"tideless" poems
Bipolar sunshine;
Life's periodic lullabies
Changing me,
Waking me from ash to animal,
Trapped in the cage
Of my past lies,
Present cries,
Future demise.
But underneath this skin,
I'm still a human;
Boats of evergreen
Floating on tideless seas,
Yet I think I'm dying,
Unready for breathing;
Wild waters, blood oceans;
Mind lost, nightmares healing.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 3:38 PM UTC
Go to sleep—though of course you will not—
to tideless waves thundering slantwise against
strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray
dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind,
scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady
car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls’ cries in a wind-gust
broken by the wind; calculating wings set above
the field of waves breaking.
Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests,
refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food!
Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white
for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild
chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices—
sleep, sleep . . .
Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby.
Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders,
hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings—
lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles,
the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks:
it is all to put you to sleep,
to soften your limbs in relaxed postures,
and that your head slip sidewise, and your hair loosen
and fall over your eyes and over your mouth,
brushing your lips wistfully that you may dream,
sleep and dream—
A black fungus springs out about the lonely church doors—
sleep, sleep. The Night, coming down upon
the wet boulevard, would start you awake with his
message, to have in at your window. Pay no
heed to him. He storms at your sill with
cooings, with gesticulations, curses!
You will not let him in. He would keep you from sleeping.
He would have you sit under your desk lamp
brooding, pondering; he would have you
slide out the drawer, take up the ornamented dagger
and handle it. It is late, it is nineteen-nineteen—
go to sleep, his cries are a lullaby;
his jabbering is a sleep-well-my-baby; he is
a crackbrained messenger.
The maid waking you in the morning
when you are up and dressing,
the rustle of your clothes as you raise them—
it is the same tune.
At table the cold, greeninsh, split grapefruit, its juice
on the tongue, the clink of the spoon in
your coffee, the toast odors say it over and over.
The open street-door lets in the breath of
the morning wind from over the lake.
The bus coming to a halt grinds from its sullen brakes—
lullaby, lullaby. The crackle of a newspaper,
the movement of the troubled coat beside you—
sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep . . .
It is the sting of snow, the burning liquor of
the moonlight, the rush of rain in the gutters packed
with dead leaves: go to sleep, go to sleep.
And the night passes—and never passes—
4k
I like to call it blowing on the harp. Or wailing.
Like how helpless my mouth is
in the throes of translating wind, how I forget to
unfurl into the hot pleasures
of bath, pearling on around me,
that I had previously spent several dimes of
anticipation on,
even the mounds
of afternoon-special bubbles,
even the pleasure of seeing my own
flushed and perfect skin, mermaided
beneath this tideless sea.
When the urge to blow upon the slim silver box finds me
I almost don’t. Issues of noise and also
whatever it is when you think “I don’t
know how”. I am surprised to see such
reasonable concerns after all these years
of exacting unreasonable responses
from myself in those silvering and hightide
moments that you never see coming.
As if there were more to
the how of it than lips and hands
and steam and breath and the now weary bubbles
done tired of waiting
and laid down instead, across the water
in flat white whorls,
in a type of peculiar obedience, to the music above.
Jan 14, 2012
Jan 14, 2012 at 1:58 PM UTC
.
*Musical brush strokes paint
the pink honey moon
full and bright ;
the melody wafts lightly
with a sensual scent
of Jasmine fleur
Lonely hearts sip the sky’s
lambent elixir’s gentle persuasion
from separately dispersed novas
the perennial blossom of the perpetual tide .., .
merely pined moonlight
Immersing wholly in wistful reflection
alight on wellspring emerald pond
Verily unspoken words cavort
like musical rivulets spiraling flow
into the crystalline echo
Luna’s haloed heavenly sighs ,
emanation bestrewn
shimmering through dark nebula
like shooting stars shattered
by the weight
of their darkest radiance,
echoes upon the tide-less mirror pond
the nimbus of moonlight
imbuing all the ways I want you* . . .
wild is the wind ...© 6.17.2015
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 12:53 PM UTC
the maze
inside the rules of the car
you promise me that no matter what
insane or compromising thought might
have arisen from either our mouths,
there would always be the maze to keep us as friends- naked friends. ******* friends. hot, **** blonde and brown haired beasts summoning our human equity to arouse and arraign each other, each's other:
say,
drowning in internacional shipping bombings, lost at terminals, aboard flights.
