Mjseaborne

Mjseaborne The Raconteur

09/07/2026

The Void

Another autumn, another year,
another stone on top of some gods stone wall somewhere going nowhere for no particular reason.

The wind shifts all exits into entryways.
In the mud room the snow boots of winter slip past the flip flops, Chuck Taylor’s and sandals.

Each week reminds us of our frailty, each year becomes a ghost, and each memory no matter how long in the past is magically recalled as-has it been that long?

©Mjseaborne 09/07/2026.
North Adams, Massachusetts

09/04/2026

One year ago.

In the 1800’s on Man-of-War ships, the term Beat to Quarters was a drum beat used to alert the crew to Battle Stations. Saint Andrew is a sailor Saint as are a number of others. Sailors can’t be too safe. When I worked in Spain I stayed in a town called, Saint Andrew of the Little Boats.
Perhaps far in the future we will have Space Sailors-not just Astronauts

Beat to Quarters
(Space Sailor’s)

The hissing in his ears, the sensation of rocky planets sailing through desolate chart map eyes.

His temples are drum heads, pounding out the rhythm in his plundered soul.

So many light years away from reality.
Where should he lay as he dreamily sails through the Straits of Infinity?

Come travel these checkerboard riddles. Pray that the Boatswain’s Mate has whistled Saint Andrew aboard.

© Mjseaborne 09/03/2025
North Adams,
Massachusetts

09/03/2026

Dreams for a Dime

A half opened bedroom window,
framed by faded blue flowered curtains troubled by a unbroken wind.

The flawless rhythm of a hard rain
on a red tin roof,
loud enough to lull a person to dream of colors well beyond the rainbows of youth.

Early evening,
manic peepers sing a chorus in a Cat o’ nine tails swamp.

A half closed bedroom window,
faceless neighbors grilling juicy marbled steaks and as they consume the rare meat, blood oozes.
Like Water from
a sponge.

Broken boats moored
on a burnt umber lake. Her eyes, deep pools of bottomless regret.

A lady of the night,
her heels hard in the city of ruined streets,
her lilting voice could be heard,

“Dreams for a dime.”

© Mjseaborne
09/03/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/26/2026

White noise in this dark bedroom
as the electric fan hushes the night terrors.

It breathes out, generating the same frequency into every journey to the land of nod and beyond.
Straight into the deep end of sleep.

Swimming with eyes fluttering and flickering riding rainbows into the gale of another day.

© Mjseaborne 08/26/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/25/2026

An asphalt fog pulled the shades down on the emerald night and devoured the stars.

An invitation to the
sensation of endlessness.

© Mjseaborne
08/24/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/21/2026

Grandma Two Claw’s

Grandma smells of mothballs,
lavender and a snort of Mad Dog 2020.

She has two shrunken hands with veins bubbling up from knuckles that don’t seem to work well anymore.

Inside the right sleeve of her Camo print tent(!)
like garment she conceals a tattered lilac lipstick stained hankie.

Watching her talking about various bric-a-brac and so and so and she hears the new dentist in town really is a handsome Joe.
As the litany of neighborhood gossip travels down street
a clear drop of fluid oozes below her left nostril.

Ever so slowly the little droplet begins to elongate, and propagate.
Then gravity flexes its muscles sending a spider’s web of nose mucus to the tip of her hair stubbled chinny-chin-chin.

At times that nose issues forth a generation of green material similar to the salt water taffy we used to eat at Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
Used to eat.

© Mjseaborne 08/20/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/17/2026

July 1969

The grey stand up fan stood forty inches across on a chrome pipe thirty six inches tall in the south corner of the bedroom and when switched on hisses white noise.

The large round beige base, where the chrome pipe either begins or ends depending on where one wishes to be, is tattooed with shoe scuff marks, some dress shoe black, others the color of unanalyzed manure, indicating attempts at sliding Skaats Wheeler’s technology of the late 1800’s across the centuries.

I cannot see white noise, because white is not a color.
Our ears are constantly assaulted by turbulence of one kind or another.
For some the tinny wheezing
never stops,
instead it collides and surrounds a world of confusion.

Ivory noise in a turquoise
room, sable curtains furiously fluttering, adding to the burning searing sound tearing through the fabric of obscurity.

July 1969

© Mjseaborne 08/17/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/15/2026

She was a Grumpy Old Woman.

“Get off the GRASS!”

She sat in a second floor crows nest
rocking in a black lacquer chair
with bright red seat and back cushions.
Kids in the neighborhood swore those cushions were monogrammed gifts from Lucifer hissself!

Hunka, as she was known,
always had a Maxwell House coffee jar full of, coffee I guess,
all-day-long.
There were several a rings of red cherry lip stick👄 along the mouth of the jar.

“Get off the GRASS!”

On top of her head on her dyed mahogany hair was a blue handkerchief Babushka.

“Get off the GRASS!”

Even over the roar of a lawn mower she could be heard.

I finally turned the mower off and stated,

“I work here.”

© Mjseaborne 08/14/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/13/2026

Charlie’s Brother

Chasing someone else’s moonlight
through dusty corn rows.
Tripping over grey stonewalls, suddenly surprised by perfect hay field wind-rows.

The charred remains of what was a barn.
A house cellar hole tangled with bramble bushes and broken dreams.

No one ventures into the twisted zone of vines, broken Mason Jars, soot
licked dinner-ware
and
the soul of one brother.

© Mjseaborne 08/12/2026
North Adams, Massachusetts

08/11/2026

“Loneliness I taste. The chair I sit in, the room, the house, none of this has substance.

I think of Hemingway, what we remember of his work is not so much the color of the sky as it is the absolute taste of loneliness.

Loneliness is not, I think, an absolute, but its taste is more powerful than any other. I think that endeavoring to be a serious writer is quite a dangerous career.”

~ John Cheever

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28 Goodrich Street
Hubbardston, MA
01247

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