on the pier

[revolutionrabbit]

I was on the pier
the sun was a huge orange peanut candy
the ocean wanted to drink me like a beer
the pier was a finger pointing to a star
I stood and looked over the railing
at the choppy sea caps becoming diamonds
I looked back at the houses on the hill
behind that also look like cheap paperback
novels

the wind was licking me like a salty dog
I was lost in a reflection of life and moments
washing over me like childhoods and zoos
the sound of the ocean pulsing in my blood
here the laughter of sun waves and fishermen
there is a strange music that lingers from
other times other nights spent on the pier
looking at the stars above and the stars below
looking and waiting for the world to roll over
like a whale

on the pier I hear voices of mythological gods
I remember ancient days and modern ones
I am seeing sea shells float through pink eons
the crash of the waves like the endless foot steps
of strangers on the planks and the smell of sea rot
I'm waiting on the pier for a mermaid or a starfish
or the man with a bag of junk so I can remember
why I came here all those years ago looking for
the orange peanut candy sun and a lost poet

[stilltrucking]

on a pier in Morrow Bay, or Astoria, or Ilwaco, or as a kid back in Baltimore even.

The memory so sweet
even with smell of the sea rot


palpable poignancy

thanks for the poetry

I don't know what it is about the sea that draws poets. I can relate to it even if I am not a poet. Fore me it is like homesickness.
poets are homesick angels.

[revolutionrabbit]

I began writing poetry seriously in a little town called Capitola on the northern California coast that had a pier.But I remember living in Redondo beach as a small child, and my mother took me for walks along the beach and on the pier.And for some reason I always remember a candy peanut colored orange, which for some reason reminds me of my mentor who was from LA. and was a surfer, which for some reason reminds me of Bukowski who lived in San Pedro a harborside city near L.A. the last years of his life.

[stilltrucking]

I was lucky enough to be employed on a fishing boat out of Rockport Texas. We fished the west coast from Morro Bay up to British Columbia. Only six weeks of my life, but a peak experience I will never forget.
And I will never forget the captain of that boat
His name was Wolf Larsen.
Yes San Pedro, where we sold our fish.



One day when I am old enough
I wish I could sail away into a sunrise
and disappear



In the mean time I sit on the dock with Otis Reading.

pardon the ramble
thank you for the poem and a wiff of freedom


Dug your poem
I am sea haunted since I floated in that dark sea within my mother's belly.

[SmileGRL]

rr...i liked the image of the wind licking like a salty dog and the sentimental feel of the whole poem.

and if i may, stilltrucking...

I don't know what it is about the sea that draws poets. I can relate to it even if I am not a poet. Fore me it is like homesickness.
poets are homesick angels.

yes. all of that.

[stilltrucking]

I always remember a candy peanut colored orange,

Yes that is what made my memory of the Waterfront in Baltimore so sweet even with the smell of the dead rats with maggots.

"candy peanut colored orange" such an innocent childhood color,

I guess that bit I should have mentioned, like a Proust and his cookie thing kicking off vivid memories.

Sorry I get so literal with your poem
the visceral reaction to the odors overcame the light of the vision.
ie the sea rot.

them dam alleys still haunt my dreams sixty years later.
I would always take the back alleys to avoid the truant officer.

Yes SmG, and all that too, and more than I can say.
Seems like the older I get the more of a trip poetry has become for me.
one of the blessings of longevity.
I am grateful that Herr Rabbit shares it with me.

[mtmynd]

an unusually melancholic piece, RR, and one that I, too, enjoyed.

the sea, the sea... the mysterious sea
that calls for you and it calls for me
the sea, the sea, whose waves wave
waiting our return from where we came

[joel]

rr...i liked the image of the wind licking like a salty dog and the sentimental feel of the whole poem.

and if i may, stilltrucking...

I don't know what it is about the sea that draws poets. I can relate to it even if I am not a poet. Fore me it is like homesickness.
poets are homesick angels.

yes. all of that.

YES YES YES

If poets live like angels sick for home,
and angels live as messengers of fire—
of all-consuming fire—that, like the stars
of galaxies forever never to
be known, exists like something hidden, then
it’s awesome for a poet: life is awe
and awful, life is love and loveless, life
is poetry and poetless—like strife
unstriven, seen as something nothing saw
like raw and wondered dreams from evenings when
some poem set itself as prophets’ dew
on prophets’ oracles. And yet it mars
the process of a verse to then inquire
of hidden flames where angel poets roam.

...fire on the water...

...and, of course, Herr Rabbit, wunderbar. Wahrscheinlich wunderbar!

[revolutionrabbit]

it.

it is odd to me that childhood memories
or lack of them, seem to trigger some
association that sends certain images
spiraling back, as if there is a poem,
one certain poem that always sits there
like a poet like a person about to write
a poem, always just about to be written

but when you actually write it
it takes on other tones other color
other fragments of other poems
other scents that drift in and out
like some smell that exists like
a unknown that is many different
ones together or like the smell of
silence, or that initial impulse
to put it into words

it becomes the presence of the poem
that is always moving through itself
that is perhaps why, the word alley
is always my first beat image, like
man, it all happened there, dig!
jazz

myself, from a poem, rather i am still
standing on the pier of the poem
with a deep look I look out to the ocean
and then I turn around and walk
back to the place I came from

yes, there is a profound difference
between that look out to empty nothings
that vast stretch of the imagination
like the metaphor in the poem
and where it came from

but that difference is what makes the poem

and after all this writing, it still is all in flux

so I refer back to the poets that inspire me

and having said that I reflect on it, what
could i have said in a better way, or is there
some point of departure where I would have
said it in another way, is it clear i want?
is it possible to make it any clearer?

and it fades

...and the wind licked me like a rain drop