noting our beasts
the minimalist pianissimo of black and white keys, the growing spirits of a Richter violin filling us up
with anti-matter, inside this hours black tideless extremes. this place's mooring soporific tinders. You placed this cart of humanness too close to the life you live
even say,
rules i wanted to know but
never have to practise in your absence
nowness self-less and losing to the light, losing to the ocean, each ounce of life is now vastly different
inside of me
where dead worms
cannot crawl
i continue to die beside your sprawl
where heavy night brings memories of
your skin affixed n entwined
each of your twelve unspoken names
each of these hours that won't be mine
and as this box of earth resigns
its peace, i wish never to have known
this haunting sea, where quaffing like
the enigma of misery
my secret voice cannot be free
my eyes cannot bare their sight to see
if ever chance should be
May 25, 2017
May 25, 2017 at 4:02 AM UTC
My life-long journey I made
to the furthest edge
of experience--in patience
and humility-- old age
begins to tell but no message
of understanding or joy
has greeted me in my passage
I'm far from being enriched
what's before me
is dim and desolate--
the field is parched
the trees are starved
the sea is tideless
the sky is charcoal-black
birds have taken flight
new havens to locate
they would never come back
there's nothing here
for an old man to celebrate
but to sigh and regret--
there's not the slightest flicker
of light in the stealthy night
there's no moon awaiting
nor a single star in sight-
I feel the utter emptiness
my heart begins to cry
my feet are frozen in numbness
as the bitter winds unabatedly blow by.
Mar 3, 2019
Mar 3, 2019 at 12:34 AM UTC
At the black bottom of the loch
layers of forgotten days,
long dead, long lost
stir
Though the surface is glass
ruffled by no wind
tideless, seeming safe,
wait -
At any moment
the rot of what was thought
safely buried, hidden,
may rise
And the deeper it was drowned
the bigger bursts its ghost
smashing the reflected sky
forever
My back is to the loch
I walk untroubled hills but wish
that I could turn, raise hands, shout
"Stop!"
And help you.
Only help you.
I wish
that I could help you.
Mar 31, 2011
Mar 31, 2011 at 12:11 PM UTC
What emotion is this ?
This tideless ocean
that breaks nightly
upon
scotch stained rocks...
as I drowned my sorrows
reflecting upon
mine own repulsion
of myself
in spillage soaked emultion.
Bartab grows
bearing teeth of broken glass
as late night melancholy
bites me in the ***
The jukebox
offers his ten cents worth
Pour me a drink and I'll tell you some lies
change the record
pull the plug
pay off the stranger with the cigar **** eyes.
One more for the road
and maybe I'll leave
for there's too many ghosts
wearing out hearts
on their sleeves...
For my hearts the Titanic
smashed on fresh ice
as I head out in the rain storm
to take the Everlys advice.
May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012 at 5:59 PM UTC
Moon tideless
mud ***** at
rubber booted cocklers.
Crackle of *******
crustacean lifted
by ***** slipshod
Raising fractal shells
in practice old as man.
Listless boats loll
sealess, same little
boats, fishers of men
dunkirk.
Migrant birds ebb
and flow from africa,
struggle for land.
May 10, 2016
May 10, 2016 at 5:27 AM UTC
The conscious sea arrests hold of me,
Collective knowledge streams to my head,
With new eyes of three, I now can see,
I’m swimming in secrets of the dead.
A tideless sea, of consistency,
Not up nor down, behind or ahead,
All Life dissolved in pure unity,
All life woven from a single thread.
One drop is whole– The Entirety,
Reality fits on a pin’s head,
Uprooting all I thought there to be,
Replacing it with nothing instead.
Thoughts absent beyond duality,
And time crawls while elusive and sped,
All is formless unfettered and free,
And no words say what needs to be said.
May 11, 2025
May 11, 2025 at 10:21 PM UTC
The conscious sea arrests hold of me,
Collective knowledge streams to my head,
With new eyes of three, I now can see,
I’m swimming in secrets of the dead.
A tideless sea, of consistency,
Not up nor down, behind or ahead,
All Life dissolved in pure unity,
All life woven from a single thread.
One drop is whole– The Entirety,
Reality fits on a pin’s head,
Uprooting all I thought there to be,
Replacing it with nothing instead.
Thoughts absent beyond duality,
And time crawls while elusive and sped,
All is formless unfettered and free,
And no words say what needs to be said.
May 10, 2025
May 10, 2025 at 12:10 PM UTC
As we sway
Like stone statutes
Under the tideless
Moon
As
We
/Cold marble/
The night
Away .
As we plummet,
Wet-winged to the
Sea .
And
Me ,
Gun-faced as
Children .
Wolf-mouthed , as
Love .
Bring me your/cities
To
Wipe spittle-edge .lips
With something to
Grip
To grip
T0
.grip
I
grip.you
Jun 6, 2023
Jun 6, 2023 at 6:44 AM UTC