Best Faro Poems
( El Faro means the lighthouse)
El Faro #1
salt is in my tears
for the grace of god go I
Fiddlers Green awaits
El Faro #2
brothers and sisters
Joaquin cries tears of sadness
forever leeward
El Faro #3
El Faro now rest
sleep deep on your mothers floor
she has called for you
El Faro #4
no wave for granted
my heart is heavy today
listen to bells ring
El Faro #5
list fifteen to port
Edmund look for your cousin
hold fast the mid-watch
El Faro #6
no lighthouse to watch
irony not lost at sea
I long to hear you
El Faro #7
you believe in god
it pounds you like a hammer
green water swallows
El Faro #8
with culpability
I think of the storms survived
when resolve is breached
A Friday of Gayness
Today I drove to Faro town I wanted a meal of tuna steak with
onions at the café I used to frequent fifteen years ago.
The place had gone upmarket and so had the prices one waiter
remembered me but not my wife and she took a dislike to him
said he was effeminate; the café has two parts, one with a wine bar
I mostly sat there. Oscar Wilde came in or someone looking as him,
he remarked of what he had observed during the day an intelligent
mind who could recite his own poems beautifully .
I decide to become gay too, to be frivolous and happy, but avoid
the sex thing the very thought made me shudder.
Alas, I had to drive my wife home I tried to translate some of
Oscar`s remarks into Portuguese, she didn`t think it was funny
But that was my fault telling jokes is not my metier so I was
back being my pedestrian self
To long for poetry soup, cut and paste follow like , page 9.
http://www.seafarers.org/documents/May2016Log.pdf
She's far from Faro
and I s'pose Berlin.
There's something in her buildings -
they are rose in certain light.
She's far from London,
and I s'pose New York...
(Make that I know.)
There's something in her windows -
they are bright in light.
She's where I don't live,
but I may do one day...
That's if I don't go to
Faro, London, or New York.
Berlin's another matter.
Write it in the chalk!
5/13/2017
She was a wily cigar chompin' gambler with the moniker of Poker Alice,
Renowned throughout the west for her skill in many a gamblin' palace!
Poker Alice had a good head for countin' and with her very cunnin' guile,
(Plus her beauty), she mesmerized her opponents, amassin' quite a pile!
Poker Alice worked in saloons across the west as a faro and poker dealer.
She worked in Creede, Colorado for Bob Ford, that notorious stealer!
Because of her pious rearin' as a girl, she refused to work on Sundays,
But she was back smokin' a two-dollar stogie and dealin' cards on Mondays!
She drifted to Deadwood, South Dakota, where her notoriety was well known,
And married a house painter named Tubbs who was a deft gambler on his own!
Later she established a brothel near Fort Mead Army Post with her ill-gotten gain.
The place was small and she needed funds to fix the 'house' on Pleasure Lane!
To expand and recruit 'soiled doves' from Kansas City she applied for a loan.
The banker scratched his skull sayin', "I dunno! That's a risk into the unknown!"
She convinced him notin' that The Grand Old Army had an encampment near,
And for the soldiers' bent for visitin' hog ranches, he had nothin' at all to fear!
Things didn't go well since she plumb forgot The Methodist Preachers' Convention,
Convened each and every year and she hadn't figured on that intervention!
Poker Alice's fame and notoriety followed her well beyond her wanin' years.
She died after a gall bladder operation with her 'house' payments in arrears!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
Placed No. 4 in Don Johnson's " Your Old Ballad Or Rhyme - Best Of All Time" Contest
July 2011
All answers want to be given unto you
As swiftly as you can illustrate them
Point to their essence, serenade them
Aboard this passing ship, my view casts not a glare, nor reflection, nor stare,
Roaming freely as the Earth through the timeless air
My outer shell is my greatest inception
Yet as time comes to a crashing halt,
The faintest glimpse of the Strange and the Familiar approach together
As the rime of my belt
A horticulturist’s dream says I
The blackened period that wallows alive
Deprived, sanctioned and walking the line
As our guest is herded out
And suddenly the animal turns its other side
Now in your stomach I wait
Leaving a silent trail of breadcrumbs
Leading to the foothills of the gates
Who, discovery alluded, hadn’t a face
I am after all a sarcastic utterance
Which after years fade into the gloaming of dawn,
Reveals itself a mutterance undone
A muse, a choice, a song
A faro stow-away,
A shy allurement enclosed in a darker response
Building expeditiously my patient getaway car
Holding stead readily around the block
and clocks fall off their "ATTENTION!"
to the approaching sound of
someone else's Hum-drumm
Bingo dice faro keno typical vino
recall of mind, yet but O' no
what have i done?!
