The Beach at Acheron
The ship lay a hundred yards offshore
gently rocking to starboard
in rolling swells
Shining black sand on the beach
shards of mica glittering
in afternoon sun
dark shrubs scattered
on a rockstrewn hillside
trees twisted and gnarled
hover on the ridge
odor of cordite
and a barking dog
just out of range
a single raven
circling overhead
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Omaha Beach
The ship lay offshore
gently rocking
port to starboard
shards of mica
in the black sand glitter
in the gloom
gnarled and twisted trees
cling to a rockstrewn hillside
sharp odor of cordite
a barking dog
a single raven overhead
poem by Michael Pruchnicki
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Tropical Recollection
The crashing of the glass
Shards of memory scattered throughout
Whilst ominous gusts of terror besiege,
Convincing the upends have come
Bellowing into disabled blue eyes,
Blurred and blinded through battles of time
The dark deep dread creeps in
Shards of memory scattered throughout
Thoughts cloud in withdrawal
A relinquishing storm of all form, all peril
Void as a dream, void of sanity
Shards of memory scattered throughout
The Cyclists
Spread on the roadway,
With open-blown jackets,
Like black, soaring pinions,
They swoop down the hillside,
The Cyclists.
Seeming dark-plumaged
Birds, after carrion,
Careening and circling,
Over the dying
Of England.
She lies with her bosom
Beneath them, no longer
The Dominant Mother,
The Virile -- but rotting
Before time.
The smell of her, tainted,
Has bitten their nostrils.
Exultant they hover,
And shadow the sun with
Foreboding.
poem by Amy Lowell
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We walked on the beach
We walked on the beach
my shadow and I.
Rocks protruded
out of the sand
and a big ship passed by.
The tide was high
and the angry sea crashed
and slapped spray
upon the rocks.
a Strong wind scratched
me with buckets full of sand
and I wondered what had happened
to a perfect day at the beach,
but later the wind died down.
a Single gull surfed the air
and suddenly it wasn’t there
and only the green sea,
the white-hot sun,
surf crashing on the beach
and I remained.
poem by Gert Strydom
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The highway man
The wind was howling
and shaking the big oak trees,
and the moon hanged like a sickle
gliding like a ship over the dark sky
and the motorbiker came riding
and the light of his motorbike cut
through the rain and kept him
locked to the stretch of road
that twisted up a hill.
He’d a round black helmet on his head,
a black leather jacket and black boots
and he rode through the weather
to where a light sparkled in the dark
and the girl of his heart was waiting.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Wish You Wait
I glare across the causeway
But cannot see
Beyond the lumbering beachcombers
And their city of twisted gray shacks
Any sign of life
Then again no man may see into
His future
Or past
The marine landing
Mirrored in a pane of glass
Will I see you again soon?
Will you fall into my reach?
Will you wait for me until then
On that rockstrewn brazen beach?
poem by Stan Petrovich
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Another Near To Perfect Day
In the sky the sun brightly shining the blue sky with some clouds of gray
On an afternoon in late October another near to perfect day
The white surf waves are gently rolling one reason no surfer in sight
And the silver gulls on the white beach search for food in the warm sunlight
An artist may well sketch such beauty and writers about it may write
By the coastal town on the surf beach there is beauty in peace and quiet
Today the ocean is not roaring no big waves for surfers to ride
The waves on the beach gently lapping so timid the sea at low tide
In the park the magpie larks calling the only notes they sing pee wee
And wattlebirds on the flowering coastal banksias their harsh calls familiar to me
On a beautiful day in the Springtime of around 24 degrees
And there is a cool sort of freshness in the cool freshening coastal breeze
Save for the silver gulls the beach is deserted and so clean is the fresh coastal air
A good memory to keep and to cherish and a good memory with others to share.
poem by Francis Duggan
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The Girl With Raven Hair
The girl with raven hair,
Flies up to your door,
Dancing round in pokadots,
Drawing on your wall,
She makes you a portal into secret gardens,
Blessing the dark with midnight parties.
Stars shining down upon you,
Emblazening the celestial sky,
Your name in glittering truth,
Mornings blessed with twinkling eyes.
The girl with raven hair,
Flies up to your door,
Floating in air,
Bringing an horizons bloom.
Stars shining down upon you,
Emblazening the celestial sky,
Your name in glittering truth,
Mornings blessed with twinkling eyes.
poem by Craig Turner
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A Raven
Dark bird
Black raven with black wings,
Black eyes as dark as midnight,
Wind flutters his wings,
Shadows turn his head,
And movement catches his stare.
He looks down upon you and watches in dismay,
No black is with in you,
No night in your eyes,
No wings to up lift you,
No shadow to attract you,
And movements pass your gaze.
A raven, A raven, A moonlight silhouette.
