POEM TITLE
Black Thoughts on Deck
POEM
Black Thoughts On Deck
By Clark Zlotchew
Midnight on deck.
Thinking of Blackness on Sea
on the Firth of Forth,
and The Lobster Pot Pub,
thousands of miles away.
While I stand watch in
the here and the now,
in this tropical black bay,
where the fresh salt air
wrestles with the heat
that radiates from land.
And thr brisk briny breeze
struggles
with the pungent aroma
of raw tobacco leaf,
with clinging odors
of human sweat,
of cheap perfumes,
of disinfectant.
Memories flood over me like the oceans I’ve traversed,
when fierce winds drove waves like mountains of water,
to crash on decks of ships I sailed, threatening
to cause the frail craft to founder and plunge
deep down and deeper, down, down and way down
to the bottom of the sea,
to bring me and my vessel to anchor
in the briny domains of Davey Jones.
Yet it always surged up and out of that aqueous Valley of Death,
to soar toward heaven on the black back of a beast made of water.
I remember storms and tempests and hurricanes ferocious,
and labors and dangers and brawls in seedy taverns,
and friends and shipmates who have sailed their last voyage,
and women I once loved and who’d even loved me.
I recall old tunes with heavy nostalgia
for things that were then, but now are no more.
No more.
But now I search beyond
my shadowy steel vessel,
gaze toward the horizon,
the invisible horizon,
the black horizon.
The bay is black.
The sky is black,
but the bay is blacker,
with a slick, oily blackness,
a glossy blackness
that glows and shimmers,
reflects moonlight.
A polished black jewel
glinting blackly
under a bright light
in a shop window.
Tiny points of light sketch
the invisible curve of the bay,
where the shore holds the line
against the aqueous tide.
The lights form a necklace of pearls
on the black plush bed of a jewel case.
No.
A string of pearls on the dark throat,
on the dark breast,
of a lovely lady,
or a diadem of lemon jade
crowning black tresses.
Lights that separate night-blinded water
from night-blinded land.
Black abutting black.
In truth, the lights embrace tall masts
of seaworthy stalwarts destined
to dash bravely,
to crash gayly
through tempest and squall,
splitting the sea, heaving white foam.
Now shamefully imprisoned,
moored
to this tropical pier:
(Swift Arabian stallions
Created to prance gallantly,
To charge valiantly,
Now tethered in
stone-paved courtyards.)
Jets of steam
Hiss
Intermittently
From these dozing steel giants.
Against the black sky,
The puffs of vapor are
White,
Snow white,
pure white,
Like human breath
in a Scottish winter,
Like freshly fallen snow.
Against the blackness of night,
They appear clearly.
They appear briefly.
They appear only to
Disappear,
To dissolve, to dissipate,
Instantaneously,
To become nothing.
Nothing!
Without leaving a trace, a residue,
Some sign they had existed!
Other specks of light,
at points within
the burnished black bay,
gently swaying, revolving,
slowly… slowly… slowly…
almost imperceptibly
(as in nightmares of futile flight)
around an invisible sun,
a black sun:
Vessels at anchor, each
gently turning on her axis.
Those glowing mast lights:
Beacons of hope in their restricted plight?
Candles to cheer the gloom of night?
Torches that flame with pride and might?
No.
I lift my eyes to the black firmament.
The contrast jolts.
The mast lights below are pale,
The mast lights are stale,
sickly yellow, jaundiced, sour,
compared with the bright,
the immaculate
blue-white sparkle of stars overhead.
But the stars glint hard as diamonds,
cold as ice.
They are shards from a blasted iceberg
Scattered
Throughout the vast heavens,
Throughout the black depths of endless space.
I’m suspended in time,
Suspended in space.
I’m one of the lights in the bay,
swaying yellowly in the darkness
under the illusion of motion,
becalmed in a stagnant black ocean,
circling in place.
No.
I’m one of the stars
in the most remote,
in the most frigid
regions of outer space.
Alone.
POEM TITLE
The Omen
POEM
The Omen
By Clark Zlotchew
At The Lobster Pot Pub, in Blackness on Sea
Murray sits back and sips his black tea.
Sees a dust cloud approach, obscuring the sun.
The cloud rolls nearer, prompts an urge to run.
He spies a white stallion with its rider astride,
A woman in flowing silk the color of gold.
Her countenance radiates an overweening pride
That stirs a vague memory of a story once told.
Long blond hair like her white stallion’s mane,
Her saddle is golden, of silver each rein.
She leads a black mare by a black leather tether,
The white and the black, they now canter together.
The mare’s red saddle is tooled with great care.
The mare has no rider, the saddle is bare.
She sings a strange anthem, a weird, haunting song,
In a voice softly tender while so harshly strong,
Whose melody holds rapture, strangely tinged with sorrow.
