Best Water Washed Poems
I watch the water trickle down my blank canvas,
The whole world is crying today...
Nature has water-washed the Earth green,
The land looks fresh, as if awakened by a magic touch,
I trace the cold mist with my fingertips,
as the dark clouds are drawn towards the half bright sun...
Raindrops jump and splash in brand new muddy puddles.
Lilies look lovelier and jasmines jive joyfully,
Daisies wear dewy dimples,
even as the merry marigolds seem to melt...
And on that faraway mountain, in a summer cottage,
those roses blush redder when the rain kisses them.
My eyes glisten and my lips spread in a smile,
while I brush away those few drops left
to complete my candid dreamscape...
06/29/17
GOD WILL NOT BE MOCKED
He sits high upon golden calf
— invisible to naked eye.
If they saw him they’d know the half.
The mocking dragon waves goodbye.
The red face of Moses turns pale.
He descends the holy mountain.
Harried stone tablets —downward sail!
Quake splits earth with molten fountain.
Serpent’s head crushed in mortal blow.
With Living Water washed away.
Polished idol no longer glows.
The trumpet wounds! It’s time to pay!
Ashen faces repent of sin,
having witnessed the wrathful din.
2/5/2018
We played in sandcastles made from falling mistakes...
The water washed away all my sins it could take...
Precious tears that dried before the pain went away...
Now only floating among what never really fades...
Paper clipped to my soul like a reminder that makes an imprint...
I close my eyes to a darkness that was only a hint...
And drift away down a stream to land where I belong...
And scribe tales of love and loss in my own song...
after doors close after hours when scarlet neon flickers out red-light nights fill voids of need my body is a ripped flower my throat tingles to the burn of vodka-fire gleaning the gleaming water-washed street for an answer to the latest outstanding bill sadly grateful for the slightest footfall twenty for oral forty for full car park dark steam-heavy dark not streetwalking but streetstaggering in hollow-pod hell anaemic-ashy and vodka-fumy amorphous shadows loitering on durex-dotted waste ground in secret alleys back to dank brick or deep throating down on my knees skirt around thighs fingers come-pearled and slick come quick after doors close after hours when scarlet neon flickers out cold glitter of streetlights gleam of cold hard cash cold kisses colder touch no eye contact look away the cold nothingness that we say
Crudités, fresh, piled high and swaggering
From the market, bought this evening.
Thrusting carrots, earth still clinging,
Crisp cos, perky peppers, piquant roquette,
Rude red radishes, cucumber firm,
All in cool clear water washed,
Droplets sparkling on their surface.
Want to dip them in my hummus?
Temptresses teasing, to whet the appetite:
Oval curves unending, singing:
“Start with me”. Oeufs en cocotte,
Yellow yolked white winking coquettes,
Lovely lazy daisies, out of work, hors d’oeuvres,
Swoon to my eager spoon.
Taking a breath, your mouth’s alluring smile,
Eyes meet, hands connect,
Hot and cold shivers thrill.
An amuse-bouche:
Burning ginger flavours a cool sorbet.
How d’you like your steak, sir?
Rare, seared, visceral, red,
Caressed with oyster mushrooms wild,
Crushed peppercorns, randy brandy
Added accents to saucily seduce the palate,
Juliennes strewn prettily around the rim.
Velvet to the tongue,
Come, taste my peaches,
As moist flesh yields sweet warm juices
Merging flavours with wanton,
Whipped, drifting, dreamy, creamy domes.
Stimulation of the mocha and the mysore beans
Offering their perfume to enchant the air
As we sip, laugh, talk and glance,
Flirt, flirt and flirt.
I found a kind moment lost in your cloud tear
The heavenly water washed away our pain and fear
It drowned us both with love and took away the sin
The rain drops of hope began to cling to our skin
The torrent showers flowed through your heart and mine
Kisses followed succulently between the liquid sunshine
The storm continued while our love deluge grew
But all at once it turned from drenching to dew
The sun shower returned and warmed our souls forever
Will the rain return to make us fight the stormy weather
Summer,
the Guadalupe River,
at least a couple of decades ago...
A bend in any river,
no matter how slowly that river flows,
erodes the outside of that bend,
digs away at the bank,
separating stones from sand,
nudging them into shallow water
across and down the river,
sorting them by size as it goes,
the smaller, rounder ones
in a layer on top.
That’s where I was that summer afternoon,
on my back, half-submerged in the gravel shallows,
the water so warm I couldn’t feel it,
my arms straight out from my body,
interrupting the flow,
causing almost waves
as the water washed over.
My ears were under water;
I could hear only the flow of water around me.
Above me the leaves and branches
of trees overhanging the river
moved gracefully in the hot breeze.