In Silent Winds
In that darkness lurking in-between
Deep sleeps and hazy waking
There resides a clear and clean
Whisper of brisk air that has me quaking
Like dark sand running through my fingers
Like water dripping from the leaves of nettle stingers
Smooth and rushing
This dark sand silently gushing
Like the stars in the sky lament
Shining and dark with every twinkling moment
The dark sands of a beach far away
Rushing in the oceans waters astray
Waking once red embers, now black
Like death, revived to enkindle
My heart, the strings have gone slack
Dark sand repair, filling the spindle
The one that holds the flame, it dwindled
Reclaiming that pain so aptly swindled
The peace of mind and half of my light
The candle flickers in black and white
In silent winds, taken aback,
Sweet were those dreams that attack
Sewed into the present and past
Somewhere with dark sands so vast.
poem by Deep Dark Soul Poet
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Lovely, Lovely, Lovely Memories
By an old river beside a bamboo grove
She bathes herself
Only the bamboo leaves hinder
Your view of her long black hair
As she splashes naked in the
Clear River.
Lovely 2
There is a nipa hut on the side of a hill
You meet her when it is dark
She lights your cigar
As you get near her
You decided to smoke later
Lovely 3
You are rocking yourself on a rattan hammock
On a late afternoon when the rest go home
It is Saturday
She stays
You watch her come near you giving you something
She says it is the key to her room and she is all alone tonight.
Lovely 4
The cogon grasses have grown tall & thick on the hillside
Both of you hide in there
Nobody sees you
The tall cogon grasses dance wildly to the slow wind
Lovely 5
Four years in the university studying chemistry
You return home finally
You embrace your old mother meeting you by the door
Outside you see the guava tree filled with its ripe yellow fruit odor
So heavily laden like a big Christmas tree
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Quest for Shaded Truth
Dove came to Raven in a dream.
He was whiter than snow.
Raven woke with his croaking scream,
A creature of light had visited.
It was not just a vision,
The Dove soon arrived in flesh.
Raven stared in derision,
As Dove was loved more than he.
What have I done, thought Raven,
To deserve such hostility?
Must I stop eating carrion,
Or carry a branch in my beak?
Dove is loved by all,
With his smooth, snowy plumage,
And his slow, cooing call
That so comforts Man’s soul.
As the wind whispered Nature’s
Thoughts into his ears, he realized
That without the dark there
Could not be light.
Raven watched fires angrily destroy,
And rain patter softly on earth.
He saw shrubs, stooped like haggard men,
While tall trees towered tyrannically.
But who made the rules about
What should symbolize purity,
And what should represent
Repulsion and evil?
A Single Black Rose
A single Black Rose to turn the tide
A single Black Rose to make one die
A single Black Rose to ensnare the soul
A single Black Rose to widen that hole
A single Black Rose to melt the heart
A single Black Rose to force a start
A single Black Rose to entwine the bodies
A single Black Rose to dictate the deaths of these
A single Black Rose to lie upon her breast
A single Black Rose to stop the tears from soaking his vest
A single Black Rose to mourn this memory
A single Black Rose to become a plot in this cemetery
A single Black Rose to take a life
A single Black Rose to end his strife.
(8/21/2007)
poem by Michael Koelliker
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Little Raven
Little raven,
Where did you come from?
Little raven,
With your little black body.
Little raven,
With your long, shinny wings.
Little raven,
In mid flight.
Little raven,
With your frightening caw.
Little raven,
Why are you a sigh of death?
poem by Jameaka Shibles
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A Bird’s-Eye View
'Croak, croak, croak,'
Thus the Raven spoke,
Perched on his crooked tree
As hoarse as hoarse could be.
Shun him and fear him,
Lest the Bridegroom hear him;
Scout him and rout him
With his ominous eye about him.
Yet, 'Croak, croak, croak,'
Still tolled from the oak;
From that fatal black bird,
Whether heard or unheard:
'O ship upon the high seas,
Freighted with lives and spices,
Sink, O ship,' croaked the Raven:
'Let the Bride mount to heaven.'
In a far foreign land,
Upon the wave-edged sand,
Some friends gaze wistfully
Across the glittering sea.
'If we could clasp our sister,'
Three say, 'now we have missed her!'
'If we could kiss our daughter!'
Two sigh across the water.
Oh, the ship sails fast
With silken flags at the mast,
And the home-wind blows soft;
But a Raven sits aloft,
Chuckling and choking,
Croaking, croaking, croaking:—
Let the beacon-fire blaze higher;
Bridegroom, watch; the Bride draws nigher.
On a sloped sandy beach,
Which the spring-tide billows reach,
Stand a watchful throng
Who have hoped and waited long:
'Fie on this ship, that tarries
With the priceless freight it carries.
