"upwind" poems
Sunlight on my grinning face
Follows me from place to place
But it won’t do
Don’t know how long I can wait
Wandering this empty space
Searching for you
Up and down the barren coast
Listen as the riptide rolls
With so much to say
Probably what hurts the most
Is knowing when you’re so **** close
And still so far away
Once per while I catch a glimpse
Of unintended fleeting hints
To call out your name
Won’t make much a difference
Words don’t carry far upwind
It’s always the same
In the breeze
I see it’s just the wind
It’s a tease
To be at the shoreline again
Shepherd, call the sheep back home
Be thankful that you’re not alone
Round em up one more time
My, how much the herd has grown
With wool to warm your gentle soul
Leave no soul behind
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 8:32 PM UTC
I sailed a laser
in the horseshoe bay
of an island
in the San Juans
The wind was blowing
from the south
at twenty
knots or so, it felt
like fifty on my cheeks
As I headed upwind
and felt the vessel heel,
my toes dug past
their strap,
I leaned to level 'til
My face was sprinkled
with the spray,
my hair was trailing
in the wake
And geese did glide
not far away,
just above the crests,
honking as I flew along
and just behind them
Skipping now and then,
my windswept face
like a stone
Mar 6, 2010
Mar 6, 2010 at 7:24 AM UTC
The lightning crackles
Like a rattlesnake rattles
The sun burns weary
evaporating the teary
The soul unfolds in sin
squeezing life out of wind
Stay down upwind
of my ginaceous grin
My favor is South
always South . . .
by Southwest
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 8:05 PM UTC
In a throbbing coccon seized by ablazen web
thou viscid meanders woven by an unabating tempest
then hoarded in a rapture... by the sylph of the sands.
Rising rider, captive of an upwind sail
meadowy sky lover, worshipper of the ephemeral
fettered Why mooring the eluding eons to a transfixed now
as if the twined dreams of a wayfarer,
nomad of the seas, the sands and the skies
trapped in an ethereal time warp.
Jun 1, 2010
Jun 1, 2010 at 9:10 AM UTC
A tough
guy still
his place
relives Spanish
Inquisition and
gossamer upwind
only prorogue
yesterday with
those Oxfords
on shoes,
shirt and
Otis for
trusty returns
easily now
a ghost
ware of
his Aberdeen.
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 4:56 PM UTC
I could have saved her
Wasted, waste down
Caroline, oh Caroline
It could have been me
Distorted noise
friends upwind of the screams
It's never enough
They never had enough
Beach chair, mangle
Tripod, classic
Ripped from the great novels
Footage with a sun kissed tint
The foliage underfoot
Face down
In the bloodied mud
Where is the love
It's not enough
There's not enough love
Guide her above
Clouds like gloves
Caroline, oh
Caroline oh where do you go
Traffic warped noise from the boys
Explicit wickedness
Extrapolated desires
Extraordinary circumstance
Circumvented rent cheques
Caroline are you at rest yet?
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 1:45 PM UTC
It was a day like this,
in March; smiling blue sky,
cheering wind, chill and brisk
A day like this, on the Charles
It was a good day
for sailing, hiking out
side by side, racing upwind
‘til feathers by the bridge
rocked us like babes,
laughing verses of Rimbaud
lamenting Milton
and the Arch-Fiend
We sailed circles round the eights
sculling their way to Henley;
we called them slaves
and gestured like Merry Pranksters
We tacked and jibed, glided downwind,
and on a broad reach, we saw Prufrock
standing on shore, downcast,
as mermaids slipped on board
and sang with us:
A verse for Nausicaa
A chorus for Eidolon
Mar 11, 2014
Mar 11, 2014 at 7:34 PM UTC
June took root in the same way you learned to scream
but now it's fall and you're trying
to sing.
It slipped away from muddy lids like lifting a veil,
like stepping into a bath,
(toes, sole, calf. toes, sole, calf.)
and crawled unseen behind apartment-light echoes;
crooning sultry half-truths,
weighing down vascular walls.
My heartstrings aren't laundry lines but the conversations
we never finished (last night, last week, last year)
hang from them; pinned to sheets, unbothered.
It's pulling on my sleeves; heavy and damp.
The wind isn't howling but
I don't want to hear about the dream you had
where I was a Priest,
where I was hitchhiking,
where I cut off my hair in a taxi's front seat,
and gave it to you in ziplock bags.
A hazy sky; slow and sweet,
coats my traipsing moods like honey
and sticks to the bottom of your favorite mug
(yes, that one, with the chipped rim and your rival
high school's logo.)
We're still here, springing forward and listening.
It's growing, humming cold verses in a new language
while we watch his name take shape in the mist accidentally.
You don't mention how fiercely I'm blushing and I'm grateful I don't have to laugh it off. Some days laughing feels worse than puking.
We are still here.
We are still.
We are.
I'm looking for something important and I won't know it until I see it.
It's morning, it's warmer and we lift our chins to coastline.
I blow smoke upwind;
today physics is purely speculation.
Today I feel like secrets are extinct and I'm certain the day is so much clearer through my Atlantic eyes than their protesting embrace.
You can keep June, I'll take the sky.
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 10:30 PM UTC
A blue blanket crystalline
stretching out to infinity
glistens in the limelight
of the sun's affinity.
The horizon paints its' golden rays
upon the august rippling waves,
& feathered fiends all sail upwind
For the spectacle the sunset gave~~~
Apr 28, 2021
Apr 28, 2021 at 1:26 AM UTC
Imagine you have a marble collection.
