Verse and Perverse
by
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The This is the ocean primeval Its shadowed depths phosphorescent In meridian sun all asparkle By ancient moon luminescent Abyssal plain and deep trenches Volcanic mountain and peak Silent in A vastness that words cannot speak I''ve sailed on your breast gently heaving And bathed in your crystal lagoon I''ve seen you get surly and restless And run wild in a raging typhoon I''ve been in your dark secret places One hundred fathoms and more But always with wonder and sadness I return once again to the shore The Deep Strange things there be in the Say the men who go down in the deep There''s things that float and things that swim And things that crawl and creep A sane man stays on the land that lays Above that watery waste But there''s a few, like me and you Who''ve acquired a different taste Why we leave our homes and hearths to roam In the sea''s great somber deeps Is a tale that''s strange, but it doesn''t change The call that plays for keeps It may start with looks in adventure books Or a scene from a movie show But the seed that''s layed is a dream unplayed Until it begins to grow The ocean''s lure is a thing so pure And raw, like the naked sky That a man doesn’t ask how hard the task He just goes for do or die
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About the Book
This book is a collection of ballads and rhymes reflecting the life experiences of the author. The author has a background rich in real life encounters with danger and near catastrophe. The ballads recount in rhyming verse actual events in the author’s life which by accident or design put him in harms way and from which he luckily escaped alive to tell about. Many of the rhymes reflect philosophically or satirically many of the problems everyone must confront while living in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, being contemporary with our troubled times in the western world. Some of the rhymes delve into the mysteries of the sea (the author has spent the last thirty five years as an industrial deep see diver), while others involve mountain climbing and other high risk pursuits.
There is no lack of a mocking sense of humor that threads it’s way throughout this book in spite of the serious nature of much of it’s contents. The greatest fear the author has ever faced is the prospect of boring his reader. With bated breath, he leaves that judgment to the reader.
About the Author
Gene Glenn Ainsworth was born in the High Sierra mountains of
When Gene was about eight years old, his family left the mountains and moved to the coast at
Upon graduating from high school, he received an honor society scholarship and attended the university at
After the heartbreak of a brief and failed early marriage, Gene joined the Marine Corps and spent two years on the
After being discharged from the Corps, Gene worked for awhile as an engineer, but soon tired of the boredom of technical work and became drawn back to the sea where he has worked as a professional diver ever since. His work, first as a hard hat diver and later as a diving operations supervisor has taken him to every continent in the world, where he both participated in and supervised diving excursions to 600 feet of water using the latest equipment available.
After years of this, friends and family persuaded him to recapture some of his experiences by writing about them. After some consideration on the matter, Gene decided to put a few of his life experiences and thoughts down in the form of rhymes or ballads, and this book is the first result of his efforts.
The author has won several awards in poetry contests sponsered by "World of Poetry" from 1989-91 including two Golden Poet awards, two Awards of Merit and a Who''s Who in poetry honor for outstanding achievement in poetry.