The time seems long and longer:
O languid wind, wax stronger;'—
Whilst the Raven perched at ease
Still croaks and does not cease,
One monotonous note
Tolled from his iron throat:
'No father, no mother,
But I have a sable brother:
He sees where ocean flows to,
And he knows what he knows, too.'
A day and a night
They kept watch worn and white;
A night and a day
For the swift ship on its way:
For the Bride and her maidens
—Clear chimes the bridal cadence—
For the tall ship that never
Hove in sight for ever.
On either shore, some
Stand in grief loud or dumb
As the dreadful dread
Grows certain though unsaid.
For laughter there is weeping,
And waking instead of sleeping,
And a desperate sorrow
Morrow after morrow.
Oh, who knows the truth,
How she perished in her youth,
And like a queen went down
Pale in her royal crown:
How she went up to glory
From the sea-foam chill and hoary,
From the sea-depth black and riven
To the calm that is in Heaven?
They went down, all the crew,
The silks and spices too,
The great ones and the small,
One and all, one and all.
Was it through stress of weather,
Quicksands, rocks, or all together?
Only the Raven knows this,
And he will not disclose this.—
After a day and year
The bridal bells chime clear;
After a year and a day
The Bridegroom is brave and gay:
Love is sound, faith is rotten;
The old Bride is forgotten:—
Two ominous Ravens only
Remember, black and lonely.
poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Potato Harvest
A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne
Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky
Washing the ridge; a clamour of crows that fly
In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn
To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;
A line of grey snake-fence, that zigzags by
A pond and cattle; from the homestead nigh
The long deep summonings of the supper horn.
Black on the ridge, against that lonely flush,
A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside
Some barrels; and the day-worn harvest-folk,
Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush
With hollow thunders. Down the dusk hillside
Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.
poem by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
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At dusk as I urged the fish too bite
I remember the lake light shining
Like a disk as I fished for perch or pike
At dusk as I urged the fish too bite!
Bite a spoon of shimmering bait…
I remember bats flitting and circling
Like the insects they longed to catch…
And the ripples left by fish, that had.
I remember the blunt roll-call home…
The boathouse like a sarcophagus…
With its two well rotten doors
Gaping open; like malnourished jaws.
Awaiting, deaths ferrymen back.
Back to them; keep net shores.
I remember the rolling. Fog, rising
About the gnarled chestnut trees
Billowing-out; into brackish reeds…
And then a slice of moon leaping,
Frantic; pulling line from my spool.
I remember the lake light shining
In the scales of a real; living ghoul
Plucked out of the waters fighting…
Was a fish that wasn't preschool.
poem by Mark Heathcote
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Aura
The air was dark
The moon was dark
The night was dark
The cloud was dark
The heat was dark
The stars were black
The birds were black
The eyes were black
The shadows were black
The planes were black
A sound of night
The hearts of night
A chase at night
A fall at night
No help at night
The night is night
Where is my sight
I have no sight
Your light was sight
No light no sight
No one in sight
The dark in sight
Don't call my name
What's my name
They call my name
That's not my name
Who said its my name
I have no name
You took my same
It was our same
She was our same
She's now your same
Its all the same
I'm not the same
Judas and my hand
You took my hand
'I do' my hand
You kissed my hand
You broke my hand
You fell my hand
A tear in sand
A heart in sand
A body in sand
Alone in sand
A dust in sand
At home in sand.
poem by Jenim Dibie
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By The Sea
Bright skies of summer o’er the deep,
And soft salt air along the land,
The blue wave, lisping in its sleep,
Sinks gently on the yellow sand;
And gray-winged seagulls slowly sweep
O’er scattered bush and white-limbed tree
Where the red cliffs like bastions stand
To front the salvos of the sea,
Now lulled by its own melody.
Yonder the rising waters ride,
O’er ironstone masses, celled and worn;
There, gnarled and bent by wind and tide,
A single mangrove stands forlorn,
Alone in melancholy pride
A symbol of the soul of man
In Life’s wild surges tossed and torn,
That yearns amid the battle’s van
For the vast good it may not scan.
Along this silent shining sand
Come, brother of my heart, with me,
Tho’ I have never felt thine hand
And tho’ thine eyes I ne’er may see,
Yet somewhere or by sea or land
Thine heart and mine keep equal beat,
And in Life’s strange eternity
Responsive souls perchance may meet,
And know each other ere they greet.
Begone regret and carking care
That to the murky world belong
The chimes of earth and sea and air
Ring softened here to elfin song.
Come, friend of solitude, to where
The low dark jetty meets the blaze
Of sky and waters slumbering long,
Here let us dream while ocean plays
The mystic chants of golden days.
poem by George Essex Evans
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Keep five yards from a carriage, ten yards from a horse, and a hundred yards from an elephant; but the distance one should keep from a wicked man cannot be measured.