I love spending nights on the lake.
Once the oven-like sun disappears,
things get suddenly quiet, except for
the occasional hoot of an owl, crickets, frogs
and the soft lapping of the lake on the boat.

When the moon rises above the pines
the sky lights up, like a fireworks bloom,
its reflection is brushed, in scatters on the lake,
giving insubstantial moonlight a sharp substance
not unlike a fractured, undulating, glittery lace.

This evening, there’s a rumble, stage left, off to the west,
and a thunderstorm’s growl, like a wolf on the prowl.
The wind was picking up, so we began battening down,
stowing things in the galley and taking in the flag. The wind,
had become almost solid with its insistent and restless energy.

The question, with these daily, southern, summer thunderstorms
is whether you’re going to catch the edge of it or get the full onslaught. The doppler radar, of my iPad weather app indicated the monster was headed right for us.

Just as our phones, watches and iPads began chirping
with National Weather Service, “Severe Weather Alerts,”
Charles asked, “You two still want to stay?” His voice fighting
against the stiff wind as he watched the tall pine-tree tops bob,
like boxers, afraid of the far off lightning flashes in the sky.

“Of course!” I chimed in, wearing a grin, I LOVE boat storms!
“Lisa, there’s a storm on the way but we’ll stay on the boat, ok?” I asked, trying to English the question with both a sense of adventure and nonchalance. Lisa, of course, followed my lead, saying, “Sure.”
“It’ll be ill,” I assured her.

Charles nodded and leapt to the dock, replacing the gunwale rope lines with longer dock rods to distance and secure the boat (lowering front and back anchors too).

“We’re staying,” Charles walkie-talkie’d Carol (his wife) below in the staterooms where she was probably making the beds. “10-4” she replied.
I love her, she’s so game for anything. While Charles worked, Lisa and I sealed the upper deck from cockpit (helm) to transom, putting up sturdy plexiglass windows and closing the transom doors.

Charles came aboard just as we turned up the air conditioning and thick raindrops started falling. Having finished our work, we looked up and the moon was gone, hidden by dark clouds that writhed like some angry, mythical, steel wool animal.

The rain went from a delicate pitter-patter to a generous applause and finally, a steady torrent. We felt it initially pass over us from port (left) to starboard (right). The wind whistled, like a giant’s breath, rocking the boat, alternately, in two directions. It was wonderful.

The far-off thunder had become intimate, bomb-like and personal, with its Crack-k-KA-BOOM! Every time such a concussion rocked the air, the boat and our teeth, I cackled, with joy, like Poe’s Madeline Usher, the madwoman in the attic.

“HOW DO YOU LIKE IT!?” I yelled to Lisa, but she made an ‘I can’t hear you,’ sign. Carol, who’d been working the galley, produced yummy tuna-fish sandwiches, potato chips and milk. We played a dominoes game called ‘Mexican Train’ until the rain stopped, then we watched ‘Jaws’ on the fold-down TV. Lisa had never seen it!

The boat had rocked, lightning had flashed, the cutting wind howled and the thunder boomed, but it was the clawing rain, like a tiger trying to break into the boat, that made it an unforgettable night on the lake.

In the valley of *** Ben Hinnom or Gehenna with Greek roots Geena, there were confinement cells, for bodies and souls lost in leprosy, given the confinement, both lepers with the accent of isolated eternity. In both sites and at different times, leprosy caused by Mycobacterium Leprae, affected skin, respiratory tract, peripheral nerves, and respiratory mucosa. It was installed in the glen of Hinnom, punishing beings who had to purify themselves in the demon of Gehenna. In the mysterious space duality reassured two resigned spirits and two brothers, Theus who came from Israel and Vikentios from Athens, being destined for Spinalonga; when this island was only a fortification, but since then it had channels with the Manes Apsidas, referring to what they would do in the future of the great plagues, in a site of barbarism as indicated in Zion to Kidron. The political sociological relationship will indicate that the patriarchs in oligarchic and democratic governments would lie in their politics, so that beings would be faithfully represented by their origin, being free enough in the subject citizen treaty, but free in quotation marks, to define archaeological sites like these two that would affect two brothers who are confined healthy contracting leprosy in these redoubts. All in due course as hoplites who were recruited as mercenaries, and forced to die in the arena of a coliseum or in the belligerence of tyrant emperors who ruled untouchables from their throne. The phenomenon of slavery of each one refers to the fact that both geographical contexts in which they were subjected by multiple eastern and Roman legions, generating good living in the case of the hoplites up to Philip, decreeing them well to be and meeting fundamental needs for their maintenance, but behind All this well being was the scene of the life of two brothers who were separated from their family, one had great military training in the case of Vikentios, but not Theus who was more intellectual, but he was a fierce combatant against all tyrant fronts. Vikentio had disciplinary rigidity but, above all, an orthodox Christian, that he always kept him tied to his roots of sufficient freedom, to retake the slopes as he did in *** Ben Hinnom and now in Crete. Free from a final reunion and with his brother, such as Vernarth and Etréstles, who came from Patmos through Plaka crossing to meet them, and Wonthelimar from Kalydon, near the town of Elounda. Here the four swords would cross with the Fourth Arrow of Zefian, to redeem them from democratic despotism, and to be able to live as free and competent soldiers, but in the ruthless reality, they were reflectors of the flowery submission by castes and generations always, subject to the mist of slavery.

