Long Portholes Poems
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A seaman's life
Looking at the map, I have been to most countries
that have seaports but no time to explore work had
to be done whether it was Monday or Sunday
I have crossed many seas. The Pacific Ocean had
long, deep waves, the Atlantic Ocean had sharper waves
while the Mediterranean Sea could not make up its mind
The Black Sea wasn't blue and looked darksome; the ship
was stuck on ice flakes
The country we seamen preferred was the USA
we could get our shopping done and buy stuff for
friends at home, shops stayed open longer
A Russian town had a beautiful avenue, but otherwise
a city shrouded in darkness
I lost my heart to Guatemala, beautiful beaches near
the docks, a nation of friendly folks
Haiti, Port-au- Prince where Papa Doc ruled with his
brutal men dressed in flowery shirts, sunglasses
eager to shoot at anything that moved
a place where portholes had to be closed for the stink
What I remember best was in Nagasaki one afternoon
I had two hours off work and noticed how few people
I met it was as if they were still in shell shock
In a courtyard, I came across the graves of Portuguese
seamen who had died of the pest 200 years ago
far from home, died of an illness, I grieved for them
The evenings in foreign ports were the same bars
and women of ill repute ready for a small amount
of money serviced the ritual of sex, so one could be drunk
go back onboard for a few hours of sleep
Moments become wet steppingstone
over a stream of consciousness.
At breakfast, a TV delivers omens
with a perky disposition.
Buttering grilled bread, distracted by normality,
slipping through the well-greased gears
of a self-made reality,
then a singing hint of burnt toast
ripples through suddenly aware
nostril hair.
What should you do today -
walk the mood off
or pray brother pray?
Will the monstrous appear,
its likeness --- cute and kittenish,
though even now
new velvet satanic horns
are already budding.
Will the fuzz and fur turn quickly
to scabs and scales?
Sinister left-handed slaps of hysteria
swipe the sweat from wrinkled foreheads.
In a room bereft of natural illumination,
a light on an open laptop is blinking,
imagination types a nightmare
on the underside of its blank screen.
Brains unchecked by reason,
swivel inside their bony portholes,
they search this way and that
for a more feasible fantasy
before this amorphous apprehension
emerges fully clothed
as an all too familiar
mirror image.
Spaceward: genesis, obedience, fathomless: universe.
In Cerulean: lambent, sullen, discernible: Close ignite.
With harmony: hypaethral, skyward, aether: womb hiccups
Whelm time: serenade, stardust, drizzles: diamond dust,
Overall trends: extinguish, slumber, wonder: celestial hymn,
By extolling: Argyle, twinkle, soothing: miraculous rule
Alabaster Gypsum: portholes, peering, ogling: rain glints
Rubicund Jocund: ventral, sheqalim, vivid: lured stars
Exalt air: Blistering, bleeding, molting: Corolla collide
Orotund Moire: Kaleidoscopic, sentient, dusk: carnal life
Grab fistful: Dripping, purple, precipitation: Sunburnt sky
Dodging Venus: Flytrap, ill-wishers, pyramids: Shift astern.
This variation on sonnet XL1 to illustrate what Kuhlmann intended .
kuhlmann is a verse poem of two phrases interspered with three related monosyllabic stem- words(nouns,adjectives )with an integral title.The label and form is derived from the baroque poet Quirinus Kuhlmann's 50 sonnet
form Love-kiss XLI
Poem inspired by the sonnet penned by Brian Stand
Violet Jessop, threat ahead
Escaping Poseidon’s death toll’s
“Look after this, will you?” He said
She did, counting down the portholes
First the Olympic’s nurse enrolls
Last, the Britannic’s noon code red
Titanic claimed her shipmate’s souls
Violet Jessop, threat ahead
Miss Unsinkable showed no dread
There as a nurse of many roles
To safety, others she had led
Escaping Poseidon’s death toll’s
The Titanic, tragedy doles
Passed a bundle with tiny head
As he returned to his patrols
“Look after this, will you?” He said
This man was cursed to join the dead
One thing left under her controls
Hold this babe close while others tread
She did, counting down the portholes
Life for her was not grassy knolls
Dreamt of the sea from in her bed
Board the Olympic, heat the coals
The ocean from her veins she bled
Violet Jessop.
March 14, 2023
"Double the Fun" Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Joseph May
Written of Violet Jessop otherwise known as Miss Unsinkable or Queen of Sinking ships. She survived the near sinking of the Olympic, the tragedy of the Titanic and the sinking (after being hit by a torpedo) of the Britannic. Following all of this, she returned to working on ships (including the repaired Olympic) until retirement. One more interesting little tidbit I read, 59 years after the Titanic sunk, she got a phone call from the baby she was handed and saved. I thought she had an interesting story to say the least.
We had arrived to board our ship,
a mysterious adventure to be,
I felt completely immersed.
On this voyage our vessel
was the center of all things
and the sea the universe.
This journey was all in my past,
but I still remember fondly
waves, seagulls, decks, cabins, and portholes.
The salty breeze, shaddy sun and shaky sealegs
will forever be ingrained in our souls.
My brothers and I had daily adventures
on all the decks,
but it was the forbidden areas
I will never forget.
