Best Backwash Poems
Mindfull of a parallel sequence
we seem to function light between
thought and hurt hoping for
easy advancement up the channel steps--
pecarious invoking with someone who
knows--- and not knows inescapable from
ourselves compliant (fraud) if need not be.
Backwash of hidden intermittent terrors preclude
external sensitivities---like my aching back
heat waves of generalized dizziness and
gender--izing. The sweet bird of youth
never suffers a jet lag stupor as we enjoy
and (softly) murmur the last rungs in a
flaccid present tense loss of self faculty.
But the nevertheless picture of realitivity
lends a jargon journal future sometimes
nameless but (at least) omnidirectional
happenstance.
What’s the use of trying any longer?
Nothing comes out the way I want it to flow
Words perpetrate my every being
And I strain to get my temperament to slow
But my cognizance is reeling in a panic of waves
The voltage of emotion is overwhelming me
What is this journey impending to?
What is my purpose?
To obliterate or build?
I keep assurances only to splinter and shatter them
I melt into their regrets and apologies without looking back
Then I am slapped right back in the face
With my own waves of shame and qualm
I wish I was like you
I wish I could put a guise on and never show my face
I wish I could take a dagger and extinguish the sorrow
Destroy tomorrow
But it keeps coming back with twinges and pains!
I want to scream my way into your existence
I want to end all the overwrought thoughtlessness
I want to be lifted in your ease
To be beautiful and clever like you
The demon is me and I am foaming with misery
My horns are melting by your pertinacious confrontations
I can’t reply to the desolation of nothingness
I can’t make it all go away
I’m trapped! RELIEVE ME!
Cursed adrenaline rushes about me
My body is prickling and waterlogged in blackness
I swallow the poisons of my backwash
And back-fire every stab in the back
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.
All night unto dawn
a gentle sadness
a comforting...
there is a dreaming rain falling
it is younger than morning mist
it is the first and last teardrop
as the world recalls its ancient roots.
I rest in the backwash of my own ebbing waves.
My breath cleansed in the light-stepping rain.
Distantly I hear soccer moms backing-out of driveways,
the last moment rumpus of heel-dragging kids.
I listen as a mail van trundles-by,
hear it pushing messages into gawping spaces.
Trains merge with geese
in long slipstreams of sound.
Plants fold fronds and leaflets
while dripping blooms bathe.
All is well, all unspoiled.
The world is a child again.
It rains gently now within.
"He can sit in a room, and not perish"*
Or might he stand upon the deck,
release the dove, and weep for years,
not for its loss,
nor for the triumph of its flight
above the waters; they are not of God,
they are the backwash of our fears.
There in his room alone,
imprisoned by his conscience
he may let his mind fly free
while tears beneath his wings
may no more flood the ground.
But we are not alone;
we have the educated man fulfilled...
and weeping. He has not such irony
for comfort.
It is a flood to cling to.
Fears, we understand;
they are our bulwark
when an educated man could speak—
could sweep us all away with wonder,
separate us from such grand pretensions.
We are not free to weep with him.
We may not seek the refuge of the mind,
eyes not for insight, not for closing,
senses bound upon another time
away, another circus of distraction,
yes, another box of little men
to dance upon the screen.
It is a dance to take away our fears,
a dance beguiling death,
suspending it awhile with candied tears
and frosted dreams protecting us from envy,
nodding to the educated man apart,
who sits there in his room alone
and weeping for us,
just as we who may not see
across the arch of his reality,
cannot.
~
*quotation from Jacques Barzun
The beach at Orca Praia – Funchal Madeira
The powerful deep blue ocean
Expends its tidal force
Pounding down upon sea pebbles
With thud and smash so coarse
Watching from a vantage point
From the horizon to the shore
The lines of sea swell building up
Growing bigger more and more
Low, rumbling ocean rollers
Waves curling with such symmetry
Then the breakers quickly form and crash
Tossing up a plume of spray of sea
Incessant surf on shingle
Swash, swoosh and susurrate
With that endless marine motion
That will never dissipate
The waves break up and flatten
The tidal rush now gone
As the pebbles roll and rattle
Against each other as they tumble on
The roller spent, the wave now dead
Or that is what it seems
Then the backwash slithers downwards
Sluicing pebbles like big grey beans
The unending flow and ebb of tide
Today a calm but restless sea
Incessant waves wash and whoosh
So soothing it can be
But at other times she’s not so kind
Or benign to beach or land
Dashes disastrous desolation
With a fury on rock or sand
But for now I stand and wonder
At Mother Nature’s gentle reach
And watch and taste and listen
To the ocean on that basalt beach
Why do you do as you do
and not do as you don't say?
asked the journalist of the leader,
asked the child of her parent.
