Best Amidships Poems

I shall resolve to leave this
Place now...
And steadfastly search out,
Nestling between ridge and bluff
Amidst the folds of a foreign 
Land,
Several acres of unkempt ground
Fallow and rough;
Upon which stands...
Crumbled stone walls
With an exposed slate roof in
Some state of disrepair,
And a rounded brough
Complete with smooth, 
Well trodden...

Continue reading...

The date is twenty six July,nineteen hundred forty five
soon, only three hundred seventeen would be alive
Eleven hundred ninety six of you assigned 
eight hundred seventy nine lives denied,

Two torpedoes, that found their mark
at twelve fourteen in the morning, very dark
the first hit the bow, blew...

Continue reading...

UndefeaTed.  A Boxing Lesson.

A friend, off the Vineyard,
wrighted a ship.
And, perhaps himself,
and certainly the worlds ‘round him.
His words were fashioned, shipshape and watertight
as were the splines and bungholes and rudder pins and
All the Things I didn’t know what they were.
All the Things I didn’t...

Continue reading...

"Lo! the dolphin dotes laughs
My passion is the maritime coast
'Ocean!' said I, 'thing of seawater.'
Oceans dolphins 
In a kingdom full of coastlines
Eagerly I looked for the seaway
I crave the marine, more mare
That up bound jellyfish - that unbound jellyfish
I felt compelled to sniff the territorial...

Continue reading...

CHAPTER 6 (continued, c)

Several of the primate children 
Sat together in the branches 
Of a tree; they did not notice 
Danger silently approaching 
 
Through the leaves a brown and yellow 
Shiny scaly serpent slithered
Closer to the young gorillas 
Eyes unblinking glimmered palely
 
Then one of the watching mothers 
Saw the snake and cried...

Continue reading...

 He put to sea west south-west
    in a small cabin amidships -
 stole away in an unknown quest,
 salty ocean brine wet on his lips

 In the fires of smoke and light
    Neptune raised his trident,
 and led...

Continue reading...

Chapter 12 c The fireflower (cont.)

When at last they had descended 
Back down to the forest clearing 
Rosy sidled up to Lisa
Yielded up the flowering branches
 
Now they had secured the fire flowers, 
Now achieved the day's objective 
Back they climbed through upland forest
Back to humid lowland...

Continue reading...

Chapter 3 THE RIVER continued (b)


Carefully they placed the children
In the small canoe amidships;
Pushing out into the current 
Han swam alongside to guide them
 
Kwona, as she stood and waited
On the shore now took the hatchet
Cut the twin horns from the forehead 
Of the now...

Continue reading...

...“Harpoons away,”this ensign said,
“Impact in a minute or less.”
The captain nodded, strange as this was,
they’d picked on the wrong ship to test.

Out on the Atlantic waters
across the waves the missiles screamed,
striking the Dutchman amidships,
blasting the ship to smithereens.

The gory bodies of the dead
were shattered or...

Continue reading...