"rudders" poems
The smallest things are the strongest things
As I got older I got smaller I got stronger
Boats guided by rudders
Bridges held by hinges
Trees anchored by roots
Brains fired by synapses
Depth conveyed by words
These small things these strong things these guiding things these supporting things these hidden things
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 3:48 PM UTC
*We are all poets
In the same boat
The reason we write
Just to stay afloat
There's no other reason
Of that I know
For us as poets
To stay afloat
So draw the anchor
Hoist the sail
We'll all rhyme our way
Clear outta here
Sailing the pantoum oceans
With the sonnet seas
Casting our lot
In the poetic breeze
Steering riddling rudders
Across verses in waves
Until the very last day
We're made to walk the plank
As we are all poets
In the same boat
Trying our best
Just to stay afloat*
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 8:00 AM UTC
Forehead sore, striving to hold my irises unstrained
I see through the rays, red, blue, and white snapping in the wind
Casting flickering shadows upon the women in frocks of lighter pinks and turquoise
Just like that of the channel waters through which my bow cuts cleanly
Rudders portside, ropes knotted on hand
My lady and I dock, a gentleman all in black ready to oblige her graceful hand
Two cheeks dampened with a kiss’ moment later
A glance welcomes the uniform balconies which wrap around curved corners,
Double windows, and modest roofs that mirror extravagant ceilings
Onward we stride to our night time lodging where the dormant flares shall ignite
We celebrate our ought’ve been loss of virtues
And gain of not one golden band, but two
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 6:59 PM UTC
-
some'll talk of subtle Thirst --
per the words of burning Hunger..
..others talk of utter Yearn.
its
irking Curse'll burst a Bubble.
some'll talk with humble Class --
of
static Tones n phony Numbers..
..others talk of punctured Glass --
casting Stones n throwing Punches.
some'll talk of hunching Backs,
shattered Bones n broken Rudders..
..others talk of ones who Crash:
the
tattered Boats n smoking Rubble.
some'll talk of subtle Worth --
per the words of hurting Others..
..others talk of under Earth --
in
third deGree -- beneath the World.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
some'll talk of subtle Thirst --
per the words of burning Hunger..
..others talk of Wonderland --
magic Herbs n purple Colors.
.
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC
Call it a yard, call it a shed,
That vessel grew up in bed,
With a covered head,
So that its frame did not get wet,
But better yet,
Many times,
Resins used were left to dry,
Into the cracks their poxys pry,
To amalgamate the creaking ply.
And only when the final *****
Twists its way to something new,
To tie the lace of this floating shoe,
Still sitting under rusted roof;
When the metal files are swept away,
And the hazel mast accepts its stain,
By a whitened brush proclaimed,
Only then does she take her name.
For a day or two she’s left to linger,
Poised at the top of her sheltered slip,
A proud and shining ship,
Held in place by the gasping grip,
Of the steadfast holding line.
Her ivory sails lie week and flat,
And there is irony in that,
For a girl already waxed and named,
With canvas cut and metals tamed,
Perched there upon that ledge,
Has yet to take her newborn breath.
Through forward rings two ropes are thread,
To heave her from her resting bed,
Call it a yard, call it a shed,
Into the water below,
A world she does not yet know,
But there she is bound to go.
Soon her airtight helm will taste that salted swill,
Her rudders will shoulder the force of a thousand men,
And by her maker’s will,
She will not meet her end.
Bang,
Goes the steadfast holding line,
As the forward rope force applies,
Without a wince or a whine,
Does our vessel bid goodbye,
To her sheltered bed,
Call it a yard, call it a shed,
And with one final gracious bow,
Into the wet of the sea she ploughs.
May 26, 2018
May 26, 2018 at 4:51 PM UTC
I think of you
at the oddest times,
and the strangest places,
as if I were an air show pilot
with the stick pulled back
and the rudders set in place,
and within that ****** roar, and airframe shake
I notice that in my chest there beats a heart that aches.
