It all happened so fast. Like most good things in life--the really monumental moments--it's like you float out of your body and come screaming back just soon enough to realize the moment had passed.

I didn't know how many miles were behind me now. It seemed like a thousand but it didn't really matter. I wasn't going to be one of those mindless wanderers--blindly probing my way through life's misery and defeat to one day wake up wishing I was young again.

I'm taking my youth back from the government, the bankers, the Wall Street gamblers and racing toward the horizon like there are commercial airplanes in my blood and skyscrapers burning in my chest.

You can only go to the same god forsaken place to have your soul ****** out of you for so many ******* days in a row before you either become one of them or make your own revolt and

collapse
                 *into a sea of ash
                                              slithering like snakes along the city streets.
You just run as fast as you can.

I chose the latter.
__________________­__


I'm going to do the cliche thing I suppose. Do as many drugs as possible, do as many women as possible, keep chasing the next good time until I get high enough to slap a saddle on my car roof and ride off into the Atlantic--fireworks shooting off in every direction to *** up the stars--refracting radials within the iridescence of the shimmering sea.

>explosions echo endlessly<
[wrap around the ambient rhythm of the TidePuller]

touch! caress! make love!--stare through eyes into deep blue souls and find something of yourself there.

That's how I'd like to go anyways, I don't know about you--.

That might just be this narcotic cocktail talking. I take my pills ground up in a wine glass mixed with cheap scotch. Then I chase with cups of watered down coffee--chugging until ceilings start to undulate and shake me loose. That's when I know I can start the day.

It's usually my most productive days when the ceiling tiles arrange into piano keys. Then I get to create my symphonies and soliloquies before I try to go get laid.

Now that I'm out here on the road though my mind is being blown.

Try waking to the same white black piano key ceiling everyday, to then finally feel the colors of the sky--for the very first time!

A never ending metaphysical canvas for the thoughts and longings of a drugged up DaVinci who just woke up in his time machine to start the 2nd Renaissance in the clouds. It all makes me wish I would have left years ago.
__________________­_


You see, I'm your typical twenty-something passionate kid trying to turn a ****** past into some kind of salvageable foundation for a chance at catching up with the rest of normal "adult" society. But I've got some problems with this whole "reality" thing people are so adamant at upholding.

Last time I visited my human family around the world they were all drowning in debt and poverty; trying with every fiber of their being to find that one bright spot. Stuck. In the deepest, darkest, most cavernous rotting excuse of a day to day life.

All because some meaningless number
on some computer
in some bank building
with their name on it
either is too small or doesn't exist.

Most of my human family know things are bad,

But most in the impoverished third-world are so deprived of basic human needs that they never get the chance to ponder who really holds the key to their cage.

So they are inclined to accept the status quo and the system and try to live inside of it. Failing to find sunshine within the deepest depths of an erupting volcano; mistaking the heat, the burning alive, for some kind of sign that the brightness has got to be somewhere close. So we will just try to sink a little deeper with the rest of them.

Here in America:
Sure, let's go on back to ringing registers for minimum wage all day until my ears bleed and my head wants to fall off so I can go home to watch some television!

Yes, God Please just let me relax here with my box of flashing pictures and scintillating sounds. The only truth I'll ever need.

Just let me relax here with my reality being defined for me by the volcano directors--telling me that I didn't just come in my house dripping with magma all over the carpet.

YES GOD, just let me relax a little before I have to go to my volcanic, skin searing hell again tomorrow morning. Where they tell me on T.V. that I'm going to find that sunshine I desperately long for. But It'll always

*collapse
                 into a sea of ash
                 to scar the sky grey, silence the sun's rays, blot out the stars, and darken our days*

You just sigh and say "Tomorrow's another day..."
_________________­__


Yeah, I was right there with them yesterday. I was with them for years. Getting brainwashed and ***** slapped by advertising--getting barraged with constant reminders that all I was meant to do was to work my life away--decide to be some tiny insignificant cog in this "economy" they call it.

Looks more to me like I signed up to be some mindless consumerism *****! Sheeping my way along... buying and wasting; buying, wasting; buying again, a bunch of **** I don't need and throwing it away.

We're Living in a society infected with some sort of capitalistic contagion that pretty much siphons off the Earth's life force.

We are conditioned into a reality that the richest & most powerful would like all to believe.

Art-full hearts are stomped on, told to get a job, and plan for retirement. Told to slow down and be reasonable rather than speed up. Velocity of the heart may as well be an act of terrorism unless it's for marriage--and LGBT is on the no fly list.

This is a reality set up predominantly for the endless profit of a bunch of trans-national corporations who won't be satisfied until they hold complete and utter dominion over their ***** and pillaged planet.

Perhaps then they'll be rich enough to fly away in spaceships to **** the next Earth and leave all us sheep here with bargain sales, social networking and reality T.V. as distractions...

Too bad for them some people still read. So I'll learn the different strains of herb from my local library and become a ***** of feeling good, freeing love, and accepting all artistry.

Have you ever seen a painting in the sky? Or witnessed windy symphonies in trees? Hey, don't judge me,

you're the one addicted to killing everyone and everything with your mindless dollar bill.

kneel before almighty god,
mind your founders,
adore their wise countenance,
looking up at you,
re-assuring you,
comforting you,
taking the pain away,
but DON'T RUN OUT!
you'll be back for more.
you'll come crawling back.
You'll do anything for just enough,
just one more fix.

It's got its hooks in bad,
don't it.
___________________­_


PRODUCT-XA110357: Capitalism
DRUG STATUS: Still in Clinical Trials
TEST SUBJECTS: Human Race
PHARMACEUTICAL LABORATORY: Earth
INITIAL FINDINGS: Subjects not receptive, keeps causing: Anger, Greed, Jealously, Oppression, War, Ignorance, Famine, Inequality, Imprisonment, Slavery. Environment not receptive, will cease functioning in the future. Time of Earth Death is unclear. Thankfully it does seem capable to last through the next few fiscal years. A relief, as this is what our stockholders are concerned with.


Symptoms of Withdrawal
Users who are addicted to money and are going through withdrawals may or may not experience a loss of food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation, education, free-time, happiness, fulfillment, reverence of nature, beautiful moments, relationships with friends or families, and love.


FDA Warning
If you are poor, lazy, and uneducated it is your own fault. Being poor and lazy may or may not result in Debt. DEBT may or may not lead to SLAVERY, stress, illness, and an early death.


Poison Control Center
If you have ingested too much debt, slavery, stress, illness, and are fearing an early death please do not call any corporate buildings. Access your phone, computer, or go to your local library to find reputable resources and EDUCATE YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY. Get some nice speakers and start exploring ALL GENRES OF MUSIC. Look at as many paintings, sculptures, forests, and gardens as you can--as often as possible. Lay under the stars and dream about what YOU want to do to make a positive impact on this world. FIND OTHER POSITIVE PEOPLE and AVOID NEGATIVE PEOPLE. If you know someone that is poisoned who you want to save please refer them to the nearest Poison Control Center

-->Smile at the sun--feel its warmth<--

----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------------------------------

happy hearts:--after love--not money--free from pain--sickness will surrender--
addicted to art, peace, compassion, and empathy--feel the sky get closer--.

-----------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------





­




























"In a state of enlightened anarchy each person will become his(her) own ruler. They will conduct themselves in such a way that their behaviour will not hamper the well being of their neighbours. In an ideal state there will be no political institutions and therefore no political power."
-Mahatma Gandhi

Oh
to be the girl in those adverts ,
Light,
skinny,
beautiful
A tragic line
to every gentle rib
I fetishise her fragile fingers
A monstrous beast reflected in the mirror, the worst possibility.

Tis poetic, there she stares
Says her lines; remaining fair,
Into my face, My acting is heavy handed and awkward
She’s a consumable reality,
She’s easy on the eyes
The fragile female,
salvageable.

We are a tragedy of ages, her Juliet, I Faustus
They silently boo while I slop onto the stage
A lazy slob,The **** of society, just don’t eat you fat ****. men like curvy girls We don’t want to see you, You’re so brave!  You’re the problem, it’s not hard hide your mass from view, unkempt, repulsive, vile. hide yourself it offends my sharp eyes.
I open my drooling mouth to speak, but there are chins smothering my mouth
My eyes clouded by greasy cellulite
I don’t want to exist like this.

So just stop eating.


I’d give an arm and a leg,
my pale teeth,
my parasitic possibility
my child

I’m the type to holster mental index cards of things to say on a first date
But no matter how much I study, my words never withstand the test of time.
Eventually, sweet nothings cause ear canal cavities from sultry words too often indulged.

Love made me want to rip my pulsing heart out of my chest and place him on a table just for interrogation.
I would ask, why he would trust so easy when he should know better than anyone that no love, melody, or beat goes on forever.