It augurs for Murray an uncanny tomorrow.
At the sound of her voice, falcons cease from soaring,
They perch on tree limbs to listen and reckon,
The farmer cuts off his motor’s rude roaring,
Cattle stop grazing, though grass does beckon.
The song then ends, insufficiently long.
“Woman,” he asks, “please tell me your name.”
“Never. Yes, Never and I are the same.”
“Never,” he beseeches, “to me teach your song.”
Her grey-eyed gaze provokes a chill.
She gestures to the saddle, so blood-red still,
Fixed upon that mare, black as blackest jet.
A beast is it only, or an omen and a pet?
She then proclaims this cryptic tiding:
“My song is for him who with me goes riding.
If to learn my song is your wish and your will,
Then get you up on that jet-black back,
And if resolve aplenty you do not lack,
What is now so empty you will fill,
For I teach my song to him alone,
Who with me makes bold to ride.
So, ride and abide right at my side,
But know that later you alone must atone.
POEM TITLE
poem "Song of the Sea"
POEM
Song of the Sea
By Clark Zlotchew
The old man climbs to that space in the attic,
filled with dust, and cobwebs and mem’ries now ancient.
He crawls on all fours, searches and finds it:
A cheap old suitcase, battered and beaten,
like the old man himself, broken down and decrepit.
He stares at this memento, this relic, this keepsake,
and he remembers.
Memories flood over him like the oceans he traversed,
when fierce winds drove waves like mountains of water,
to crash on decks of ships he sailed, threatening
to cause the frail craft to founder and plunge
deep down and deeper, down, down and way down
to the bottom of the sea,
to bring him and his vessel to anchor
in the briny domains of Davey Jones.
Yet it always surged up and out of that aqueous Valley of Death,
to soar toward heaven on the back of a beast made of water.
When he was young, he’d yearned to break out
of the hemmed-in circle of an East Coast city,
confined to this one little point, chained to this spot
on the map of our world so enormous, so immense,
which stretched out before him to what seemed like infinity,
which seduced with its vastness, its beckoning giganticity.
From an office in a tower looming o’er streets and dark alleys,
where people below scurried through steel and glass valleys,
he peered out a window as through a glass darkly
at sky above and river below, river sky-blue, river so sparkly,
a mirror to the azure heavens above,
celestial ribbon gleaming as it flows
through cities so crowded and abysmally grey.
He watched countless ships ply north and ply south,
dreamily gazed at vessels on route to its mouth,
work-a-day tankers and commonplace freighters,
gleaming-white cruisers for tourists on vacations,
pleasure ships, adventure ships, bound for exotic locations:
The Lobster Pot Pub for excellent grub in Blackness on Sea,
Great lobster dinners, among saints and sinners, or a cup of tea,
fountains of Rome, sled-dogs in Nome, the Tower of Pisa,
castles in Spain, Jerusalem’s domain, pyramids at Giza,
boatmen who sing on Venetian canals, a Wall in Cathay,
isles of the sea where grass-skirted girls swing and then sway
‘neath date palms in trade-winds, to pulsating rhythms,
to the beat of the drums, to the beat of his pulse.
In his head, in his heart, in the depths of his soul,
to see them, to know them, became his chief goal.
He bought that cheap suitcase made of cardboard and glue,
said farewell to his boss, and took payment due,
signed on to a freighter to work and to sweat,
to swab decks and load bales in cold and in heat.
Tonight, his gaze rests on that beat-up old suitcase,
kindling memories of cruises undertaken in youth
to the outermost lands of the bright golden sands,
where he thrilled to the sight of shores unfamiliar,
feeling new climates and greeting new nations.
He steamed north to the end of inhabited lands,
Murmansk and Hammerfest, those frigid arctic ports,
then south to the end of all human habitation,
to a town named Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego,
where fragile mere humans have put down their roots
beyond the old limits of his too-familiar world,
beyond his imprisoning, his restricting horizons.
Fifty years he roamed on seven stormy seas.
Half a century on deck with scarce a moment of ease.
He lived and he loved in the heat of the tropics.
He lived and he loved in harbors choked with ice.
He lived and he loved till vigor waned and departed.
He drags the shabby suitcase down the dusty stairs,
Sets it on bear rug from Disenchantment Bay.
Old and decrepit he sits by the fire
to sip his rum toddy and play on guitar
old tunes recalled with heavy nostalgia
for things that were then, but now are no more.
His gaze on that suitcase, like him old and scruffy,
views a veritable sea chest filled with journeys and exploits,
a treasure trove of mem’ries of persons and places
and storms and tempests and hurricanes ferocious,
of labors and dangers and brawls in seedy taverns,
of friends and shipmates who have sailed their last voyage,
and of women he once loved and who’d even loved him.