We pray to many Gods at sea and call on them to do their stuff. 
We are uncertain folk and practical with our prayers when seas
are rough.  If our ships breaks down and hands are lost, we bail,
we stroke, we do not curse the rain, or blame the sun
flaming out across the skies, sinking lower than the ocean's rise.
We are down to earth and civil men
with a love of honor and useful work to do the job and get it done
when times are touch.  We rub the salt and scrub the skin,
clean the corpse of dirt and sin before we slide it down into
the deep.  We must be brave and keep afloat, shore the leak and
save one boat, or all of us will drown.  We study charts.
We do what must be done by being of this world,
hissing and purring like the oiled ball bearings of an engine room,
shafts pumping, steam building up within the pot.
But pressure mounts below the deck as icy panic sweats the clock,
beats the skull, clangs the metal with an iron wrench, claws the brain,
men vomiting, throwing up, panting as the soul escapes, crows
squawking, children running through the howling storm, when suddenly
there is a moment of grace, a week of truce, pure white space,
when oceans are as still, and flat as a virgin bride lying
on a featherbed, petrified, as we sit down with knives and forks
to operate.  Sometimes setting sun and the pain of disappearing
coheres and we feel so insignificant, it's hard to keep 
from crying.  It's then that we go deep into the shell to formulate some
sane response, descending to the mouth of hell with prayers
alone.  We smoke a butt to calm the nerves, fingers trembling,
nostrils flaring.  Actions must be orderly, right, proper
in the blaring light of mortal combat.  Maps measured, muscles 
sprung, radar scans the moon for saboteurs.  Scope is up.
Target's sighted.  Eyes open wide until the mind squeezes the trigger.
Thunder booms, ship shakes.  The fantail rides like a bucking bronc.
We tape all screams.  We tape the mirrors of our mental madness
gaping holes, breaking glass.  No man should be allowed to see
his bleeding heart, the aching loss of women loved, aborting life.
When squalls are up and whacking wild, provoking us to run away,
insulting bravery on a catwalkwire, we accept this wisepunk challenge
bending low and moving fast
straight into the center of eternal fight, like holy men on coals of fire.
No laughing now with knives flashing, arms waving,
pitched into a bloody chum,
swimming to the ends of time, arteries aging, centrifuge
of motion winding down, five bells ringing, curtaintime, closing.
We cut a course through a sea of glass, dozing, erupting, blowing gas.
We grin and bear this farcical mess, drinking coffee, watching
sunset splash and day say to night, ‘it's done!'
What gods shall we dump into the sea just for fun?
We agree.
All of them.
Save one.
 

Order of the Day

It's the order of the day to be taunted by the sea,
anointed by a hurricane with a sense of humor.
In the time it takes for a line to snap or a single bird to fly the coop,
great armadas disappear,
go down.
Haunted by this mal de mer we pray to God to interfere
before we drown.

On a dead calm night when my watch was still,
a massive wave slammed the hull and sliced through steel
the way a butcher guts a cow.
There were screams, noise, men and boys flailing
on the outward tide.
Dazed by the fury of this shark attack,
I lost ability to play, to be resilient in this century.
Numb, I became a refugee.

When least expected, least demanded,
least believed in anything at all,
sanity resumed on Friday.
In front of my nose in a provocative pose
was a Great Blue Whale sunning her body.
She was singing a song lasting ten minutes long
of crude and ribald fantasy.

Her gown was made of barnacles,
shells more beautiful than gold,
and when she breached, she reached into the sky.
In the time it takes for clouds to rain or a fool to piss away his pain,
her calf was born.
It is the order of the day to be amazed,
to be torn in two.
 

Papageno in the Shower

Yesterday they strapped me to a bosun's chair
and I went sailing high above the moon.

When I looked down, waves were rushing by
like bulls thundering across the plains

and I thought what would happen if I fell onto their horns.
I stagger from a troubled sleep and hit the lights.

Steaming water soaks my skin and soap 
washes over me with graceful rain.

I feel so good to be alive, I want my foes to be alert
to arias of bellicosity.

I place a song inside a sling and heave it through the air
to ring inside Goliath's head and I connect,

nasally resplendent, contented amateur.
Quivering with vocal passion, dripping wet,

I serenade the world at large with mighty choruses
Mozartian duets.

Today is Sabado,
time to cheer the week, reconstitute,

Papageno in the shower,
washing his magic flute.
 

Crossing the Border

City stink smacks my nose and makes me tumble down the gangplank.
There's a stench to Terra Firma as I slip and slide in mud.
My first whiff of action is a stroll across the border to rustle up
the sweat of dockside ladies.  They blow my tubes, scrape the rust,
set my clock in motion.  On the other side of the city crossroads
is a pothole two miles deep, wider than the kraken's jaws.
One mistake and I will stumble off the edges of the world, down
into this toothed vagina.  Crossing here is beery and bizarre,
my mythic confrontation every time I row ashore.  Horns blare,
policemen shout, howler monkeys run about chattering invectives,
showing off their flaming derrieres.
I spent my youth shooting pool, dancing the herky jerky with local
widow wives, who bit my neck, sucked my blood, and dragged me to their
living room theatricals to meet famiglia.  Not to be outdone by all
the goombahs of the neighborhood, I took to roller skating on the
backs of blue Mercedes, scratched my Star of David on their hoods.
The five top families swore a biting oath to break my fucking arms
and legs, Matzu Christi!  Fifty years later, they remember me
with foggy apprehension, ask me for a sailor song to goad their memories,
an operatic cavatina.  They've now worked a lifetime for their
common transformation and await oncoming death by eating pastries,
muttering threats to no one in particular.  They drink their coffee
black as pitch and say their lives are moderately wasted.
The finality of nothing gained irritates my psyche.  I'm not interested
in endings, but in crossing borders.
Old friend weep as they embrace me.  Everything aches, eyes,
arthritic knees.  They tried demystifying the daily dose of being
dead but they never could get away with it.  Their days diminish
in front of my eyes like they always did.
On a table filled with beer and pastafazool lie the skeletal remains
of a feast in progress, my homecoming party.  I feel like Bright
Ulysses, Wandering Jew, for it's quite a spread.  Candelabras are 
burning in my honor, and I am center stage, outlined by a halo
of lights to bring them hope, a laugh, I don't know, maybe a memory
a long time ago when I pissed from a five story window
down onto Don Chichi's fedora.  I believe I was whistling Forza Del Destino.
So now we're laughing.  This is the way to go.
I minister my Yiddish comedy as best as I can muster, for them,
and for me.  I make them howl, and I make them groan.  I make them 
double up and laugh their heads off.  And then I rise, and like
Babe Ruth, pointing to the bleachers, holding time in the bottom
of my hand, I throw a beer against the wall and it shatters.
"Mother of God!", they leap up, crying.  "Did you see that?
You haven't changed! You haven't changed at all!"
 

Coffee on the Morning Watch

berries
mangled into magic powers
set aflame
black as you can make it
strong as you can take the rising heat
and salty sweat
this panther in my throat
raw and radical
dynamite
tribal history
hand over hand
and bit by bit
lowering the cowardly king
into a open boat
shark filled sea
horses prance
camel van traverse the dunes
swirling sand
there before me
rasing   falling
a crescent moon.