In the colony of the ***** colony, Los Manes Apsidas presided, prowling around the gates and walls of the fortification, anticipating to Vikentios that *** Bei Hinnom was the same as anakoúfisi or Spinalonga relief, articulating networks of families that were carriers of evils and plagues, that were the faithful reflection of the decline of the great empires. The rings of the fortifications should be plagiarized on the side of the south door of the Temple of Jerusalem, so both areas would be united by the rings of the barbicans but joined to defend themselves from the family roots, free from the powers that the disunited components will never return. from the Rampart of great fortification of the front wall in Spinalonga, immediately to the transom where the crossed crossbars would be fixed where the Manes Apsidas would venture, having each brother separated by this three-meter thick Rampart wall. Only the one liberation of both of them would make them cross this wall that will lead them to meet again.

Theus meets with Wonthelimar who came with his entourage from Dicte's cave, and crosses through Plaka, then crosses Theus from Kalydon, Vikentio did it through the northeast *****, both being crossed and without being in the middle of the main rampart, which was guarded by the Apsidas Manes, with the purpose of channeling them and uniting them at the southern intersection with their speeches, when they would settle from very early until the sun was pronounced through the transom, where they erred to have the right moment to communicate the Translation of Hell from Gehenna from Jerusalem to Crete, showing the advantages and disadvantages of overcoming this last obstacle presented on this Mediterranean-Aegean island.

she had an uncle who spent
twenty years in the ring,
landing solid blows until  
he landed
in a downtown Oakland hotel,
older than he, wrecking ball got it
in the dawn of the cyber age
but for ten droning years,
it was his cage

he never had a title shot
but he kept his belly full
and had cash for the women, the drink  
never drove a car, cabbies knew him
and knew the smell of gin meant
“keep the change”
  
when his legs got weak
and his left eye went to blur
the money stopped rolling in  
but he still thirsted for the gym, the gin
he got himself a gig at Big G’s  
just enough hours to clean out the showers,
to keep the johns from smelling of ****,  
and a few greenbacks comin’ his way  

he would end each day
alone in his room, inhaling the gloom  
that seeped over the transom  
like smoke from a smoldering fire  
but there was no fire left in the ancient hotel  
or Parrot’s burned up belly  
only fading memories
of a wounded warrior  
who taunted his opponents
by mimicking every word they said  
in the ring, where he earned a bird’s name  
but never its sweet song, before time
took its tattered toll

Your ****** gestures
invite me to peer at
them through a
transom which is a two-way
thought transmitter!

rain illuminates
the pathway
by virtue of street lights
iridescent
in the vapour
past the drug dealers house
to the dark shadows
of conifers
whose outline hides
the shape of potential
muggers lying in wait
I watch through the arrow slit
of the bathroom transom window
of my fortress home
cleaning my teeth
while my ring doorbell's
paranoid cyclops eye
keeps vigil

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!

Proem

After Sir Thomas recovered the Spear of Destiny and returned it to the Pope at the Vatican in Rome, he remained there for several months serving His Excellency, attending meetings, and recovering from several minor injuries sustained while recapturing the Spear that pierced the side of Jesus the Messiah. Sir Thomas could have stayed as a guest of the pope in one of their lush suites, but he chose the bare walls of a guest bedroom at the local Knights Templar castle. The pope then called upon him for his next assignment: Leave Rome immediately, by boat, again, back to Constantinople. **“Head off a Scot by the name of Sir Robert Bruce, whom our intel indicates has a map and is currently on his way in search for the Holy Grail. Sir Robert is a stubborn ally. You will help Sir Robert, but convince him that the chalice of Jesus belongs here in Rome.”

Prior to shoving off the west coast of Italy, a few miles from Rome, Sir Thomas wrote the following message, and placed it in a bottle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My dear sweet wife and babe within her womb
The five long years since I had lost you both
I prayed for inner peace despite my joy
Your both in heaven; worship Thee Most High

Because your love exceeds all life itself
My lips will glorify you ever more
I praise you for the rest; my living days
Your name I lift on high with my bare hands

Was on my bed that I remember you
I think of you the watches of the night
The shadow of your wings I cling my soul
The depths of which my sword shall honor thee

I yearn affections taste where two come one
The seed by faith that yields abundant life
Endures celestial kingdom's perfect place
It brings this missive to its endless oath:

To bless, release my restless heart that bleeds
Commit my swords allegiance to the Lord
To you Dagung the earth is smaller still
For every inch be searched to see your face

You disappeared, not dead but still alive
I feel the transom temper my resolve
For in this ship another search begins
The Holy Grail; Dagung I'll find you both

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Postscript

I toss the bottle through the wind to stormy sea
Inside the missive of a knight in love with thee
______________

The second light of sunrise filters
through the blinds of a broken transom window, gliding the kitchen.
There’s an instant
in which bottomless jars, worn out dishes
and a headless Mickey magnet that has fallen off the fridge
Seem to levitate in a sea of dusty honey.

I haven’t witnessed the scene.

