Best Wheelhouse Poems

Morning fog was parting  for the day's performance,
and an audience of just me sat cross legged,
waiting for ghosts.
They appeared slowly, one by one.
Old whalers, freighters and, fifty yards out, 
slate grey bones scarred with burnt sienna,
a young trawler.
A Cormorant dried its wings on the...

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trawlers steam out from dutch harbour
patroling the frozen waves
serching for gold under the sea 
to feed my family

in the wheelhouse the stars shine in
skyes dark and air so thin
no mater where this vessel takes me
my heart is yerning out for you

heaven on the water
is where...

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Is Friendship Just a Delusional Fiction?

Is friendship a lifeboat that floats on convenience?
Can we all divorce who we like with a gesture
that’s less than a wave on a looking glass seascape,
ignore too, the wreckage of dreams that waves scuttle,
consigned to obscurity absent a tombstone,
now fodder...

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it moved on its own like electricity 

shimmering 
sparking in the wires
arcing light
or 
like air in my tires
...you rolled 

drove me
roved me with sleight of hand 
melt of my belts 

turn of the wheelhouse
you slid me to left
rocked me hard to right
dressed me 
cloaked me
in...

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Shalom, Aloha, Namaste

Healthy identity is rooted in wealthy socioeconomic trust,
beginning in utero
swimming about in embryonic nutrition,
rather than active distrust
or more passive mistrust of the unknown
yet frightening alien, aggressive Other.

Psychological fuel for polypathic political trust
is safe integrity-building neurosystemic empathy,
which grows bilaterally within mutually cooperative
win/win economies
of co-empathic...

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Brilliant writers
have recommended to younger students,
to only write if they cannot live without doing so.

Elder successful icons of artistic expression,
dance,
voice,
drama,
sculptors
have similarly advised apprentices,
do not do as I have done
unless you could do naught else.

But what about gardening
and parenting?
speaking of grace and beauty, lovely communication,
visually and...

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I’ve never learned to tie a scarf
Which makes me quite the fool
‘Cause scarves can make an outfit
Look both chic and really cool.

I stare at women sporting them
Tied in a jaunty knot
And wonder what it is they have
That I just haven’t got.

My mother never taught me
How...

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This foggy sky
darkly and relentlessly rains
especially for an early May morning.

He is not prepared for darkness
seeping through new-born leaves,
not yet full grown into this year's trunk-lacing dress,
soaking up from saturated soil,
slurping into his compassionately 
empathic zero-zen night
deep dark sensory flight.

Perhaps this open quality
endears him to...

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These invite you
to expand your inclusive integrity
by engaging multiple choice responses.

Please choose your one healthiest answer,
recognizing you may often find more than one choice
resonant with your own complex experiences,
win/win WholeEarth open systemic beliefs,
and/or interior and exterior re-connecting 
bicameral AnthroMind/EarthBody feelings
in-between therapeutic belonging
and traumatically dissociative
not belonging.

Would...

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Puzzle share
among a pair
shows you care

loving spouse
to spend time
in my wheelhouse 

woven slice
of a life
crafted so nice

Since you took
the time
inside me, to look

my heart
thankful for 
your fixed thoughtful part

2/26/2017...

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(for J.B.P.)

A polarizing figure
A catalyzing force
A man for all seasons 
He’s a man called Horse

A strong man in the wheelhouse
A tall man in the field 
No crow of ruin touches him
His constitution, steeled 

What dragon of today 
Could touch that mighty pen?

Demonized, lionized
All faces at...

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It`s necessary for men to be alert,
And Wrong for the entire universe to be swayed,
Your last goal can even be achieved only when you revert,
What will be the reply to questions about your earthly character played,
After being in a world known to make you a...

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On Growing Old
© Ben Burton 5-21-2014

I was something to behold back in my childhood
Quite the trickster, I was faster than my prey
Plastic vomit, rubber snakes, the best was "Hotfoot"
April first was in my wheelhouse every day

I was thirty when I wed my childhood sweetheart
Soon there'd...

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in the arms of mother nature
drifting with the tide 
winds pushed up ice water mountains
the voyage home was to be a hard ride
water broke the wheelhouse window
charts floated as the boat tipped down

and when she came back
the radar went black

please God don't let us
run aground

the...

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Out of The Dungeon
By Rick Rucker

A Death necessitated my Escape,
But I knew not what to do, on Love’s uncharted Seascape.

Before I met You, my devastation was Utter,
Wallowing around, like a ship with no rudder!

You’re a steady navigator, that much is clear,
Steered me off the Rocks,...

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