The pub were full the night we met,
Ol’ Benny Hawkins and me.
The crew were rowdy – we sailed the next day –
And the rum were flowin’ quite free!
I sat and watched Ben drink all night

Icicles

Icy blue zephyr
Like a blacksmith hammering
Forges cold daggers

Hummingbird

Tiny green jouster
Invisible horse, red cape
Never ending quest

Alien Features

I looked for you today, but couldn't find you.
Into the forest I ran, laughing in the sun,
Knowing I would see you.

"Are you behind this tree? That pine?
In the limbs of that oak?"

The swirling mist condenses,
It clouds my eyes and mutes the colors of creation.

My paintings are never to be completed.
My life’s work now nothing but a haunting memory.

He was not dashing; he was not tall,
But he was as brave as a man can be.
He had spent his life in Army blue,
Enlisting in ‘61 to set slaves free.

Buried deep within me is a memory --

Of always being hungry . . .
Of hunting across wide plains . . .
Of burning back the night with fire.

Was that me, Buck?

I think so.

It’s that moment,
You know the one:

When the mother wraps the little boy in her arms
And carries him to the car because the Fair is over,
It’s time to go home.

There are some things that will never be,
Some things I can only see with my mind’s eye.
But that doesn’t make them less real,
These things that when I feel, I want to cry.

Gather around me, ye brave seadogs,
And I’ll tell ye a tale of the sea,
Believe what ye will when I’m finished,
But remember that no tale is free.

Twenty years ago I was a pirate,

Out of the darkness . . .
From a mist thick enough to obscure the hand before my face,
Comes a voice . . .
A voice so sweet that I can taste the syrupy, honey-flavored words,

They can make me cry out in pain . . .
They have done so before and will do so again.

They can make me bleed . . .
Dark, red blood without the succor of death.

They can make me run and hide

Imagine that on that fog-shrouded airfield
With the twin-engined transport
Sitting on the tarmac in the background
And Rick’s farewell ringing in her ears,
Ilsa had said:

“Get aloft,” the captain shouted,
“There’s a prize to be taken out there!
Man your guns and prepare for a battle
Each survivor takes an equal share!”

“I loved you more than I ever loved anything,”
Said the old cowboy with a tear in his eye,
“And now all I can do is curse at the moon
And ask why, oh why, did you have to die?”

(With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, Young E. Allison, and pirates everywhere!)

Fifteen men ‘round the Christmas tree,
Ho, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!
All were pirates including me.