Feb 3, 2011
Feb 3, 2011 at 8:41 PM UTC
high above the river, from the edge of the cliff, one can
see the rafters in their inflated crafts, in the blue and
red and yellow ovals, bright and iridescent and suspended
atop the furious strip of gray as they wend below, lifting,
twisting, careening as their vessels sprout sodden arms that
grip scarred paddles, paddles that swing quick and deep
into the foam only to then be held still and wide to the water,
a thousand rudders to navigate the rocks and avoid the
hard realities that rise in the shallows and are revealed
without warning, some only to scream haplessly like
funhouse monsters, while the others lie dangerously quiet,
unseen under the surface, until at river's tail the rafters
lift their oars in triumph amid the mirror-like calm, life’s
vagaries conquered for the moment
May 18, 2021
May 18, 2021 at 6:27 AM UTC
Flickering like a tentative alpenglow corraded from profaned time
A whisper jostles through a crowded rumpus prescient of teleology and design
Jolting with pangs of panic a screech emanates from the brontides of tomorrow
A chagrin outpaces the gingerly apprehension of a peevish sorrow
Among the ruffled plumes quaffed from pedigree and put to disuse
A banausic electricity galvanizes the ****** of the amalgamated acuity pinched from the sordid, the obtuse
Refracted like off a darkened moon that clenches the darkness in an abstruse tomb
Combs through sentience of Saturn presiding over ineluctable doom
A silence louder than a plangent ****** of phantasmagoria debased
A looming victor erodes with the putrefaction of sworn and utter distaste
How to obtrude on the evening with triaged fulmination
Is an affront to the rudders of a piecemeal civilization in tatters with exacting doddering calculation
Graveyards bustle with the eidolons of scurrilous spite
Congregating around a blackened epitaph on an alabaster palace gilded in the swanky pinnacle of light
Scuttling the outmoded flanks of an abortive war
Against a henchman of state too ostentatious to hardly ever ignore
We clamber with insistence hoping on fortuitous deliverance
Yet we are deranged of the clasped distance between the crevasse of the clerisy and the satisdiction of futures passed with meticulous diligence
Absconding with furtive furrows on a wizened guild an entrusted world we helped build
We witness the silence creep over us like a trepidation contained as lethal killers of the cartel willed
That which frightens a self-fulfillment is a fatalism gone awry
Someday soon omens excavated from immolated tombs will beseech a more universal backlash, an alienated sorrow that will one day cry
But until that fetched disaster occurs
Let us meditate only on the process of emanation among wayward words
That dance with a destiny that the hegemony of momentary circumstance much prefers
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 2:19 AM UTC
Those ripples
spreading hope among the waves
in torrential despair
foreboding
right behind where I toil away
with all her ships and sails
hidden in her receptacle soul
broken them rudders
we're sinking
as I hold out a palm
for some cheer
to gather. Macabre.
The Ocean, she came to me
and sat silent in the jar
not a whisper of a wave.
lives, palimpsest soul
stepwell storms
revenant, re-sonant
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 9:36 AM UTC
The coral rock, the seaweed, the waves,
Within her heart still lives on, the drumming,
Fueled tides now with oil, no one can hear
Hear her crying, something is vague, missing.
Sand in my shoes, the wind whipping at the face,
The coral rock is smooth, definitely hollow,
Engrained with billions of stories, light years, space,
You'll venture further, the skis on, the rudders spinning,
But still entrapped in our oil ridden world, the coal,
Gas and oil prices lower, but now the sun is dimming,
Greying clouds, her voice, her heartbeat, like the tide,
The inner beauty, brought to you by solar winds,
Stuck in the whirlpool, the star fish, sands, the sparkling light,
The stars that no longer hide, unlike yesterdays so dim,
Bring an old story back to life, the forest path, the tribes,
Brought here from nowhere, strong to withstand the tides,
Standing there as if it's nothing, the common man runs a-fright,
An endless ocean even so, although the rivers trapped in oily soak,
And in this ocean that no one can even swim in, there is still hope.