But what an exceptional construction worker you’ve become.  
Demolishing hearts as if the blueprint to my soul has become obsolete.
Words spewed from your mouth with the power of a wrecking ball that collided with my 5’7 frame.
So unpredictable that I doubled over from the pain.
I crumbled as if I was an ancient building way pass my prime.
And I’m still searching through the rubble to find any salvageable pieces.
Maybe I can recover a missing part of my smile and plaster it back into place, though it will never fit quite the same.
You ****** slowly on my bone marrow and your lack of concern made me insane.

Before I slept, I sprinkled immaculate images of you on my eyelids as if I was the Sandman.
Thoughts of you embraced my dreams, and it was the only way I could find serenity in my slumber.

I will never again activate the synapses in my brain that saw you as a god that descended to earth.
You ripped my psyche to shreds like a cannibalistic cupid who lost sight of the agenda.
To create love, not to pierce it with vindictive arrows.  

Now all you are to me is this poem.
A poem.
Letters, words, and stanzas.
You don’t even deserve the time it took me to write this.
You do not deserve the effort of my joints smacking the keys when I find the next thought of how you hurt me.

Like sacred paintings in newly discovered caves, I tattooed the inner walls of my cerebral cortex with memories of you.
It would be there forever. Waiting to be discovered by the next person that walks into my life with a torch filled with hope.
Illuminating my dark, damp and lonely cave.

When the next woman crosses my path and wonders why I get a verbal tic from the word love, I will unlock those same chambers of my mind and show her the walls that you’ve left your worthless signature on.

I hope she will be able to understand that I can let her onto the front porch, but it will be some time before she gets to see my home.
Because, it’s really messy in there.
***** dishes in the sink, books thrown on the ground, an unkempt bed, and my confidence and self-worth hung up to dry on the clothesline.

You cannot just rent a space in someone’s home and then leave without a month’s notice.

You were my addiction,
I injected your ******* essence and I was high on life when you were near.
So close that you coursed through my veins and made me feel alive.
Every now and again I get that familiar itching of an addict.
I am itching, just to text you.
Just a simple hello.
I get urges to find you.
To cop another one of your addictive glances straight into my two liquid pools of inexperience.
I never thought addictions were this hard to kick.

I am not old, yet.

My skin is not powdery and white, see-through like a paper lantern.

But there is a part of me which

When I dare to reach for someone I love

Reaches with brittle ***** fingers, soft and cold and fluttering like white moths

That edge closer to a flame until they catch.

There is a part of me that feels old, and fragile.

And already even in the crest of my youth I’ve cursed this body

For its frailty, its needs.

It suffers and complains, always crying out for something,

Never sated, never still.

I’ve said it feels like living inside a porcelain doll

A look, and cracks can spider out along an arm,

A word and blood can bloom beneath the surface, seeping up into

Bruised pictures and symbols.

I must always be gentle,

I must always be

Watching.

Too passionate, and fissures form, marring the cheek, spreading like shadows thrown by a lace curtain.

I stare out, burning to touch everything,

And yet I pull back:

To dare is to risk, and I’ve seen

Both reward and loss.

I have seen a thousand shining colors spread across me like sunrise,

Warming my skin,

Calling to me like prayer until a bit of light escaped through the spaces between my atoms and reached another person’s palms,

But I have also seen the pale, flat shards of myself,

Sifted through white dust in dismay

For a salvageable portion.

Indeed, there are rooms in this world where sharp edges of me still linger

Waiting in obstructed corners and beneath heavy refrigerators

To gouge a foot or snag a hem,

Interred

In the dark and hollow places where they flew when I shattered and could not gather them all.

I have known

Intimately

My own fragility,

How maddeningly breakable I am

And how difficult to mend.

And there is a part of me now, always,

Which whispers to me when I would be bold,


“You are not old, yet.

But wouldn’t you just love

To live that long?”

Talent is a mime on a mountaintop* said he who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon.  He had said previously other things but this was the first to which my mother caught me listening.  She took my ear and me with it outside and shoved two cigarettes she’d been smoking in my mouth and told me to chew.  When I did not she worked my jaw herself until the tip of my tongue bled enough to give her pause.  Neither one of us cried and the cigarettes were salvageable.  The morning speaker then joined us obviously hoping for a drag.  The moment my mother hated him passed and she told him what hope was.  

He who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon would not often be seen by my mother.  He and I were late in our waking and she’d be out gathering types of dead bird from the bases of cornstalks.  I’d sit in my highchair and watch him shirtless as he prepared the tools of my art.  The hairs on his back would grow before my eyes and need bitten at the follicle.  He would turn and put his finger in the garbage disposal and pretend it was on.  On was something he never turned it because he said a mantis lived there and what would bite his follicles.  I wouldn’t be hungry then which was good for my show.  He would laugh at the misery of my scooping arms and be full of it and tired and he would ask me to rub his belly while he went to the couch on his back.  His belly the single most reason to keep him said mother.  I’d put my ear to it to feel myself kick and never did stir him from sleep.  Pretty early in this routine some of his belly hair started to grow in my ear and my dreams from then always had a banquet in their midsection.

Careful with my dreams.  Mother said they are kittens and one can bite too hard.  It is like her being stubborn and only calling me boy when most called me boy and girl in equal measure.  Sometimes when boy got the lion’s share I’d long to nurse and have to slap the ******* sound out of my teeth.  For saner things I’d walk the dog with a dog in it.  I had names for both and both were names I would’ve called my brother had I been born.  I once found a sipped at wine glass on the roof of the pharmacy mother later burned with lit stalks.  When the turkey buzzards skittered themselves nightly across the horizontal track of my looking for god I’d imagine my brother skinny enough to fit in the parched tube of his swallow.

Now that I am returning to Shudderkin, the welt left by my larger than life father whipping his belt across the tailbone of Ohio, it is clear to me that what we called a dog was correct only on certain days.  The mongrel keeping pace with my bike, the second name I have for my brother, is not the physical dog a city knows and not country loyal as country wants to, and so makes others, believe.  It is instead more like the talking when one is sped up and words get put together and then are stuck there.  Dog of Shudderkin.  Its tongue does not droop or even wag outside the mouth.  A pinkness has always gone on without me.

At age 45 I decided to become a sailor.  It had attracted me since I first saw a man living on his sailboat at the 77th street boat basin in New York City, back in 1978.  I was leaving on a charter boat trip with customers up the Hudson to West Point, and the image of him having coffee on the back deck of his boat that morning stayed with me for years.  It was now 1994, and I had just bought a condo on the back bay of a South Jersey beach town — and it came with a boat slip.

I started my search for a boat by first reading every sailing magazine I could get my hands on.  This was frustrating because most of the boats they featured were ‘way’ out of my price range. I knew I wanted a boat that was 25’ to 27’ in length and something with a full cabin below deck so that I could sail some overnight’s with my wife and two kids.

I then started to attend boat shows.  The used boats at the shows were more in my price range, and I traveled from Norfolk to Mystic Seaport in search of the right one.  One day, while checking the classifieds in a local Jersey Shore newspaper, I saw a boat advertised that I just had to go see …

  For Sale: 27’ Cal Sloop. Circa 1966. One owner and used very
   gently.  Price $6,500.00 (negotiable)

This boat was now almost 30 years old, but I had heard good things about the Cal’s.  Cal was short for California. It was a boat originally manufactured on the west coast and the company was now out of business.  The brand had a real ‘cult’ following, and the boat had a reputation for being extremely sea worthy with a fixed keel, and it was noted for being good in very light air.  This boat drew over 60’’ of water, which meant that I would need at least five feet of depth (and really seven) to avoid running aground.  The bay behind my condo was full of low spots, especially at low tide, and most sailors had boats with retractable centerboards rather than fixed keels.  This allowed them to retract the boards (up) during low tide and sail in less than three feet of water. This wouldn’t be an option for me if I bought the Cal.

I was most interested in ‘blue water’ ocean sailing, so the stability of the fixed keel was very attractive to me.  I decided to travel thirty miles North to the New Jersey beach town of Mystic Island to look at the boat.  I arrived in front of a white bi-level house on a sunny Monday April afternoon at about 4:30. The letters on the mailbox said Murphy, with the ‘r’ & the ‘p’ being worn almost completely away due to the heavy salt air.

I walked to the front door and rang the buzzer.  An attractive blonde woman about ten years older than me answered the door. She asked: “Are you the one that called about the boat?”  I said that I was, and she then said that her husband would be home from work in about twenty minutes.  He worked for Resorts International Casino in Atlantic City as their head of maintenance, and he knew everything there was to know about the Cal. docked out back.  

Her name was Betty and as she offered me ice tea she started to talk about the boat.  “It was my husband’s best friend’s boat. Irv and his wife Dee Dee live next door but Irv dropped dead of a heart attack last fall.  My husband and Irv used to take the boat out through the Beach Haven Inlet into the ocean almost every night.  Irv bought the boat new back in 1967, and we moved into this house in 1968.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun the two of them had on that old boat.  It’s sat idle, ******* to the bulkhead since last fall, and Dee Dee couldn’t even begin to deal with selling it until her kids convinced her to move to Florida and live with them.  She offered it to my husband Ed but he said the boat would never be the same without Irv on board, and he’d rather see it go to a new owner.  Looking at it every day behind the house just brought back memories of Irv and made him sad all over again every time that he did.”