I think about all the other ordinary prodigies
That must be happening somewhere.
A trembling chrysanthemum blossoms in the frosty gardens of Nagoya.
Six grey wolves fail to hunt down a white deerling.
A middle aged man whispers into a hollowed stonebrick, then covers his secret with mud.
Two  giraffes disappear in the middle of a starlit Colosseum, to the astonishment of a roman dilettante.
Twenty years of boredom; then an ex con feels the tact of dewy grass under his feet again.
In a balcony over the Seine, two lovers prepare a padlock.
Some skinny kid from La Matanza scores a last minute free kick to win the neighborhood derby.
A pretentious teenager watches The purple rose of Cairo for the first time, and  discovers his true calling.
Days before dying, an old man stops by a bakery and inhales the same caramel fragrance he would inhale in the afternoons of his childhood summers.
An older brother decides to throw a game of Mario Kart to his sibling.
On a deserted reed bed, a blackbird sings the most beautiful tune in the world. There is no one there to listen.
A single mother finishes cooking breakfast for his son, and decides to let him sleep for another five minutes.
A physics grad student solves the meaningless quantum noise model that’s been torturing him for weeks, and stops wondering why he didn't choose to be a lawyer
Two old friends share the same espresso in a hidden Manhattan coffeehouse, perhaps for the last time.  

None of this everyday miracles are
happening to me.

The Trail Creek,
could not hold
the flow of
a million million
drops of rain.

The bank let loose and a Gulch became a river,
basements of homes and stores became indoor pools but
not one resident was close to foolish enough to go in and swim.

The streets became
a river of
a muddy coffee
coloured toxic feared
enemy, that had
no weakness but
time.

An apartment building fell as the Columbia River swelled,
eroded and took the ransom till it flowed down stream and
was rumoured to have crashed into a transom of the old bridge.

So many memories swept away down stream, many more, could
not resist to power of the water to remove and ruin, words and images,
by force, and in time, dirt and sediment remained everywhere, after the flood.

Tears replaced rain,
in time water,
all of it,
was drained away,
peoples lives strained.

To a ten
year old boy
this was big!
And as the
Columbia was growing
larger each day
parks disappeared as
the danger neared
I sang, "rain,
rain, go away
we have had
enough, there is
no where to play.


The flood of
nineteen sixty-nine,
was a vivid a
disaster you will,
ever find, but still
the City survives.

Vernarth in the evening of his life is called again to raise his sword, perhaps following the paths of Paul of Tarsus, precisely here his Word would begin in the figure of a Hoplite who will redeem the oppressed, who will reinforce the growth of the seeds, that will give hope to those deprived of Faith when they have to face their own Apokálypsis that would allow them to take with them when embarking on this adventurous daring in pages of life that follow that for many will be unknown. The seer's paranormal experience in Patmos will vivify his commendable virtue of confessing himself as a defender of Life and Death from the same intermediate final point, to then reach the nexus of gratitude that compensates that leads to make amends when leaving his abode naked and return every six months to Sudpichi in Solstice, and Equinox in Spring to Patmos explaining the premiere of this final event.

Vernarth's distinctive and codes will swell an intertestamental Biblical event, made up of crude abstract and demonstrative images that from so much decanting could be assimilated to what the Mashiach did in the Siloam Cistern, more than water being the same Hydor that is born from the origin and reaches the end of the erudition. The desperate desire to limit the spirit of a soldier is clouded within his own microclimate, wishing for a possibility that lies in the impossibility and fruits of the fan that separates the Universe from the Earth. From here the Faith is professed by the reflections of all those who have lived in a body of Flint, as were their parents freed by Vernarth, letting rest the readings of the sunset to those who from Flint have become meteorites that wander through the universe. As possible Christians to re-convert after a pre-tribulation or a new order, separated from what deprives us of new incursions. The Apokálypsis according to Vernarth does not diverge from Saint John; rather it tends to seclude itself from all the windstorms of divinities that are intermingled in its mysteries from all the exuberances of an endless gospel, which moves the hair of the Yahweh with the scent of lavender even within the pantheon itself after three days. The mystery of not understanding that a common man bears stamped on his body all the signs that give observance of a Passionate John that is in all of us having to share his silence within us, as suggested by the silence of which we are fertilized by clairvoyance’s of Patmos more than the consequences of some supra desire of Vernarth to cover some hint of autobiography, but more generously than the doors of his Megarón or Dypilon, be clairvoyance that shows us that the doors are the unknown within what is and we cannot Observe, V.G. as is illustrative in Spinalonga when Marie des Vallées settles at the point of the salvation of Theus and Vikentios all behind the transom as a consistent metaphysics of the unfulfilled desires due to burdens of other souls in salvation entrusted to resplendent beings. This is testimony to buried or invariable enemies such as Edomites with the affinities of the Seleucids or Pharisees with the Primitive Christians in the channel of each word that interprets the opposite diameter adaptable to a prayer that circulates the course of what an exegete does well If the original word of Vernarth's testimony of never perishes to aspire to do as the manah on the flowers that well deserve to perch on the Xiphos, where the central nerve of its shoe is the Baldric, many times it turned only in the battlefield when Vernarth used both hands, what a mystery! Here is the glossary of what is double-edged and double-handed metal when its length is pointed to the edge of the world where the Sun at its tip let the Light penetrates. Each unknown hemisphere will be possible to slice with both edges of each Xiphos as interpenetrated bronze and iron until it dissolves in the light of the Spring Sun.

