"seawater" poems
Twisted reeds sway gently in the wind as black seabirds slice the sky overhead.
Waves rolling one by one crash with increasing ferocity on to the rocky beach,
And I watch the red sun set fire to the spray while the tide encircles me.
Tugging at my feet, pulling me forward, it beckons for my consent. I give in,
And all is quiet even in such chaos. All is nightmarish and beautiful all the more.
The blood red horizon seers my retinas; freshly unleashed tears take to the sea.
These waves, such enormous swells, crash in on me; an unseen war is waging.
They press me down and back, and then drag me further into the endless blue.
Over and over again, repetition loses count, my outcries die prematurely.
Only seawater and air manage to sputter from my lips, cracked and worn.
Not a whisper can be heard out here in such a true state of despair, but not all
Castaways are without faith. The past I once cherished has been lost to the depths,
Yet a knowing tingle in my gut keeps me searching for a message hidden merely
'Neath the surface. Drifting deeper into my pain, I notice a curious thing:
The force of the waves lessening as I gracelessly surrender to Sorrow and the sea.
My feet torn by jagged rocks no longer felt, my eyelids blistered by the red
Eternal sunset, a few waves push me under before the siege of the sea falters and
I learn to ride the surf, taking each afront as it comes, whether predicted or
Suddenly upon me. My pain ebbs away slowly with the passing of each episode,
And with each wave I acknowledge my loss, relinquishing my burden.
Like so many desparinging hearts before me shipwrecked in the sea of tears,
I forcefully remind myself that one day the lush, inviting green shores of the
Other side of the sea will appear in my line of vision. Yet, for now, I let myself
Drift through the grief of grieving you, often unsure of whether I'm meant to float
Or should let myself sink toward the blackest crags of my mind. Here alone.
Apr 19, 2011
Apr 19, 2011 at 11:30 PM UTC
I remember a dog with matted fur lounging in the shade
of a collapsed arch, staring in a way that animals sometime
stare that makes me wonder if the beliefs of Kantianism are
nothing more than old wives’ tales spun from smoke and cinder.
I remember the faint smell of sulfur mixed with seawater
in the shadow of the volcano that poured out its wrath
by the bowlful, the golden urns of the gods spilling
fire and magma from the very cradle of hell.
I remember the empty bathhouses, the villas with
half-painted frescoes, the expensive red paints made from
crushed beetle shells, the overturned tables and chairs,
the uneven stone streets carved by horse-drawn cart wheels.
I remember the skeletons huddled in boathouses,
unearthed from their ash-spun graves for prying eyes,
for the rapid shutter of camera lenses, for the proof
of their existence, as if to leer at the living and say,
“We are all nothing but carbon and bone.”
Jan 25, 2018
Jan 25, 2018 at 10:30 PM UTC
There is a place in this world where we all belong
Where we can be as free as the wind and as reckless as the waves
We could sleep on the sand and walk the shores
Where the water will love us and we will care for it
Where we can swim forever into the depths of the sea
And explore the places where people have never been
And share secrets with the coves and have a family of miles of seawater
See creatures of other worlds and beautiful kelp forests
That’s where I would be forever and ever
I wish I could be there, live there
Soon I will be at the sea and live with the
Creatures
Soon that will happen
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 12:09 PM UTC
Dear titanic, tell me of how you survived your last hurrah- tell me of how you didn’t see the iceberg, tell me of how it felt to lay down on the ocean floor, tell me of how empty you are, the skeletons of your passengers are all but hollow husks- skeletons from a time that is now gone.
“I am not empty,” the titanic says back to me, her voice muffled by bubbles and groans from rust coated pipes.
“But you are, I say. “You are empty but filled with ghosts- yours, the oceans, theirs. They party and laugh and drink and dance and run in your rooms, your hallways that go on forever.”
“You are the empty one,” titanic whispers, rusty railings creaking.
Dear titanic, how did you feel, sinking, ripping in two- unable to be put together again, how did it feel becoming a broken heart? Did you bleed? Did you do it to yourself?
“Was your sink an accident?”