Just then Ed walked through the door leading from the garage into the house.  “Is this the new sailor I’ve been hearing about,” he said in a big friendly voice.  “That’s me I said,” as we shook hands.  ‘Give me a minute to change and I’ll be right with you.”

As Ed walked me back through the stone yard to the canal behind his house, I noticed something peculiar.  There was no dock at the end of his property.  The boat was tied directly to the sea wall itself with only three yellow and black ‘bumpers’ separating the fiberglass side of the boat from the bulkhead itself.  It was low tide now and the boats keel was sitting in at least two feet of sand and mud.  Ed explained to me that Irv used to have this small channel that they lived on, which was man made, dredged out every year.  Irv also had a dock, but it had even less water underneath it than the bulkhead behind Ed’s house.

Ed said again, “no dredging’s been done this year, and the only way to get the boat out of the small back tributary to the main artery of the bay, is to wait for high tide. The tide will bring the water level up at least six feet.  That will give the boat twenty-four inches of clearance at the bottom and allow you to take it out into the deeper (30 feet) water of the main channel.”

Ed jumped on the boat and said, “C’mon, let me show you the inside.”  As he took the padlock off the slides leading to the companionway, I noticed how motley and ***** everything was. My image of sailing was pristine boats glimmering in the sun with their main sails up and the captain and crew with drinks in their hands.  This was about as far away from that as you could get.  As Ed removed the slides, the smell hit me.  MOLD! The smell of mildew was everywhere, and I could only stay below deck for a moment or two before I had to come back up topside for air.  Ed said, “It’ll all dry out (the air) in about ten minutes, and then we can go forward and look at the V-Berth and the head in the front of the cabin.”

What had I gotten myself into, I thought?  This boat looked beyond salvageable, and I was now looking for excuses to leave. Ed then said, “Look; I know it seems bad, but it’s all cosmetic.  It’s really a fine boat, and if you’re willing to clean it up, it will look almost perfect when you’re done. Before Irv died, it was one of the best looking sailboats on the island.”

In ten more minutes we went back inside.  The damp air had been replaced with fresh air from outside, and I could now get a better look at the galley and salon.  The entire cabin was finished in a reddish brown, varnished wood, with nice trim work along the edges.  It had two single sofas in the main salon that converted into beds at night, with a stainless-steel sink, refrigerator and nice carpeting and curtains.  We then went forward.  The head was about 40’’ by 40’’ and finished in the same wood as the outer cabin.  The toilet, sink, and hand-held shower looked fine, and Ed assured me that as soon as we filled up the water tank, they would all work.

The best part for me though was the v-berth beyond.  It was behind a sold wood varnished door with a beautiful brass grab-rail that helped it open and close. It was large, with a sleeping area that would easily accommodate two people. That, combined with the other two sleeping berths in the main salon, meant that my entire family could spend the night on the boat. I was starting to get really interested!

Ed then said that Irv’s wife Dee Dee was as interested in the boat going to a good home as she was in making any money off the boat.  We walked back up to the cockpit area and sat down across from each other on each side of the tiller.  Ed said, “what do you think?” I admitted to Ed that I didn’t know much about sailboats, and that this would be my first.  He told me it was Irv’s first boat too, and he loved it so much that he never looked at another.

                   Ed Was A Pretty Good Salesman

We then walked back inside the house.  Betty had prepared chicken salad sandwiches, and we all sat out on the back deck to eat.  From here you could see the boat clearly, and its thirty-five-foot mast was now silhouetted in front of the sun that was setting behind the marsh.  It was a very pretty scene indeed.

Ed said,”Dee Dee has left it up to me to sell the boat.  I’m willing to be reasonable if you say you really want it.”  I looked out at what was once a white sailboat, covered in mold and sitting in the mud.  No matter how hard the wind blew, and there was a strong offshore breeze, it was not moving an inch.  I then said to Ed, “would it be possible to come back when the tide is up and you can take me out?”  Ed said he would be glad to, and Saturday around 2:00 p.m. would be a good time to come back. The tide would be up then.  I also asked him if between now and Saturday I could try and clean the boat up a little? This would allow me to really see what I would be buying, and at the very least we’d have a cleaner boat to take out on the water.  Ed said fine.

I spent the next four days cleaning the boat. Armed with four gallons of bleach, rubber gloves, a mask, and more rags than I could count, I started to remove the mold.  It took all week to get the boat free of the mildew and back to being white again. The cushions inside the v-berth and salon were so infested with mold that I threw them up on the stones covering Ed’s back yard. I then asked Ed if he wanted to throw them out — he said that he did.

Saturday came, and Betty had said, “make sure to get here in time for lunch.”  At 11:45 a.m. I pulled up in front of the house.  By this time, we knew each other so well that Betty just yelled down through the screen door, “Let yourself in, Ed’s down by the boat fiddling with the motor.”  The only good thing that had been done since Irv passed away last fall was that Ed had removed the motor from the boat. It was a long shaft Johnson 9.9 horsepower outboard, and he had stored it in his garage.  The motor was over twelve years old, but Ed said that Irv had taken really good care of it and that it ran great.  It was also a long shaft, which meant that the propeller was deep in the water behind the keel and would give the boat more propulsion than a regular shaft outboard would.

I yelled ‘hello’ to Ed from the deck outside the kitchen.  He shouted back, “Get down here, I want you to hear this.”  I ran down the stairs and out the back door across the stones to where Ed was sitting on the boat.  He had the twist throttle in his hand, and he was revving the motor. Just like he had said —it sounded great. Being a lifelong motorcycle and sports car enthusiast, I knew what a strong motor sounded like, and this one sounded just great to me.

“Take the throttle, Ed said,” as I jumped on board.  I revved the motor half a dozen times and then almost fell over.  The boat had just moved about twenty degrees to the starboard (right) side in the strong wind and for the first time was floating freely in the canal.  Now I really felt like I was on a boat.  Ed said, “Are you hungry, or do you wanna go sailing?”  Hoping that it wouldn’t offend Betty I said, “Let’s head out now into the deeper water.” Ed said that Betty would be just fine, and that we could eat when we got back.

As I untied the bow and stern lines, I could tell right away that Ed knew what he was doing.  After traveling less than 100 yards to the main channel leading to the bay, he put the mainsail up and we sailed from that point on.  It was two miles out to the ocean, and he skillfully maneuvered the boat, using nothing but the tiller and mainsheet.  The mainsheet is the block and pulley that is attached from the deck of the cockpit to the boom.  It allows the boom to go out and come back, which controls the speed of the boat. The tiller then allows you to change direction.  With the mainsheet in one hand and the tiller in the other, the magic of sailing was hard to describe.

I was mesmerized watching Ed work the tiller and mainsheet in perfect harmony. The outboard was now tilted back up in the cockpit and out of the water.  “For many years before he bought the motor, Irv and I would take her out, and bring her back in with nothing but the sail, One summer we had very little wind, and Irv and I got stuck out in the ocean. Twice we had to be towed back in by ‘Sea Tow.’  After that Irv broke down and bought the long-shaft Johnson.”

In about thirty minutes we passed through the ‘Great Bay,’ then the Little Egg and Beach Haven Inlets, until we were finally in the ocean.  “Only about 3016 miles straight out there, due East, and you’ll be in London,” Ed said.”  Then it hit me.  From where we were now, I could sail anywhere in the world, with nothing to stop me except my lack of experience. Experience I told myself, was something that I would quickly get. Knowing the exact mileage, said to me that both Ed and Irv had thought about that trip, and maybe had fantasized about doing it together.

    With The Tenuousness Of Life, You Never Know How Much      Time You Have

For two more hours we sailed up and down the coast in front of Long Beach Island.  I could hardly sit down in the cockpit as Ed let me do most of the sailing.  It took only thirty minutes to get the hang of using the mainsheet and tiller, and after an hour I felt like I had been sailing all my life.  Then we both heard a voice come over the radio.  Ed’s wife Betty was on channel 27 of the VHF asking if we were OK and that lunch was still there but the sandwiches were getting soggy.  Ed said we were headed back because the tide had started to go out, and we needed to be back and ******* in less than ninety minutes or we would run aground in the canal.

I sailed us back through the inlets which thankfully were calm that day and back into the main channel leading out of the bay.  Ed then took it from there.  He skillfully brought us up the rest of the channel and into the canal, and in a fairly stiff wind spun the boat 180’ around and gently slid it back into position along the sea wall behind his house.  I had all 3 fenders out and quickly jumped off the boat and up on top of the bulkhead to tie off the stern line once we were safely alongside.  I then tied off the bow-line as Ed said, “Not too tight, you have to allow for the 6-8 feet of tide that we get here every day.”

After bringing down the mainsail, and folding and zippering it safely to the boom, we locked the companionway and headed for the house.  Betty was smoking a cigarette on the back deck and said, “So how did it go boys?” Without saying a word Ed looked directly at me and for one of the few times in my life, I didn’t really know where to begin.