All the causes were weighted to a grandeur where the messages of recomposing all the patrimonial legacies that would be the influence that everything could decline in the grandeur of bloodcurdling screams from the temples, which remained in the dark because they did not know who to unbind from the co-responsibility of seven churches of the Hellenic Elegies; from Ephesus to Laodicea trying to remove from the jaws atrocious empires that sentenced policies with more than a thousand years without having any more than a macular century. Vernarth in the depth in which nothing bothers him incites his sensitivity with what reduces the pain in his compassion of the 1st century, which will never stop passing through the well-deserved waking time in all the streets of Greece in which all his traces are they shuddered in challenges that deserved to be from a great classroom that is oversized more than any possible Odeon to fill with spectators from a well-to-do society and satisfied as it seems today with a high price paid for an unworthy degree.

Also, his apocalyptic metaphysics flees by whole perverted societies, and not half due to points of tension of his overwhelming immorality, and defense of all nature that does not corrupt itself, perhaps from an echo locked up when converting from Laodicea to Ephesus as if he were to remake Vernarth's Inverted "V" as the initial contact point of these seven derivations of his decline. The barbarians are at the foot of the very door that enters rather by inertia, and decline from the extinction of the Sun to later redefine it through cycles from spring to winter as we will see that it will emerge with the Duoverse manifested, after trampling on the beast that feeds on of pain and ingenuity from which all our destinies are focused to be swallowed by the snout of a battalion of enemies that migrate from the beast, but they do not realize that this is how calls should be made to all the empires that leave to his abandoned combatants, left on burning pyres immune, punished by flames that will never consume him, who were dazed and with their temper will come out alive with bodies that do not belong to us, annoyed at not prospering because of this anti-divine ****, understanding that the harshness of our tears will not make us neutral or worthy of the joys of suffering together what belongs to us in a body already sacrificed, this is the Apocalypse of flourishing images that are directed in processes of slaughtering the lamb that I cannot and will not be able to identify with the apparent strength of knowing how to be forgiven or undermine the riches of a leadership that for long millennia hoarded riches and never delegated its feigned goodness to us where the grass grows and twists from its root, rethinking days to count and increasing the agony of counting the simulated strengths that never let us enjoy.

It must be understood that all the opposing forces merged with the numbered days of a new rebirth, with the cries of Vernarth from Hyperborea, the pre-tribulation from Erebus or Sheol, from the anguish of the pectoral or Lynothorax from which the days counted in the same distance of traveling in the Purgation or Katartirio of the total confinement of which could be mentioned shouting in the acoustics of the Valley where the last word will remain. We place ourselves in the extravagance of which the rays of luminance deliver us the entire body of credibility to reach the step of happiness that will flow from the first and inaugural vision that confirms the first of the first of the alchemy that has been positivist, even of what paradoxically resurrects not expecting to be who we expected it to be, but despair is cast down in an act in which Vernarth dares to let go of the Mashiach's hand, to go help his parents from being petrified by the Flint that It would be provided for the end of the world with the prompt assistance of St. Jerome of Estridon as it was for an act where the Dragon calmed down, and stopped moving its tail, perhaps from the Green Dragon of Slovenia or its offspring for spreading within the world expelling fire with scales, horns that could be trusted from the Ibex of Valdaine, the Dragon of the Stained Glass of the Cathedral of Avignon hitting with its tail the Portals of Saint George, stating that such time the Nibelung Ring Cycle with Siegfried or secular specimen of the Draconian descent of the Merovingians, of the very Greek Drakon that began to subjugate Patmos in the year 76 AD. C. in between and badly wounded between the rocks of the Wind Tunnel of Profitis Ilias or as the dragon could be welcome, and if it were Lohikäärme Finnish descent stopping Soviets on their borders of blood that roars fire from the deepest corner of their land. The Greek serpents were born in the seas for several miles around where there were no other species but them, because if they had they would have been devoured by the great Ha-Shatan with ten horns and seven heads, much of the literary inspiration of San John is in Greek, but it is more likely that he originally came through the Near East. In the embryonic Roman Empire, each military cohort had a particular identification Signum (military standard), after Trajan's Dacian wars in the east, the military standard of the Dacian dragon entered the legion with the Sarmatian and Dacian cohorts: a large fixed dragon at the end of a spear with large open jaws of silver and with the rest of the body formed of colored silk. With its jaws facing the wind, the silky body was inflated and undulating, resembling a windsock, the Dragon continues to travel along roads that are the marks of the chariots without any mercy to those who awaited them at their destination with legions throwing hot breath that only Saint Jerome of Stridon knew how to mitigate. This huge lizard will continue to lay siege to the evil that cannot contain it, just like the basilisk in the Raedus Codex to imbue the never-burning blades of fire from the Apocalypse of Saint John, by chance with the fiery semblance of a Wyvern in the dome of the cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Slovenia, swallowing his own fire. With a fateful language of birds that would codify Siegfried that the end of everything comes from the seas of Patmos with heated water.

That winged creatures will come copiously to quiet the world to the world of Miðgarðsormurinn perhaps in Jämtland, besieging the Soviets like a serpent more than winged in vigor that shakes the Celtic tree with its Birch and Beech in Solstice or a dragon that was not with wings glued with wax that crashed when falling before reaching Sicily as is the case of Daedalus and Icarus, or the Lindworm dragons that expelled fire from the Mörser 16 howitzers of the Second World War. All these wealthy treasures are fundamental pieces of all the paradigms that form the prelude to a History that has blinded us without giving rest to everything that surrounds us, not even lavishing Christian burial with evil eyes that are characteristic of the dragons that they spit fire from your back, stalking a Britannia Pendragon.