“What do you think?” She growls- groans and moans echo all around.
“How did the music players continue on as you sank- their instruments and lungs filling up with seawater as their somber music filled the ears of your passengers?”
“They just played on, soothing my pain,” came the reply.
“Dear titanic-” I started.
“Let me ask you- why have you come?” She demands.
“To learn your secrets of course.”
“That’s not why.”
“Who hurt you for you to seek me out? Why have you come?”
“I've come to find out what you did to survive.” I reply.
“Then you know now” She whispers, pipes groaning as she shook with mirthless laughter
“Do I?” I questioned.
“Yes.” I imagined her smiling at me- broken glass as teeth and sharp lines for lips.
“How did you survive?” I whispered, my heartbeat echoing in the stillness- needing to hear the words I hoped she wouldn't say.
“I didn’t.”
— dear titanic, tell me of how you survived your sinking // a.
Feb 25, 2020
Feb 25, 2020 at 9:57 AM UTC
Sometimes we run
into the arms of a terrible person
just trying to escape a broken heart
because loneliness has been known
to taste like warm whiskey,
parliament lights and the kiss
of a lack luster lover who spent more time
trying to lie you between the covers
than they did learning to say your name
out loud, you know the type.
I'd be lying too if I didn't say
I've been that kind, that tall glass of water
promising to dampen a dry tongue
which ain't got the courage to say I'm sorry,
not to nobody else but to themselves.
So I want apologize for not seeing
or perhaps ignoring how crushed you were
when I rolled you up in my arms
the way hikers do sleeping bags
and I held you in my lap
because the car was packed
and I didn't know where else to put you.
You must have felt safe there
thinking you were the place
for me to lay my head on this road trip
we call life, but little did you know
had the trunk not been full
I would have been sitting alone
face aglow from my cellular phone
texting other women,
probably with a smile.
I am here to tell you, you deserve better
and I don't want you ever settle
for anything less than a lover's embrace
because comfort plus time
equals unease on your mind.
Worrying whether this companion of yours
has become a stone tied to your heart
with a heavy rope and its tugging you down
into the dark blue depths
filling your lungs with ice cold seawater
with every last breath.
I want you to be with someone
you can chase for the rest of your life
and when you get tired of swimming
they won't leave you treading,
chumming shark infested waters
with blood from a poorly stitched heart
but they will follow and follow
until you both find that deserted island,
that paradise you promised one another.
Jul 10, 2015
Jul 10, 2015 at 10:55 AM UTC
I was gonna write about how I was writing standing up like Hemingway at some bar in Key West, but instead I ended up nearly lying down, like some Roman eating grapes, and I’m not scrawling with a pen. I’m typing.
Why the standing up, Ernest? Was it to gauge how difficult it was to keep good posture? Was it to better measure how drunk you were getting?
He would have boxed me for those asking those questions, or maybe he’d just slam a few shots.
All of us Northeasterners enjoy getting drunk somewhere tropical. I never have a choice in the matter. Whether it’s Florida, South Carolina, or the South Caribbean (I've never left the Western Hemisphere), all I really like down there is beaches and seawater. Everything else gives deep cringes. Those other tourists, so annoying just to look at. Flip flops, whole families, and the god awful shops they keep open. You go to a place good for a beach, green hills, seawater, and fruit, and you want to buy diamonds? C’mon. I wish you’d want these islands to be like national parks; nature over here and cities over there. But the tourists enjoy fake grass huts that try really hard to sell them junk.
So who’s to blame for the sellers perpetuating petty sales and mediocre values? Is it the islanders that make a profit, or the buyers that want the wares? Or is there a third party guaranteeing that the buyers and sellers alike are propagandized to expect the less than fine things in life? Are the salespeople actually working the shops, the ones really getting rich from the sale?