“My God,” I said.  “My God.”  “I’ll take that as good Betty said, as she brought the sandwiches back out from the kitchen.  “You can powerboat your whole life, but sailing is different” Ed told me.  “When sailing, you have to work with the weather and not just try to power through it.  The weather tells you everything.  In these parts, when a storm kicks up you see two sure things happen.  The powerboats are all coming in, and the sailboat’s are all headed out.  What is dangerous and unpleasant for the one, is just what the other hopes for.”

I had been a surfer as a kid and understood the logic.  When the waves got so big on the beach that the lifeguard’s closed it to swimming during a storm, the surfers all headed out.  This would not be the only similarity I would find between surfing and sailing as my odyssey continued.  I finished my lunch quickly because all I wanted to do was get back on the boat.

When I returned to the bulkhead the keel had already touched bottom and the boat was again fixed and rigidly upright in the shallow water.  I spent the afternoon on the back of the boat, and even though I knew it was bad luck, in my mind I changed her name.  She would now be called the ‘Trinity,’ because of the three who would now sail her —my daughter Melissa, my son T.C. and I.  I also thought that any protection I might get from the almighty because of the name couldn’t hurt a new sailor with still so much to learn.

                                  Trinity, It Was!

I now knew I was going to buy the boat.  I went back inside and Ed was fooling around with some fishing tackle inside his garage.  “OK Ed, how much can I buy her for?” I said.  Ed looked at me squarely and said, “You tell me what you think is fair.”  “Five thousand I said,” and without even looking up Ed said “SOLD!” I wrote the check out to Irv’s wife on the spot, and in that instant it became real. I was now a boat owner, and a future deep-water sailor.  The Atlantic Ocean had better watch out, because the Captain and crew of the Trinity were headed her way.

                 SOLD, In An Instant, It Became Real!

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the kids the news.  They hadn’t seen much of me for the last week, and they both wanted to run right back and take the boat out.  I told them we could do it tomorrow (Sunday) and called Ed to ask him if he’d accompany us one more time on a trip out through the bay.  He said gladly, and to get to his house by 3:00 p.m. tomorrow to ‘play the tide.’  The kids could hardly sleep as they fired one question after another at me about the boat. More than anything, they wanted to know how we would get it the 45 miles from where it was docked to the boat slip behind our condo in Stone Harbor.  At dinner that night at our favorite Italian restaurant, they were already talking about the boat like it was theirs.

The next morning, they were both up at dawn, and by 8:30 we were on our way North to Mystic Island.  We had decided to stop at a marine supply store and buy a laundry list of things that mariners need ‘just in case’ aboard a boat.  At 11:15 a.m. we pulled out of the parking lot of Boaters World in Somers Point, New Jersey, and headed for Ed and Betty’s. They were both sitting in lawn chairs when we got there and surprised to see us so early.  ‘The tide’s not up for another 3 hours,” Ed said, as we walked up the drive.  I told him we knew that, but the kids wanted to spend a couple of hours on the boat before we headed out into the bay.  “Glad to have you kids,” Ed said, as he went back to reading his paper.  Betty told us that anything that we might need, other than what we just bought, is most likely in the garage.

Ed, being a professional maintenance engineer (what Betty called him), had a garage that any handyman would die for.  I’m sure we could have built an entire house on the empty lot across the street just from what Ed had hanging, and piled up, in his garage.

We walked around the side of the house and when the kids got their first look at the boat, they bolted for what they thought was a dock.  When they saw it was raw bulkhead, they looked back at me unsure of what to do.  I said, ‘jump aboard,” but be careful not to fall in, smiling to myself and knowing that the water was still less than four feet deep.  With that, my 8-year old son took a flying leap and landed dead center in the middle of the cockpit — a true sailor for sure.  My daughter then pulled the bow line tight bringing the boat closer to the sea wall and gingerly stepped on board like she had done it a thousand times before. Watching them board the boat for the first time, I knew this was the start of something really good.

Ed had already unlocked the companionway, so I stayed on dry land and just watched them for a half-hour as they explored every inch of the boat from bow to stern. “You really did a great job Dad cleaning her up.  Can we start the motor, my son asked?” I told him as soon as the tide came up another foot, we would drop the motor down into the water, and he could listen to it run.  So far this was everything I could have hoped for.  My kids loved the boat as much as I did.  I had had the local marine artist come by after I left the day before and paint the name ‘Trinity’ across the outside transom on the back of the boat. Now this boat was really ours. It’s hard to explain the thrill of finally owning your first boat. To those who can remember their first Christmas when they finally got what they had been hoping for all year —the feeling was the same.

                            It Was Finally Ours

In another hour, Ed came out. We fired up the motor with my son in charge, unzipped the mainsail, untied the lines, and we were headed back out to sea.  I’m not sure what was wider that day, the blue water vista straight in front of us or the eyes of my children as the boat bit into the wind. It was keeled over to port and carved through the choppy waters of ‘The Great Bay’ like it was finally home. For the first time in a long time the kids were speechless.  They let the wind do the talking, as the channel opened wide in front of them.

Ed let both kids take a turn at the helm. They were also amazed at how much their father had learned in the short time he had been sailing.  We stayed out for a full three hours, and then Betty again called on the VHF. “Coast Guards calling for a squall, with small craft warnings from five o’clock on.  For safety’s sake, you guy’s better head back for the dock.”  Ed and I smiled at each other, each knowing what the other was secretly thinking.  If the kids hadn’t been on board, this would have been a really fun time to ride out the storm.  Discretion though, won out over valor, and we headed West back through the bay and into the canal. Once again, Ed spun the boat around and nudged it into the sea wall like the master that he was.  This time my son was in charge of grabbing and tying off the lines, and he did it in a fashion that would make any father proud.

As we tidied up the boat, Ed said, “So when are you gonna take her South?”  “Next weekend, I said.” My business partner, who lives on his 42’ Egg Harbor in Cape May all summer and his oldest son are going to help us.  His oldest son Tony had worked on an 82’ sightseeing sailboat in Fort Lauderdale for two years, and his dad said there was little about sailing that he didn’t know.  That following Saturday couldn’t come fast enough/

                          We Counted The Minutes

The week blew by (literally), as the weather deteriorated with each day.  Saturday morning came, and the only good news (to me) was that my daughter had a gymnastic’s meet and couldn’t make the maiden voyage. The crew would be all men —my partner Tommy, his son Tony, and my son T.C. and I. We checked the tides, and it was decided that 9:30 a.m. was the perfect time to start South with the Trinity.  We left for Ed and Betty’s at 7:00 a.m. and after stopping at ‘Polly’s’ in Stone Harbor for breakfast we arrived at the boat at exactly 8:45.  It was already floating freely in the narrow canal. Not having Ed’s skill level, we decided to ‘motor’ off the bulkhead, and not put the sails up until we reached the main bay.  With a kiss to Betty and a hug from Ed, we broke a bottle of ‘Castellane Brut’ on the bulkhead and headed out of the canal.

Once in the main bay we noticed something we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t see at all!  The buoy markers were scarcely visibly that lined both sides of the channel. We decided to go South ‘inside,’ through the Intercoastal Waterway instead of sailing outside (ocean) to Townsends Inlet where we initially decided to come in.  This meant that we would have to request at least 15 bridge openings on our way south.  This was a tricky enough procedure in a powerboat, but in a sailboat it could be a disaster in the making.  The Intercoastal Waterway was the back-bay route from Maine to Florida and offered protection that the open ocean would not guarantee. It had the mainland to its West and the barrier island you were passing to its East.  If it weren’t for the number of causeway bridges along its route, it would have been the perfect sail.

When you signaled to the bridge tender with your air horn, requesting an opening, it could sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes for him to get traffic stopped on the bridge before he could then open it up and let you through.  On Saturdays, it was worse. In three cases we waited and circled for twenty minutes before being given clear passage through the bridge.  Sailboats have the right of way over powerboats but only when they’re under sail. We had decided to take the sails down to make the boat easier to control.  By using the outboard we were just like any other powerboat waiting to get through, and often had to bob and weave around the waiting ‘stinkpots’ (powerboats) until the passage under the bridge was clear.  The mast on the Trinity was higher than even the tallest bridge, so we had to stop and signal to each one requesting an opening as we traveled slowly South.

All went reasonably well until we arrived at the main bridge entering Atlantic City. The rebuilt casino skyline hovered above the bridge like a looming monster in the fog.  This was also the bridge with the most traffic coming into town with weekend gamblers risking their mortgage money to try and break the bank.  The wind had now increased to over 30 knots.  This made staying in the same place in the water impossible. We desperately criss-crossed from side to side in the canal trying to stay in position for when the bridge opened. Larger boats blew their horns at us, as we drifted back and forth in the channel looking like a crew of drunks on New Year’s Eve.  Powerboats are able to maintain their position because they have large motors with a strong reverse gear.  Our little 9.9 Johnson did have reverse, but it didn’t have nearly enough power to back us up against the tide.