Much of the banners, heraldry, and heraldry bear this emblem of beings made up of male and female offspring to form as a family the antigen of Slavic Bulgarian humanity, as a dissident figure that was torn from the edges of the Apocalypse to protect the crops where probably Rains of gold would come for his crops if he were male, and female if it were a prophecy of bad deeds to denigrate the farmer's seeds. Strong-blooded dragon would be Zmiy, Ukrainian carrying a four-legged beast, and on each leg a Cornucopia for golden petals that are collected from other maidens who will never stop being lush, protecting the arteries that rain healthy blood from Ukrainian maidens like the Zmei. From Zsablas that carry the Polish Smok on their backs that will be reborn from this apology of the Dragon of the Apocalypse that freed them from the Katyn Forest, on the banks of the Vistula where Bogdan drank water with his Zsablas to go free the Heroes of Smolensk and each Polish officer who had a Dragon stamped on his forehead, and also on the Coat of Arms of the Cracovians in Piasts of Czersk, fleeing from the cellars of some Warsaw revolt.

The climbing of the Basilisks of the Profitis Ilías Wind Tunnel will reign throughout Hispania as a prophetic emanation from the mouth of San Juan in Asturias and Cantabria with the magnificent silhouettes of the mountains in the Dragon Saw, followed by gargoyles that come to life in the peaks as a young Hoplite who wears his Áspis Koilé polished to annoy the dragon, which is nothing more than the basilisk when he was tricked by the Raedus Codex by mistaking them for his own offspring, thus allowing those who went to the Investiture of the Himation. It will be the eponym of Sugar, a Basque masculine god, who is often associated with a serpent or a dragon, but can also take other forms. His name can be read as "male snake".

Marielle de Quentinnais shows us in Saint George and the Dragon in the era of the Antipopes in Avignon, of which Saints and Blesseds would fight with the powers of the Dragon as in this sub-sequence that was released from Forli, with great similarity to the Mercurial Ambrosia due to Saint Mercurial as the laurel of Christianity over the idolatry in which terrified people did not sleep because of the frightful tremors of Forli and Forlimpopoli. Possibly, Saint John, the Apostle helps them put the stoles around the cornered Dragon's neck. Every evil force that is not defeated is a postponement of that moment in which it will fall surrendered, as it was from the original of the Dragon Hunters like Saint John of Patmos styling in the acroteras, and ledges of the Megarón that points to the Aegean seas to see if some of them are coming regurgitating the intact body of Margarita de Antioquia, that burst from the black belly of the Dragon saying "Draco vivit in Homine, non in Legendis" "The dragon lives in Man, not in Legends"

Having established Draco Vernarth Apocalypsis liturgy "Apocalypse of the Liturgy of the Dragon of Vernarth" the message continued along the path of Hydor where precisely the defenseless doors will be protected towards the enthronement of Silence with the ardent hope of Salvation as evidenced by the Pauline message "Marana Tha” building the coming of the Eternal that with all its dimensions will transform the collapsed world, tearing the senses that can reach the trade that transforms the ritual that is entrenched in the genetics of eternity in the tail of the Dragons that have formed classes and subclasses of heraldry of the Black Templar Knights, who roam on the run, creating the confusion that the medieval feudal mysteries were the continuation of an antiquity even if hostilities did not exist unless the tails of the basilisk of Patmos are crossed with some science from Ephesus to Pergamon , with the providence of a god in extinction that s ea disobeyed by his troops, and is bloodily decimated by the suffered trances of evil from which the ill-fated Knight is transformed into his own Dragon bled and immolated.

The end is not made with a mere vision of a Draconian Liturgy, from the year 72 AD. the Roman legions of Palestine were uncrossing where voices were heard like an occupied face of land but free of religious authority, which in one way or another saw the contemplative passage of half kindness or benevolence of a Caesar that would later be followed by the chins of fire of the Dragon, always escorted by Vernarth who lived and heard everything succumbing to imperial systems that were attached to filings of Hebrews that burned on their backs, to corners not sharpened by Greek spears to corner the frequency of a detractor of symbols of the Apocalypse, that was embodied in Vernarth with sumptuous flint that adhered to the Áspis Koilé or smaller Peltas that became prosaic to arrows that adhered to the tin shaft to vindicate itself in the foliage, as a recurring expression of the apocalyptic mentality assumed by recognizing that the Apocalypse is lived inside, and nothing on the outside that corrodes more than its own entrails. Indeed, everything private and non-transferable exhorts us to the end of the melodrama from where we must share hearts for those who keep their manners, and make the opening of the Kassotides a tiny possibility of change after Vernarth realizes that he has the furthest possible the dung of the Human Dragon, creating a dominant culture that recovers what enables us to preserve in its own Identity, illuminated and reinforced by conviction.

Vernarth, a few steps from falling from the abyss, makes his prophecy to ask the sky, the Mashiach, and Spílaiaus to release the chains of Kairós, so that the genre of granting life revives the system of the flame of the omega point, which then is reversed in celestial spasm, strongly grasping the tail of the dragon that will transport him with three lightning bolts and trumpets with the seven trumpets that will leave them in Delphi according to the nature of the Cassiotis or Kassotides moat, as a praiseworthy insurrection of being reached by a metaphorical being in Daniel as an apocalypse that will indicate that rain of light and fire will flow from on high, but they will all be directed from Patmos to Delphi.