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
I always wanted to be that random style of writer
Writing about things which have no connection
In reality but they are connective only by the ingenuity
Of his genuflection; the circumvention of his
Circuitous routing, his plaintive perturbing petulance
Which insists on stacking things of different orders
Flying birds together of different species
If I could write something of the ticking of clocks
Not as though the ticking were of premeditated duration
Embedded in metal tracks around perimeters
Of prevaricated die-cast hours; but as though the ticking
Were only a random fixture of a theoretical day
In which random clocks ticking played a minor role
During the still life of which a poet happened along
And copied it all down dutifully, not caring if
Ticking clocks were related to pitchers of Forsythia
Or falling off of cliffs into the Aegean;
The only task of the poet to capture it all
And let the reader sort it out later
In the random tracks of his circuitous brain:
Whether the pitcher was full of sea
Or the sea was stealing into the pitcher
One blue, serendipitous drop at a time
And where no clocks were keeping time.
Mar 7, 2010
Mar 7, 2010 at 5:36 PM UTC
When I was sketching this afternoon,
my strokes seemed unsure
and my lines were all wrong and
I realized some things about you.
The reason your fingers
always seem to be slipping
every time you try to catch a
handful of waterfall
is because once upon a time
the rocks that your soles were planted on
crumbled.
You used to be a deer,
the way you stood on new heights
and how you looked on
with a steady eye, so
when was it that you decided
one more step was too much for you to climb?
The burying must stop.
It has been proven time and time again
that no matter
how deep a grave is dug,
the flowers will give the bones away.
I don't understand why you
confuse seawater with fresh, because
I know that you've already stuck out your tongue
and tasted the sweetness of real freshwater
or have you?
You are dust
walking in deep shadows
where I cannot find you.
I have only a candle
and my words, but I will wait.
After all, in the beginning,
something beautiful was made from dust
and from a word
sprung a world.
And lastly I realized that
I hope that you someday read this poem
and we will sit together in the afternoon sun
and you will listen to the sound of new things
as I sketch with sure strokes
and just the right lines.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 1:12 AM UTC
Good grades will buy my
ticket to the New Town
where there's sun and golden sand.
Good grades will save me from
the homework I am drowning in.
One day I'll count my change
to buy a banjo like my
runaway uncle owned.
Each strum will create
my Freedom Song.
Toes in seawater,
Strings beneath my fingertips;
I'll have found my escape.
While the tide goes out it will
carry my worries in its waves.
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 7:01 AM UTC
i heard a girl once say,
*if i could
i would drown
in poetry.
i would throw myself
into a sea of verses
and sink in splendor.*
oh, no, i thought -
no you wouldn't.
if there was a sea of poetry
the coasts would be ringed with barbed-wire
and electric fences,
and signs that yelled **warning
keep out
undertow**
and swim on risk of death -
the beach would be littered with broken glass
from all the drunks that took their last drink
on the edge of a stanza.
the water would be turbulent
and *****
and cold,
and you might admire it one twilight,
when the sun is drowning and turning the sea
red,
and you'd say, *oh
that's beautiful.*
and you'd take a photo of yourself
grinning with the sunset at your back
and leave.
i heard a boy once say,
*if i could
i would drown in your poetry.*
oh, no, i thought.
no you wouldn't.
why is drowning such a common theme
in the minds
of readers of poetry?
i imagine it seems
romantic,
in some twisted morbid way -
but i think seeing a bloated corpse
pallid with seawater
missing a limb
or two
would put these delusions to rest.
i imagine seeing
the corpse of a poet
missing a heart
or mind
would put these delusions to rest.
you don't want to drown in poetry.
you want to watch me drown.
i heard a boy once say
*if i could
i would drown in your poetry.*
so says the boy who calls himself an artist
because he can play
'hey soul sister'
on guitar
and will prove it every chance he gets.
you don't want to drown in my poetry,
and even if you did
i doubt you could -
if poetry was bodies of water
you would throw yourself into a hotel swimming pool
miles away from the polluted lake
where i wash in stagnant water.
if poetry was bodies of water
you'd have someone build a koi pond in your backyard
and call yourself a poet.
*if i could
i would drown in your poetry,*
he said
and i told him to prove it.
