Tom Lyford has original poetry books and memoirs for sale on-line, and offers poetry readings and workshops in northern New England...
  • Home
    • MISSION STATEMENT
    • MISSION RESTATEMENT
  • Hometown D-F
    • Dover-Foxcroft: the BORING FACTS yadda yadda
    • D-F IMAGES
    • DOVER-FOXCROFT...?
  • Poems
    • D-F POEMS >
      • THE ARRIVAL
      • FIRE AND ICE
      • GOOD OL BOYS
      • MASONRY
      • MERRICK SQUARE MARKET
      • PLEASANT STREET ELEMENTARY
      • THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
      • THE PLEASANT STREET PHANTOM
      • MASONRY
    • CEREBRAL SIMILES >
      • EASTER PARADE
      • ALTERED STATES
      • TELEPHONE POLES
      • GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
      • MEMPHIS BELLE
      • THIS BODY?
      • THE BIG CHILL
    • JUKEBOX POETRY >
      • 102.5
      • INVITATION TO THE BLUES
      • JUKE BOX JOHNNY
      • REQUIEM
      • SPELLBOUND
      • WOLFEN
    • RUMINATIONS >
      • 3RD ROCK
      • I ROBOT
      • ORIENTATION
      • THE RIGHT STUFF
      • VECTOR ANALYSIS
    • NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE, TOTO >
      • EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS!!!
      • WITNESS PROTECTION COUNTY
      • TWO-HEADED MAN RUNS FOR MAYOR
      • THE STING
    • TRIBUTES >
      • TO LEONARD...
      • MR. SALINGER...
      • MIXIN' UP THE MEDICINE
      • RIDING AROUND IN STEPHEN KING
  • Prose
    • Man on the Flying Trapeze
  • Bio
  • Reviews
    • NO DAFFODILS REVIEW
    • PLAYING WITH FIRE
    • PLAYING WITH FIRE (Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards Commentary)
    • MY CINEMA PARADISO
    • KILROY WAS HERE and WORK AVERSION TRAUMA double-review
    • AMERICANA REVIEW
    • PLEASANT STREET REVIEW
  • Events
  • Influences
    • LITERARY
    • MOTIVATIONAL
    • BIZARRO
  • eMail
  • Buy
  • A / V
    • Video Catalogue
    • Audio
  • BLOG

A POEM REFERENCING MOBY DICK...

6/14/2010

0 Comments

 
Picture
What men dwell on when they go to sea...


JAWS  (for Officer Brody)

We’re gonna need a bigger boat… 
is what I say to Phyl… us, surrounded
by the circus of breaching leviathans, fantails
wider than the
Orca’s deck on this whale watch
I swore she’d never drag
me on after twice reading
Moby Dick and watching Jaws a few too many times
(if that’s possible)… 

her seeing me as The Clown, my familiar humor
only a fleeting distraction— my sole purpose on earth:
keeping this woman in smiles— but me, seriously
identifying with
Jaws' hydrophobic Brody, me weak
in the knees with vertigo at the thought of
twenty thousand leagues of watery grave looming
below us and patiently trolling the surface… waiting on

Ol’ Man Gravity to reel us down… and so, humor being
my best coping skill, like whistling through the cemetery
at midnight, I kill both gulls with one stone, leaning
into her as we brace for the next swell on rubbery
sea legs, and me plucking the invisible Chesterfield
out of my mug and crushing it under the toe of my
boat shoe while muttering in my best Bogart…

When this tub goes belly-up, kid, shtick with me, see?
I got us a plan. “And what’s the big plan, Ahab?”
Party balloons, shweetheart… “Party balloons?”
That’s right, beautiful: I’m packin’— The way I see it,
when this floating coffin rolls over, I give you half, see?
That’s when we start blowin’em up ‘n stuffin’ our shirts…
But sudden flukes slap surf off the starboard and

I lose her to the spectacle--
so I, too, marvel for a while…
secretly fingering that very
real packet of red, green,
yellow and blue birthday
balloons nesting in

my jacket pocket...

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    THIS IS IT--
    YOU'VE FOUND THE BLOG...

    Picture

    MAJOR TOM
    (to Ground Control)

    Tom Lyford

    ...who used to be an English teacher... and who used to be a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a king...

    Archives

    February 2013
    January 2013
    July 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010

