Brackish Poems

Listen to the Wind

The wind off the cold North Atlantic ocean
smells of piquant seawater on its breath,
agreeably pungent, brackish and moist.
The legendary Nor'easter off Newfoundland,
the bane of so, so many ships at sea,
is not a breeze with a soft, caressing hand.
It kicks and knocks and slaps and whacks and thwacks,
pummels and punches, pinches and pushes.
The stolid, sturdy imperturbable island
sits there and puts up with the abuses.

The northeasterly wind is very resentful
of its odiferous reputation.
At night, it simmers and seethes and smolders,
writhes and trembles, weeps and whines, stirs and sulks.
But, like the song says, the wind and sea smells
are "perfume to my soul". I stand alone on shore
and listen to the ocean's roar, wind's whoosh,
and my mind decompresses, destresses;
this is my peace, my serenity. I am home.

Rubber Worms

Truth comes in one golden droplet
you can wait for days -weeks 
or a lifetime for it to appear 
in a dustbowl of faithlessness and doubt...
You wait like a blind baby bluebird
but mom only brings a rubber worm.
Eventually the sweet droplet meets 
the soul's red parched beak
songs are sung in hues of golden love
everything bathed in thankfulness and blessing.

A lie is much more frequent
an endless deluge of infinite confusion
a blue thorned brackish delusion
a fire ball of blame, hate and rage.
It may take a millennium, 
but a lie will collapse under its own toxic weight...
Transparency always devours opaque.

Dawn Pond

Brackish lichen forms a raft upon the pond,
a low haze floats like a moored airship.
Small frogs chirrup sotto-voce
as if they were
dreaming sparrows.

Water birds dabble in their sleep.
Soon the sun
will dash across a drop of dew
bursting dams of light.

A fisherman in his truck
drinks his coffee,
rubs his eyes and smacks his lips.
He grabs rod and tackle,
hopes fat fish are lazily
rising.

Feathers shake off waterlogged shadows,
wings slap the groggy face of the pond,
ripples splash up
to rinse the air.

Coots and Plover call
until the water
awakes.

Love Drifts

Brackish nerves languish and latch 
like seashells clinging to the shore—
something in the water pulls them in…
some fervor from something 
Familiar and Ancient.

I’ve seen your eyes before… 
on too many arresting horizons…
how light hits your features,
colliding waves of my senses,
twisting my inner bitters—
wringing them out to the tactless tide.

Bitters melt in the salts…
nerves narrow and focus. 

My lit up eyes drag against tidal forces and 
you’re lost—drifting love…drifts…love drifts…
Love Drift. 

Those dream-drooping eyes 
are too knowing—too familiar—
which makes me whimper to realize…
you’re too bright for me to handle.

Blue Cheese and Old Pickles

I fought the good fight, yet still I lost
and you stood in brackish silence
with bitter reward in briny eyes
proffering spiny frowns
shoulders crumbled with aging ache
and brow dimpled with sour failure
I staggered dragging the last crumbs
through the madness of a blue funk

A Set Of B

Bystanders of waves,
plethora of marine life;
Awe inspiring breach.

Bandeleros break
the grip of society;
Culture’s climate shifts.

Brackish voices sing
the blues inside the bayou;
Salty metaphors.

Background stars still shine
although they’re never in front;
Juxtaposition.

Back it up baby,
better give it all you got;
Befitting a boss.

Purgatory

When will my judgment come? He asked
of him, who stood, face shadow-masked
in moonlit dark, beside his right.
Don't let it be this mournful night.
Perhaps so, or not; has, or ne'er,
they rasped, exhaling rancid air
so brackish foul to cause a soul
to wish for Golden Oriole.
Who asked, who heard for judgments call
within, without, or none at all?
And yet, the shadow questions so;
and answers as a cawing crow
of dreams for which they dare not ask
the truth, but hide behind a mask;
as he, or they, for we are many.
They lay upon their eyes a penny;
I still have tales to tell, they plea!
They spoke; what is you ask of me?
What's done cannot yet be not so
you held that power long ago
and sold it, for this coin we give.
You think that they can now forgive?
He smells them near, their sulfurous breath;
is this a dream, the truth, a death?
Death is for those who felt some pain;
who smelled the flowers in the rain,
shed a tear at sunset's dying glow;
it is not yours to now foreknow.
They softly say with whispered threat.
It may well come, but not just yet;
there's time for you and I to play,
for you to waste another day.

Life Raft in Amber

When brother was fading away
black chimes signaled for the demons to play
They attacked all sides of the hobbled mind
Treating the heart like an orphaned marble
They were rabid and had brackish intention
hope chipped away like crowbar on cement.