*if i could
i would drown in poetry,*
she said.
the only people who say
they want to drown in poetry
are the people who don't know what it means.
the only people who drown in poetry
are the people who have no choice.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 9:51 PM UTC
my ribs were pierced and the last
vestige of life kept pouring out.
and when the last word was said,
my body was lain among the mute.
I was a carpenter once, yet I will
Soon be carved from wood
To sit in silence like furniture,
all dressed up and well kept
with expressions on my face:
Of pain, of hope, of kindness.
But let us keep our eyes
on what cannot be seen.
What is visible is seldom what it shows.
A man I once knew kept with him a jar of seawater
He reasons that when he wakes up
He is reminded by the vastness of the sea.
And he embraces its fragrance:
Salt and water.
Can not a jar claim a portion of the sea as his?
Or to put it in perspective is it not the sea that embraces us?
Our mouths and minds are still, left open and dull in silence
Waiting perhaps in solitary meditations
or in many tongues we will talk.
and the crowd will call us drunk.
I and my other self are one.
But soon, after I have gone another will take my place,
he will embrace us like the sea
Even in places where no sea is in sight.
One thing is certain: salt.
The tasteless air will ink new births of sea.
Today let us clothe ourselves in the nakedness
of our adopted innocence. We will walk with the many
and again converse in the greater garden.
- 5 September 2018
Sep 4, 2018
Sep 4, 2018 at 1:43 PM UTC
APEIROPHOBIA: [n.] the fear of infinity or infinite things.
—
you are love at the end of the world, something spelled without a glottal plea
the stars on my crown hang heavy tonight and i’ve barely slept for an hour but my mind drifts off to weary constellations and i sometimes wonder if we were aligned at all
you, vague hurt, you, toothache in the middle of a birthday party
you, a love like no other
and running without wolves to guide our journey, the forest scratches every inch of bare skin and i would cry out if you hadn’t done the same to me in your restless tossing and turning, there is love in your eyes but no love in the blood you make me bleed
there is still something left to be said. but my mouth is dry and full of sand, kiss it and catch a fly on the wall, smear ointment on its wings and maybe i’ll tell you about how i feel
and it isn’t a good one, it isn’t a love i towed beyond fathoms of seawater and across miles of irradiated coastlines, it isn’t me, count the distance and end up with infinity in one sitting, infinity with end, infinity to beg you of love
beg me of a message unclear, home sweet home
it’s better than nothing. the woozy way i walk into the ocean with a pocket full of rocks and a mind full of bitter sloshing around, is better than nothing, love
it’s better than everything love
because it’s something i still wish to keep, wish on a nebulae cluster that doesn’t exist the second you force yourself to breathe out, screams
no comforting the choir, i’ll drape mine around your bruised shoulders and shake both of them softly until i’ve killed half the universe with my hubris, until we’ve killed off every erstwhile incandescence just to look a little off-kilter, early morning, i’ve never felt better despite never finding out what repose meant
the sky is red at sunrise and then what
and then we, and then we
feel fine
you are love at the end of the world, and i am ready to struggle for survival. invite me into your rose-tinted apocalypse and allow me to decide a fate which was never mine to rewrite
it’s nothing
it’s better than nothing love
Feb 28, 2022
Feb 28, 2022 at 2:07 PM UTC
I am a lighthouse
or so I’ve been told
where few ships have sailed
in to find guidance.
I have been waiting
for a vessel to see my light
for a captain to come to shore
for the tides to wash up
something more than
a seashell
a jellyfish
an empty bottle
with love letters drenched
in tears and seawater
(I couldn’t tell the difference)
I am a lighthouse
Please remember me
in the storm
and on cloudless nights
when all the stars are
irresistible in their glory
Remember me
as the place you come home to
Where you can let yourself in
(feel free to put your feet up)
and lay your head back
and let out a sigh that won’t
be whipped away by ocean-saturated air
I am a lighthouse
in the middle of nowhere
Ships have wrecked themselves
on broken boulders that line my body
like a jealous widow, like a marked territory
Few have made it through.
None have ever stayed.
