the skiff chugs along
toward the end of the lake
where the tall peaks rise
snowcapped mountains ripple
across a backwash
an eagle
glides in a blue distance
a red and yellow float
mirrors itself
below the surface
one silvery fish slipping
under
a deeply swimming sun
no way to catch that
optimistic gremmie hits the beach with her new board
eager to take on magnificent crests, showing off her stuff
her knowledge minimal, but her courage impressive
an aggro gives her a few tips, then goes along his way
aggro gets caught in the backwash, and rides the aerial
gremmie watches, enthralled, entranced, amazed.
she bails a few times, wondering if she will live or die.
She’s got it, he thinks happily, the heart of a surfer.
in the backwash of my mind
memories still legible
sunken crystalized in sands
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Spam-O-Rama-Dama
Try this tonight: One Shot Keto Fungus Destroyer. Put
This spice in your shoes to Fix Toenail Fungus and
Toxic Liver Backwash ...Overnight (Doctors Stunned)
MELT Fat Away with this 2,500-Year-Old Secret, and Stoke
YOUR metabolic furnace NO Dieting NO Exercise, Thought OR Surgery.
If You Can Flush a Toilet, You Can Do This (Doctors Consumptive)
SAVAGE SEX!!! Up to 12 Inches YOUR PLUS 12 Inches,
Hazda Tribal Elders Reveal Ancient Elongation Secret
Money Back if Overwhelmed Longitudinally (Doctors Emulsified)
Congratulations: YOU HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED (You Flushing Buff,
Fungus-Free Penilally Salient Spam Savage, You) Confirm
Your Order Now: Confirmation Code 123.asol (Share with No-One)
Plausibly Certifiable Medical Experts standing by. They have seen
you coming for a while now, and Eagerly Await to Verify YOUR
Personal Information for Quality Assurance at NO EXTRA charge.
The Chucko Children
roller derby brains passing into the steel mainspring
if we eat these slivers of veal paradox and watercress
the chucko children will slip beyond the sly pastures
they will forever traverse the bone rub badlands
the golden hard-on matinees, the grinding piano teeth
tearing it up, absorbing the pretenses, the stoney soufflés
the moulin rouge’ side glances dripping from the stars
now it’s clinging to your skin like jellyfish regurgitations
the simplex television people rattle chains during halftime
roller derby brains passing through the perforations
the backwash inseminations from a thousand lost nights
the dusty facades of made-up motel girls smoking fear sticks
hey you, yeah you, i got ten bucks in my pocket all for you
maybe you and me can test the winds and apply the dance
we can slip beyond the sly pastures, the stoney soufflés
the war still rages, even as the comatose night sleeps on
We can hear the chucko children tearing it up grinding it out,
bringing it on, again and again inside the steel mainspring
Get right with the creator...
Teach your kids how to fish.
Give EVERYBODY a second chance or even a third
(that's if they're not to vicious).
After that you're wasting your-breath- my dirty dime.
Do hire more GOOD police they're quite necessary
To keep the hell hounds off the streets.
Thin out the Neapolitan herd of
STRAWBERRY KNEED race baiting politicians.
BLACK HEARTED MEDIA HEADS.
Billowing out the pale sludge of lie and half-truths.
Thin out the GREEN- EYED OLIGHARCS.
Greasing the souls and crotches of politicians.
Do promote peace within your family.
Don't paint people in your backwash of hate...
The community will bud-cities will bloom...again.
Tend to your teeth -a smile will naturally follow.
A smile can make all the difference.
....and did I mention, get right with God.
We'll all be better off...somewhat.
Ezekiel’s Witness
David J Walker
It was the Spring before Eddie died that Fall
The graveled back road leading to the
end of the airport runway and an audible adventure
In the perfect evening air
no wind
as the light defused
into the equinox sky
we parked his Buick on the leeward side of
the barbed wire fence just beyond the runway
and stood in the chilled and perfectly stilled night air
Where
we became four animated fixtures
beckoning to the coming Continental Airliner
watching it grow nearer
bigger
louder
roaring
rattling our bones in the backwash of
a passenger jet landing on time in
the middle of nowhere
Ezekiel bore witness to the wheel in the wheel
Way up in the middle of the sky
Ezekiel bore witness in the valley of bones
Dry but not lifeless
Eddie left a note naming the boys who would
Bear the pall of his casket
It was the fall of our senior year
The cadent curls recede upon the shore,
with fizzle sounds like brushes on a drum,
their once brave tune declined forevermore,
beneath the growing shades of a beach plum.
The shadow fingers stretch along the beach,
to close the eyelids of a sleepy sun,
on the horizon nodding her last speech,
her closing song, as her best time is done.
Yet, she leaves fervent images behind,
reprints of joyous moments on the sand,
or backwash from tides pounding so unkind,
a montage of love sketches super grand.