Spherical objects of varying sizes and colors.
Now imagine everyone has a collection of marbles.
Every single individual on the planet,
has a collection of marbles.
These marbles are your thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
The object of life, the fabric which binds us all.
Is the idea that we cast our marbles in the table.
We share them.
Albeit selectively.
We throw our marbles,
not all at once mind you,
on the table.
We show ourselves to others.
Sharing our perspectives
and ideas.
We observe and recognize
other marbles.
I exist through you,
and you exits through me.
In turn we are able
to see ourselves
for who we truly are.
Any resistance to this idea,
as safe as it may seem,
only serves to weaken the whole.
Jun 3, 2017
Jun 3, 2017 at 8:58 PM UTC
I felt it on the back of my neck,
a puff at first, licking at the sweat
soaked threads of tangled hair
that lay complacent on a broad reach
Telltales of the human kind that
whisper to the meta states before
transforming into siren calls of
change, something different,
something new, something
longed for in the quiet doldrums
trapped by endless drifting
on the boundless sea
My body turned instinctively
to face the tease, while my mind
remained behind, still stuck in
the quicksand grip of fading
memories, and slow surrender
And then the spray, from a swell
across the bow, a jolt of innocence
against a wall of indecision,
splashing hard my cheeks and
forehead, stinging splintered
lips and wincing unfocused eyes
A sudden rise came next, followed
by its fall, to weave their way into
a gentle roll that slowly
rocked the beam
Announcing arrival of the gusts,
scattered bursts at first, a panoply
of warm and cool that pressed
against my back and swam around
to fill, then leave the yearning sails
I hauled the sheets in closer, hoping
to capture the moment of the wind,
and though my preplanned destination
called the course I had been on, I
turned the wheel against the grain
and bid farewell, to the lee shore
I gazed out into the distance, where
whitecaps smiled at me, I smiled back
cranking sheets to the full
measure of the keel, and rode the
surging waves oncoming, taking
the howling wind on filling,
with its breath
my lungs, once again
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 8:23 AM UTC
I thought I was flying in slim and sure
Coasting on air,
Sliding upwind smooth like a float plane,
Touching down on a lake of glass.
You saw disaster coming
And set the world on fire.
You were right.
Jun 19, 2015
Jun 19, 2015 at 5:43 PM UTC
This is the first couple paragraphs of a story I've been working on
interested in honest critique.
Neko awoke to the smell of blood. He sniffed the cool night breeze, and his ears swiveled, listening intently.
A wolfs ears were sharp and keen, but it was the nose that knew everything. The nose that had woke him from his dreams of warm summer play.
"A rabbit," Neko thought, injured and bleeding, maybe three hundred yards away upwind in the tall plains grass. Neko's stomach growled.
A wolf always knew an easy meal when he smelled one. Neko rose from his slumber stretching his powerful limbs and began to move slowly and methodically through the grass. He was careful to remain upwind. His steps fell like whispers on the soft ground.
The moon, which Neko so loved was full and bright tonight and threatened to betray him as it cast its silvery glow across the grassy landscape.
Neko's nearly white coat stood out against the yellow grass, his saving grace was the smattering of silver that ran down the center of his back and rimmed the tops of his ears.
Neko crouched deeper into the grass, and farther down into the shadows, his movement slowed to a crawl. He could hear his prey now. It was weakened but not so much that it wouldn't recover given time, or run should he miss his mark.
The rabbit had been lucky at some point earlier this evening in an encounter with a lesser predator than himself, a coyote or a fox perhaps.
However Neko had no intention of allowing his prey any reprieve from fate.
All animals great or small ended as a meal for someone, even wolves bones were picked clean in the end. Neko knew this on some primitive level but he gave it no thought, he crept closer.
The smell of the animal's blood was intoxicating. He could hear it's labored breathing.
His muscles were coiled and tense, he inched as close as he dare then suddenly,
Neko sprang swiftly and with no remorse. His jaws closed around the rabbits throat with a sharp snap, one shrill, short, squeal, and it was over.
Jan 12, 2025
Jan 12, 2025 at 10:17 PM UTC
There’s a man off his chops selling tough for a tenner
But the mercury drops in his ugly temper
And gets lost under Victorian modesty
When faced with their war on fallopian sovereignty
Girl wears her mother’s mittens for earmuffs
Until they’re far enough upwind
“See they’re paraphrasing Jesus dear-but
I’m not so sure that’s what He meant”!
Nov 17, 2017
Nov 17, 2017 at 5:29 PM UTC
Every time it feels like the evening
Upwind of cigarette smoke
I become aware of the holes in my shoes
And the holes in my eyes
And the holes in my logic
And the holes in me.
Aug 6, 2017
Aug 6, 2017 at 12:22 PM UTC
My honor was Dishonored by horns
As I Approached the end part with
so much greed inside my mind
As I picked this words to construct
a sentence bullied in pains
I quote in my sentence :
Im trying to live his legacy
but Im dying digging my grave with Satan,
Like a dumb child on his first day at school
My honor look for a relationship to rewind,
As I upwind life inside a boom box,
Im confusion but still a toolbox
Weird as my brick mansion built with grey hair from Satan skin
As I was trap taps inside his kindness
It's an illusion
Im in a lawsuit duck
They plug in the electric chains chair
And I cry inside a shower cap
until my vocal chord
Could auspices my name .
Did , I discharged my honor:
Destroyed my ugly heart
Simply an amazing honor
As no differences between you and me
My honor.
Mar 19, 2020
Mar 19, 2020 at 8:54 AM UTC