Mother said, “Avoid the bilge,”
Keep your dreams clear, don’t let them delve.
No depth in anger, nor strife,
“Steer clear of paths where woes are felt.”
Do not let your heart be like a delft,
Cold and rigid, set by a protective shelf.
Live close to the warmth, shun the frosty guise,
Let no icy barriers govern your heart’s ties.
Happiness isn’t found in mere eighths,
It blooms in each breath, in small and grand states.
Life’s not a problem to be conquered or braced,
But warmth in moments cherished, unspoiled, and embraced.
When the world feels coated in a sticky glaze,
Remember, love’s the beacon to guide you through the haze.
Mother said, “In all your face, stay near warmth's embrace,
Value love and moments, not the race.”
In the warmth of a hearth, not the delft,
Dreams unfold, and joy is felt.
Mother said, “In all things you see,
Stay true to warmth, and let it be.”
I was born in a landlocked getaway town
Where all the colors were black, gray, or brown.
Jobs at the steel mill were ratcheting down.
It was not in my future to stay.
So, I took a long walk off a very short pier,
An unschooled, untraveled recruit buccaneer
On a quest to cross Neptune’s vast salty frontier.
Hopped a slow boat to China one day.
Underway on the Crescent City, it seemed
The ocean was wider than I’d ever dreamed.
A ship load of sinners, our souls unredeemed
Steaming west toward whatever there was.
Keelung told Hong Kong to call Singapore.
Subic Bay badgered Mombasa for more.
Sea legs, as always unsteady ashore,
Even more so with liquor and drugs.
Bilge water sloshed in the depths of the hold.
The mizzen mast learned what the typhoon foretold.
I was sea duty tempered and Shell Back enrolled;
Wasn’t nothing but maritime norm.
I was born in a hard luck blue collar town.
Half the way broken and half the way down.
But time gifts its renaissance scepter and crown
To a jack tar who’s weathered the storm.
A humid day
mosquito clouds swarm and separate
along the dirt road to the farm
pig pens hazed by black flies.
Bob (an old friend), said, “man,
you picked the wrong time of year
to come visit,” he chuckled.
Hogs grunt and squeal.
Slop-time - the air was turgid with
with the numberless notes of a stale miasma,
the splatter of slick gobs of muck.
He hands us smeared green buckets,
a yellowing deleterious stench reeks
from the semi-solid swill
that the hogs grow fat upon.
There are stains on baked-in stains here
corrugated into noxious layers.
At the back of the sties
there are heaps of sludge
a bilge even the swine could not consume.
Bob bends to his tasks whistling happily,
while I explain to my wife
that Bob used to work for the C.I.A.
I can see she is surprised and impressed.
“He got tired of that sh*t,” I add.
Through mirror’s bilge, Mariana on deck -
Wick’d queen, licks lips, with a delicious scheme.
In mock ascent, ego gives cheek a peck.
Suddenly daughter’s reflection - a gleam,
As snow forms queen’s exhale into a scream,
Her rubious threads covered in bright light,
Mariana’s hair in cascading flight.
Furious dark red strands taint apple’s flesh.
Fruit’s innocent beauty beckons a fright.
Hoary-shapeshifter tempts Eve - step-hate fresh.
8/15/2020
Contest: Pick-A-Title, Vol 21 - Dizain
Chosen Title: Incandescence
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
Dizain in 10 syllable lines
ababbccdcd
Checked by howmanysyllables.com
I see nothing that's made by man's hand.
My eyes make out this deep waterland.
We race sea path this day's way as planned.
Sails full, breeze strong.
Sheets need go far to reach beach and sand.
Sky's clear, way's long.
Wheel feels steady, ship stays straight on course.
We sail nine knots before Auster's force.
No life plays the swells these days for us.
Mates work, they toil.
They keep clipper trim gainsay words coarse.
Know ye, most roil.
Hey Ho, climb the ratlines, hold your jaws.
Stave thee thy bilge or you'll feel cat's claws.
We make Canton without little pause.
Fly jibs, we lug.
Be we slow now, the sea isn't cause.
Blow wind, sails hug.
Grog
Gulping down a flagon
Gives one a gibbous glow.
Gather 'round ye hardies,
Grab one and have a go.
Ghostly foam and farting
Gnomes bilge one gushing flow.
Garish gaffe...drinking Grog!
deborah burch©12/4/2016
_______________________________
Form: Pleiades
Brine kisses window impermeable
Impermeable to sea’s hydration
Hydration fills the hull, so visible
Visible in ship’s flagging flotation
Flotation, bilge pumps’ precipitation
Precipitation steaming on motor
Motor caked with salt crystallization
Crystallization of need to defer
Defer to elements, a requisite
Requisite to survive the Nor’easter
Nor’easter which does not invigorate
Invigorate soul of the mariner
Mariner looks homeward, does deeply pine
Pine for his love to the fragrance of brine.
4/3/16
For Contest: Elements, Part 3: Water
Sponsor: Brian Davey
Chained Sonnet, Shakespearean rhyme scheme
abab bcbc dcdc ee
a distant flickering
like looking through curtains
to see the flame of a candle
I could hear her
a woman’s voice rising and falling with passion
in a harmonious round with the falling rain
the pitter pats and scat calling out with the blues
dragging her mouth across the streets
steaming with streams of backed-up sewers
her lips gathering glass and gravel
she took it in and this bilge billowed forth with the blues
a heavy sound that was laden with
the burden of an unrequited life
rising and falling she carried me too
through the story and I rode with her
my heart careening and crashing
full speed into crystal and china
chipping and cracking and splintering
gathering under my fingernails and glittering in my hair
my face dripping from my tears cried
as I hear her lament
the rising and falling of the curtains
blowing in the breeze and the rain was poured
from rusty buckets of her blues and
she sings to me so sweet
like succulent splooge that seeps from me and
I lie on the floor soaked and tattered
just because we looked into each others' eyes.