On our third pass zig-zagging across the channel and waiting for the bridge to open, it happened.  Instead of hearing the bell from the bridge tender signaling ‘all clear,’ we heard a loud “SNAP.’ Tony was at the helm, and from the front of the boat where I was standing lookout I heard him shout “OH S#!T.”  The wooden tiller had just broken off in his hand.

                                         SNAP!

Tony was sitting down at the helm with over three feet of broken tiller in his left hand.  The part that still remained and was connected to the rudder was less than 12 inches long.  Tony tried with all of his might to steer the boat with the little of the tiller that was still left, but it was impossible in the strong wind.  He then tried to steer the boat by turning the outboard both left and right and gunning the motor.  This only made a small correction, and we were now headed back across the Intercoastal Waterway with the wind behind us at over thirty knots.  We were also on a collision course with the bridge.  The only question was where we would hit it, not when! We hoped and prayed it would be as far to the Eastern (Atlantic City) side as possible.  This would be away from the long line of boats that were patiently lined up and waiting for the bridge to open.

Everything on the boat now took on a different air.  Tony was screaming that he couldn’t steer, and my son came up from down below where he was staying out of the rain. With one look he knew we were in deep trouble.  It was then that my priorities completely shifted from the safety of my new (old) boat to the safety of my son and the rest of those onboard.  My partner Tommy got on the radio’s public channel and warned everyone in the area that we were out of control.  Several power boaters tried to throw us a line, but in the strong wind they couldn’t get close enough to do it safely.

We were now less than 100 feet from the bridge.  It looked like we would hit about seven pylons left of dead center in the middle of the bridge on the North side.  As we braced for impact, a small 16 ft Sea Ray with an elderly couple came close and tried to take my son off the boat.  Unfortunately, they got too close and the swirling current around the bridge piers ****** them in, and they also hit the bridge about thirty feet to our left. Thank God, they did have enough power to ‘motor’ off the twenty-foot high pier they had hit but not without doing cosmetic damage to the starboard side of their beautiful little boat. I felt terrible about this and yelled ‘THANK YOU’ across the wind and the rushing water.  They waved back, as they headed North against the tide, back up the canal.

      The Kindness Of Strangers Continues To Amaze Me!

BANG !!!  That’s the sound the boat made when it hit the bridge.  We were now sideways in the current, and the first thing to hit was not the mast but the starboard side ‘stay’ that holds the mast up.  Stays are made of very thick wire, and even though the impact was at over ten knots, the stay held secure and did not break.  We were now pinned against the North side of the bridge, with the current swirling by us, and the boat being pulled slowly through the opening between the piers.  The current was pulling the boat and forcing it to lean over with the mast pointing North. If it continued to do this, we would finally broach (turn over) and all be in the water and floating South toward the beach towns of Margate and Ventnor.  The width between the piers was over thirty feet, so there was plenty of room to **** us in and then down, as the water had now assumed command.

It was at this moment that I tied my Son to myself.  He was a good swimmer and had been on our local swim team for the past three summers, but this was no pool.  There were stories every summer of boaters who got into trouble and had to go in the water, and many times someone drowned or was never found or seen again.  The mast was now leaned over and rubbing against the inside of the bridge.  

The noise it made moving back and forth was louder than even the strong wind.  Over the noise from the mast I heard Tommy shout, “Kurt, the stay is cutting through the insulation on the main wire that is the power source to the bridge. If it gets all the way through to the inside, the whole boat will be electrified, and we’ll go up like a roman candle.”  I reluctantly looked up and he was right.  The stay looked like it was more than half-way through the heavy rubber insulation that was wrapped around the enormous cable that ran horizontally inside and under the entire span of the bridge.  I told Tommy to get on the VHF and alert the Coast Guard to what was happening.  I also considered jumping overboard with my son in my arms and tied to me hoping that someone would then pull us out of the water if we made it through the piers. I couldn’t leave though, because my partner couldn’t swim.

Even though Tommy had been a life-long boater, he had never learned to swim.  He grew up not far from the banks of the Mississippi River in Hardin Illinois and still hadn’t learned.  I couldn’t just leave him on the boat. We continued to stay trapped in between the piers as the metal wire stay worked its way back and forth across the insulated casing above.

In another fifteen minutes, two Coast Guard crews showed up in gigantic rubber boats.  Both had command towers up high and a crew of at least 8 on board.  They tried to get close enough to throw us a line but each time failed and had to motor away against the tide at full throttle to miss the bridge.  The wake from their huge twin outboards forced us even further under the bridge, and the port side rail of the Trinity was now less than a foot above the water line.

              Why Had I Changed The Name Of This Boat?

The I heard it again, BAMMM !  I looked up and saw nothing.  It all looked like it had before.  The Coast Guard boat closest to us came across on the bullhorn. “Don’t touch anything metal, you’ve cut through the insulation and are now in contact with the power source.  The boat is electrified, but if you stay still, the fiberglass and water will act as a buffer and insulation.  We can’t even touch or get near you now until the power gets turned off to the bridge.”  

We all stood in the middle of the cockpit as far away from anything metal as possible.  I reached into the left storage locker where the two plastic gas containers were and tightened the filler caps. I then threw both of them overboard.  They both floated harmlessly through the bridge where a third Coast Guard boat now retrieved them about 100 yards further down the bay.  At least now I wouldn’t have to worry about the two fifteen-gallon gas cans exploding if the electrical current ever got that far.

For a long twenty minutes we sat there huddled together as the Coast Guard kept yelling at us not to touch anything at all.  Just as I thought the boat was going under, everything seemed to go dark.  Even though it was early afternoon, the fog was so heavy that the lights on the bridge had been turned on.  Now in an instant, they were off.

                               All Lights Were Off

I saw the first Coast Guard boat turn around and then try to slowly drift our way backward. They were going to try and get us out from between the piers before we sank.  Three times they tried and three times again they failed.  Finally, two men in a large cigarette boat came flying at us. With those huge motors keeping them off the bridge, they took everyone off the Trinity, while giving me two lines to tie to both the bow and the stern. They then pulled up alongside the first large inflatable and handed the two lines to the Coast Guard crew.  After that, they backed off into the center of the channel to see what the Coast Guard would do next.

The second Coast Guard boat was now positioned beside the first with its back also facing the bridge.  They each had one of the lines tied to my boat now secured to cleats on their rear decks.  Slowly they motored forward as the Trinity emerged from its tomb inside the piers.  In less than fifteen seconds, the thirty-year boat old was free of the bridge.  With that, the Coast Guard boat holding the stern line let go and the sailboat turned around with the bow now facing the back of the first inflatable. The Captain continued to tow her until she was alongside the ‘Sea Tow’ service vessel that I hadn’t noticed until now.  The Captain on the Sea Tow rig said that he would tow the boat into Somers Point Marina.  That was the closest place he knew of that could make any sailboat repairs.

We thanked the owners of the cigarette boat and found out that they were both ex-navy seals.  ‘If they don’t die hard, some never die at all,’ and thank God for our nation’s true warriors. They dropped us off on Coast Guard Boat #1, and after spending about 10 minutes with the crew, the Captain asked me to come up on the bridge.  He had a mound of papers for me to fill out and then asked me if everyone was OK. “A little shook up,’” I said, “but we’re all basically alright.” I then asked this ‘weekend warrior’ if he had ever seen the movie ‘Top Gun.’  With his chest pushed out proudly he said that he had, and that it was one of his all-time favorites.

            ‘If They Don’t Die hard, Some Never Die At All’

I reminded him of the scene when the Coast Guard rescue team dropped into the rough waters of the Pacific to retrieve ‘Goose,’ who had just hit the canopy of his jet as he was trying to eject.  With his chest still pumped out, he said again proudly that he did. “Well, I guess that only happens in the movies, right Captain,” I said, as he turned back to his paperwork and looked away.

His crew had already told me down below that they wanted to approach the bridge broadside and take us off an hour ago but that the Captain had said no, it was too dangerous!  They also said that after his tour was over in 3 more months, no one would ever sail with him again.  He was the only one on-board without any real active-duty service, and he always shied away from doing the right thing when the weather was rough.  He had refused to go just three more miles last winter to rescue two fishermen off a sinking trawler forty miles offshore.  Both men died because he had said that the weather was just “too rough.”

                     ‘A True Weekend Only Warrior’

We all sat with the crew down below as they entertained my son and gave us hot coffee and offered medical help if needed.  Thankfully, we were all fine, but the coffee never tasted so good.  As we pulled into the marina in Somers Point, the Trinity was already there and tied to the service dock.  After all she had been through, she didn’t look any the worse for wear.  It was just then that I realized that I still hadn’t called my wife.  I could have called from the Coast Guard boat, but in the commotion of the moment, I had totally forgotten.

When I got through to her on the Marina’s pay phone, she said,  “Oh Dear God, we’ve been watching you on the news. Do you know you had the power turned off to all of Atlantic City for over an hour?”  After hanging up, I thought to myself —"I wonder what our little excursion must have cost the casino’s,” but then I thought that they probably had back up generation for something just like this, but then again —maybe not.