Vernarth joins the Maccabees to obstruct the Seleucids, as the two books of the Maccabees tell, who start a ****** guerrilla war against the oppressor, and the prophet Daniel chooses a totally alternative and non-violent path. This shows that the worst militia of an armed man is to break with the sovereignty of his oppressed soul, and then be batoned in literary artifice like books from the present to a past with leaders buried in the ruins of lost civilizations, as in the case of the Seleucids and Edomites in open bread on themselves by Mikaiyáh, Archangel Saint Michael. Behold Vernarth where each gloss of contracted episodes never disengaged from the muscular tail of the Dragon that evidenced his vision of St. John, in such expectation that it resolutely rose from the heights of the Iridescent Nimbus, subduing all empires in the tail of the Dragon. The dragon that shakes the resistance of the ungovernable walls, but not the law of the powerful who makes himself believe, but the muscle piece that is rooted in Tel Gomel, is nothing more than the Holy Scripture of the duality of Saint John the Apostle / Vernarth; both as a monosemic (uni-meaning) and univocal lexicon that penetrated with all the desire of the heart moving them together, to decipher after the year 96 AD, towards the unveiling of Sardis to Laodicea with the Iscaton that is subtracted from the Dragon's Tail.

Down the deer path, thick with ****,
to every hard to find
creek bank in the world,
there's a busted dinghy,
a forgotten sloop dream,
with a mudstuck sprung transom,
a sky beckoning bow,
tied to a cattail or some other
tenuous stem.

Down the deer path, thick with ****,
the willows, reefed in a gale,
cringe in the rising crest,
and a busted dinghy
lifts on a swell and bellows
against the cleat to slide clean
to the sea, to a young boy's
landlocked dream of spray,
hard weathers and anywhere
but here night-watches.

All the colors of elsewhere,
the splendid regatta of the never-seen,
the gleaming spice and bent strange
tongues of the could have been - mold,
dip and sigh, lift and strain,
again and again,
upon a cleat,
upon a rope,
upon a cattail
or some other
tenuous
stem.

The monolithic columns were beginning to be built that transferred to the transition columns of the period of the 6th century BC. That they would stipulate the fixed number of units of the Doric columns that would be installed towards Vernarth in the transom that would join the crossbars between Mount Profitis and the Iridescent Nimbus, representing a theosophical concept, which when divided into the chromatic ones would materialize, making a commendable incipient epoch of eternal humanity, where the individualities were decompressed from the descendants for more than 500 thousand years in the perspective that would allude to the logos of the Universe, and that very few of their ins and outs were unraveled in the convergences of their diction, before they could be concretized facts that exceed the reality of a theory that is not proven when it is really all consummated. And although everything is the result of a period that will not be reissued again, everything in the Apokálypsis would be of renewal and thoughts with characters of the Factotum interspersed with the forces of the Universe, Elementals and Spirituals that would be teleported in the trans-religious vehicle of Vernarth , with its own intellectual scope that would go back to expressions of philosophical writing but with the grace of the Logos that would redirect itself through vestiges, where there are disquisitions in the claim of Saint John the Apostle referring to that beginning that everything was re-indicated as Genesis was, in which this world has already proven is only the manifestation of a new Universe that would leave the spare one, and would give us the Duoverse full of Light and Hope, vindicating the divine concept in all the voices that were never heard by the fine ear of conception. of the Camera Obscura, where all the voids of the Universe would be engaged in the strengthening of man through super credibility, and d e the support of pre-knowable favors, based on the Logos of hearing everything that is heard, and saying everything that is spoken ..., creating the pronunciation is everything first, and that the word is of significance in what is pronounced in all the processes of withdrawal and insistence that our evidences be resonated, allowing that what remains to be included is the incarnation of a Creator of worlds where no body has been occupied, nor that all the spheres that govern him are in the capacity of the will of empowerment, which is recited in all the multi-evocations, which come from all the well-smelling essences of Cosmic Thought and the Logos of the Monolithic Columns, attracting and magnetizing what “is not thought” to become the verb that resonates in the form of the waves of its creation and of the sense of existence, with the only spiritual spirit that denies all capacity to increase all the plans that have to be made and that are to re-study, under a world that belongs to those who have been humiliated of their will, who have been sullied and who will be liberated in their own exaltation where the words will be lost so that they can later find themselves in the experiment that whips the truth, in the bed of things that swirl in a cosmos that is fed up with being the same and that no one dared to know more than a Peri Kosmous, which of course will give the origin in everything that remained in the accent for those who listened to him hiccuping on the side of a thoughtless tree. Irrational reflections took over the entire heritage of what was the essence of a Christianity that was beginning to be renewed on Patmos, where the experience was those of a very early encounter with the Truth that was a simile of every basis of truth contained in the genome that is woven into the lordships of which it has only the sharpness of facing the self-confidence of the chills, and of the fright when its meaning leaves you speechless.