    Categories

    All
    1950s
    1953
    1960s
    1970s
    Acceptance
    Aging
    Ahab
    Alone In A Crowd
    Altered States
    Alzheimers
    American
    Americana
    Anger Management
    Animal House Urban Trapper
    Attraction Of Opposites
    Audio Poem
    Authority
    Authority Figures
    Baby Boomers
    Bad To The Bone
    Banned Books
    Basic Training
    Basic Training Orientation
    Basketball
    Beards
    Bears
    Beat Generation
    Beatniks
    Beauty
    Beauty Is Relative
    Bible
    Bicycles
    Big Chill
    Bikers In English Class
    Birth
    Bison
    Blackbird Jungle
    Blackboard Jungle
    Black Magic
    Bonfires
    Born To Lose
    Bosses
    Buffalo Jeep Safari
    Calvin Wright
    Camaraderie
    Cave Canem
    Censorship
    Character Sketch
    Cinema
    Cinema Paradiso
    Comb Overs
    Confession
    Cowboys
    Cry Me A River
    Curmudgeon Blues
    Curmudgeons
    Custer State Park
    Cwy Me A Wivvuh
    Cyber-Life
    Cyr Bus Tour
    Dan Mcgrew
    Dark Humor
    Dark Mood
    Dead End
    Deadwood
    Death
    Democracy
    Denial
    Depreciation
    Dexter
    Discipline
    Disney Girls
    Diversity
    Dna
    Doggerel
    Dogs That Don't Bark
    Dogs Without Leash Laws
    Dover Foxcroft
    Dover-Foxcroft
    Drill Instructors
    Dumbing Down
    Eagle
    Easter
    Emotional Turmoil
    End Of The World
    Epiphany
    E.T.'s
    Existentialism
    Explosives & Demolitions
    Fashion
    Fatalism
    Favorite Radio Station
    Fear Of Water
    Feeling Dangerous
    Fickle Finger Of Fate
    Fire Of Love
    Following Orders
    Found Chords
    Friendship
    Full Monty
    Gambling
    Gangster Motif
    Gardiner
    Gary Larson
    Good Ol
    Good Vibrations
    Goose
    Grande Distractions
    Growing Up
    Halloween
    Hav-a-Harts
    Haying
    Helen Of Troy
    High School
    High School Heartthrobs
    High School Hijinks
    History Channel Spoof
    Human
    Human Contact
    Humor
    Ice-skating
    Inauguration Poem
    In My Day
    I Robot
    Irony
    Jack Mccall
    Jaws
    Jaws Tribute
    Jukebox
    Jumping Rope
    Kilroy Was Here
    Lanpher
    Last Man On Earth
    Little Big Man
    Loneliness
    Lost Chords
    Love
    Love Of Reading
    Lustlove
    Maine
    Maine Arts
    Maine Poetry
    Mama Said
    Man And Machine
    Marbles
    March 8 2011
    Marking Territory
    Marlboro Man
    Marriage
    Masochism
    Medicine For Melancholy
    Memoir 2
    Merrick Square Market
    Me-time
    Military Connections
    Military Testing
    Minnesota
    Minor Keys
    Moby Dick
    Mortality
    Movies
    Music
    National Guard
    Neighborhoods
    Nostalgia
    Novelty
    Numbers Suck
    Obsessive Compulsions
    Odes
    Oh Lonesome Me
    Old People
    On The Beach
    Open-Mics
    Opposites Attract
    Orientation
    Outhouses
    Paper Route
    Parallel Worlds
    Paregoric
    Paris
    Parts Of Speech
    Peace Messages
    Perspective
    Peter Pan
    Philosophy
    Phonographs
    Pinocchio
    Place As Mood
    Playground
    Playing
    Playing With Fire
    Poet Defined
    Poetic License
    Poet Laureate
    Poetry
    Poetry And Sex
    Poetry And Striptease
    Poetry As Striptease
    Pop-culture
    Pop Music
    Press Release
    Primary School
    Propaganda
    Prose Excerpt
    Public Schools
    Puritanism
    Real Poets
    Rebellion
    Recurring Dreams
    Regimentation
    Relationships
    Relativity
    Repressing Feelings
    Rhubarb
    Risk-taking
    Robert J. Duffy
    Robert Mitchum
    Rollerskating
    Romance
    Roots
    Scotty
    Sebec
    Sebec Lake
    Seduced
    Sex
    Shit For Brains
    Smoking
    Solitude
    South Dakota
    Space Race
    Spellbound
    Spelling
    Spinster Teachers
    Spring
    Sputnik
    Stephen King
    Storm Warning
    Strangers
    Strawberry-Rhubarb Pies
    Streaking
    Student Teaching
    Survival Of The Fittest
    Sweetness Vs. Tartness
    Tabloids
    Tarzan
    Teaching
    Technology
    Telephone Poles
    The Badlands
    The Darker Side Of Things
    The Dark Side
    The Fun We Had
    The Sting
    Thunder Road
    Tom Lyford
    Toner And Serotonin
    Total Solar Eclipse 1963
    Trace Evidence
    Tribes
    Turning Points
    Twelve Step Programs
    Urban
    Urban Legends Blues
    Ursaphobia
    Vacation
    Varmints
    Vector Analysis
    Video Poem
    Vintage Movie Posters
    Visual Metaphors
    Walter Mitty Imagination
    Want Ads
    We Are Not Alone
    Whales
    Whale-watching
    Wheels
    Wild Bill Hickok
    Wild Party
    Wisconsin
    Witness
    Wolfen
    Word Power
    Wordsmithing
    Words Vs Numbers
    Working
    Wwii Conceit
    Youth

Dover-Foxcroft's Rogue Poet Laureate since... well, OK... only 2010
✕