Somehow the leaves and branches and water
moved at the same tempo,
not like music,
but rather a deep humhmmm
I could both see and feel.
I don’t know how long
I hovered in that flow,
but it wasn’t long enough.
In ways I can’t describe
I’m still there,
bathed in that most elemental of mediums,
moving with the leaves,
lost in a very long moment.
They were young then, now they would be old men looking across an empty beach, the sun at their back; for many this would be their last day to grow old; dead in the water; dying on the sand of Omaha Beach.
Memories.
Three long hours smashing through the pounding white capped waves; cold and hard as the water washed over the sides, mumbled prayers mouthed through cracked lips saturated with a salty brine taste.
Bodies were pressed together, brother to brother, clammy breath on your neck, an anvil hammering your chest and hoping the body against you would not taste your fear.
Scorching white flashes of light slashed across the plodding boats, tracers burst bright in the early morning light, twisting a body around, then another crumble, finally the Higgins boat stops......
And the gates of hell open wide to the heavens, making room for the newly departed as bodies stumble over the metal ramp, falling down in a slow-motion dance into the water and drift away, for eternity.
Terrible Memories.
A fifty-pound stone strapped on your back, when suddenly the guy standing next to you is not there, vaporized in a conflagration of redness and matter, an empty vessel flung to the heavens in pieces.
The screams of the wounded horrific, as bullets drive you across a sprawling field of fire. The sand was pockmarked by craters on what should be an early June summer day for frolicking at the beach.
The dead bob in the cherry colored water, and the torn apart want to be any place but here, at this hour, at this time, on this day, praying to heaven to make this hell of exploding shells a dream.
Haunted Memories.
Your name doesn’t matter when you are already dead. The dying dissolve in a burst of machine gun fire before kissing the coarse sand, washed away by the relentlessness of tide and the hour, MIA forever.
The unbroken rat-tat-tat sound as bullets slam into bodies and the boys of summer scream for their Mother and the God of morphine. Bursting landmines scatter a leg fifty yards away and the sand bleeds out red.
Memorials
The Ghosts behind the graves, brothers in arms, rest in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in the quiet French countryside, not far from a place with the All-American sounding name: Omaha Beach.
The Pitter-Patter of Rain
I sit here on the porch listening,
Watching the rain in the night.
Pitter-patter on my roof,
I thought about all I have gained,
Over all these years of life,
As all I have lost and gone,
As if water washed it all away,
Oh maybe it was all the people,
And the circumstance that did,
Never to be found,
retrieved nor replaced again,
The only thing to mend my heart,
To fill the emptiness within me,
Is Jesus as He had promised,
As the rain kept falling into the night,
as tears from my heart for you,
As I was comforted by the pitter-patter,
As the footsteps returning,
faces to see again,
Words left unspoken,
now are able to be said
In this life there is only once chance,
To fully make it right,
- Resolution and completion -
Only you know when it can happen,
A presence in life suddenly washed away,
Only to return in dreams,
When my eyes have shut….
To the pitter-patter of rain,
Falling in the night.
Rev. Dr. Samuel Mack
Copyright 2017
We half-hearts cling as scaffold
Mouths of cellophane statements
Morphia inducing as our eyes talc-storm over
Seeing nothing in everything
Like a tank we collide, by the
Edges of a summer vortex pushing as bulimia
It is only the intoxication of drink talking
However, I am yet to take even one mute glass
Empty bottles clutter regardless like rats swan-necked
And corner-slipped like zymotic casings
Speaking slow theremin thunders
Water-washed into neck-delicate walls meeting
Vapour hitting equal to bullets or butterflies
Equations of minus mixed with minus
A downward spiral of blitz-neon roars
Sekt and saxophones hitting like opium
To a rotten core; and I'm sure you remember
If you do then I hate you, and if not you disgust me
How I gave your apple back and
How my Bohemia is your gate
And how my gait is quite unassuming
But again, my sweet heart, it is only a larynx painting the air
With a true-to-type blue-blooded red-devilled roar.
How do I explain where I have been, new lover?
Once, on warm summer nights
I laid tangled in the darkness
Warmed against deep loneliness
In the form of a man
And how I accepted it, this moth’s fate-
Tapping my heart
Over and over
Against that light
On the other side of the glass.
Seeking fulfillment from emptiness
No better then that creature, I persisted.
Digging myself this kind of grave.
There was this death before you.
My death.
And it cycles over and over on the surfaces of my mind
Like the tide, turning in on happier days
And withdrawing with the dark.
And I fear
I am nothing more than these motions
Repeating with no more reason then to say:
I had loved once
And then it was gone.
I had loved once.
And now, it is gone.
