Long Mariners Poems

It's Halloween!
Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give...

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It's Halloween!
Michael R. Burch

If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;

if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads

uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!

If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;

if birds give...

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"Salvage"


Salvage the fixating salvation 
unfurling from the wreckage
of a numb world twisted inside
treasure climbs swimming 
the ladder from the deep of all things 
reaching upwards travelling in a new time
of melting morpheme moments overlapping 
dissolved...

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The First Thanksgiving (Sept. 3, 1578)

The shortest distance to Cathay 1
(Land of riches: silks, teas and spices)
Lay to the north to the South Sea. 2
Didn’t Barlow tell the King, 3
Was reserved for England.

The routes ‘round...

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Like the Evening Star guided ancient mariners through calm or troubled seas
Let it guide and help spread this message of Peace to the far ends of galaxies

May it become the ‘Swan Song Poem’ of all...

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some wise men
of different bent, ilk,
orientation and time, 
then our own,
prescribed four spice yellow smoothie milk 
to fortify the virtues 
considered natural and proper
by their standards and rules of the game:
swaddling was à la mode
cuddling...

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What is love?
A sea of nonexistence
both tranquil and calamitous
where the mind
does not dare enter.
(Rumi, M. Mafi, "Day By Day", p. 120, 2014, Hampton Roads)

What is timeless synergy?
Our sea of coexistence
both confluent and dissonant
where blind consciousness
seldom...

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Standing all alone in the woods;
eyes shut, I feel the lilting light.
Sun dodges needles through the crown,
beams land on my skin softly so.
Brisk breezes quicken and rustle.
Bristlecone pines ever sway slowly,
while pockets of air blush...

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Down deep beneath fathoms icy keep, where deadmen’s
Scream in utter silences aquatic hell, amongst the devils
Graveyard of wreckage's carnage, there exists a ghostly harbor
Of phantom ships!
Anchored are the souls of the undead, and vessels craft...

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With lone intent, all freedom it will wrest
if obstinance you let these wolves deny.
As tonnage sinks beneath the torrid crest
your struggles for survival magnify.
Each flailing ship that ferries surety
is fodder for the fathoms of abyss.
Their...

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What golden fevers disease drives the madman’s insanity,
A toxic yellow shines metal, that glitter beneath the polar Aurora,
Of greed’s horded treasure of the Klondike’s curse!
By sheer brawn's heaving and hoe, did these fortune hunters so...

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Because of you, I'm in a Seattle kind of mood
When I look out my window 

And see the rain drops gently falling all around
And I feel that special Seattle kind of chill

In my bones 
I...

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"Fata Morgana" 

feet hardly touch the ocean
when silent stars of no voice
transmit words to pay the ferryman
on the water no reflection 

gently the sun waves smiling as if to say
feel that, the warmth of waking...

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Long ago
In a far away land
With stags in the glens
Salmon leaping so grand
 
This ancient Kingdom
With its lonely King
Longs for a maiden
To make his heart ring
 
No crusades
No battles no wars
His reason-ability
What do we want...

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                         I
With all the world a thousand feet below
  ...

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Gather friends if you care to hear, I’ll favor you with a tale
About the fate of a gallant ship that long ago did sail
Built of the finest teak wood in the year sixteen-thirty-nine
A three mast...

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Upon a whim arising on this sunny springtime morn
hearing birds perform their songs at the crack of dawn
my knapsack packed already with a tasty picnic lunch
bread with cheese and wine
oh such a scrumptious tasty brunch
so...

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Mute
but immutable.
Unmoving, unmoveable;
timeless, yet tireless.
Solitary stalwart sentinel
surveils undulating horizon.

Aberrant, achromatic clouds
pock-mark the skies, as distant
rumblings herald his adversary's
latest gambit in their age-old conflict.

The wrath of a thousand crashing,
clashing, thrashing fists batter
against the beleaguered sentry.
Ceaselessly, remorselessly,
the...

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I make haste to the earth 
And anoint its rebirth
When my mother, the cloud, is above, 
And then mildly caress 
The irradiant dress
Of the hills with immaculate love. 

I descend upon leas 
And respond to...

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Acciaccatura

And filled with stars and the land
A pale gentle hand turned the hourglass 
Of my soul

Stalking the alabaster moon 
I rejoined once more
Those who follow the dream

Cutting through crests 
Time the scythe of a barque
Treads...

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I venture on a falling tide,
my little ship the current rides
down river to the open sea,
from Carrick Roads first to be free.

Anthony Head I hoist the sails
and now the boat leans to its rail
as winds...

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The elliptical sea, ageless, timeless without fathoms depth
Of the eternal degree, its finite waves ushering against the
Everlasting shore of tranquility’s rush, a liquid vacuum of inner
Special waves, crashing against the coral rife of life itself.
Beneath...

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I WISH I WEREN’T A TURTLE
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS




I wish I weren’t a turtle, I’d rather be a hare
I beat him every time, but no one seems to care
I  carry this armor plate every where...

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soft flames flickered offshore
Timucuan tribal campfires
luring Menendez’s armada

Feast Day of St. Augustine 1565
Spanish settlers rowed covertly to shore
more than 600 torches ushered in a new era of light

torches turned to gaslights
hanging yet today in a...

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When gazing Beta Persei,
a star with many ghoulish names, 
be wary of a winking eye,
for fluctuating flames
belie its evil aims. 

Ancient mariners would watch with dread
and chant their prayers out loud,
when that “Eye in Medusa’s...

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