In a dream one of them took me into its sky
I clung tight to its undercarriage
begging for it to release me
It promised that it would if I said
that I loved it...I relented
It didn't keep its promise as expected.

I coddled a little amber cross.... 
(a field mouse in an owl's greying claw).
I was dismissed into a pillow of tranquility
The demons slowly drifting away...
as did my brother the very next day.

Holy Punchers

I think hell to be like a midnight grocery store
shelves filled with burning crucifix and pestilence.
Bloody-black water up to the necks of Half-souls.
Groping mindlessly in the dark...
searching for God in brackish hopelessness. 
Flint and wooden carts colliding-
black water biters abound.

The checkout line is a turnstile 
manned by faceless- dripping things
wielding holy punchers
eternally pocking your debit card soul.
while howling      Next!

Bells

It was the bronzed bell of a tinseled Ocean ship.
Until destiny was scuttled by a fiery water witch.  
In time, it became the haunting clang upon a reef.
A macabre Nic Nac for cliques that ruled the deep.

They returned like blue birds, lonely for a blossoming.
To pay homage to every sailor overtaken by the sea.
They lay bouquets of flowers, over shadowed grief...
as ghosts pared sweet memories into paper effigies.

Between shuffles of worn decks and ninety proof lips.
They spin tales of crimson seas and horrible dorsal fins...
Torn hearts and sails, forever on a starboard list
Drifting between a blue refrain and the salty mist.

In the graying vein of time, everything's forgotten.
The sweet angelic, the mundane, the eternally rotten.
Gravestones hoard salt within their granite cracks.
Tokens to a time when auroras bled into blackness.

One by one the crew will drift from this pearled realm.
Riding TradeWinds into the gilded scented heavens... 
or becoming driftwood, in the brackish heart of hell...
as the captain sways to the clang of his beloved water bell.

LOVERs LAGOON

segment of the sun
lemandarin, semi-black
‘midst toasty branches
floats flamingos, flaming pink
in lagoon’s brackish parquet


*hybrid between mandarin orange and lemon

Brooding River

Brooding River

This winter saw a lot of rain in the river near the houses, still running clear and lucid, giving its soul
to the ocean
On the old Roman bridge, I asked the river to stop wasting its precious sweet water on the salty sea
One cannot let thirsty horses drink brackish water
having hauled a cart full of dead sheep up to the mountain top as offering by an idiot savant, a gift
to a god that only exists in feverish minds
The river hears me not, its job is to run dry during the summer for at fall be reborn.
Beware of a river that has no fish!
Those who haughtily laugh will be turned into frogs banks, are full of them, petrified seeing nothing.
Only a princess can make them human again, but they will still retain the souls of frogs.
Alas, due to hard times, the princess is a dancer in a Spanish nightclub, knows nothing about emails, and is not on Facebook.

The Washing of the Stone

a bed of stones unloosed to spill from its path
through fresh waters flow to the distant sea
laving pebbles from its silty rough wrath
from rivers fresh to brackish brine's debris
the journey ends where it began its ascendancy
drifting as the impetus of tidal destiny

To Plow and Seed

A well-water pump cranks out its iron-water
    crooked wire remains -- once, sturdy chicken coops
  The brackish, muddy area over there, the cowshed
    some withered trees dot the hills, bereft now of their fruit

  A few young lads herd goats, or perhaps they are living skeletons?
    cows with ribs exposed, horses with manes as limp as rags ...
  Some day they'll come again, the strong, determined youth
    to bale the hay, to turn the rocks over, to plow and seed relentlessly ...

Water Rations In a Prison Cell

after Ho Chi Minh

I
The stone basin holds
still water. The still water

drinks the arid sponge
as rays of pure energy

slake their thirst on
the ebon wings of crows

II
Yangtze flows from widows peak
pooling briefly in the lock

of a tired eye. Dirt
and salt cry brackish tears

before leaping from sallow chin,
like rain from languid boughs

III
Frogs turn dirges beyond
translucent glass, their croaks

fold and crease the air
putting dusk on the shelf.

Aphids eat the pithy stalks
and drown in sudden morning dew.

IV
No callused hand washes
in the same basin twice

V
The kettle boils, pallid
phantoms push through iron

walls. Prescient tea leaves show
time’s current—fish swim 

upstream. Two worlds away,
a young girl draws a bath.

VI
Forehead donning liquid rosaries, 
each dawn anoints a king anew

Each afternoon, grains of rice
cling to one another, fulfilled.

Ink spills quickly each evening,
the white page laps at pitch waters.

VII
Eleemosynary sunlight burns
through the keyhole, tumblers

click in the lock. The stone basin
is once again filled with still water.

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