Short Jetsam Poems

I can see all pest
Piles of flotsam and jetsam
Users final rest....

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flotsam and jetsam -
                               seascape graffito...

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In
our
landfull 
sites today-
tomorrow's treasures
that will amaze in future hands....

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flotsam, jetsam days

                                     unafraid of ocean's sprays

                                          crabs sidle sideways...

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Listen to poem:

Each dawn's debris sort
of wreckage from day before
yields jetsam just junked 
and flotsam break-up relics.
On the beach who can tell which?...

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Do you strive to be poetic,
while forgetting to be a poet

Your words when forced an epitaph
to what you never said

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2020)...

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On
the beach,
ebb & flow-
with no place to
go


Anthony Gormley's installation Another place


http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2005/07/05/art_antony_gormley_feature.sht
ml...

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Taking my dogs on a raft trip to North Missouri,
Solomon, Jasper, Jetsam and baby Madame Curie,
None of us are swimmers, but there is no real worry.
We float along in peace, none of us in any kind of hurry....

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shipbuilder’s nephew




. . . . flotsam and jetsam of culture 
drifted and piled haphazard 
a finger-drawn life structure 
while all the smells of fish and wrack
and shipwrecks linger anew
around this jumbled stack
a shipbuilder’s nephew . . . ....

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Flotsam
and jetsam,
in abstraction-
stranded in the painter's 
mind's eye


Inspired by John Pipers Beach object 1937 a construction.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=-
1&workid=11931&searchid=false&roomid=false&tabview=text&texttype=8...

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Shipwrecked

A great poet
I'm probably not
A brilliant writer
The same response
My own best Critic
the job I've got
Yet the words float 
to the surface
In my mind's cesspool 
Of self doubt
My fingers swim 
Tapping buoyant words
Flotsam and jetsam
That survived 
my shipwrecked thoughts....

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Viscid,
      Black,
           Highly spoonable.

Floating,
        Submerged,
                 Gellid pieces.

Flotsam,
       Jetsam,
             Relics of life?

Putrescent,
          Vaporous,
                  Motifs of death.

Ubiquitous,
          Ignored,
                 Feast for vultures....

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spiral darker
   deeper down
 ever starker
   viral rounds

sing out somber, to the seas
 of tears of floods, uprooted trees,
   the flotsam the jetsam
 the waste and ennui
        barred walls of this cyclonic me
     this caged vortex of the sea
        this maelstrom of my
                                  infinity
  for Bacchus loved Neptune
and they both hate me...

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Five lines in the sand – his quintet of children is skimming the surf

Like ariels chasing youth not yet knowing Plath’s substanceless blue

Streaming chariots of gleams into fireflies dragons dinosaurs and castles

Oblivious to extinction the full impact of tides and dereliction of beauty

Just foot prints on the shore reaching fast for jetsam flotsam and joy



21st April 2019...

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We are all surfing the wave of time.
In times immediate wake is the frothiness of near history.
Smooths out as the wave moves on.
The wave churns and gurgles as the past is being created.
We the flotsam and jetsam along for the ride.
The wave creates the lives we have lead.
Potential is all that’s in the waves headlights.
Nothing at all the wave moves into.
We all live on the edge of reality and time....

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Two scruffy pirates picked me up.
Intending to toss me overboard.
I weighed too much; they were struggling.
True.
They needed to lighten their load.
But I was not going easy.
I purposefully got heavier.
"She is flotsom," the tall fat one said.
"Jetsam," the dumb ugly one argued.
"Let's get a dictionary," I said. "Let's do this right."
This gave me a few more days,
as there were no books on this ship....

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There is a place inside
where the crime and grime hides
All thoughts and fails lie lifeless hand in hand
In the shadow of lies told
darkness unseen
knees cradled
head bent
furtively looking up
in fear that darkness
will feed upon
this dead atom
My make shift soul
Trapped in flotsam skin and jetsam bone
Never felt the warmth
always joined never part
There is a place inside
were the real me resides...

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"The Sensual Hereafter"

we rise 
like flotsam 
and jetsam

our colours 
always
sting 

our time 
lost in the 
sun setting

every now 
and again
we find love

it’s a returning
to departure 
that requires 

the long kiss goodnight
that deserves a 
close remembering

when the 
message 
is found in the 

sensual 
hereafter

we deliver

(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
...

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Salvaged trinkets from less mindful times,
doodads and trifles - mainly yours.
Electrical dinosaurs, 
wrapped in wires and plugs – mine.

Not much furniture: particle board,
cheap impulsive clutter.

Browsers turn over knickknacks,
hope for an overlooked value;
we have none.

We have this jetsam, and this, and this
and that.

Treasures in-between bric-a-brac 
and thingamajigs -
almost priceless, almost worthless....

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St. Simons Island
beached Juicy Fruit gum wrapper. . .
flotsam and jetsam






***
Poetry Notes:

Juicy Fruit gum wrapper surrounded by sea foam bubbles, found 2 hours after low tide while walking on St. Simons Island beach on December 4, 2011.  Photo taken with my iPhone 5 or my iPad 4.  I can't remember which :)




Copyright © 2018 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
Published 2018 in "Up In Smoke" via wattpad.com...

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+++++++++++++++   (Q ) Tides


        current running hard
            pulling all jetsam along
         a bottled message


     GINSU -KNIFE      EASTPORT , MAINE  USA


     The Quoddy Tides is the easternmost newspaper in the United States.
    Published in Eastport , Maine.  The easternmost city in USA.
       Lubec, across the bay , is the easternmost town in USA.
     West Quoddy Head is the easternmost point in USA....

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Ode To A Wave

Such beauty
Such ferocity
Such power
Traveling around the world
Pushed by tropical winds
You grow and fall
Only to grow ever stronger
Carrying ships and jetsam
Even moving lands before you
You are as destructive as you are beautiful
Yet, after your travels
At the end of your life
A child laughs and dances
As you tickle their feet as you roll across the sand
And then you are gone
Except in that child’s smile...

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So quietly she trips across the floor,
dragging random flotsam and jetsam
she finds in niches the vacuum can't reach.
With evil intent, she crouches at my feet.
Then BONK! I've been kitten-bombed.
She exults in my reaction
of flying drink and floor-bound french fries.
Then she creeps away again
waiting for her next opportunity
to turn on airplane mode,
shut down the computer without saving
my changes,
and scare me half to death....

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I wish she were my concubine
all wrapped in my celebrity,
draped, Dali-like around my neck
or me melded between her thighs,
not just a deity
who floats past floored-jaws
as if they were a guard of honour.

A virtual sniper
fixating her in a thousand yard stare,
firing bullets of desperation
hoping to pierce her heart,

but I am a candle in a flash bulb supernova
not even the burn in retina's memory,
just a mote in jetsam discarded....

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I saw some flotsam floating by
Or maybe it was jetsam.
Whichever one it was, I know
The river always gets some.

It’s strange that if I’d spotted it
On sidewalk, road or street,
It would have just been detritus
That I had chanced to meet.

But floating cast-offs seem to take
A step up on the scale,
For, carried by the currents,
They’re explorers setting sail.

And where they’ll settle, we can’t know
But out there on the sea,
Unlike the city’s litter,
They are rambling and free....

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