We would climb up and down ladders
into small passage ways,
would give me a terrible fright today,
but back then it was fascinating
with no regrets.
When this wonderful passage was ending,
I didn’t realize then
how much this journey would be transcending.
So now I’m much older
and much wiser you see,
but I would certainly give that all up
for one day back at our sea.
Into the snow white castle only tepid feet bound
Head mirror of quilted bed reflects a glimmering compound
Satin blanket spreads over each frozen mound
A blinding glare from the silted bed doth rebound
With each heavy step mist arises from fluffed goose down
Arching o'er head a crystalline canopy doth crown
The hooded frames as glowing sentinels ballast ground
The woody rails in their icy coat of arms surround
As tempest blows, crackling arms in groaning chorus resound
From portholes beaming, frozen pellets wayfarers confound
Alighting from pillowy perches, Red-shouldered hawks with wings unwound
Strafe the bystanders; with their prickly dander doth hound
A fibrous parapet of occluded, twining roots shields ground
Each truant sole straying from the beaten path will impound
Buried stumps as pulpy landmines on periphery abound
The errant, plodding heel with shocking pain to redound
Pace must quicken in the late afternoon stound
Dusk's chilling tides o'er snowy copse leaves laggards spellbound
As the last rays of light funnel into
the background
Enchanting visions of woodland nymphs mind's eye doth astound
The Conductor
David J Walker
The low rumbling voice
Of the locomotive reminded me
Of my time traveling days from this to
Another place
another time
In space
That would become Mine as well
Where the young sang
Love songs in romance
Languages unknown
In this today
The engineer poet played his prose
On his whistle in echoed harmonies
on the landscape
While trees danced to the tune in the
Midnight rambling concert
In the moonscape
I have been the passenger
I have been the
Engineer
I have been the conductor
On the passage to portholes
Both far and near
And now
I am content to listen to
The train pass
Knowing at last
Where it is going
It’s echo in the distance
Clear
The year I became seasick
I lived in a bungalow on the edge
of a wilderness moor.
The sky and land
grappled together
for supremacy of my soul,
Inner dogs whined,
my eyes were portholes
where cats watched
the turbulent dance
of garbled mind waves.
I had to leave a wife,
but knew I could not swim,
couldn't drown, nor float.
I stumbled across high wind-woven gorse,
ghosts crying through my hair.
in the end,
the crashing sound of breakers
smashing against cliffs
made me vomit, I staggered
choking still
into a pathless night.
A cloud garden had to
wither and bloom,
toes had to learn to grip
ever shifting sands.
Time whittles,
it sharpens the bones of your throat
until you can consume
the stale and the fresh,
while riding a moon crazed
rocking-horse.
CYBER LIFE
My stamen a purple flare of Light
lit from Galactic Sun
igniting me for an hour or a day
a week or month, who knows ?
Portholes open ever so slightly
Time truly an illusion
Between petals I zoom extracting
nectar for cloaking against
cyber pistols, unpeelings
invasions, unveilings, insertions
with fire eating flesh
A joke tastes of poison
Moon a metallic observer
Buttons, knobs, numbers, clicks
My babes in their Pleiadian pods
incubated quietly like geraniums
in the backyard
Radiants swirl down marbled stairways
No corridors or medbeds touched
trained so on a faraway planet
Sheets folded in symphony
without speck, sparkle or frequency
We were strapped
Plutonians commanded
destruction
Tails chopped or dissolved
pendulums swung
A silent silvery slippery kiss
below a peppered moustache
pats on backs for a job
well done
My stamen wilted into mauve
Galactic Sun still waits
for me, as I return
to civilian couch
©GhairoDanielsPoetry&Song
2022
Jellyfish! Who could have named you
other than a creature structured
by a cage of bone?
Opaque but transparent
your arrested evolution
lives in an alien perfection.
You abide inside the sea, yet billowing that sea
through your bald, bladder body.
Propelled by the encompassing
and likewise, encompassed and captured
by that which fills and surrounds you.
Jellyfish, not a fish nor jellied
but muscular and powerful
yet in a strange, smooth-sided way
the way the deep is. Slick and slippery
as oleo. At once both a slack rippling
and a tenacious tough whiplash of power.
Your form a confliction,
a mass of otherworldly contradiction.
Under the knife
your body defies reason,
until we see the aerodynamics,
the subcutaneous aquatic precision
of your parts.
That glistening hood,
the bell shaped corpus of you,
but no brain just a stomach pouch
in place of any mentality,
perhaps your thoughts float free
inside that gaseous umbrella of your mind?
Multiple eyes dotted around the hood
like inky portholes.
A sallow mandible mouth
tucked like a fist under your hood
from which those ‘oral arms’
fan away from
to reach and gather morsels of meat.
These your only speech
as you consume a thrashing utterance.
Loosely arrayed about those mouth appendages,
are long trailing tentacles,
each sensitive feeler equipped
with venomous cells encrusted with barbs
that bite with a poisonous ferocity.
Jelly fish, your anatomy is upside down
and inside out, and yet
we cannot doubt the impeccable necessity of you,
the point of you,
and perhaps even the point of us
as we search
for that germinal sea within.