Tag Archives: Ocean

Before the Mast

I am all wet
wet is what I do to you
with blue and green oils
I fill your valley and canyon
play host to millions of minions
swamp your mountain up
to it its bald peak cooling
your outrages.

I am atmospheric host
to my children who swim
on my skin and burrow
deep below
when one leaves
I cry.

I rise up
and hug the dry bones
and slide away.

I bay and bawl but
I’m not angry but I yowl
and roar and spit
up splash into the sky
drown your bounced boats
I am wet noise.

I know when you come near
and when you go in
as you say
I spread my molecules
and envelop you.

You dive down in me
your bloated body floating
cured with salt
draped in seaweed
and that silly snorkel
you look just like
another funny fish.

I am mostly all body
a bowl of jelly
I won’t lie still
I love my sailing curves.

You can’t walk on me
you talk over me
all your rocks sink
I answer only to the moon.

Summer and Winter

the freezing leaves and all this grieving
since we left and lost the sea the blues
so far from home why we did roam
the roses frozen now the pipes broken

the hats and coats gloves and galoshes
umbrellas tire chains space heaters
and as our hearts grow colder winter
comes a tidal wave of muddy gloop

wanwood and wormwood show the lies
we strive to live by never mind spring
who lives through the endless summer
cares not when the sun comes or goes

the sun rises not for us nor sets just
past our roof where the real mingles
with mindful reveries of delirious
waves of unknown origin washing

we danced across sand dunes
drifted past coastal goldenbush
sea dahlias and evening primrose
and slept in beds of sober poppy

not to worry not when now my love
we will come again to this summer
this cold for now allows us a deep
sleep a slow dive for full seashells

so we hear in winter the blue sounds
of the sea green vibrations upshore
we grow old and leave behind us
only one place to have summer fun

Sunday Morning (III, II, I)

III
Oh my Zeus a girl Suze by Jove!
No god got involved the parents
the ruin of beauty and paradise
a coffee shop she a cupbearer
waitress to the young men new
to the surfboard of wet thought.
The waves roil with oily sludge
the kids play run from the blob
of the reclamation plant lazy
jets from lax prodding probing
the puffy foggy overcast clouds.
Bucketed fish guts and heads
on the pier odors the paradise
she comes to know and to love
evening gold and morning blue.

II
Why should she give it up to him?
What is love if he can come only
in noisy fantasy and nightmare?
Her dolphins play in their waves
charismatic and whole while he
came to end all frolic and family
for some abstract community
of musty prayer and the comfort
of wet sackcloth and cold ashes.
He who lived within herself
washed up on a desert beach
her desserts shells for a shelf
her soul he saved in a bottle
labeled I am not to drink in
letters from a foreign field.

I
Malaises of the nightgown and wait
for the coffee in the well worn bed
and the matted habit of a real cat
up in her window seat dome room
coalesce to repeat the profane
reminder of ritual dismission.
She dreams not and moves awake
with the eye of the storm encircled
by each newfangled catastrophe
as wealth darkens among Malibu
lights across Santa Monica Bay.
Against a rude screen true bugs
intrude like the kitchen roaches
scattering from the sudden light.
The day is like El Porto happy
with friends and popular songs
until the coming of the cat poop
cup up the stairs all the way
from the sway of bread and beer.

Sunday Morning (II, I)

II
Why should she give it up to him?
What is love if he can come only
in noisy fantasy and nightmare?
Her dolphins play in their waves
charismatic and whole while he
came to end all frolic and family
for some abstract community
of musty prayer and the comfort
of wet sackcloth and cold ashes.
He who lived within herself
washed up on a desert beach
her desserts shells for a shelf
her soul he saved in a bottle
labeled I am not to drink in
letters from a foreign field.

I
Malaises of the nightgown and wait
for the coffee in the well worn bed
and the matted habit of a real cat
up in her window seat dome room
coalesce to repeat the profane
reminder of ritual dismission.
She dreams not and moves awake
with the eye of the storm encircled
by each newfangled catastrophe
as wealth darkens among Malibu
lights across Santa Monica Bay.
Against a rude screen true bugs
intrude like the kitchen roaches
scattering from the sudden light.
The day is like El Porto happy
with friends and popular songs
until the coming of the cat poop
cup up the stairs all the way
from the sway of bread and beer.

