Submissions by hemihead (hemi)
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
Free….
LOVE POEM
Published
15th Aug 2015 7:22am
15th Aug 2015 7:22am
all we earn
walked down that hill today
past the graveyard
toward the sea
all the way down to the place
where we'll dig the big hole
for the best rock on the island
walked all the way down to the edge
to where that good rock
hard basalt
comes out from under the earth
that’s the rock we want
old as hell
hard as hell
volcano-made
bed rock
for tough country
everything feels old here
even the trees carved
from something else
stooped low
surrendered
I...
past the graveyard
toward the sea
all the way down to the place
where we'll dig the big hole
for the best rock on the island
walked all the way down to the edge
to where that good rock
hard basalt
comes out from under the earth
that’s the rock we want
old as hell
hard as hell
volcano-made
bed rock
for tough country
everything feels old here
even the trees carved
from something else
stooped low
surrendered
I...
1327 reads
15 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
27th Jul 2015 9:34pm
27th Jul 2015 9:34pm
nowhere
could write all sorts of lies here
could be a poet about it
could pretend a real man
come out swinging and strong
but nothing true in that
8 years away from this city
and the first night I had the chance
with no eyes open to care
went back to the dark places
in those back alleys that stink like art
among the bums and working girls
to throw around cash and hard liquor
with good honest earthy types
who would only stab me for money
made them tell their stories
kept us drinking until they did
and they...
could be a poet about it
could pretend a real man
come out swinging and strong
but nothing true in that
8 years away from this city
and the first night I had the chance
with no eyes open to care
went back to the dark places
in those back alleys that stink like art
among the bums and working girls
to throw around cash and hard liquor
with good honest earthy types
who would only stab me for money
made them tell their stories
kept us drinking until they did
and they...
1316 reads
16 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
14th Jul 2015 9:06pm
14th Jul 2015 9:06pm
weather-eye blind
been eight months away with my boat, always close to her
eight months living bare foot with a sailor’s knife on my belt
the days calculated in distance to travel, food stowed and fuel in the tanks
my neck cricked permanent by my favourite bunk
days and days without talking, then wild nights in ports you never heard of
with people I’ll likely never meet again, sea-eyed types going somewhere else, for ever
got stories to tell of line squalls and night-time bar-crossings
of bad diesel and good men
of an engine that wouldn’t quit, right up...
eight months living bare foot with a sailor’s knife on my belt
the days calculated in distance to travel, food stowed and fuel in the tanks
my neck cricked permanent by my favourite bunk
days and days without talking, then wild nights in ports you never heard of
with people I’ll likely never meet again, sea-eyed types going somewhere else, for ever
got stories to tell of line squalls and night-time bar-crossings
of bad diesel and good men
of an engine that wouldn’t quit, right up...
968 reads
24 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
17th Jun 2015 10:08am
17th Jun 2015 10:08am
hard liquor, ugly answers
I know what you want and this aint it; a story of the sea, of some kind of victory, of leaving port on a good tide and making landfall some time after, with rum-eyes and a sailor’s walk. Well, not this time, not this tune.
This time I took to the sea and the sea didn’t want me. Just twelve hours in, seas steep and ugly, short hard breaking waves that pitched us up up and over, gut-emptying up and overs, and by then both my crew bedridden with seasickness, or fear, or both, and so in the darkness, 100 miles off the coast, I ate my heart and turned my boat around, retuned to the...
This time I took to the sea and the sea didn’t want me. Just twelve hours in, seas steep and ugly, short hard breaking waves that pitched us up up and over, gut-emptying up and overs, and by then both my crew bedridden with seasickness, or fear, or both, and so in the darkness, 100 miles off the coast, I ate my heart and turned my boat around, retuned to the...
1040 reads
11 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
2nd Jun 2015 3:28am
2nd Jun 2015 3:28am
low-talk liquor
In amongst the drinking and packing and last-chance plays to tidy up the women who I always figured might be alive to my way of thinking, there have been the unannounced visits from good men, visits from sailors, sea-dog skippers who have put small boats to sea in all the corners of the world.
They are the men who come with rum, to sit on the porch and talk in low voices of the ways an ocean trip can go sideways. We talk in low voices because it is the right way to speak of the wide open place, and we talk with rum because it makes us brave enough to admit fear.
...
They are the men who come with rum, to sit on the porch and talk in low voices of the ways an ocean trip can go sideways. We talk in low voices because it is the right way to speak of the wide open place, and we talk with rum because it makes us brave enough to admit fear.
...
938 reads
16 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
12th Apr 2015 7:20am
12th Apr 2015 7:20am
the whims of Tangaroa (caution - long as hell)
She was 80 feet long
fresh from a fitout in New Zealand
which included the best of every safety thing
she had a crew of pro sailors
all salty salts to their sailor’s beards
with a combined experience of half a million miles
on every sea
in every kind of boat
and still last winter
in the teeth of 80 knot winds
and 12 story high breaking waves
she went down
all hands lost
without even a word on the radio
just here...
fresh from a fitout in New Zealand
which included the best of every safety thing
she had a crew of pro sailors
all salty salts to their sailor’s beards
with a combined experience of half a million miles
on every sea
in every kind of boat
and still last winter
in the teeth of 80 knot winds
and 12 story high breaking waves
she went down
all hands lost
without even a word on the radio
just here...