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 2:09 PM UTC
They say we left our marks in the bark of that tree. But according to fate, we were never there
We were never in that park that sparked our flame. We didn’t start the fire and we sure as hell weren’t matches
We were just birds of a Phoenix feather wanting to write a book worth burning
Wanting to be reborn from the ashes like a new leaf turning in a second wind, we were supposed to bend before breaking
Ask before taking, shiver before shaking hands with crossroads demons. We never felt a thing
I’m gonna need a bigger a ship if I want to rip your name from my jaws and loosen this grip on my trachea
But you don’t give in. Especially when you smell blood in the rudders, fanning out the tension with a propeller pen compelled to
right a wrong
Like we were never here, weary from the weight of the lies. To the Victor go the vices and I’m tied down by the anchor in my mind
Afraid to set sail, this pale coast is so close to home I can still hear your voice
The water is inviting and I can’t decline. It’s time I ride out the storm and find a new place to lay my head
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 12:28 AM UTC
We are all poets
In the same boat
The reason we write
Just to stay afloat
There's no other reason
Of that, I know
For us as poets
To stay afloat
So draw the anchor
Hoist the sail
We'll all rhyme our way
Clear outta here
Sailing the pantoum oceans
On sonnet seas
Casting our lot
In the poetic breeze
Steering riddling rudders
Across verses in waves
Until the very last day
We're made to walk the plank
As we are all poets
In the same boat
Trying our best
Just to stay afloat
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 8:42 AM UTC
ran myself up on the land
chasin' the dark black storm
cracked my rudders straight in half
fightin' them waves off shore,
i's up in the early morning hours
makin' sure the house not burnin
down, 20 minutes there and back to
try and prove something more
no sleep for a week 'cause i'm worried
'bout a question, the one that no one
wants to answer an' drives the nail in
could love a girl to pieces but she
ain't nothin more than the warmth
she gives an' the way she consoles
i've wrapped around him tired and sore
but i've been here, i've been here
just bones and shreds offerin' up myself
in as many ways as I can before
that just ain't enough anymore
and it never is, the heart and soul
it never is.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 8:51 PM UTC
I can’t say that we go anywhere when we’re gone
That said, have you ever stood somewhere where everything washes up? Everything lost, everything left, everything broken
The ocean is not endless, no
Endless means forgotten
The ocean is everything
When something falls in, it rides the currents for as long as it takes to get somewhere.
Somewhere might be sinking, or in a fish’s gut, on the great Pacific garbage patch or on a little island
If you want to know how to get there I’ll ask you if you know the neighbors
Everything washes up there
Everything lost, everything left, everything lingering
Lobster pots
Shredded lines (the ocean holds all barriers)
Broken buoys (everything that floats, floats forever)
Seagull bones
Cans and bottles
Even rudders
There are stories of how tractor beach got its name:
There was once a whole tractor that washed up on its shores
Gears, wheels, engine, rusted metal (all things lost are not all things forgotten).
Pieces of it are long since buried in the rocks and mussel shells
But the ocean has parts of it somewhere
The ocean has parts of us, somewhere.
The ocean has parts of the seagulls and their wiry legs
Or the murky tidepools (even when we are left behind we are still ocean).
If planets were marbles the earth would be the only blue sphere in the whole pile
The ocean is the universe’s blue moon
One day a tractor came through one of its portals to an island
Heaven is a doubt, but perhaps heaven is Tractor Beach: a place where everything washes up. Where the egrets perch dreamlike above beach roses and sumacs. Where gulls kneel by broken eggs in nests of rocks. Where trash is treasure is the legend of a tractor in tide. A legend of escape, a place to float away, and a view like no other. What else could we need after life?
Sep 19, 2021
Sep 19, 2021 at 8:48 PM UTC