The muted iridescent leaves the branches of the trees more significant than the cosmic thought itself, which was the light of life in all the voices that cheered him where nothing could find conceptual footholds in the gaze of a sigil of abstract love, only letting the testimony of beings of Light ennoble the capacity of a love that boils with love under every expiration in the darkness itself, as is Wonthelimar full of the flower of Liz that lies in its familiar heraldic. Everything is detachment in the seed that whimsically delivers its fertile axiom in the purity of the layers of the land of Palestine, where thousands of routes of donkeys do not cease to infuse events from the bases of custom and to move where there is no shelter, but there is an illusion that everything happens on Earth and that it is the same gender than itself, almost more eloquent than those who dare to say that everything comes and goes from this earth loaded with Cosmic thought, loaded with inalienable rights where the beneficiaries will be benefited. doubly, and that being a witness to the glory is the same grace that lulls the feeling where everything is Duoversal in a thought that replaces the one that will partially follow the one that comes, for its concepts and true plans where everything and everything will be part of the Prologue of Vernarth in the encounter of a Purgation that utters all the gales of the Meltemi that will pierce all the orchards where they will finally be able to rest on the head of Jakob, and l The fruits of the Faith of Elohim by recidivism will give the world courage by not being afraid of the changes of the foliage, which are from their own repose in the garden that makes them ascend, which abstracts them in the predominance and in the shallow laws of a Occultism that is associated with universal ideas, that puts names and pro-names in powers that are only subtracted with humility in the echoes of personal power, and in what their foliage radiates, that with the piece of a commemorative arrangement of Lilies, now nothing It mattered as a conceptual universalism, without the axial that rusts in the tendency that after its numerals running in different directions or senses, when contemplating itself from a ruler of the cultural word, being intelligence that transverts the dyes of knowledge in the Greek or Hebrew gnosis, that Vernarth or Etréstles could never take back the barge that took them from Sardinia to La Spezia, or that whatever it was like from a sequence shot could be duplicated with the hidden part of a Duoverso, to always have a substitute brother, and that he does not lack when the effect of his occultism is going to emerge in the Aramaic voice that makes the walls of the oropharyngeal trunk creak, with the thought that it makes an elixir of generational life, when the force that It propels a complete involvement, by shaking all the spheres that were anodyne with a new gesture in a dawn of Eternal life.

The category of anodyne value is that what collides with the solid elements what could be in the new essence of an elemental rebirth, and of occultism that only transgresses the ideas that are proper to those who rectify a greater degree of physical forces than move the world for the minors who sustain the microcosm, before a micro thought that was sometimes more contemplative, of what its inheritance as a software perfects, and that has to be descended in its hereditary integrity as "Inheritance", devoid of any individuality that makes an omen the real estate of the anhistorical sense, perpetuating the anhistoricism that refers to a denial of the relationship with history, in the historical advance or the custom, such as the frequent criticism that the facts reveal a nuance of weakness Where would Alexander the Great's record change, if he had been protected by Vernarth before he was consumed by malaria, or had been abused by his own commanders? They have a trophy of a fever that offends further from everything that is ignored if it is not a real argument, and may have lived many more than the same context of knowing or ignoring what happened, that is why their anhistoric polytheistic-social will describe the vision more adjective of who detaches himself from his history, and repairs in history itself the secondary planes where only a submitological discourse would take him to the source of the timeless Macedonian seat.

Drinking four hours now
in a pool hall, Larkin folded
behind me as a I draw
back the cue. Distressed,
lines snap the stroke:
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.
Not tonight: clouds crawl
on sick bellies to an Alka-Seltzer moon.

But drink gone dead, without showing how
to meet tomorrow – is molded
perfectly to this blind drunk, thawing
beneath breezy transom, getting dressed
for a ride home after going for broke,
drinking anesthesia and losing all finesse
early in the binge, kindly corralled
by patient friends deaf to last call's croon.

Finishing the thought
Producing commentary
With or without meaning
Measuring space on a page
Of unknown value
Awakening a prism of the intellect
Printed against a background
Of tangerine
Books filled with words
Amounting to nothing
Thoughts piled one on another
Illuminating hidden understanding
Through a transom of enlightenment
In the age of reality
Never forgetting to cut and paste
In a journal kept hidden under the bed
Thoughts of great minds
Produced in history
Resolving complexities of hidden meanings
And finishing the thought

7/22/19

www.brucelevine.com
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07485W4Q1

A constructed carrier
at rest
this
now state set to seek
next via
next via-ble duct-
--- course, of course, I think
fluid mind wandering, conducting
place in time aware, I am, bleeding out…
then I see
you may be, if I can,  see you bleeding real,
stretch the point I make to yours,
touché,  eh… shall we by
chance, feel around for a grip
a hold on, seep in, through to sense

some thing sense, sol-idity, I think
I sense seeing sometimes smells good,
some times other… space is the why
since time took my cares away,
suddenly, how is immaterial
so far as any given word
could ever care…
space
you sighed, looked at me askance,
asked me if I thought I could dance.
-------
ductile (adj.)
mid-14c.,
"hammered, beaten out or shaped with a hammer,"
from Old French ductile or directly
from Latin ductilis
"that may be led or drawn,"
from past participle of ducere
"to lead" (from PIE root *deuk- "to lead").

From 1560s as
"flexible, pliable;"
1620s as
"capable of being drawn out in wires or threads."
Of persons,
"capable of being led or drawn,"
1620s.

hardwired, intuitive art… hammered home,
the point of any thing made most honed…

Klang. Echo from ever.

A via duct to hold a thought,
writ once right to left,
then bent this other way,
construed to sense in you,
as you
see time from the underside.

Look up inside the mind you
authorize to come and see,
is this me thinking each line,
are you listening to the real as
ever life  
in tumult considered
common sense, edge wisdom limits
felt
thus far, not further, sings the shore,
wait to see, wait to know, wait to feel
the settlement

intent on spreading comfort, safe
and solid, sound somewhat other wise,
at the bottom of it all,
at the very be-gin engineering conference.