Because I like to help
and I do not enjoy recognizing myself
as a selfish hypocrite,
responds the leader
to writers of famous and infamous history,
respond therapeutic parents
to children writing compassion stories.
How do you know you are helping
and not helping retain a flawed toxic elitist system,
maintaining poverty of margins
far below wealth piling into too much power?
asked the cynical divestor
challenging this help-as-health investor,
asked the hurt and wounded child
challenging her health-confessing
professing irreligious monoculture.
I doubt I could help
without co-investing in flawed health with pathology
in both political and economic systems,
responds this wu wei leader,
responds this co-mentoring parent,
but what have you noticed
might help more
while collaterally hurting less?
It seems to me,
writes aging journalist
and systemic trauma informed WholeEarth Tribalists,
those plans and budgets and stories cooperatively researched and written
by and with and for co-investors
in our civil passion/pleasure trusting enterprise
sustain more healthy multiculturing mind/body wealth,
with less pathological neurosystemic backwash,
as compared to Business As 0-sum Usual,
anthro-absorbed profit monocultures
elitist Publican winning
to lose further uncapitalized
democratically needy
competitors against too-exclusive empowerment.
Why do you win/win extend co-empathy as you do
and engage compassionate communication
as you would become Earth's Beloved PeaceCommunity?
asked the exhausted leader of retiring generals,
asks indigenously co-intelligent MotherTrees
of their polyculturally extending forests
Root and crown
body and mind therapeutic
politically empowering/disempowering
enlightened/unenlightened economies.
Why do you inclusively co-invest as you do
and not empower what you don't communicate?
asked the journaling child
about her favorite MotherTree's
inter-religious Golden Rule
to optimize effective
and efficient co-governance.
I closed my mouth around the words,
felt my skeletons wash up against
the shore of a silver tongue;
Driftwood,
laying still on the bank,
charred and cracking open
inside the swallow of shameful
Determination.
“I never wanted it to be like this,
never thought it would go
…this far"
I watched your finger list its way
around an empty highball glass,
its fragility reminding us both of
the damage of throwing stones
in a house ready to shatter.
I couldn’t look you in the eyes.
Couldn’t let you see
the poison forcing its way out.
No matter, how badly I needed
to feel anchored.
I was better off;
left to drown,
than to pull you under
the waves birthed by
my lack of transparency.
"I never wanted it to be like this,
never wanted to bring you down.”
I couldn’t look you in the eyes;
as the light shined through
the gleaming vessel wrenched
in your palms,
I ordered another round,
Unable to stand the spectrum
cast, the colors of truth,
with nothing to hide.
So, I finished my beer.
Tasted the backwash cast back,
from every selfish, thoughtless
draft, and forced it down.
The amber tint of the bottle
reflected nothing;
As volatile and opaque as
the soul clinging to it.
"I have to go,
I’m sorry.”
I left the money on the bar,
hoping it was enough to sate
our demons for the night.
-James Kelley 2014, All rights reserved
Curling crests cassessing coastlines
backwash bumping beach breakers.
screeching Seagulls squark and scream
mocking maritime merrymakers.
Burning boogers brave blisterd backs
scorched surfers seek shoreline shade,
urbane under umpteen umberellas,
peacocks posed in a parasol parade.
Drifting dunes delight deserted
lovers, languorously lounging, lazily
craving comfort, coveting cool currents.
Hellishly humid, heat hovers hazily.
Spirited siblings, spades spanking
bucket bottoms, bulid
carefully carved chimerical castles,
infantile fantasies fulfilled.
Exposing exiled exoskeletons
turning tide tickles toes,
sun sinks slowly seaward
disclosing dusk's descending doze.
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.
"Ennui Sets In”
Whenever pen is placed
Between purloined phalanges,
When my mind unfolds and tears along the seams,
I know it’s time to move my thoughts,
Through the underground;
That dark crusty void
Of dreary dreams diminished,
Where loose hell raisers floss and shine,
Comb and spray,
As drowning voices backwash yesterday’s histrionics,
Dark-eyed winches peek through the
Centers of dead doughnuts;
Bleacher seats rust and wallow
In half-moon emancipation,
Ennui sets in…
My bow tie knows all the answers.
I cry and beseech for all those tomorrows
To resurrect, to pontificate, to loose
The bowels of screaming sunsets, yet sutured.
I flinch. I sigh.
Force majeure got in the way.
Polka dot panacea,
Wretched weasels in the underbrush,
Prufrock is the metaphor to mangle, impugn, vivify,
And otherwise squeeze until the cows come home.
