Knock knock I kept knocking at addictions door
Each knock feeling as if only they were knocked
Days turned to weeks with little to no progress
I kept knocking at the door so well locked
Failure after failure I became its expert
I’ll try my elbows at this door so blocked
Do I ask for help or do I seek wisdom in thyself?
I throw my whole body at the door only to get mocked
One day I tell myself this door will loosen up
I try to knock softer in this never-ending deadlock
6 months go by I begin to stop myself before blackout
Still the door remains but it doesn’t seem so landlocked
Another three months I dwell in shame
Turning to prayer I fear God sees me as King of Gawk
Faith is all I have left to throw at the door
Then one day I no longer feel mocked
Finally a year later later I regain my goal of goals
Persistence and faith finally made this door unlocked
Some may look to distant Mars
among radiant stars.
Get to the desert, you'll find more
much nearer ours.
Nearer than any man knows.
Ancestral, celestial bones,
secret kept in Mojave's botany
seldom seen
though I've never been.
Spread of clustered flowering panicles..
tall giants in sun swept sleep,
despite little rain
inside darkest soul
they creep.
As a child waking from slumber,
thirsty in wonder..
they'll see you free wi' no more pain,
'cept that you bring.
Look to the west,
our landlocked stars..
and be free again,
truly free,
once again.
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 leisurely coffee, conversation
that barely makes it across
the table before slipping back
into silence, shapes passing by
shadowed in the blurr
of their growing distance.
They gather at ten, old men,
landlocked yet in their mind’s aegean,
letting out their long nets
beneath a vast shopping center ceiling
arching over them like an endless sky,
horizons drawing them further out
to where, one day, they won’t return.
‘She was haunted by the call of the sea;
Wishing to dive forever stay under. ‘
Truly that woman has always been me,
Dying to wake from a landlocked slumber.
My travelling shoes
got up early,
they had hydraulic jump-starts.
Countries spun my head around
while I discovered lands
only Albatross dream of
in a limitless sky.
Across many countries
I loop-di-looped,
crop-seeding my
ever seeking mind.
The trips and treks
trudged to a stop
in the late middle ages
of my historically mobile plod.
Now the world comes to me,
to reveal all I missed.
The nooks and crannies
of distant plateaus and valleys,
stones left un-turned,
faces posted from places
once so sea-sealed
or landlocked,
only the address-less
could find them now.
Everywhere comes to my door
entering announced
by wind-blown Tibetan cloud horns.
I open a carriage window
in a train of thoughts
and let that 3-D atlas
of all that was overlooked
chug on by,
watching from my roost
and long anticipated
nest of rest.
Their youngest boy, they call him one-eye Jake
He was as means as a black mamba snake
Cursed like a landlocked sailor
Took a job as a county jailor
Made all the money a good thief can make.
written October 28, 2021
At the remote crossroads of Central and South Asia
Fostering pre-history vestiges as landlocked country
Gathered the dust of the famous ancient silk route
Hibernated long in the cauldron of tribal ethnicity
Assimilating deeply the Islamic culture and customs
Never compromised with personal freedom concept
In spite of the drag of poverty plunging people in abyss
Subservient spectators of numerous military campaigns
Turning the land into tormented target of geopolitics
All crusades crumbled in inhospitable hostile terrain
Not untruly it is nicknamed “graveyard of empires”.
September 2, 2021
Contest : Afghanistan
Sponsor : Kai Michael Neumann
Slips marked and mapped across the intercoastal waterways
a scanning breached out of high low tidal waves,
silent, still, obscure, and not well hidden
liveaboards hold steady isolated sheltered misgivings;
embedded and anchored in place
buoys secure contested living space,
Matanzas Pass, Sarasota fields, Titusville and Sunset Bay
the Gulf Stream Key Largo flow a mainstay;
honker down between the wind, the rain, and sun
vessels sturdy and rickety, short and long - all come,
house and home hum interludes for a sing-along,
push aways and pull in tights
safeaways and derelicts amidst stormy plights
resident and transient, occupied and abandoned
faceless vacancies, sequestered and random,
marinas and harbors within hurricane holds in tandem,
dockmasters and dock slips. environmental folds alluring
beleaguered and bewildered landlocked sailors touring
in their trawlers, boats, cruisers and yachts adoring
September shelters in the Florida moorings.