A New Moon

The doctors of science
are replacing Earth’s moon
with an artificial one
made of rayon and crayon.

The new moon replaces
the old one deemed now
obsolete and in danger
of falling into the sea.

From Earth we’ll be able
to adjust the moon’s color
and position to improve
its influential benefits.

Several high speed elevators
attached to Earth’s tallest
peaks will allow tourists
easy access to hotels

bells and whistles
of space cultural
events and venues
and an Earth museum.

All About You

I was all on my own till I touched you
till I touched you I was all on my own
and you all alone until you touched
the sky above the ocean the clouds
pulled you from a dripping wet swim.

You liked to come first touch waiting
patiently fins by our sides politely
waiting for each other in the shadow
outside your watery cave in the cove
I without you and you without me.

All about you was all about me
and all about me was all about
you on our slow trip to elderly
crust when crest again you are
thine and I am mine all alone.

Out to sea it was all about you
fish and shells and boats above
while we waited for you and we
waited for me it was all about
you it was all sea creamy ocean.

This solmization of signs mused
no curled hair no moist kisses no
tattoos no clothes no perfumes
no cigarettes no booze no streets
no cars alone olive drab greys

sea greens and ocean blues
all about us surround sound
where water touches sky
all about you all about me
all about me all about you.

Nothing to be done nothing
to do much ado about you
about me about me about
you nothing to be done we
sit on our rocks and wait

for the final tidal coming
when you touch me and I
touch you first you then me
then the everblue sea the
ocean in our dew eye mist.

Rowboat

They said rowboat
lost untethered
with the ebb tide
one day late Fall.

She was to wait
but waded off
he back for the basket  
she in search of shells.

He forgot the sandwiches
in the car up the road
and the redundant bottle 
of purple pinot noir.

From the pier end
she fell hell bent
and got her into
the boat and off

waddled he oaring
she at the tiller
crossing the bay
to the picnic beach 

the old couple
coming years said
but the new owners
did not know them

said better keep
an eye out
not a good day 
for crossing the bar.

Drowning Amid Waves

That swimmer Stevie Smith mentioned
the one “not waving but drowning”
off Muscle Beach that cold morning
still the iron ones sweating
considered neither waving nor drowning
men but lifting they carried one another.

He was too far out for his cries
to be heard and from under their
umbrellas they waved back at him,
but he wasn’t waving, Stevie said,
he was drowning, but how did Stevie
know – ah! the lifeguard poet

who drowning waves not to be
saved but to say here I am
and goodbye, goodbye
my loves goodbye
I am too far out for you to hear this
this wave to all along the shoreline.

Chary

Sun blasted yeses across space and time
and the moon goes down in a mist of no
earth rolling moving warming ice caps
melting and the seas rise first a foot toe
a frozen continent calving crumbling
a piece at a rhythmic mythic time slow
so slow lights dim smoke cake rises
and they learn to go easy the strung horns
plucked and picked by the breeze afloat
in cosmic currents first detected in the 60s
of each receding century shoveled under
fallen garages leaning walls broken
foundations sinking into the ocean
nowhere now to park the rigs the stallions
of snow unleashed from barns of bane
from frozen fears offered up to the sun.

“Loomings”

“Loomings” is the title given this now completed painting, shown below in various work in progress stages. The piece is 24″ x 36″ x 1&1/2″. For the first time, I used Lukas Berlin “Water Mixable Oil Colour” paints. I did not mix in any water. Though I have wall-hung the painting, the paint is still wet, but not dripping wet. It will take up to a year to completely dry, as discussed in the info. pdf linked above. I like the paints. Will experiment with mixing with water next time. The canvas stretched on wood frame was purchased used for $5 at a garage sale last summer. The black showing through, mostly around the edges, is from the original painting, which I mostly covered over, beginning with a squeegee wash of titanium white acrylic. “Loomings” is the title of Chapter One of Melville’s “Moby Dick.” An alternate title I had considered was “Sailboat with Umbrella.” But that seemed too specific. One wishes not to disambiguate one’s paintings no more than one’s poetry.

  • Feb 10
  • Dec 24