Before the final twilight curtain’s drawn,
seek to bask in the wonders of each dawn.
a thunderstorm passing over -
gun turrets flash
gray hulls rumble and roll
above tumultuous clouds
evening commences to weep -
a damp emotive capsizing
that barely touches upturned faces
as seafaring battles go
it was a sky-skirmish
of near misses
a backwash of electric fizz
the distant sound
of sailors shouting for rum
light blinks
shipping damp echoes
that drip
into a salty bucket
of silence
Swollen ocular objects of sensitivity
Stared back in the rear view mirror
Tear glazed cheeks of sadness
Raised hand the last goodbye
And I forsook love again
A singular journey of thought
The paved road ahead a blur
But albeit a welcome retreat
From emotional backwash
Senseless beguiling stupidity
If but love we’re not so cruel.
she made a desperate leap but once more missed the boat
had to absolve her failure by swimming in ablution creek
the water was murky and viscous but therefore she floated
the sheen on her skin blessed her strokes in polluted disguise
distant proximity posed a new challenge as she sifted the debris
of her sad heart punctured by thrash of emotions and feelings
as astern backwash propelled her journey back to its start
when she bobbed up and down to the bottom of her resolve
she felt the stagnant drift of many years by the ocean shore
where she had been unable to set neither sail nor cast an anchor
restless and yes apathetic she had watched her rusty engine
to stay close to the harbour of uncertainty and bracken water
like a bubble from sunken Atlantis buried deep in her soul
the missed ferry sank because of too many passengers aboard
who attempted to catch the same wavelength of rapid departure
and she threw them a lifeline for she knew about safe passage
dolphins jumped up and down to the applause of the lighthouse
keeper whose beard was so long as to serve as yarn for the rescue
sometimes missed opportunities deliver grace in selfless struggle
The sky turned from dewy drab to gunmetal.
Pewter raindrops slipped down the window like mercury.
I went out onto the covered deck to smoke a cigar and sky gaze.
Iron winged grey geese had shed their metallic plumage,
ferrous sheets of sleet crashed into a low leaden haze.
Easy to imagine infinitesimal steel dioramas turning
within each particle of soaking spindrift.
I thought of space junk, not ours, but an alien detritus
drifting in from a thousand galaxies,
hundreds of space craft abandoned and defunct
all slipping, unmoored into fragments
falling and smelted small within times rendering forge.
Evidence of dead-end hopes and far explorations.
I watch this riven wreckage rolling in
apprehend through clouds of cigar smoke
its last landfall on our far flung world
as a dissolved ore in a backwash of rain.
A thunderstorm passed over,
gun turrets flash.
gray hulls rumble and roll
above tumultuous clouds.
Evening commences to weep -
an aftermath,
a damp emotive capsizing
that barely touches upturned faces
yet it splashes fright onto brows.
As seafaring battles go
it was a skirmish,
flotillas of cruisers awash from
near misses.
They sailed away
leaving this whittling rain,
a backwash of electric jism,
the distant sound
of sailors shouting for rum.
Behind our eyes
deaf fish mouth deaf bubbles.
Ozone spumes against inner ears.
The wake of the storm
sponges, damps down,
slowly drips
into a salty bucket
of silence.
There’s a deep burning encumbrance
Lagging within my torso
Its lacerating my soul
No explanation, ask Picasso
Occasionally, I wish I never knew you
Un-acquainting my best friend
I bind fast and then I bruise
When I feel like I’m losing you again
I can’t express it verbally
And it’s something you wouldn’t comprehend too
You have human embroideries
And what I have is you
Cognizant of your concord
You’re taking my unique one too
It was like a smack in my face
Asking me for something, I didn’t want to do
How could you not know the backwash
That cracked my benevolence
I thought we were so adjacent
Tout de suite moved my smile into spins.
No explanation, just “Picasso” the sense of my verse
I’m not devoted with love for you, I just feel demolished
Like a once colourful stained glass
Now gray and cannot be polished
a fourstitch (quatrain), chain-rhymed
in response to global warming and climate change
Environmental agendas of the left
see such solutions left far behind
in the demonstrations of today.
The political climate is shifting.
“Peaceful” protests have left us bereft.
they are scarcely more than a blind
for annihilation’s holiday.
There are few signs of the smoke lifting.
Violence, fires, murder and theft
are the accepted answer we find
in angry, youthful, political naïveté.
Our moral climate in a fog is drifting.
2020 discovers our nation cleft
by childish fabrications designed
as name-calling, verbal horseplay.
The backwash creates wide rifting.
Eco-friendly debate was never adept
in the chaos of our fiscal disarray -
an appeasement for activists’ protégé,
and more stimulus? mere spendthrifting.
Related Poems