I STAND I STEPPED IN AN AQUATIC SPILLWAY OF A DREAM LAKE
Dream lake head waters
Thing of lacquer
Engaging lacquering
Full of shallows
Silent lac
I stand I stepped in an aquatic spillway of a dream lake
Out by the thought of lakes
Of my dreams, rivers streams
A body of waters
Cumulating waters gathering together,
All those rivers streams
I stand I stepped in an aquatic spillway of a dream lake
They which are perfumed from unseen scoter
In there within themselves lakeshores
Warming were those ground waters
Some sandy beaches pearl aqua clear blue
The soft shoreline shallowing
I stand I stepped in an aquatic spillway of a dream lake
Demersal, demersal ponding
In fact that it was swishing
A landlocked loch lacquering
So there I stand stepped in an aquatic spillway
Dream lake head waters
I stand I stepped in an aquatic spillway of a dream lake
7/21/21
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2021©
Longing for the sea,
the foam soaking my hair;
Longing for the breeze,
to carry my song on the air;
For gills and a tail
I’d gladly give this life;
Longing for the day
I don’t have to come back;
Longing for a time
the Sun is my only clock,
Aching to be
no longer land locked.
Faster than a precipitous squall, ivy spreads and climbs the wall. It's quarried a landlocked structure in Nepal. Through the cracks wails an ominous battlefield call. The preamble of turnacets tied tight by medics to stall as profanities ptyalise saturating gauze deep red with gall. Hanging the jaws in fascinated appall , rubberneckers congest the receiving friends' line snaking down the hall. Perturbation too thick to order from short to tall, the shoulders stacked by chaos wearing a one size fits all shawl. So barbwire a must install to tear then rake camouflaged skin off words that underneath crawl. To limit the insidious minifies the onslaught threatening to befall. Protecting the house sometimes requires merciless law taking only two at high noon to draw.
RISE
iNtEnSiTy Of BeAtS, trapping hailstorm in landlocked gorge.
nose flARes as I procure brisk air, balloon deflates at dread’s
FALL
4/14/2020
Let the Pens Flow - Antonym Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Jenish Somadas
Syllables: 1/14/14/1
she had a dream
of seaside escapades
and seabreeze in her hair
this little girl of three
landlocked
utterly determined
to make her dream come true
with a fistful of crayons
she brought to life her pony
Published in my 24-page photo/anthology ~A CHILD'S WORLD~ 2020
AP: 3rd place 2021, Honorable Mention 2020
Submitted on March 2, 2022 for contest A BRIAN STRAND FREED VERSE sponsored by BRIAN STRAND - RANKED 1ST
Grand Howl for the Sea
Oh I howl!
Longing to be free…
But I remain, landlocked to a people
Growling and hissing you must face your responsibilities!
Indebted to a society into which my debts never seem to end.
I long to be a Man-child, Hidden from Society
Gaining the Wisdom of the Jungle with child-like glee!
Mowgli of the impenetrable Jungle, lost but found himself within.
Learning how to survive from nature herself
When one is accepted as Kin
Sown into a land-lubbing society
Into which one must work and can never seemingly be free
Forever tied to the land and continuing responsibilities...
Oh how I long to gain the Wisdom of the Seas
Constantly changing as it was free to express Emotions!
Without the Constraints of a [Rigid Society]
Thrusting itself onto land whispering…
Come away with me-
Gain the Wisdom of the Seas!
Float on your sea vessel
Akela, the lone wolf of the sea
I will show you the wonders of the world---
If only one would dare to come drift away with me….
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