Category Archives: Gone to Sea

freeverse collection about the Pacific and the Atlantic and depth perception

Humble Boys Club

Years ago, the Humble Boys Club was a stalwart on this lost coast, now just the foundation remains.

NOTE: Hear Humble Boys Club as a spoken song

Humble Boys Club

Tucked in a south Westmoreland
Parish corner
a coastline bay
left to sequels of buccaneers
and earth core miners

The hard men & the Maroons
sequestered in the mountains
look long back behind, below
to forgotten sugar cane and ash

Rivers run past the opening
to the very middle of the soul
the water springs to pull you deeper
into the limestone and the very molten core

We are only Humble Boys
No poncies in our club
Overproof rum, bunks and porridge
at the end of the log flume runs

They left the coral
jagged rock to the hard men
and his schemes
the wise ones went foreign
made money and split

While the rest cemented in
tied a cabin to the very firma
which tears your feet and soul

Re-barred lashings to anchor
from impending storms
Buaxite, guano, timber cane.
And Human power.

You are a just a humble boy
toiled the sound, club burns down
Broken rubble is not your pillow
and the dust never blows away

We are just humble boys
toil the sandiness, bunkered
down huddled in, porridge with the other men
They’ll disappear into the green
disappear from everything
but remnants of life.

Porch Supper, Briefly

palm frond palypa
red snapper grill-marked
smoking peppers
rolled with twigs

Off the Brittany Seacoast

(For Tristan Colbriere, The End, La Fin)

Oakum planks rowboat
Bohemian seafarers
The current pulls towards easy an stride
Oars pull – locks wobble,
dynamics of hollowness and displacement
Expecting the inclement
seeking a forward curl

You and your seafaring dreams
Do you not know about the fever that levels so many?
Deep, gritty slick bottom appeared
before no gracious host
only grey curious gaze

Or a foreign plot lined with the greyest stones
Shipmates and explorers align aside
only to fade
Nigh seamate, hold fast
seek the cove and savour
The salty bracing air dear shipmate

Ships lean, storms crush, sailors scramble and the orphans walk
Mast arched and stretched against
The grain.
Storms pull fro and ships seek harbor
Grimy oakumed planks stuffed with twine –
tapped with purposeful hammer
The hollow serves no purpose
with naught a shoreman aboard

Pulling to the Strait

Pulling to the strait
Finding St. Chrispoth
you’ve freeloading aboard again
steamrollers and stowed
in amongst the shipping crates

under rocks you’ve tugged
at barnacles undersea
your reat to zinc electrolysis
of a magnitude
almost impossible to resist

Before when the desert was flooded
under rings like steppes of ebbing tides
cataclysmic events
indeed water scrapes over the land

the emptiness
dry left behind
is what i suppose is below
look thru the portholes to the absence
of thought dimension
and turmoil

Arching Racers of Barracuda

Arching racers of
barracuda
coming round the reef
silver fast in unison
chasing each other first

he speared a fish
with parrot beak
enameled azure blue
dappled like a sunset
these swimmers never see

Giant clams are hermaphrodite
and win at scrabble every time
snapping jaws slow at first
faster when breaks the air

Aye Carpaethia

Aye Carpaethia
sublime vision of grace
you came alongside
my listing hull

Grabbed the briney rope
and you pulled me towards
the sheltered cove

Flotilla of flotsam
bounding with the swell
my heart aching
wondering where to pull

Inhibitions and accolades
rescue me to pier
when the wreckage split
me in blinding fear
i yearned for your
uncommon gaze
thoughtful twine
and restive ways

curled in a quilt
handmade by
a mysterious soul
my disaster
now averted
despite impending gale

forced winds
and the ends
of existence
as it’s told
by fore-bearers and liars
who nearly took stroll
long slowly
glancing only once behind
changing lines sometimes
exceeded what you’ve been told