Plucky feeling risk taker
tho' ne're been there ever
doth think economist specs ever wonder
how truth thou art has kinder
No they never , not of what i think
held by cruel little ring
yet they bolt all the thing
by one mysterious yet ming
politics it is; thou art has force
beyond mans cause
and so forth i am bound to live under that auth
there it be cause , surrounded by foes
The Sinking of the Cargo Ship, El Faro
The Bible, itself, speaks of the men of the world that go down to the sea in ships
because notably, they see the Hand of God move more than we all,
For in the midst of a storm, these seafaring men cry out with all of their might
to God, Who alone can calm the waters when He hears their fearful call.
What started as a pleasant voyage and one they thought
that they would remember until the day that they died,
became a horrendous nightmare of gigantic proportions
one that took their breath away and caused these strong men to cry.
For unexpectedly they all heard a dreadful loud noise that
they had never heard before which caused the ship’s engines to come to a screeching halt,
franticly they tried over and over again to fix the problem to get back underway
yet they were not able to accomplish it at no one’s, again I say at no one’s fault.
To top this all off, suddenly the wind picked up the waves to 30 and up to 40 feet high or more
and tossed this small ship like a toy in the hands of a child round and round,
the crew wondering if they had to abandon ship would it be at all possible
in a storm like this to be found?
Then wailing was heard from the Captain, himself
as he repeatedly said, “My friends, what have I done”, he cried,
“Why I have plotted a course so close to this storm
and now, our engines, they to have died”!
Yet, some of the men began to remember at last
how their parents had taught them to pray,
but when they had left their homes and went out on their own
they forgot about God till this day.
Lastly, though I cannot be sure and say with certainty
yet I believe most, if not all were eternally saved,
for I believe that these seafaring men called out to the Lord of the storm
and are now in Heaven because He saved them that day!
Written by: Marilyn S. Jennings
November 9, 2015
Grant Murchison was a ranch-raised young man,
Arizona territory was his land,
Six-foot tall, and blonde around the head,
Raised by good parents, even well read,
The whole dang town spoke highly of him,
His charming ways and earnest grin,
All thought he would take his daddy’s ranch,
He’d spent his teens working with the hands,
When his pa asked if it would be this way,
Grant shrugged,”I’ll settle down some day.”
Not long after after he stared going down to
Scully’s Oriental Cathouse and Saloon,
Took him no time to get used to drink,
After a few too many he’d up and sing!
People knew him to be fond of a good time,
Even when his songs had mixed up lines,
To the point the bartender became concerned,
Said,”Grant, a hot fire does not long burn.”
Grant listened and heard what he had to say,
Then laughed,”I’ll settle down some day.”
A few days later, sitting at the bar,
He took a nation to playing the cards,
The whole of the saloon looked on, awe-struck,
He own hand after hand, beginner’s luck,
and soon he was dealing his own table,
poker and faro, he was deft and able,
before long he’d won a chuck of cash,
but what he earned he spent almost as fast,
his pa said,”Son, it’s a dangerous game.”
Grant smiled,”I’ll settle down some day.”
With his new success, Grant wanted more,
and frequented the Oriental’s whores,
one in particular received his love,
a former slave-girl, soft as a dove,
daughter of a master, with tawny-skin,
she was a hundred things and more to him,
so much that in bed one summer night
she asked him if he’d ever take a wife,
he said,”Just you. But it’ll have to wait,
until I’m ready to settle down some day...”
CONCLUDES IN PART II.
The Pianist
I flick through the TV channels. It is football
and football, except on Fox News, but they
are so insane there I rather watch sport.
I played the picturesque game once as defender
but I grew up and it was at the same time
as I stopped believing in god and that he looked
like the pianists in Alfred´s cafe.
I have often missed the pianist, not long ago I
saw him in Faro, followed him along the promenade
I fell over a pollard; he helped me up and said:
“Once and for all I´m not your father.”
I once saw my father on the bus, he was an enigma
a shell that gave nothing away except being drunk.
Totally unlike the pianist who wears a beret, alpaca
jacket and a yellow silk scarf.