But my lamp is still burning
and my tower stands tall
and I will guide your journey,
even if it means pointing over there
when all I want is for you to stay here.
Jul 13, 2013
Jul 13, 2013 at 11:02 PM UTC
The yucca plant from my mother’s garden sits
unattended and on the verge of death next to her
eldest rose bush, now wildly overgrown and lightly
blushing in the cosset of the midmourning sun. Its
withered rosettes droop down to its bed of maroon-stained stones
in crisp, harum-scarum patterns as if the plant is spending its life
like currency trying to touch its toes. I oftentimes
find myself wondering if the reason behind this
slow rotting of mother dearest’s garden is hidden within her
five-year absence. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say
her nursery missed the d
i
g
g
i
n
g
of her weathered hands.
She was the biosphere of my world; I suppose that
it only makes sense for the earth to match my thirst. We
sit side by side, that yucca plant and I, as we struggle to
nod our heads towards daylight while we rise on
the side of the house that is more or less
cloaked in shadow; the side that she would sunbathe
on during scorching late afternoons. Perhaps without her
body giving shelter, all her garden is doomed to
atrophy like muscle in the sunlight.
I find irony in the way that my mother’s favored plant
was the “ghost in the graveyard;” a perverted parallel
to the game that she never wanted us to play. I think it to be
sort of sardonic that her pride swallowed the possibility of
a cure being found within that ****** plant’s roots. She,
a third generation American girl,
had blood as muddled as the mud
that buried that yucca’s heart.
The boundary line between Mother and
nature coalesces into one:
Gaea
six feet under
melting into soil
I hope she becomes seawater.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 1:41 AM UTC
A toadstool is swelling
inside my limbic system.
Spores sweat amongst tissue cavities,
dining out on grey matter,
until they force me
to stay in bed through the day.
What a thing it would be.
Depression as a fungus.
A mildewed mind as damp sets in,
the trumpet player
with athletes foot,
casting out the air-borne blues.
Misfortunes follow one another
along straits of fate,
as if sadness were a colony itself.
I want to take a pill
to **** the mushroom
that plumes over my head.
You can only diagnose
through words and symbols,
only treat once you set down your pen
and hold the hand
of a patient lover,
of the savant drinking at the bar.
For now I will let air in
through the open window,
watch the dreamcatcher sway
and hang like a tarantula
over the stars and crescents,
spilling out over my bed.
When I close my eyes
I hear the ocean in distant traffic,
sounding as waves when rolling by the door.
I will drown in seawater
and hallucinate a scene
of happiness.
Of a place for a poet's retreat.
Sep 8, 2014
Sep 8, 2014 at 9:01 AM UTC
Sensing the loss of you
Was hard, raw and angry
The realisation that you would not be mine
Stung like seawater
And howled like a foghorn
For months, seeing you cut like a knife
Hot, fat tears rolling down my cheeks
As I mourned the loss of your love.
Sensing the loss of us
Was slow, sad and silent
The realisation that I was over you
Crept like an ant up my leg
And whistled like the wind through a window
Now, seeing you is like pressing a bruise
Our conversations just a nostalgic echo
As I mourn the loss of my love.
Jul 25, 2010
Jul 25, 2010 at 8:04 PM UTC
The prison bus
passes this way
every now and then,
surfacing without
warning—a leviathan
of metal, grease, and glass
its dark windows secured
by squares of rusted wire
its diesel engine heart
spewing exhaust that
turns morning rain
the color of seawater.
The prison bus
does not stop
for stop signs;
red lights are nothing
but violent memories
strung in an overcast sky.
When the bus strikes
something in its path
the prisoners bounce
slightly in their seats,
lifted into
impartial air
liberated
momentarily
by the familiar
co-conspirators
of blood and laughter.
In his dreams,
the guard who
drives the prison bus
circumnavigates the globe,
plowing through clouds
of insects that shimmer
like fuel above the road.