I’m a poet without a message.
My heart pumps vexations of vaseline,
I am dry and empty
Like the musty moans of sweet madness,
Emanating elusively
From the hollow of ancient days,
Amidst unanswered questions,
At the fork in the road,
Two blocks northwest of my last dying breath,
I am the last sunset!
Ennui sets in.
Twilight vivisection holds the door open this time.
There is no respite,
From Raphael’s regurgitated Renaissance.
He jumps backward,
Through the darkening dissonance,
Dissolved, dismayed, dumbfounded.
Skipper Frank lies dead in the glittering gutter.
The Pancake Man melts into the waxworks.
Madame Tussaud wonders why.
Ennui sets in.
Dead meat saliva feeding
The roses of Robespierre.
Little Lord Fauntleroy is mixing martinis, and
A dozen dainty dames are dancing
Past the midnight of my time.
A blue trumpet, buzzing in the steamy shadows.
Lapping corpses line the phosphoric hillsides;
It’s not what it appears to be.
Truth and beauty perceived in the morning mirror.
Ennui sets in.
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
The night sky is ablaze with stars
and planets like Venus and Mars.
A sight, unseen in the city,
for background lights obscure our view
and what stars we see, are but few.
It is a modern-day pity,
stars are so difficult to see.
Sailing in an ebony sea,
there is nothing quite as pretty.
Like crystalline gems sparkling bright
billions of stars light up the night
and yet, they're so itty-bitty.
Earth's a jewel in its own right,
adorning space with sky blue light.
But the universe goes unseen,
for city lights levy a toll
we might as well wear a blindfold.
And yet, the Milky Way's still a
serene spectacle to behold.
Amidst stardust, life's genes unfold,
a life-generating machine.
The night's alight from the big bang
stars are the sparks from which life sprang
forming galaxies where none had been.
We've lost sight of the stars at night
content to live in concrete caves
views blocked by a backwash of light.
(Hutinashro)
Nov. 14, 2018
Imagine we trek,
To nature recede,
Trail wending and worn
Where pines scrape blue sky
And mankind’s unheard,
A river ahead,
Its turbulence roaring
Through forest’s calm shade
Cast by sun beaming down
And twinkling and glinting
Off water, pristine,
That roils and jumps
Off time-rounded rocks;
Oh! Nature’s grandeur
When we shed our garb
To frolic and splash
In backwash, ice-cold,
Then repose on the bank
To bask in bright sun
And returned, thus, to nature
In my arms you’ll find peace.
Herons fragment the mist,
appear and disappear while remaining motionless.
The skiff rocks as a coal barge trundles past.
A dewy sky shivers.
Nowadays he just sits in a boat looking at Ohio.
This morning the sun reached the top of a willow
and got stuck.
He rowed toward the bank thinking to get under the tree,
filled an imaginary pipe full of tangy river smoke,
sucked on the wet air
as he watched the tree struggling with the sun.
For a while it was a tussle, then the willow shook itself
and the sun slipped away like an unmoored ketch.
At first, the sun just hovered like a blanched balloon
then it found a window above the mounded smother
and it rose up like a Choctaw bass
about to mouth a trill of small fry.
He was near to the shore now,
Ohio slanted down to meet him
cattails and reeds scratching the aluminum hull.
A couple of mallards jumped out of nowhere
and flew over his eyes. The clatter of wings
ruffled the chill bank where a dank light had sunk.
His mind followed them for some time
until they settled deep down
amid a wraith-wrapped Kentucky.
A heron slowly rowed the wind
stirring up the vaporous air, Patches of clarity
drifted across sky-high filtering puddles.
Ohio becomes a river town, the huddled houses
have scuttled their roofs upon soggy pathways.
The mossy hulks of an abandoned industry
wallow in a foggy backwash.
Castaway wharfs drip a spatter and smear,
a hand me down script of a yesteryear.
A small blue-collar marina,
beer cans roll on swaying pontoons,
a couple of dry docked rowboats
and canoes.
Truck tires thump harbor chains.
Someone is up early, someone else watches him
gut and clean a large flathead.
On the damp dock cats circle the bones and scales
creep through the miasma
their fur wet and glistening eyes flashing a liquid silver.
The catfish is naked and shorn of the river
a thing to be watched least it return to life
as something beyond the ken of cats and fishermen.
On the ramp he hitches up his straggling life
and drives away from a berth awash
with the haunted cries of Loons and Redtail’s.
Soon he will be back in the patched-up pockets of Ohio
where corn husks snag hoarfrost and rattle
in a fresh rinsing breeze.