cross
oppose betray
fight contest challenge
arbitrate parents counsel church
forgive friends support
blessed prayer
Cross
that lonely lad’s
deserving fates
now come at last
but much too late
one gentle heart
beats full of love
still, no one feels
that’s worthy of
their admiration
thoughts or time
and thus he’s left
to barter rhymes
delivering phrase
dreams arbitrate
life’s feelings, be
they love or hate
it’s nothing special
just these thrums
his lover’s dreams
as kingdom comes
and so folks fawn
o’er what he pens
while deep inside
those bitter ends
the bloody words
then let as phrase
shall clot in pools
with empty days
for all that purge
his scribbles find
is washed like ids
or muddled mind
and crafting prose
that coaxes sighs
births, deep within
his slow … demise.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, August 13, 2017; rewrite, August 27, 2022
In those far days, stars had stilts, shafts
that pierced every eye with a legendary knowledge.
There were celestial dragons
that roamed the daylight clouds,
actual myths glittered in the sunlight
as they shape-shifted through a gleaming creation.
Olympus could be found in every nest. Nirvana
explored in nightly rain puddles. Heaven was a word
for the ordinary and mundane.
Then a thing darker than the darkest of shadows,
cast its vast leathery wings over the minds
of these lesser gods and their magical beasts.
Conflicts arose in every land, fairies fled
to the timeless flowering fields of Arcadia.
Blood oaths were sworn and few there were
that would arbitrate for peace.
To this day, starlight walks elsewhere,
and we the ill-bred whelps of fear,
must travel with no thaumaturgic succor
or wit to discern
this wonderful macrocosm of us.
I don’t believe Donald Trump should be impeached,
He’s brought light to the Presidency, a dynasty,
Of a long line of ‘born again’ believers, screeched,
Wiling government into a god-inspired fallacy.
Burocracy is not an heuristic term or value judgement -
It’s a rational roll of reasonable deliberations, business,
Mirroring the typical American citizen as sediment,
Which Mr Trump places, to his credit and best guess.
He’s not a force for power without love and freedom,
Stealing smiles from unlikely Democrats, Pub’s alike,
He gives the lesser the right to arbitrate and custom,
When climbing the hierarchy an eager workers’ hike.
He’s not killed five people, an individual’s sadness,
Another quinquennial would see America great again,
With Covid faced squarely and firmly by flatness,
Joe Biden will take it as efficient, practical and fain.
Let the people speak from the Representative’s House,
Not one view, but proffering all view’s to regulate,
Bold with speech, he’s turned the stiff upper clouse,
Into commerce’s flutter, so please give a vulgate.
Dominique Webb
Embittered winter
indignant
spreads rancor
erudite in malice.
Irreverent arbitrate
derisive
disdains masses
sardonic in verse.
Vengeful slayer
belligerent
inflicts brutality
pitiless in wrath.
Steadfast rime
unyielding
immovable blight
resolute in rage.
(click on the pic to preview my poetry book!)
Polarizing the Populous
Heaven’s tide is far and wide as they manage in their malevolent mockery
Their hands are tied and losing pride, dining without candelabra crockery
In a calamitous chasm their dreams in spasm as they awaken the nightmare
Scrapes of sarcasm thrown by the pious phantasm as they look to compare
In a silken state the high adjourn and arbitrate for they conquer and divide
In their cure to annihilate they castrate the mirroring images that they hide
They adorn as they scorn the lonely for their wrathful worship falls to ground
In their obsessive opulence with protruding corpulence sins that compound
In a vicarious void, the mighty have employed sewn surrogates as their slaves
Their will destroyed and must avoid the gravitational grieving to their graves
In their impulsive impetus using stimulus, they must be freed from their chains
Upon leaving inept infelicitous ideas by timorous travel thus exult in their pains.
Aug.15.2018
Eight word challenge-8
Sponsored by: John Hamilton
Placed 3'rd
Let there be no light,
Errie darkness,
Let it surround the world in it's wake
The black cover, let it encompass,
Smother every flame that lasts.
For the dark does not demarcate, you from me and from anybody else,
The dark does not arbitrate,
It unbounds every built fence.
The dark makes us hear the world,
It does not let us know,
You might be pale or blue, noble or brute,
The dark does not let it show.
Light makes us decree,
Good from bad, enslaved from free.
It makes us arrive,
to conclusions,
rested on what we sight.
The dark takes it away,
the power to guage, to purvey,
It makes us realize,
The disguise, the confines,
Turns each of us into a surprise.
A gentle heart
So full of love
Yet no one feels
It's worthy of
Their admiration
Care or time
So I am left
To barter rhyme
Matching words
To arbitrate
The things I feel
Be love or hate
So others fawn
At what I pen
When deep inside
An endless end
Crafting prose
To coaxing sighs
While deep within ...
A slow demise.
God lives in the hearts and souls of people,
He does not reign on any worldly plane.
No one can verify God's existence,
we choose to believe in Him, or we don't.
Religion has little to do with God;
and much more to do with wielding power.
Some scientists dispute God's existence,
yet note the possibility He's real.
God's presence supplies spiritual peace,
He doesn't arbitrate mortal affairs.
And so, praying won't eradicate war,
nor save a starving, sick child from dying.
Humans conceived of a Divine being;
infinitely greater than they themselves.
But God can only exist through belief,
and thus, He becomes part of who we are.
God rules the conscience of humanity,
outside rituals and superstitions.
But religion exploits Man's fear of Death,
reinforcing apprehensions of Hell.
Belief in God strengthens faith in oneself,
His influence cannot be disputed.
And once you challenge church doctrines and myths,
your conscience will decide if God exists.
Gibberash spontainly rushed
From other poet’s pens regushed,
Cannot contain the jovial
That Joycean phrases frame so well.
Ditberner is the Guzzi dare,
Dare I to say I doubly care?
Constracted I to JJ.’s soul,
I half a line to make it whole.
I fear my brain will adlelate
My mind doth too soon arbitrate.
Read this I beg in smallish doses
Ere Poetry Soup gives in and closes.
Power comes to those who would prevail,
In mind, in sight, in countenance, in name,
Thus arbitrate for one, who must avail,
Of humble heart and gentle ease to gain,
Wisdom comes to him, who would return,
To challenges most fearsome and most loath,
If in his heart the blazing fire burns,
And every lesson brings about its growth,
Beauty comes to all who would but see,
That love and grace so tender and so still,
Is worthy of a patient mind that’s free,
To please, to smile as others balk and shrill,
And peace it comes to those who would contrive,
That power, wisdom, beauty will revive.
Under the boughs, the blossom shower drifted
downwards with the rain;
time stood still, yet hour upon hour shifted
the earth's moist counterpane.
Taking the air, a breath of musing sang
a hymnal melody;
and God's decision, his own choosing, rang
the change for you and me.
Holding the moment, framed in glory, took
each other by surprise;
flickers of grandeur in a story book
reflected in her eyes.
Loneliest lives, duplicity stung, were freed
by kismet arbitrate;
and a silent love song sweetly sung, decreed
by the holiest seal of fate.