Merrilyn escorts John through the Western trudges, as strangest of strangles blocks the memerrical double
Her momentous reflection: sordid, drossy, and wide to portant throttles
As whips become kisses and fainting memories open with admittance
The sorest sense of what will
She sinks down with arms befuddled, hands secreting rantfit metal
The sheer glory of having a semblance to riddle
Awoke Marin from her marching parade huddled softly around the charred spittle
As a choke veered into the holdings of her room
No one came, no one threw
But out of light came light, words yet more words,
Gone again and afrittle,
The shyest voice in a passable kidult
‘Laudable is that which mantles over a variety of rituals delineated for the appreciation of the belittled’
This is what we call to your view
And how we crusade, A rolling few,
Round after round, at the eve of curfew,
Steepening the anguish, as identity falls to loom,
The track marks printed along the ever-present faro plateau
Following dusk till dawn
Wheat fields and a draft court after the meager youth
‘Tis a xenolithic anthem we hunger after in dissolution
Our copious ardours, our lasting milieus'
As last meets new,
Past meets few,
Drastic action opens a polylogue,
With visage repute,
Merrilyn dances tiptoe out her seven-storey window,
All around her, print vestiture falling to the ground
Obsession
The pianist Albert has got a job in Loulé last time
I saw him in Faro and fell over a pollard, he said
he was not my father. When he spotted me he ran
into a café, they let him run through the kitchen
into the back, a dead end; I waited for him there.
“If you don´t stop following me I will have to call
the police, I´M NOT YOUR FATHER.” To mollify
him I said: “ I know you are not, but I do admire
your piano playing. ”This pleased him and we had
a drink and he told me he came from Yugoslavia,
had wanted to be a concert pianist, but there was
no money, so he ended up as a café pianist… just
as my father I thought but said nothing… then he
had to leave for work, saw him walk out of my life
just as my father did, there was nothing I could do
to stop this man who refused to be my dad.
Welcome onboard
I don’t care to read of other people dreams it has nothing to do with
me, so I will tell you a real story. The day after my anniversary I walked
along the docks of Faro saw a sign, a cargo ship needed a chief steward.
I walked up the gangway, spoke to the captain and got the job.
On deck when the provision arrived; I was in charge just like before.
The captain came he looked baffled; according to my passport I was 73
and far too old to join a ship. The master thanked me, getting victuals
onboard signing for them and getting the food stuff safely stored.
The ship left without me but her captain saluted me, it was raining no
one saw my tears. Whatever I do these days even driving a car there are
people telling me I’m too old. Yet in Japan their oldest ***** star, a man
of 77 and still working, so why will they not let me go back to sea again?
A poet at the Mall.
At the mall, yes we have one near Faro, I met a poet.
The mall is nicely built and has two bell towers.
From a time to time, they chime to remind us why we are
here not sit on a bench in its courtyard looking up to
the sky seeing mind-blowing cumulus configurations.
The poet I met had a white beard, wore a black old suit,
a tie with red wine spots on, a black beret that whiffed
of garlic...I think. You could see he wasn’t really there
His eyes scanning the ground he bent down picking up
half - smoked butts of cigarettes. Ok, so he was poor,
so what? Haven’t you heard of a poor poet before?
They are not all idle sons of the rich and with university
degrees in literature. A notebook in his side pocket and
two pencils in his breast pocket; so he was a poet ok.
Happy family
When I was 51 I had an affair with dancer
She didn`t want the baby and gave it to me.
Can you imagine? The village women rallied around
A thought is how to change nappies.
I also had to take in a dog no one wanted because it was
aggressive, not a bit of it she had a purpose in life
protecting me and the baby.
Years passed and when she was six she began school
I drove her there but had to sit outside so she could
see me, later that day we drove into town to buy
suitable clothes what I picked out she didn`t like
so I left her to it.
I heard a scream; she was in a panic I was not there
picked her up she clung to me and said: daddy never
leave me. We were a happy little family the doom-struck
her mother came back and claimed the child there
was little could do, so dog went behind the sofa sulking
I sat on the sofa drinking wine.
Life goes on the dog and I went for walks that got shorter
and shorter as she was quite elderly had a white snout
and sagging stomach and was grumpy in the morning.
One day I went into town when coming back she had died.
I borrowed a spade to dig a hole but had no strength
Bu I saw two big sandstones leaning toward each other
Forming a grotto I put her in there.
As I said year’s passes when I was 71 I needed surgery
Think it is called a bypass, sitting there with a tube in my stomach
There was a knock on the door and in came my daughter
Cried as I have never cried before, she was studying
to become a doctor. When I was feeling better I wanted
to take the bus home. She would hear nothing of it
And arranged for an ambulance, she was in charge
a right bossy little madam, of course, she had a job in Faro
but she visited me every other day, telling me what to do.
Then she got a posting in Cascais and with my new wife, we moved there. Her mother had said she was not
my real daughter, like I, should care she is mine
nothing can separate us, but I wish she hadn`t been so bossy.