The water washed away the vows,
And with it,
Somewhere deep within the texture of the bottom
I found fragments of truth.
I found you.
There is no perfection where you seek it, new lover.
And how I fear,
Oh how I fear…
The impermanence of love.
When permanence of loss
is far more real.
The Life of a Breakwater
A walk on the sharp shingle led to where
The dry, smooth surface felt warm to our feet,
The pale grey stonework embedded in the beach.
Those steps so broad and long led down into
The calm sea. We paused, luxuriating
Where the Summer sun caressed the concrete
And the water washed languidly over
The next step, a shallow paddling pool
Of sun-warmed water. But then, the cold sea
Brought a shiver as the sun hid its face
With dark clouds predicting a future state.
After long years, seen only at low tide,
There are jagged teeth covered in green slime;
This monument, discarded by progress
When the old beach was sculpted and renewed,
Lies hidden under the restless waves.
High tide splashes along the shoreline and
The smell of the sea air never changes.
The sun seemed to last forever
As we walked hand in hand
My dad and I together
Our feet sinking in the sand
His smile was so bright
As he looked at me
What a beautiful sight
Of the ocean we could see
The South Carolina sun rays
Beat down on our tanned skin
Like we would feel it always
Like the happiness we felt within
The waves crashed on the shore
Grazing our bare feet
Our footprints not seen anymore
As the cool water washed away the heat
We made it to the house we rented
The beach was right behind
The morning always ocean scented
Sunset and sunrise will always stick in my mind
The week was full of relaxation
And sightseeing all around
I’ll never forget that last vacation
Your laughter was a constant sound
I wish we would’ve traveled there
At least one more time before it was too late
For life has many tragedies so unfair
And you can not dodge your fate
I will always watch the videos you took
Close my eyes as they fill with tears from the memories
For you will never again be able to look
Or feel that glorious ocean breeze
The day I married my love
How would I forget the day I married my love ?
The day daddy lavished wealth and fame
As he filled city hall with people and wine
And made music available from dawn to dusk
And danced left and right like tongue of flame
With his golden cap adorning his head,
His hearty pendant on his gutful chest.
How would I forget the day I married my love ?
As mother blessed my sweetie for fruition
When she asked love to break calabash with her feet
The number of pieces , the number of our children;
When Christ-like, mama with cold water washed her feet:
Peace,love , victory and tranquility.
Just how would I forget?
As darling looked at her mother’s eyes and wept:
Mother today I would marry my love, she said,
Bless me that fortune shall be my portion,
That with belly I would carry babies
And on my back I would wrap them.
How would I forget my memorable day ?
The day everyone joined her to call me husband,
And same folk joined me to call my darling wife
The day I did not hide from her daddy to kiss her
The day l lifted her up with waist
The day she was dangling and dangling her head on me.
The youngest marriage is the sweetest,
Come darling , let’s go to city hall,
Let’s go to city hall and marry again;
Alas, who shall be daddy?
Who shall perform the rite of calabash
And wash my darling feet ?
From who shall she now seek fortune?
Oh time,how fast you've made all a memory.
9/18/14
As the sun set and darkness fell,
A trance grew upon me, a curse, a spell.
A lonely feeling engulfed my soul,
As I searched for answers to be whole.
I soon found myself stumbling around,
Then with the blowing wind, I heard a sound.
It drew me closer to a dark red path,
Where I would fall victim to an unholy wrath.
As I inched closer to a eternal death,
A voice called out to me at my last breath.
"Come with me to a place without fright,
A place where all your wrongs are made right."
I didn't believe this God-like voice,
but then again, I had no better choice.
It took my hand, and led me on
To another place, where the evil was gone.
It let go of my hand, then said one last phrase,
one that will forever keep me in daze.
"Go on, my son. Go find your worth.
You are destined for greatness. Destined since birth."
Then through thick, damp fog and shadows deep,
I wandered on, while my curiosity peaked.
What did it mean "I was destined since birth?"
Did my spirit within have some unfinished work?
Since I can remember, I was always troubled.
My heart was dirty, filled with rubble.
But now I felt my heart was cleansed.
It was like holy water washed away my sins.
Now I was seeking solace, seeking peace,
From the world where issues fail to cease.
That's why I was saved from deathly heat,
By the word of God that called to me.
It realized I was willing to repent my wrongs.
So I was forgiven, and was taken along,
Back to heaven and out of hell,
where I currently reside and am doing well.
As In this moment, I am still,
My heart beats steady, and my mind is chill,
For I have found a way to be,
In a place where my mind's at ease.
A place of wisdom, love, and light,
Where all is clear, where all is right,
Where souls can heal and spirits soar,
Within you is the key to unlock the door…