"If You Want To Know What Sea Is..."

This poem is written as a single long sentence. Note: it refers to a storm and not to a gale. Anybody who knows the Beaufort Scale knows they are two very different things (at sea in a small boat it's the difference between terrifying and horrifically terrifying). Unfortunately, in their infantile efforts to be "relevant" the Met Office and others appear to treat the words interchangeably - searching for "the human angle" rather than simply giving the facts.

   For those who like such things I've given an "also-ran" ending at the bottom.

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If you want to know what sea is
   You’ll come to far Penwith,
Where the land makes up four portions

   And the sea always a fifth;

Look north, look south, look west,
   Even south-east a’ways,
From high ground the sea’s all-present
   Like a plain of wind-roughed baize;
In fine times its blue’s kohl-deep,
   In rain it’s grey as lead,
In cloud it’s a fishpaste green,
   The colour of flesh long dead;
But down on beach or in bay,
   That’s the place to be
When a storm ten hell sweeps in,
   Upending the pliant sea:
Ah, it’s dark as a devil’s cave,
   And the clouds stream like smoke from a pan,
The wind screeches in a top-speed rush,
   Punching stronger than a man;
Crouch behind rock or wall,
   Bulleted by the frenzied rain,
Cautiously peer round an edge
   At sight of the sane gone insane:
Huge flint-faced rollers rear,
   Lashed with cords of spume,
Upended by the granite shore
   They explode in a maelstromed plume;
The beach becomes a sump,
   Waist-deep, of raging brine,
With a backwash strong to drag men
   To a death where the fish will dine;
Cape Cornwall’s drenched in rack,
   And offshore the Brisons rock
As combers erupt with a crump
   Felt inland like a shivered shock;
Mousehole’s gone black under hail,
   Its harbour wall near breached
As creamers chainsaw its rampart
   With a thunder that’s chaos speeched;
And across Mounts Bay, Porthleven,
   Smack in the path of the storm,
Shoulders against its pummelling
   And the wind’s rasp like a shawm;
Here two thousand-miled breakers,
   Delegged by the offshore shoals,
Surge like clouds of frogspawn
   Dousing the town in its scrolls;

Bowel on Legs

   “All’s dung in, dung out,” cried Bowel on Legs.
If there’s no meaning, if no final One
Which as the Omega is meaning’s meaning,
If all just happens then one day is done,
   Then be it gruel and a sop, or foie gras and champagne,
   Nothing is pitiful, nothing is vain:
   “All’s dung in, dung out,” cried Bowel on Legs.

I made eyes at the girl in the grocery store,
She smiled then flared into a pus-filled sore.

I soothed a weeping abandoned child,
It clawed me like a spitting bear-cub riled.

Through webchats and podcasts I signed up for the good,
But the conveners turned devils and cavorted in blood.

   “And all’s dung in, dung out,” cried Bowel on Legs.
If from birth’s moment we’re dropped to our dying,
Stranded with physics where we longed for meaning,
If half are lying and the rest are crying,
   Then each slow day’s a defecation
   Never to be a deification:
   “And all’s dung in, dung out,” cried Bowel on Legs.

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© June 2021