Long Pilings Poems

oh, Dear Indulgence ...

desolate, obscure, I know you not, (and have known you not),
    still, do I not know the glint there, in your eye? Aye, it abides
    ...

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Irritatingly often unnecessarily compliant
to the whims of those about him
endlessly wordlessly wondering
about the many demented subjective qualities
of our ever present mammalian imperative via
a thought balloon filled with candy and bullets
that lingers menacingly overhead
announcing the death...

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the inside attempting to outside
each with its own absurd shopping list
we are after all composite beings
clumps and aggregates and glomerations
made up from all the faces we have seen
all the people we have imagined to have...

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The wind came down from the canyon with a quite heat
It was to his back as he faced the crashing waves
He watched the pelicans skimming the rolling surf
The sun warmed sand felt comforting beneath his...

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Author’s Introduction - A word about Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse: 

The Minot’s Ledge lighthouse, built 1850, lying off the southeastern chop of 
Boston Bay, was the first lighthouse built in the U. S. that was not...

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One day—
The sea will be my backyard
Every morning, standing upon the deck
Of the one called Going Numb
A “Greatest Dad” mug in one hand
My last vice burning orange in the other

I will watch the sun rise...

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...One night I asked who it was,
she said,”Just a man I used to know.”
She would never say more than that,
so I decided wisely to let it go.

But that night, like every other,
when midnight rolled around,
she...

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Fever and Chills

History writes itself
invisible pens find surfaces unknown
private life
public life
fever and chills sleep together
heaving corrosive air
from colorless lungs
hearing but their own moans
their own cries of ecstasy
how loud
how soft

From boardroom
to bedroom
clinging to manufactured essence
flesh bleeds...

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sigh …

a lifetime ago
I breathed here, vital -
dangled my topsiders over these
pier stones and pilings
tempting the dark leviathans
that swam beneath the bloated
August moon, reflected …
kissing menthols like careless lovers
concerned only with the moment (hoping)
and a...

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I could've gone to Holland. I could've gone to Spain.
I could've gone to Denmark. I could've gone insane,
But instead I came here, where the river mirrors life
In a fractured, dream-like way on this brilliant summer...

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The Linda-Marie

I venture on down to the harbor, smelling the salt of the sea
Where waiting in anticipation is my sloop the Linda-Marie
In silence she sits while I board her, and cast her lines aside
Like a...

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You are in your blue period -
turquoise swimsuit, buoyant in azure.

Behind your shoulder,
Brighton West Pier,
A snap taken at an amateurish angle,
you’re diving sideways into the waves,
the gaily painted structure
tumbling after you.

A day later, the pier...

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A COPPER PENNY


The significance of a copper penny…
It’s part of our heritage
Being raised in the copper mining area
Of Ruth, Nevada
Fathers and brothers worked for
The Kennecott Copper Mining Corporation
Both abhorred and sacrificed for
It was a job
The...

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I didn't mean it ...
     you were everything, didn't you know??
          didn't I show you in a thousand little ways?
  ...

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FOGGY NIGHT  ©

The white orb, saturated with 
tidal flows, peers through the 
veil. 

A ghost ship slips up the fog 
laden channel. 

Night gulls. sing with strident cries 

fog seeps in, the tide rolls...

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Drifting Away

All alone one might think they stand in muddy water unclear
Now feeling like a drowned rat in time and not utter a peep,
Where all at once there might have been a wooden pier
Like a...

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The iridescent raven perched upon pilings
By just one lake in Friesland's beautiful wetland outings

His golden beak and orange legs with claws set off
Against black feathers that glisten and are a rain runoff

Carefully he watches the...

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Today is Sunday and I'm going to the ocean
or maybe not. Definitely not doing the laundry
or maybe I will. Moss and even a small tree
grow in the rotten stubs of the pier pilings.
The city is...

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No penance need be paid by the insular artisan
admonished for seeking an oral platinum quota.
Under furlough! Tuck their perfume in a bureau, 
then intermittently release the poise to up-start
inferiority complexes who'll quote of the literati,

and...

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