I asked my wife to come pick us up and noticed that my son was already down at the service dock and sitting on the back of his ‘new’ sailboat.  He said, “Dad, do you think she’ll be alright?” and I said to him, “Son, she’ll be even better than that. If she could go through what happened today and remain above water, she can go through anything — and so can you.  I’m really proud of the way you handled yourself today.”

My Son is now almost thirty years old, and we talk about that day often. The memory of hitting the bridge and surviving is something we will forever share.  As a family, we continued to sail the Trinity for many years until our interests moved to Wyoming.  We then placed the Trinity in the capable hands of our neighbor Bobby, next door, who sails her to this day.

All through those years though, and especially during the Stone Harbor Regatta over the Fourth of July weekend, there was no mistaking our crew when you saw us coming through your back basin in the ‘Parade of Ships.’  Everyone aboard was dressed in a red polo shirt, and if you happened to look at any of us from behind, you would have seen …

                               ‘The Crew Of The Trinity’  
                         FULL CONTACT SAILING ONLY!

December 18, 2013

Words stab like knives. Each syllable uttered slices deeper into the nothingness that is this emotion.
Actions break bones. Pressure mounts and mounts until the sharp, quick snap ends in a flash of pain.
Caring suddenly becomes your worst trait. It muddies the waters of a once clear pool. Give. Try. Fail.
Repeat. Something so important becomes something you put so much effort into that you beat it half to death. The mystery is gone. The excitement is gone. The surprise is gone. The anger never leaves. The fighting never ceases. The hostility, rage, disappointment, misunderstanding, and fury never die.

It is still salvageable, so long as everyone agrees. As long as one person is not at their breaking point, you can always go back. Go back to the mystery, the excitement, the surprise. Effort is crucial. Patience is key. Understanding is vital.

Love lives.

There are ways
To be ready for a death of the soul.
The way you'd write a will
Or take medication to ease the pain.
People to say goodbye to,
Loose ends to tie...
Granted,
It's a little trickier when you know your body will still go on
After you die.
When you know you'll have to leave it and then
Slam back inside
And handle all the damage done in your absence.
But
There are ways.
Silently I tie back my hair.
Pour myself a frosty glass of milk.
I hate milk.
Always have.
I drink the whole thing.
Milk makes it less painful when you get sick.
Whatever I hear from you tonight,
I know I have been terrified long enough,
And there is just no way
I'm gonna keep this food.
Too bad,
I muse,
Rinsing out my glass.
I did love my dinner.
I had hoped we wouldn't meet again.
In the mirror a girl with my face
Raises a debonair eyebrow.
I wish I was as good at brushing this off
As she is.
I remove my earrings.
I put on some comfortable clothes.
It is rather like hearing the warning on the radio
That a hurricane or tsunami is headed your way
And there's not enough time to leave,
Only to prepare.
I am piling sandbags.
I am sealing my windows and doors,
Retreating to the cellar of my soul.
I am
Mechanically,
Numbly
Doing everything I can to minimize the damage,
And prepare to pick up the pieces.
I wonder
What will be salvageable
This time
From the ruins.
I hope the advance notice
Has made a difference
Because the tension of
Waiting for the storm to hit
Just might stop my heart.

i. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You were what all burning things are, hot and radiant, crackling with a force I cannot name. You were a comet speeding to earth, a malfunctioning two-stage rocket. I watched as you turned yourself inside out, as you were absorbed by the sky, as you detonated yourself in an act of destruction so powerful it created collateral art. I watched as you gave yourself up to ash. I was there.


ii. When a building is on fire, the first human instinct is to run away. But I ran toward you. I ran toward you, because I knew what things might be tucked within you. I ran toward you, because your heart deserved to pulled from the wreckage. I ran toward you, because I was not afraid, because I have been a burning building and I remember what it was like to be trapped inside myself, dissolving in the heat and the pain, toxic and dehumanized. I remember. So I ran toward you while everyone else ran in the opposite direction, and I put my hands on your windows, and I entered you.


iii. You were trembling in those flames, those flames I swept aside like curtains, looking for the salvageable. You were sad and raw and red and wonderful, surrounding me with your swollen hopes, bleeding words of venom and gentleness, a dichotomy of throbbing remorse. You blew out window panes and shook down doors. You shattered the roof, sent furniture tumbling. You howled at a moonless night, you agonized gloriously.


iv. I watched the pieces of you fly. The Tuesday night Hennessy, the poets you tried to understand, the I-am-not-scaredness of you, the pressure of your angry palms smacking the table, the movement of your legs, the ache of your voice, the bravado of your soul, all sent scrambling like grains of sand. I watched you contort, watched you turn quiet and strange, watched you forget things I still remember, things I cannot forget: the color of our laughter, the finding of trust, the promises you failed to keep, the dissolution of the invincible. I watched as you were, for one incredulous moment, so beautiful I couldn’t breathe. I stood at the core of you while you collapsed around me. I wept for you in ways I have wept for no one.


v. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You ended the way all burning things do, falling, skeletal, to earth. Desperate. Brilliant. Gone.

Today might be the day it all becomes too much
The day I grow tired of scratching at this wound
Digging deeper and deeper, scratching until my fingers are raw
Pulling at my skin, pulling myself apart
Pulling at these twisted tendrils,
hoping to finally strip them away
Hoping that there is still something salvageable
and I wonder: what if nothing is left unsoiled underneath it all?

Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of obsessing
Obsessing over every thought in my mind or move I make
Obsessing to the point that I find no rest
Spending every waking and sleeping moment dissecting every situation
Only to find that I am helpless to change what has already happened
and the actions of others
Still I wonder:  was it something I did?

Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of the ugliness
An ugliness I carry and see in the world around me
Nothing seems worth hanging onto for another aching second
As I confront myself and am forced to look in my own eyes each day
I grow more tired of being in this skin
so I pick at it again and again
Longing to hurt myself, to feel any pain but the pain of existing
Still I wonder: would they be better off without me?

Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of trying
Trying to find meaning in a life centered on meaninglessness
Trying to keep smiling when my heart and soul feel so heavy
and my face feels as though it will crack if I pretend for another minute
I wouldn't wish this on anyone
Fighting an enemy that isn't tangible for so long
Still I wonder: is this enemy even real?
Something I can't touch or describe,
but have in my mind every day
Urging me to hate myself and bringing me down,
every step feels weighted down
Pulling me further into myself and away from my surrounds
Is today the day it all becomes too much?

Thoughtless words flow from your mouth
And to me it sounds mangled and garbled
Some language that I've not yet learned

Some days i can make out what your saying
Usually in the morning
When the monster in you still sleeps.

But everyday he begins to stir
And I know that soon he will have taken over.

And then you ARE the monster
And whatever pieces of you I thought were salvageable,
Have vanished and I'm looking for an escape route

Anyway out will do
As long as I don't have to hear the words which you once spoke,
So clearly and sweetly,
Spewing out like a hot geyser
Unintelligible and broken.

What went wrong along the way
For you to so fully embrace
A monster that would soon inch into every corner
Of your life, stealing everything precious to you
And collecting them together with it's ugly claws
Balling them up and swallowing them into it's ugly black heart.

What made you love that monster
More than your own offspring?
What made you love that monster
More than yourself?

I've learned how to live with him
I've learned he's a part of you now
But no matter all the time that passes, I cant understand him.

His words, actions, thoughts.

And maybe that's why I cant help you rid yourself of him.

But when I can fully understand

I'm going to take that bottle he's been living in
And smash it into a million pieces.

2 fitted sheets, stretched and tucked atop each
other. A nesting home for soft bugs with thousands
of legs, in which you cannot see.
Why does it smell like Michigan basement
bathrooms, and size 4 feet in turtle sandboxes.

Painted, chipped, salvageable wood only shows
it's gritty teeth in the day light.
leaking through shower curtain rings on
the makeshift curtains like pool water
through the cracks in your smiling eyes,
blue goggles, the ones that cover the nose.

the longer you listen to the silence,
the louder it gets.
or is that the sounds of fan blades
ripping through the indescribable texture of
the stale air you swim through each night.

You'd swear you experienced a sonic boom here,
the bull whip cracking from over pressure. or is it
under pressure? I always thought that pressure
weighed like pounds and tons. I still don't
know if that is wrong.

I won't remember the sound of your laugh,
or the way you smell, or the clothes you wore
when we met. Like a good poet should.
But I'll remember all the things we forgot
to do together. All the times we spoke but
got too high to listen.

High, like the time I told you I thought
the trees and the sun were making
strobe lights for our long drive into
October. Flashing light in the car windows,
as we drove down the open freeway.

It's easy to remember the world
was made for us, when we are
alone, here, in this room, together,
like we were before, and will be soon
once again.