Apr 7, 2017
Apr 7, 2017 at 11:02 AM UTC
theres something about your first love
something you will never be able to let go of
youre always going to love that person, always going to want them
theyre always going to mean something to you and
theyre always going to wake you up at 3am from a nightmare
because you were dreaming about them
dreaming about the person you let slip from your fingers
and losing that person was the worst thing you could have ever done
and you regret it every day
well that probably explains why im always waking up in the middle of the night screaming and choking on seawater
[you are my favorite nightmare]
because you reminded me of the ocean
even though your eyes are brown
i can get lost in you forever
floating in the middle of the sea (you)
and i wouldnt mind drowning in that sea because
that would mean id get to spend the rest of my life with you
id get to spend the rest of my life getting lost in your eyes
that remind me of the ocean even though they are brown
[you drive me crazy]
and thats why i always get the sudden urge to swim out to sea
and stay there forever floating and
listening to the waves youve created
but the gentle waves
the ones that i love
the ones that i believed were your way of telling me you loved me
[do you still love me?]
now i understand that the reason there was a hurricane in my heart
named after you
its because i broke yours, isnt it?
and that was your way of hurting me back, wasnt it?
[i never stopped loving you]
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 8:41 PM UTC
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or a memoir of a man who remembers nothing but
danger that passed him by,
ruffling his hair as it passed,
ignoring his pleas:
stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something,
he would say
(that could be the subtitle
or the blurb,
something to draw the reader in; if floating bodies aren’t enough)
i just want to mean something,
and near-death experiences are the flavor of the day.
i’m not brave enough to do it myself,
i’m not a hero
or a villain,
just a lonely boy, undefined individual,
and your 350 teeth can help me mean
so much more,
350 individual teeth that float above my head,
falling out one by one as you bloat with seawater
(and here the first chapter would end,
here we would break for intermission,
audience smiling over martinis.
only 32 teeth, did some fall out?
too many maraschino cherries will do that to you.
too much sugar on the rim of that glass)
dead sharks in the current and none glance twice
i keep yelling but they just
deflect my bubbles,
and the surface swallows them like the heartless ***** she is
i keep yelling but they just move farther
i keep yelling but stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something.
i just want some blood on my hands
is that so much to ask?
i just want some of my blood in the water,
to be a survivor
or a victim
(whichever gets more press coverage;
who cares about a memoir that nobody reads?
who cares about a memoir where nobody gets hurt?)
i just want shark teeth in my heart,
he would say,
i don’t want to make a mark on the world,
i want the world to make a mark on me.
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or the eulogy of a boring man.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:58 AM UTC
I once set sail to a shipwreck and no one’s heard back from me yet.
Whether or not this storm can be weathered, my torn sails and bruised masts will be seen fighting the futile.
And whether or not I can come back from this, I won’t dock at familiar shores for a while.
This salty shame-filled seawater may as well be the blood that flows so reluctantly through my veins because inside it all feels the same and at least then I could give the ocean some of this blame.
I’m still made of rotten wood and rusted nails,
I just got better at sinking.
But I’m tired of throwing buckets of salt water over my head hoping I don’t slip,
So maybe I’ll take a break from going down with the ship.
So maybe I can take note from the tide and change.
Because I'm so ******* tired of trying to figure out how I wound up on this page.
Blame it on bad luck, blame it on love, blame it on god, blame it on the price of a new heart, blame it on a bad start, blame it on the ******* weather,
But even as the water rises, I can still hear the echoing lament of a would-be sailor,
“I swear I can be better.”
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 2:01 AM UTC
I think of seawater
because of its briny tang,
because when,
by accident,
it trips into my mouth,
coats the inside of my cheeks
in a clear, chloride gloss.
I think of seawater
because of the way
it blooms along the shore,
dazzling white jewels
slinking up our toes,
our feet left with a glimmer,
slippery and clean.
I think of seawater
because your hair was soaked,
chestnut brown trickles
wriggling down your face
and I could smell the beach
in the pool of your neck,
fresh and transparent
at the crook of your lips.
