Two Poems - The Mad Drinking Harpooner and An Old Sunrise

The Mad Drinking Harpooner

He grunted like a hog

His lips deep purple from the wet and cold

All his insides like burnt cinder

Gritty as sand

His tongue rolled out of his mouth

Like a dead bull in the arena

It is a terrible thing,

A Night's long drinking; thus,

The youthful harpooner

Looked about for a drink of water

Found one, his mouth sizzled

Like a heated brick,

And like many a-men, like him

He died young-

(Right then and there; his heart stopped)

His head had gone round and round

His heart and soul deserting the ship

Slave to the night and drink

It refused to revive...

Ah, is it not true, youth knows not

Its capacity, nor is it

Undeterred...to stop!

Note: 9-6-2010 (No: 2782)

An Old Sunrise

((Poetic Prose) (No: 2780/9-6-2010))

It is pleasant to be alive, the old man said, and drank a common man's drink in this tiny no man's bar, called "Pigs-eye," along the Mississippi, but then the rich man gave him a drink for kings. The hot smooth liquor soaked into his old iron ribs: "It's biting alive," he remarked, "it warms the belly and soul, for in old age, the heart grows cold;" the old man remembering when he was just a kid, running to those old abandoned houses, in the inner city, near where he lived. He was born, he told the middle aged rich man, "When the old fishing creek, was full of fish," that's how he remember his age, now seventy-nine, he was very old, it was now 1880, he muttered all this (a thing that was). "Tell me the secret," the rich man asked, "how did you live so long?"

"A man is made different than woman," he remarked, "What a woman hears, pours out of her mouth," then hesitated and added, "What a man hears, his lips remain tight."

So grows the old man older, born in 1801, cold to avoid madness, and drinks the common man's drink, to gain warmth; and drinks milk for nourishment. It was one thing never to be-he knew most men are fools, and need to be taken care of by the wise, the rich, lest their bellies go empty, and they have no place to nest, like the silly fowls that roost in trees, and keep the commandments, if possible. But most of all, he would have declared, 'especially, leave your neighbors' wife alone,' and he was one who did all this, and if the rich man didn't know, all the better. Yet he grieved, he should live all his days a common man, with such wisdom.

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