Golden brown
and wafting
in the air,
mingling
with the
dust, flecks
of nothing
clinging to
the wanton
parallel
streams that
dripped from
my nostrils,
burgundy and
thick
from a fleshly
gravy boat.
I was walking
around on the
base of my eyeball,
trying to see what
it would feel like.
I didn't feel
anything, probably
because I realized I
was dreaming.
Cursed realization.
The bus-stop
between realization
and consciousness
is littered with
leftover entrails.
Better get to work,
men, we're on
contract, here.
Fat and muscular,
and, of course,
wearing a wifebeater.
Countenance bearing
flab coated in what
could have been
grass clippings
dyed heliotrope.
Bus stop, sidewalk, brain matter
strewn, resembling lucky charms;
entrails stain the
daily news with golden
brown.
Soakin' it up.
Snow shovel, blistered
ring finger, shucked
from a stroke. Wet, now,
is the
plastic handle.
A crater of pulpy
pink sponge beef,
dripping body-bilge.
Dust was
wafting into it,
specks of nothing
clinging to the
rim.
Silence is my favorite crypt,
and when I'm feeling pious, or
magnanimous, or greedy
or alive,
I go there.
I go there because
in silence, I can run so far
away from the creeps and the
whores, the moneygrubbing
clerks and the bilge of puddles
splashing my pantlegs. And if those
shadows catch up to me, I can always
close my eyes and pray for them to
go away.
I'll pray forever, crouched and blind,
but never break my silence,
because that's my wormhole out of this
luddite galaxy,
my trapdoor in the floor
of this devolved society.
To Broken Boat
Whose land is lost, once more
To sail again, is life to end
So far outcast, the distant shore
With lines untied, the tide a friend
Whose hull, strengthened by years
To waves, rocking a lullaby
So worn, washed by tears
The heavens weep, for why to cry
Whose masts torn, to stop and think
To Broken Boat, the sea adrift
So holy the bilge, it knows not sink
With time so short, this life a gift
-Dakota Brockway
If we’re all just dreaming and life has no meaning
And tomorrow’s no better or worse
Than what we do now is pointless somehow
Including another new verse.
To this one uplifted
From one that was shifted
From down in the deep bottom bilge;
If life is a squander
Then why do we wander
In search of our fortunes and fills.
If love has no reason
And winter’s no season
And snow never falls from the sky;
If the past is pointless and memories dim
Why even open our eyes?
From this slumbering state
This giant mistake
Of human existence and emotions;
If we’re all just dreaming and life has no meaning
We should all go drown in the oceans.
Subconcious streams flitter through my silty porthole
Ebb and flow through my consciences' filtering scroll
Clogging the interstices and my formative, fragile mind doth control
Perceptions of self flood my sensory console
Pent-up desires breach mind's, shallow levee and over carefree banks roll
Carnal instincts bleach and, over time, corrode my chaste compass's steady pole
My soul's rudder listlessly through the choppy waters doth stroll
Delusions of grandeur and trite fantasies o'er my wayward ship troll
Teetering sails are blown about by truant winds so droll
Faulty navigation beaches my tattered psche on a barren shoal
Battered by the waves of inconstancy paying a penitent toll
Tunneling through the brackish bilge; a frenetic mole
Seeking to escape frollicking tidal waves that my froward, youthful mind did cajole
Sifting through the rancid seaweed that years of cresting tides did dole
Cloaked with guilt, shame stranded on a rocky, desolate atoll
Still vainly trying to justify my hopeless condition; my fleeting worth extoll
I thought of Hurricane Katrina and how the boats rolled over spilling diesel fuel and
oil from their bilge into our peaceful neighborhood lagoons. Cranes like this one
were covered in oil standing side by side with Pelicans, Seagulls, Mallards and
Muskovies. A sad sight.
Living on the waters of Lake Pontchartrain just across from New Orleans, all birds
are regulars in our backyards, protected by the Home Owners Association. It's
called a beautiful peaceful place to live.
The lovely child depicted in the photo reminds me of all the children's clothes,
shoes, dolls and household belongings floating just below the waters.
Sometimes beautiful photos, no matter how they were derived, reminds us of the
horrors that we know will revisit us again and this photo is one of those sometimes.
got an offer to move a boat
from Jacksonhell FL to back home
it's a wonder that it float
and I should have left it lone
the thruhulls were clogged
and the rudder sqeaked
the engine would bogg
and it had an oil leak
the head didn't work
and the holding tank was broke
the compass had a querk
and the bilge pump would smoke
the sails were ripped
and there wasn't a bell
the wenches slipped
"It's a trip to hell!"
"every captain turned it down"
"I'll give you the job if you like?"
"I'm the crazy one around"
"what could go wrong I'm Captain Mike!"
by Capt Mike
ps someone please help me!, I forgot my fishing pole
and I'm stuck in the bilge with my finger in a leak hole!
and I'm thinkin
I'm sinkin!
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