Sep 12, 2015
Sep 12, 2015 at 11:45 AM UTC
On the outer
carapace of it,
all seems ok
I am held
together by
single dry thre
a ds
like wire
and strips of
sinews
they keep me
tightly-wrapped,
a package of
molten powders
secret dynamite
waiting to
e x p l o d e in
exotic ticks
of clockwork
but one scratch
beneath the surface
reveals my
inner truth:
How I wish,
by those
whorled and spiraled
powers above,
for the gently fluted
forces of my being
to be parted
like sacred seawater
with my psyche
f l o a t i n g
just beyond
the zing of
my brain,
no rational
understanding
required
yes. I long
to be ever-slowly
unraveled,
layer by layer
cell by cell
until all that is left
are the platelets
pulsating between
this heart
and yours
each beat
betraying an
acute intensity
of how
I felt it,
this tender
electricity
that crackled
through and
between
our bones
from the
very
beginning
of
our quiet blaze
our pinnacle
our quirky
metallic
textures
our breath
mingling over
airwaves
in heated
fluidity
hotly drenched
in the iridescent
dust of our
star-marked
time
Oct 11, 2016
Oct 11, 2016 at 10:28 AM UTC
You visit this place
You do not stay long
There’s nothing here
that speaks of settlement
Everything you do has an edge
of intensity wet by the weather
sharpened by the clock
If you try to be still
in what passes for shelter
the wind will find you
seek you out
So with the camera your primary tool
begin to collect - image after image after image
Point and click : view and share
Eventually the mark-making begins
though fraught with difficulty
it seems just hopeless this testing out
of the body’s response to what passes
before the scanning eye
Blink
and the image shifts
There is this fierce and on-going campaign
between the near : between the far
What lies at your feet : what decorates the horizon.
After a few hours wrapped round in nature’s vortex
the eye and brain are exhausted by the profusion of it all
wearied by the press of wind, the touch of rain, the glare of sun
Always the problem of what you do
with what you’ve seen
and touched with cold hands
pulling out metal objects from the sand
whose rusted and distressed forms
will lie exposed on the studio table
The place marks you Rain and wind on the face
raise new freckles there’s a salty veneer to the skin
the rub of sand : a wash of seawater
the grasp of pebbles : wood’s chiromatic grain
The lexicon of texture expands under your fingers
changes of temperature : degrees of saturation
and further uncompromising perspectives
unimaginable yet in two dimensions
Beyond beachcombing this is seacoast surgery
Away from it all (and out of the wind)
your memory stretches to the corners of recall
Wandering through a home-centred day
as in a waking dream
knowing you’ve already gathered
all manner of sensory matter
held and stored in the pineal gland
flowing free in Meissner’s corpuscles
Even absorbed in conversation’s company
as you turn away to fill the kettle
you are on the beach back in the wind
scanning the memory tin : priming the future.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 3:54 AM UTC
Every story I write
has a quiet boy who loves words
and a girl he doesn’t quite understand.
She has a laugh that ricochets
and she makes the quiet boy smile.
She looks like algebra but is more like calculus.
She is deceptively hard to solve.
You don’t see her fault lines until you think you already know her,
but her plate tectonics only cause aftershocks,
never full earthquakes.
I always thought she was me,
always thought I wanted to be
that kind of captivating.
Enough to make the quiet boy happy.
But then I met you
and your quarter moon smile.
I always thought the girl was from some coast
but the first time I saw you in a bikini
I realized you don’t have to be from California
to have drops of seawater glow like individual suns on your skin.
I want you to drip dry
on my clothesline arms.
I’ll hold you up to the sunlight,
let your bare legs dangle in the wind.
I want to straddle your fault lines
and hold you through the tremors.
I always thought I wanted the spotlight
but I’m content
being the quiet one beside you.
I thought I loved the boy who loved words
and I wanted to be enough to inspire him to write
but you make me want to get published just to share you
with the world because
something so beautiful should not be kept secret.
You said you wanted to make the history books
and you will, but for now
I hope my poems are enough.
You are rainy day inspiration.
I thought I was the girl
but it turns out I’m just a quiet boy
who needed someone to
inspire me.
May 11, 2011
May 11, 2011 at 1:06 AM UTC