Holding onto forgotten memories
fragmented by time,
tucked away neatly at first
and then haphazardly
as if they're less important,
you revisit them like old friends,
careful not to stir any pain still
clinging to the deepest parts of you.
Even as the pieces crumble, they fall
into place like a puzzle -
the worried corner of a dream,
a water-stained wish,
distorted faces behind shattered hope.
When you sift through the remains,
not much is salvageable in the cobwebs
your mind has weaved.

Do not let the faces fool you.
Every bump in the night,
May be the cruel figments of your mind
Hoping to ignite the illusion
of utter insanity.

Do not for one second
Believe in the spine-chilling moans
that seem to leak from every unsightly crevice
of your disfigured thoughts.  

Do not allow yourself
To slip from the serrated edge of sanity,
Even for a fleeting moment.
For the comfort is short-lived,
And the ***** is endless.

Do not stare too long
At the scorched bodies of men,
Contorted into the soot covered demons
That will unfailingly materialize
In your loneliness.

Do not take the threats,
Which echo in the
Impenetrable darkness,
lightly.
They are the fabrication
of your own self destruction.

Do not think
They won’t bury you alive,
Every chance they get.
Leaving the decaying scent
of wilting roses atop the mounds of dirt.
Where they will scrawl your name in haste
across a grimy tombstone.

Do net let
The voices sway you into madness.
For they will play your vulnerability
with the fingers of a skilled harpist.
Leaving you so intoxicated
with the sweet melody
that you will believe you asked for
your own demise.


Do not forget the flimsy nature
of your deteriorating mind,
when appealing whispers
begin to ring in your ears.
They are merely hoping
to glimpse your downfall.


Remember,
not to let them get the best of you.
that if you find anything salvageable
In the chaos inside your head,
or the tsunami inside your heart.
Grasp onto the little beam of hope,
and begin putting yourself
back together.

there’s nothing good that’s come
from these past few years.
no political changes for the poor.
no more role models.
no more poetry.
I wonder what historians
will think of us.
will they lump us together
in groups of ten,
like the ’80s and ’90s?
or will they get lazy retelling us?
will they place us together
in hundreds, or thousands,
picking out only the salvageable
from this worthless era?
I won’t be included in these stories.
neither will you.

and they still won’t have poetry.

town crier

poems March 2014
99 pages
pocketbook style publication
8.50

preview of book is book entire on lulu site. the spine of said book has title. front cover, back cover, are purposely blank.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/town-crier/paperback/product-21548368.html

---

Talent is a mime on a mountaintop said he who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon.  He had said previously other things but this was the first to which my mother caught me listening.  She took my ear and me with it outside and shoved two cigarettes she’d been smoking in my mouth and told me to chew.  When I did not she worked my jaw herself until the tip of my tongue bled enough to give her pause.  Neither one of us cried and the cigarettes were salvageable.  The morning speaker then joined us obviously hoping for a drag.  The moment my mother hated him passed and she told him what hope was.  

He who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon would not often be seen by my mother.  He and I were late in our waking and she’d be out gathering types of dead bird from the bases of cornstalks.  I’d sit in my highchair and watch him shirtless as he prepared the tools of my art.  The hairs on his back would grow before my eyes and need bitten at the follicle.  He would turn and put his finger in the garbage disposal and pretend it was on.  On was something he never turned it because he said a mantis lived there and what would bite his follicles.  I wouldn’t be hungry then which was good for my show.  He would laugh at the misery of my scooping arms and be full of it and tired and he would ask me to rub his belly while he went to the couch on his back.  His belly the single most reason to keep him said mother.  I’d put my ear to it to feel myself kick and never did stir him from sleep.  Pretty early in this routine some of his belly hair started to grow in my ear and my dreams from then always had a banquet in their midsection.

Careful with my dreams.  Mother said they are kittens and one can bite too hard.  It is like her being stubborn and only calling me boy when most called me boy and girl in equal measure.  Sometimes when boy got the lion’s share I’d long to nurse and have to slap the ******* sound out of my teeth.  For saner things I’d walk the dog with a dog in it.  I had names for both and both were names I would’ve called my brother had I been born.  I once found a sipped at wine glass on the roof of the pharmacy mother later burned with lit stalks.  When the turkey buzzards skittered themselves nightly across the horizontal track of my looking for god I’d imagine my brother skinny enough to fit in the parched tube of his swallow.

Now that I am returning to Shudderkin, the welt left by my larger than life father whipping his belt across the tailbone of Ohio, it is clear to me that what we called a dog was correct only on certain days.  The mongrel keeping pace with my bike, the second name I have for my brother, is not the physical dog a city knows and not country loyal as country wants to, and so makes others, believe.  It is instead more like the talking when one is sped up and words get put together and then are stuck there.  Dog of Shudderkin.  Its tongue does not droop or even wag outside the mouth.  A pinkness has always gone on without me.

Tell me how to pull the weeds out of my scalp
Because spring tried to come with the company of flowers
The company of something new and better
But I let them wilt and rot within my flesh and bones

Death stormed in with an unforgiving glare
As winter quickly bombarded the land
The weeds and flowers had died in my hands
Nothing is salvageable
Everything beautiful dies
Where is the life I long to see?

What is a mirror without vanity?

Youth chemically plastered

smitten by Hollywood delusions

Eager limbs with a fine insect coating

What is time without thievery?

The years go and we are left with these empty spaces

Sometimes filled with television glow and robot trances

The kindle and cookies

Let the crumbs gather for the microscopic

What is life without a tilt?

Pour the paranoid another drink and nod at the bankrupt morality

Pat the cornered fiend and comfort his hate filled hindsight

observe a wasted generation

Hysterically hydrated and slumped

What is God without interpretation?

Mine is not yours

but I admire the tenacious taste of a salvageable salvation

I appreciate kindness in all forms

Whatever way it may manifest itself

A smile is a smile

What is a beginning without an end?

Find peace or guilt the path may be up too you

Sometimes the path may be chosen for us

It takes a strong mind
to reject their idea of happiness
For the sake of your own

I look at my life and see two roads.
And I stand against the current, I'm standing between them and hoping I won't have to choose.
I'm a laundry basket of jealousy, frustration and worry.
I'm constantly walking on egg shells because I don't want anything to change.
I don't want to upset you
I don't want to anger you
I don't want to lose you.
So I hide behind someone who isn't fully myself.
Because you know not yet who you are. And I guess I don't too.

We are carcasses in this life and our paths will show what we choose to show. But your emptiness frightens me and I feel it my duty to fill you.
But I'm torn between someone who cares and someone who can't. I'm torn because the perfect piece of paper I once was is no longer something salvageable.
You aren't the same. So I guess I'm not too.

But I turn to something that isn't stable to help me out of my own battles. I turn to a floating piece of plastic and expect it to help me stay afloat.

These two roads are both a part of myself. These roads aren't a mangled lie or a twisted fib,
They are who I am, just not to the full extent.
You aren't you to the full extent.
And I guess, I'm not too.

This corpse lays before me, rotting
I can feel the decay
I can smell the death
I can see old blood stains
But I still hang onto something

Some sliver of hope
That this corpse is still salvageable
That there is still a heart beating
That blood still pumps in this body
That something is still alive in there
There is nothing left

And yet, I can't fathom
That this is really it
That there is nothing left
It's all been bled
And it's all dead

Our relationship, our rendezvous, began more innocent than most,
We were teenagers, we were harmless, nothing sinister about us
Just looking for a way to break the boredom
It began before we were capable of such sinister selfish thought
Before she was looking for something more dangerous
Before I was looking for another easy exit
There were moments where my intentions were less than honorable
Yet little ever came from it
Even then I understood control, understood direction
Our would be sins were regrettable, never forgettable
I warned you from the beginning, I was something a little different
A troubled boy with a troubled past,
A damaged heart, leftover by a damaged girl
She was the love I should’ve realized when I still had a heart
When I still had love to give
I thought I was still salvageable
But I didn’t hide the damage
I plainly stated “Heavily used and abused, 50 % off”
And I read her clearly the disclaimer across my chest
“Sunshine, I’m the thunderstorm here to rain on your parade,
Babygirl, I’m the kind of boy you need to be afraid of
I’m the devil in wolf’s clothing
Run before I sink my teeth in, and bleed your neck dry
But she had a storm of her own
And she swept me up like a hurricane
And when her eyes met mine, I swear lightning struck
Your kiss like a rogue wave, your heart like thunder
The rain on the window, your head on my shoulder
And then we Titanic’d the windows
We sauna’d the backseats  
We did it, with a capital DID IT
She wrapped her arms around me
And my wooden heart started to crack
And I even started to feel human again
She’d hug me, and I thought I’d might feel sane again
But I wasn’t okay, and it was obvious
Suffering from Post Traumatic Love Disorder
Yeah it’s ******* cheesy, but I like how it sounded
And I was fishing for an excuse
Hunting for an excuse to blame you for her sins
Because when you’re sick, you pass it on
You don’t mean or want to, but misery loves company
I started pointing fingers, and laying blame wherever you walked
I made it hard to love me, hard to like me
One day you had enough and politely screamed “Why…”
I replied “Because I hold grudges, and I don’t care,”
After a few weeks, neither did you
Your bad habits would stink up your bedroom, and mine
You gave me the rope to hang us both
I had all the evidence to execute us
I branded you a witch and me a demon
And burned us both
I left you to rot, and for that I will never forgive us
The pain I know you feel makes me scream and cry
Wish I could take it all, if only to see you smile
I hate myself for leaving, because we’ll never be the same
How dare I leave when I had so much left to say
If being me is such a crime, you never told me
I never asked to be this lonely
But I did force you out
Our failure is my fault only
Now when I’m with her, I think of you
And I hate you for that
You never gave me a chance t be better than him
You never gave me a chance to be good enough
One chance could have been enough
You could have been my everything
I would have given you everything
Now to humble me,
I am forced to witness an eternal insult
A most beautiful, ****, powerful woman
Who could have been a queen
Forever betrothed to a fool.
Now, my heart only beats for war
Like when I burned our castle down