1092 reads
19 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
1st Apr 2015 11:58pm
1st Apr 2015 11:58pm
the no yo-yo blues
coulda been hormones
coulda been no-drugs livin’
coulda been too much time alone
dunno
but the world went awful grey a while
dick went downward
sunsets got to not worth watching
even the hotrod sat in the shed
not a rev turned for a week
and another
and another
which is bad news
for a good one
what to do with that kind of life?
nothing
did nothing
kept getting up
kept walking every morning
kept shutting my head down
when the one-track thinking...
coulda been no-drugs livin’
coulda been too much time alone
dunno
but the world went awful grey a while
dick went downward
sunsets got to not worth watching
even the hotrod sat in the shed
not a rev turned for a week
and another
and another
which is bad news
for a good one
what to do with that kind of life?
nothing
did nothing
kept getting up
kept walking every morning
kept shutting my head down
when the one-track thinking...
1469 reads
31 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
10th Mar 2015 11:13pm
10th Mar 2015 11:13pm
cut
gone silent these last months
been doing my living on the inside
went three days last week with not a word said
except to the dog
and even then didn’t need more than a couple
because he understands the pointed finger
and can read me by the things I do
knows the hat I put on for beach walks
better than any mouth-noise worth the making
I can feel a time coming
when maybe speaking is dead gone
and even do my sailing single-handed
putting aside the people
go it alone
cast off and sail
me
my boat ...
been doing my living on the inside
went three days last week with not a word said
except to the dog
and even then didn’t need more than a couple
because he understands the pointed finger
and can read me by the things I do
knows the hat I put on for beach walks
better than any mouth-noise worth the making
I can feel a time coming
when maybe speaking is dead gone
and even do my sailing single-handed
putting aside the people
go it alone
cast off and sail
me
my boat ...
1186 reads
26 Comments
STORY POEM
Published
26th Feb 2015 00:42am
26th Feb 2015 00:42am
Stones in the house of god
First things first; you could ask why I’ve written something like this, when it’s all history, and anyway you can get all the history you want from the Centermind. Well, Centremind is all-knowing, that’s true, but truth has a way of changing, and sometimes I need to get things down to get them square, so, for better or worse, here is how I died and went to....
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I had just turned forty five when I first believed I might make it to immortality. The science was moving so fast, the ideas were coming so...
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I had just turned forty five when I first believed I might make it to immortality. The science was moving so fast, the ideas were coming so...
1030 reads
10 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
25th Feb 2015 1:48am
25th Feb 2015 1:48am
grunt zen
Not much gets writ about the weights room, probably not where the effeminate types get their joy, but lucky for us most of the good writers were never insipid lounge lizards. The better they wrote it, in general, the bigger they lived it. Only teenagers think that poetry is something removed from life, and in the weights room life is alive and lifting. There is a saying about lifting; your bitch missus mighta left you or your job might suck, but 200 pounds is 200 pounds. Either you can tear it from the floor or you can't. It can't be faked, can't be sneaked up on, can't be earned off the back...
876 reads
18 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
24th Feb 2015 00:59am
24th Feb 2015 00:59am
the sunlight of knowing
Living downstairs from me, on the ground floor of this old rundown beach house that I live in, is a bloke named Mick. He’s about forty, tanned and strong from surfing every day, and is a drinker by profession. So are most of his mates. I listen to them some nights, usually Fridays, when they party at Mick’s place. They drink and drink and drink, Mick, his mates and their women and kids, and the noise gets louder and louder, the laughter more obscene, guttural. Later at night the noise is frightening, not in volume, but in the zombie-like carnality of it, the feeling that nothing human remains...
831 reads
8 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
13th Feb 2015 00:07am
13th Feb 2015 00:07am
sea-dog songs
doing a lot of walking these days
out to the beach the headland
now that I’m leaving
happens every few years
‘cos the work's always shifting
and I'm not a bloke to grow moss
keep movin' movin'
the dog doesn’t know it yet
but it looks like we’re going country for a while
new job is a long way in
a long way up
in-the-mountains shit
I’ll miss the sea like a leg's been chopped
and the dog will be the same...
out to the beach the headland
now that I’m leaving
happens every few years
‘cos the work's always shifting
and I'm not a bloke to grow moss
keep movin' movin'
the dog doesn’t know it yet
but it looks like we’re going country for a while
new job is a long way in
a long way up
in-the-mountains shit
I’ll miss the sea like a leg's been chopped
and the dog will be the same...
851 reads
16 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by hemihead (hemi)
