Mad Poetry Tuesday

Navy blue, the salty sea, I colored the map in pencil, Before I saw the territory. This shrine of mine, an aqueous continent, A liquid breath, heaves under the weight Of all who make paths that don't stay. But these tides tell no tales, There's nothing written in the waves. If it's a story you seek, You better look beneath the blue. There, hidden next to decaying coral, You'll find the shipwreck you're looking for. And soon you'll feel it pulling you under. Mystified, the storm above will keep you In the depths of the details. And you'll kick, you'll flip pages, You'll nearly drown in the oceanic skirts of someone else's story. And then you'll be tossed out And you'll clutch the shore like driftwood. And you'll crawl into the dune grass and You'll finally write your own damn life in the sand. -- Mad Word List 7.24.18 Aqueous Salty Dune grass Storm Driftwood Waves

Out beyond the cerulean deep There cast a ship of crystal. A ghost on waves, it splashed in the haze of the rising sun. The surf was strong, but it flowed like leaves down a current in June, you might have seen it in the moonlight, a ship with one room. The captain aboard holed up in his hoard Had not so tranquil dreams. Slipping undertow, as the riptide rolled, he promised the stars He'd never go, never go back to the shore again. "Oh fair and trembling shoreline, Oh frothy salt life of mine, Although the world is waiting, I will not tread the sandy line. He feared the break and the shallow, He feared what was left behind. And although he was out of stout, Dear friends, he would not make the climb. For fragile was his vessel, And more delicate his soul. He said to the gulls, "Look through me. There's nothing left to see but the sea, you know." And that's the story of Pirate Glass, The ghost on the rolling sea, They say he'...

We had wanted you, To hide the unsightly green box To shade us during the Mid-afternoon sun. And you grew, and grew Like the weeds, you were Getting so big and beautiful, And then he told me We didn’t want you anymore. So I threw on my all-weather executioner jacket, Picked up the shears, blunt as they were, From the garage, and under the pale Gray of the early evening sky I began to chop at your shoots Some small and easy, others large And hard. It was so hard To take my coat hanger-shears And tear at your life as if it was My choice to stop you from living, My choice to tell you this was where Your pulse was beating and where you would Not turn into a full grown birch. How are we capable of these decisions? How do we just pick up the shears, Amid the rain-soaked grass, Place you in a black plastic bag, and Listen to the windchimes as they sound Your funeral song. I didn’t want to tear at your life. We just wanted a view without you in it. And that se...

An endless slate Washed clean by waves. I atone in the dunes. Take me adrift On the sands; Let time erode Instead of pour. Into my glass, A longshoreman Entraps the steeped Grains of long Forgotten gold, ale. And we drink To the gales, And the sails, And the lasses. To the ship that made it. To the harbor She passes. Give me a glass, And a steady Windlass, dear. Let's drink. Let's drink To the hold. Valovima! Forty fathoms Deep, off the shore Of the isle, We dropped the Anchor in the Devil’s Deep Shoal And felt the Unforgiving Maritime sleep That comes with Reaching the goal. And we drink, drink, Drink to the gales, And the sails, And the lasses. To the ship that made it. To the atoll She passes. Give me a spoon And the bluest Lagoon, dear. Let's drink. Let's drink To the gold. Valovima! In the offing, Beyond the Flotsam and Jetsam of life We might wonder If matter is all just Debris, floating betw...

I wanted to feed them all - The sparrows, the doves, the jays, and the one with the little red and gray head That didn't need to be named, but I would Have loved to hear him tell me it was Fred. Still, without seed, I listened to them welcome the morning sun, the long grass in the wind, and Heard the one with a lower tone whisper above my head, seeing more than I, and telling. And the owl, off from the nightshift, hooted softly Somewhere in some Cottonwood hotel. And the energetic choir, full of morning song and chatter, and hope, Flitted behind me and gathered in the church Of the underbrush. "Hallelujah," they sang, and for the millionth time, I felt the angels Weren't in the sky, they were perched on the reeds.

Tell me a story, tell me a story, Of numinous entities that come at night, Of eldritch figures that gibber in light. Tell me a story, tell me a story, Of aeons dispelled from the histories, from time, Of ages forgotten, of cave paintings and rhymes. Tell me a story, tell me a story, Of ambivalent maidens, of onanistic regrets, Of chests of gold and pirates. Arr. Tell me a story, tell me a story, Of whence the witch goes to find eyes, Of ghouls who WHAM at the ceiling tiles. Tell me a story, tell me a story, Of the window, the curtains, the height, Of the wrong that, henceforth, is right. Tell me a story, tell me a story, Of teeth-clenching children awake in their beds, Of monsters that gather behind their sweet heads. Tell me a story. I’ll tell you a story, Of babes of the future, presently napping Of ye and y’all with those fingers snapping. -- Mad Words List 7.3.18 Numinous Eldritch Gibbering Aeon Presently Whence Hence Onanistic Clench Wham Ambivalent Y'all Ye -- This week’s poe...