What do poets imitate? If the imitators
are the proverbial poets who trouble the polis,
and not pretenders, bent to be other than,
inner getic agoraphobic aggregators
of scattered knowns, organic sword
dust collector on the hearth of Haephaestus,
hanging where my uncle hung the Winchester,
where now my thread of thoughts en now,
I bend in time slowing sent to
signal me, come and see, and I wonder
if you recall the time this phrase formed
this door,
the closed off sense, since when began, earlier
in mindless archaia sorting stages, filters formed
from sticks and stones and shattered bones,

seeing time, from the canyon floor,
the river is new,
the course is old.

All any canyon does is carry fluids down
to the solar pump,
as the world turns, it turns for cold
wishing to be warm and hot wishing to cool,
being never willing to unknow being
the reason things change
on a regular basis,
at all  angles off the point stretched
from all sides, to form
a floor, for us to see up from.

A series of days- accrue to the appointed time…

From the instant in thin time,
when the last grandmother with no child, back
in the time
of motherhood's highest value,
once,
as long as
any real story told tellers is real, ago, long
in the state of no begun ending,
sensing ever
unrelated state - single mind stability
life as a point, has an
up, up - on a moment, much like now, though
thicker in some sense, things we knew by rote,
seemed right to some, and practical,
- degated knowledge delegated
- upright walking, one way
- pfft - first act, silent
- pht pht pht, no- yes no\hmmm
- set this straight,
- equal and opposite, see-parted out
- breathing in aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
- perfect balance stop
- I am afraid I am doing no good.
God's only fear, the very beginning of wisdom.
Po-et-try- umph-oommph, feels so
good, hurts so bad, feels so good, oh no
virtual
- creation, in no time.
knowing needed limits, lines,
edges
form -freaking stringy gnosis, know, is not, is, isnot
wiping gnostic snot,
will of me says, this one thing
I think you know,
theory of mind, I think you know
differing
is how life ever matters, well,
and good
take comfort in doing
best nexts, from the penultimate
quest-ion sprung from the fear of failure
to launch.
Chiral sorting started from a way
made to hold two bits worth of e,
outside time's distance inversing rule,
being
is another pose supposed effectual, we

lift up the feeble hands that hang down,
jump and dance,
orantic, antic anticipate, seeing
all hands raised, I know,
a thousand thousand times, I know
all hands, joy bound,  thinking
we should clap.
free the non applauded hand's value
each to form a half clap
- shake
hands hindered from the knack needed,
feel the sense, of knowing this the other way,
animus in animated wedom,
hanging from a tree,
see, be the idea that knowing is.
Only the idea, not the constituent parts,
only the knowns
being formed, first seeds of this
said to have been
forbidden tree, bending, fully fruct-
ified branches -
low hung knowns, children's first wish to know
another certain thing,
if you don't mind,
if I had known you knew,
here is beyond understanding,
in the overall we stand beneath,
feeling
CRAZY LOST AND HOPELESS
uplooking each bit of sense, since feeling once
a thought,
a curious thought, a window above a door,
vvassistdas, transom
AH,
architectural acknowledgment of wind
and its will to cool too hot and warm too cold,

touch too much, or none, still as inbetween breath,
not out nor in - ******
being bound and determined to win the joy
of finishing a thought,
caught while fishing in Gods seasons of forgetfullness,
being empty of care.
Unconcerned with misconstruth,
Let all liars be men, and all truth be true
before men could have imagined
knowing as a flow… that piles up behind
those who admit we did say,

I'll be dammed. That worked.
Like putting pepper in your coffee,
a ripple dam, shape of water near the shore,
same as washboard roads after pneumatic tires
became the most comfortable travel imagined,
before memory foam.

What do you think
of quantum foam or in quantum foam, here on out?
What is the softest thought you have imagined?

DARK CRIMSON

in of itself, the spilled over feelings
-of lives unfulfilled; their willingness
to let innocence fade into, the pavement
on the side walk, or the front steps transom
leading into the light of a door partially opened
it spills, down in to the cracks with
it's dark crimson flow, to seep deep into
the soil whose essence of; becomes part of
the fabric of life itself-in a constant battle
for the daily ebb and flow, no give; only to take
which no one person can name on their own, yet
with blind eyes, we see it all, continuing to unfold
night after night, with a crescendo of anguish
a mother's cry, splitting the night in half- then;  a silent stillness
which bleeds into a red sky dawning, readying us to prepare
for another night of carnage.

By Michael Perry

The curtains hang over widows that have not been opened
for years.

I am scared to raise the yellowed
shade.  Behind the grime of ages the half rolled up crackling
fabric has tales to tell.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow
may not fall from the transom.
I am aware of this other space
above the dust and mouse
droppings on the sills of
yesterday.

If you ever come here again
you will find the splats where
my tears have spilled.  The
view from the second floor
window is distorted by my
sad eyes.  

I will be near, ever near, to
you here in this place of
memories where once we
swayed to music
from another room.

It was all so long ago when
we were young and dancing
to the sounds of
unrequited love.

Open your eyes.
I am standing by the window
abandoned to the rains.
The streaks of your young
face never fade no matter
the years.

The shade remains in place.
My thoughts steam
on the ***** glass.
My breath never distorts
the singular mission to
redeem the past.

If you return here you will
find me dreaming
alone by the marks
of yesterday.


Caroline Shank