I'm hurting inside for the world we inhabit
We protest, burn flags, but ignore every homeless rabbit
When will we notice that we aren't the only ones fighting back?
That Nature is retaliating against us and planning to attack
We won't even give Her a voice
She has no choice and can't scream Her warnings and pleas
Soon we will be banding against not war but disease
What will it take for our nation to understand
Why can't we work as a planet and outstretch our hand
To rejuvenate the few salvageable pieces of land
Because what's the point of calling for change when we are losing our homes to our Mother's fists of rage
It brings me to tears and it breaks my lion heart because I can't come to grips with the extinction of our natural art
Law makers are seeing what we're doing with our signs and parades
Now it's time we understand Nature's game of charades
Because as the volcanoes erupt and tectonic plates shift
Our nations grows more divided with a widening rift
It's all we have left as a place to call home
Animals are going extinct and in a few years won't be known
Soon will the human race fall from the earth
And our daily phenomenon won't transpire like birth
We need to see what our own world is doing
With each passing day Her anger is brewing
We ripped Her to shreds and broke all Her limbs
Then we polluted Her waters with our oil seeking whims
We aren't looking with our eyes
We aren't heeding Her signs
When will the world stop being blind
Pick up the trash bags and leave the old ways behind

Remember those small ***** that wash up at shore,
in the event of a low-tide?

I am those *****, and you are the tides.
I lay buried beneath a surface of fine grains,
salvageable in your grasp. I wait, live with you,
call to you like a tenant to their home.
I descend into your hold, unknowing, or rather,
forgetting that you change.

You always do.

You are the tides, always shifting and moving;
slow to recede, fast to return. You hold me close,
take what is dear to me. You press, and you pull,
and you push, push, push, bringing everything
with you. Always leaving nothing for me.

I lay open, bare, confused by my lack of home,
discarded like a stone, left to search for you
into deeper waters.

When you come back, you are new;
perhaps warmer, or perhaps colder,
depends on where you've been. Where
your currents always travel.  It always
depends on where you've been, but your
current had brought with it my filter of grains,
the white stark sand. The place I rested,
and where I deemed my home.

And you left it somewhere far beyond my reach,
apathetic to my struggle.

With your new presence, you leave me to burrow once more,
either shallower or deeper than before, in grainy arms
and lulling currents, making me anticipate when you would
leave again. Because I always have to find a new way to fix and
build my home, when the only thing you've ever done is make
me wait for you to come back.

And I am always surprised of the fact that I always stay.

After a great catastrophe hits home, like a fire or a tornado, you search through the wreckage to find pieces that can still be saved.

If anything is salvageable, you might as well take it. This was your home after all.

Finding old pictures, supplies, things of sentimental value, anything that reminds you of home before it was destroyed.

So what if your home is built upon people?

When catastrophe strikes, people might run away, give up, and sometimes they die. Not always, but sometimes they will.

I was part of the wreckage of my home made of people.
But I was also the disaster that tore it down.

Leaving people in pain, with traumatic break downs, panic attacks, and a lesson in language only known as ******.

Nobody died.

People were saved. I know of three in particular who found each other and survived.

But it left two others broken apart, one confused, and one completely homeless.

And as for me...

I survived like the rest. But unlike most of them, I didn't recover.
They didn't bother to search through the damaged home to find me.
There was no monetary value to my life, no point, no sentimental value to them.

And I just lay there to this day.

And to the person I hurt most...

You know who you are...

You left me in that home, the one you invited me into and cared for me as if I was family and now...

I'm here.

Buried under the catastrophe.

And I'm sorry I tore the house down.

I'm sorry I wasn't worth going back to the house to find and salvage.

I'm sorry I wasn't worth saving.

Flying down the sleet covered ground.The stop is suggested
and I flip off my brights to see the other directions' traffic
and I wonder,
'What will our kids think? How will they feel?"
I mean
ten years from now,
will we sit together for a family meal?
I mean, I get that you're angry and hurt and ****** off and, if we're honest, it's only a glimmer of thought in the vast sea of doubt that covers hope for you.
The feeling I feel when I walk in from work and I take off that shirt and see all of their smiles, I could walk for miles on that feeling. Endure torture, starvation.
I couldn't go back to that lower elevation.
I know you'd abhor me to hear that I mourn us, our future. But Justice is served with both eyes just like yours that drew me before, and I know you'll be sore for a very long time.
I always try to level the gravel with my moving tires in my driveway,
and I think, 'What would it be like, if we could be civil and happy one day?'
Has your sane worn too thin? Is there no salvageable man? Have you so lost your way?

I can’t believe I’m back here.
I genuinely thought I was done with this.
I remember the first night I sat on the floor with a glistening blade in my hand,
I turned it back and forth,
It looked so new and unused
Just like I once did.
But soon it was covered in blood
And slipped from my hand.
I stared at myself in the mirror with tears rolling down my face,
Trying to convince myself there was another way.
Was there really no other option?
There was… one.
I felt bad for mutilating myself.
But honestly,
I’d do it again.
I wish I could.
I know it sounds silly to an outsider.
It sounds dumb and confusing and insane, actually.
Not one person I’ve told has understood.
People say they get it, but if they wouldn’t do it themselves, they do not get it.
These tears come out like acid
But get reabsorbed
And corrode everything inside of me.
This whirlwind of insanity leaves me paralyzed yet running at the speed of light in every direction crashing into everything that has ever hurt me all at once ripping every fragile piece of me to shreds and leaving nothing salvageable to remain.
So,
A different kind of salt water pours out
Crying for my helpless heart
Instead of my hurting heart.
And the stupid thing is,
This isn’t normal at all.
It doesn’t matter if it was a person or a thing or a hope or a dream. It is what it is and the pain is unavoidable!
How do they handle it so well?
Maybe I’m just inadequate in the strength it takes to deal with your own emotions.
Because most people don’t jump to this
Or fantasize about quitting
They **** it up. Move on with life.
Grow. Challenge. Change.
But truth is
I’m so hopeless.
I’m done with school
I’ve given up on the career I thought I wanted
The life I thought I wanted
I don’t want my friends
I don’t want my family
I don’t want my job
I don’t want my city
I don’t want my country
Hell I don’t even want this world sometimes.
I can’t sit here and pretend everything is okay.
Every day I wake up and focus on what's in front of me
But I’m still living with this internal countdown
This clock that won’t reveal its hour
But reminds me it’s just a matter of time
Till the batteries stop moving the hands.
Please
Stop telling me I’m fine.
There seems to only be a certain anecdote
To make the sun stay
But it’s just one bottle
And I guzzled it so fast
I didn’t have any time to enjoy it before it passed.

I really think I need some type of fix.
They know the cure to cancer..
But they won’t let the patients have it.
So they drug ‘em up instead,
If thats the case,
Now it’s my turn.
I’ll need something strong
To fix all the **** wrong in my brain
That nothing else will heal
So hopefully I can make it to another country
Instead of the bottom of the Pacific
Cause I’ll tell ya what
I can’t do it here.
There are no amount of beach days or Sundays or fun things to get me through this now.
So what pill should I take?
The ***** on the shelf is waiting.

You over stayed your visit
I invited you in with the promise of shelter and you took up residence
At first i didn’t mind the company
Someone who would listen to my rants
Share meals with
Hold in the comfort of a storm
But a house needs the compliance of all residents
It needs to be as equally cared for by each individual
I maintained the foundation while you watched cracks in the ceiling form
Only pointing them out to later disappear to your own confines
I called in ever repair man asking for advice even bringing others in to help and you just stood in the doorway silent eyed and reserved
Thats how these things happen I knew
Silence became louder
The drop of a plate would resonate throughout
The life of the house seemed to disappear
A mausoleum is what you left me in
A trap made of marble once decorated so lively but darkened over the years

Now i stand in the house that we shared
I see the outlines of picture frames
Nostalgia clinging to the furniture
I can feel memories but they are fuzzy from all the dust collected
Your plants all died from neglect and so did a piece of me as well
I am stuck with a heavy decision to find anything left salvageable and remain here working from the foundation
or to up and burn this entire place down and start on a new site.