Stepha Kaye and Ima Gen
(B. Marquardt-Alexander is retiring. I am taking over this now).
A Siamese cat, with bright emerald eyes
Light and dark in the night looked on
With an element of surprise.
He searched high and low after midnight
For milky goodness, sweet and white.
A feline craving and misbehaving
For the only item on which he was sold.
He sniffed the bowls, counters, and nooks
Knowing he would soon be a crook.
But there was no milk to be found
So he sat sadly on the ground.
Disappointment crept in
As the last moon ray swept in
He turned to the side
Then saw the river in his sight.
The sound of the water flow
Black the seeds he might sow
Somehow, he made it through the window
He wished for a perch on a pillow.
He found another comfort
Not warm or soft, not his concern
For in his belief, he found his relief.
Categories:
ballads, animal, anxiety,
Form: Ballad
I have always
been scared of tomorrow.
to appease my soul,
i've always clung to
yesterday.
but now i've seen
my future with you,
my dear.
i have tightened my grip
i'm no longer
letting go of yesterday.
I guess i know my way better.
Categories:
ballads, 10th grade, feelings,
Form: Free verse
Listening to the Boss Singing
The Ghost of Tom Joad,
Imagining the Okies as they
Travelled their Desolation Road.
Word Pictures by Steinbeck,
Dust Bowl Ballads by Guthrie,
Green Pastures Of Plenty
Pretty Boy Floyd, Doh Ray Mi.
Ecological disaster,
Dust and drought,
Trees chopped down
Good land farmed out.
Then came the winds
That blew the soil away
Followed by the Bankers
Who took their land away.
Pack up lock stock and barrel
In the trucks and on the way
To the promised land of plenty
The fabled Californ-ia
So long it’s been good to know you
And then like the family Joad
Driven by need and poverty
It’s off and on down the road.
With Global warming progressing
As more habitable land disappears
Will a new Steinbeck and Guthrie
Chronicle new Grapes Of Wrath years
Will there be a new Springsteen
To sing about a new Tom Joad
As they join the new exodus on
Their new desolation road.
Categories:
ballads, change, environment, future,
Form: Rhyme
The soul of a place,
The lines written in our hearts,
The songs that linger.
November 12, 2022.
A New Hiku Footle Tanka Poetry Contest,
Brian Strand.
Categories:
ballads, poetry,
Form: Haiku
Set your willy on fire boys,
set your willy on fire
Dance and sing and hop and scream
and set your willy on fire.
Categories:
ballads, boy, humor, men, music,
Form: Ballad
Paper rustle of your lips
is not needed to her really,
You're a knight, but your heart weeps,
You were brave, why are you thrilling?
You would strip your zealous sword,
But there are no foes in moment,
It would sing and say a word
loudly-loudly without torment.
And your ballads have no sense,
You're not worthy for the beauty,
All your deeds don't give a chance,
Take it easy, slave of duty.
Because love does not take out
sword that's frozen in the scabbard,
Hear, how useless pure souls shout,
You are hero in worn tabard.
No one's happy to your flags,
Courage now must be forgotten,
Ballads die, they lie in wrecks,
Paper burns, the flame is gotten.
All will pass, they're angry, rude,
There's no point for her crying,
Drown out tubes, put on your hood,
She won't answer to your trying.
And no matter if heart weeps,
Here are many who're no thrilling,
Paper rustle of your lips
won't confess: I love you, really.
Categories:
ballads, fantasy, hero, longing, love
Form: Lyric
I persist in singing my unknown beguiling ballads
As the verdurous pasture slowly glides
Over the vernal bowers of wilderness!
Yearnings, sorrows and joyfulness
Prompt me to offer floral tributes
To this celebrated earth wherein
For a while I roam to glimpse its grandeur—
Its legacy and alliance with mankind!
Categories:
ballads, peace,
Form: Prose Poetry
Dead Ballads
Written on the pages of time
read tarnished couplets and
quatrains
which corroded pauses are
leprechauns sat on pots and
pans
which melt before and after the
rain. Yet the lyrics exist, they
are just a phantom, a semblance-
in a ghoulish apparition,
they are moved but recurs, the
leaves too timid to roll unless
a wind stronger than impulse
blows.
Unsung ballad, let us unearth
the remains that are forgotten,
for they are glorious scrap
books
and their fragments are laurels.
Majestic their wreath indeed
when newborns brawl, when
recollecting is for excerpts and
extracts a lair, and forgetting
the cannibal that's
habitual.
Lair is the Harpy and
contemporary is the claw for
her to devour the rhytmic
flesh, the tamed, the essence
and purpose of romance: the
praises given by the young to
the Winged Creature. The nest
they made they shall roost, its
straw decks undeck and the
nestling
forsaken until the abode fell:
the lair below and the Wicked
above.
Categories:
ballads, betrayal,
Form: Ballad
Long lonely ballads sooth my soul,
recounting loves which ne’r grow old.
With tales of lives, of toil and strife
which linger on the sharpest notes.
Laments pining through the key of D.
Songs sung in dissonant harmony.
Scratching, haunting, riddles
Whispering on whistle or fiddle.
And, Oh the maudlin harmony
which makes us all weep free
to know that other people cried
lost their loves yet survived.
So let me slide on glissando
Between the notes with vibrato
Let me heal upon the wail
of ancient memories.
Contest:Soul Tunes
Categories:
ballads, happiness, health, musicme,
Form: Verse