Bordering the local
football ground, young
mountain ash bend
in the cold wind.
Almost reaching to full height,
their lean, pliable trunks bow
and spring back,
whipping against the air.
Defiant, almost arrogant
they dance and swirl
their leaves like balls
of streamers waved
by frenzied fans.
Boyhood comes charging back
as I walk the boundary,
booted up and wearing
number twenty five.
I inhabited the hero,
rode wild applause
to the consummate ease
of my play and saw
my name bannered
in large print
across Sunday replays.
Imagination flew far above
my skill and as time
chastened dreams,
ambition retreated to a place
in a noisy crowd
carried along on the swells
of boisterous cheer,
or lounged in a chair
watching an ad riddled
game at home by myself
with a beer.
Categories:
bannered, football, memory,
Form: Free verse
Come we will an the road is open,
Come we will an the door swings ajar,
The land we glimpsed longing from fens afar,
Shall now be ours to make or mar!
Unto the gate we shall be holpen,
There with ye forever spar.
Perish not, then; cry instead, 'War! War! War! '
After, the doom lies no more in fist or star!
The land of clouds where suns rain down,
The land of roses where tulips are;
Land of the living where the dead croon,
Land of misery where joys scar!
Lady of our heart, bane of our soul!
Cradle of our carcasses, stinking hole!
Land of lightening, land of love!
Haunt of the eagle, refuge of the dove!
We come, O Land of the Lost!
We come in a trice, gauze bannered host,
War we shall, against thy woes,
With axe and hoe and thy own foes!
Categories:
bannered, anger, fantasy, home, nostalgia,
Form: Rhyme
sun kisses the dew
with feathered hues of sequins
the whole world glitters
with extravagance of light
in the red bannered sunrise
no trumpets are heard
for the wide lift of pink sky
as the crimson sun
greets the earth without fanfare
but wraps the soul in splendor
Leonora Galinta's Contest: Tanka Crazy/Sunshine
Categories:
bannered, happiness, nature,
Form: Tanka
When wind whips high in the night
Shrilling it's loneliness
Or the cold grey curl of the fog
Follows me through the streets
Terror is my name, as the asphalt trembles
And I land on your doorstop,
With horror at your rumpled feet
In this day's dole of happenings
I triumph over those who fear
My cloven hooves of tidings
So far from the spot where horror
Lies fused in common planetary chaos
With no one knowing the end...the time or place
Before your eyes...recognize my form
I speak with deceit mixed with truth
What is real...? Consider me depraved
The bannered headline, I go on record
For news now looms in startled silhouette
Look at this new day, look gravely in it's face
Futile those who evict a glance
To edit me, without chance to erase my lies
It looks back from a mirror eye to eye
Some equinox of destiny
That slithers back to hither...slime or shame
It has come to pass, somewhere...
Will it come here on your street?
Do you wish to escape, your name in black?
What slithers, darkly, to bedevil you...
What creeps inside your peace of mind
Seen darkly in the daily news
Categories:
bannered, mysteryme,
Form: Free verse
Dark dark the jocund space with downy flesh
Black bannered hideous gloomier than rest
Under the low hanging tattered rugged sky
Float clouds dark tortured low lit as night.
A shoal of bats deep as rust
Tight footed damp smeared descend
Over the houses streets and creeks
Invading the dark deep dungeons in heaps.
The dungeon of my brain creeks and racks
While the shoal of obnoxious foxes descend
Each one fighting and probing deeper headed
Sucking last drainage of my refelled blood.
The fury of my blood has made them blind
In bunches they grope shriek and prowl
Blinded nerve rotten hindered to crawl.
Tired and thick with banging their heads
Against rafters spokes nails and knives
Hopelessly will hang themselves over cobwebs
Dimly constrained lured dumb and defied.
There they will hang like hope forlorn
Pitted from the depth drums will be sounded
The likes & days of noisier time will sanction
The shades of escape then will be outbounded
Hands of doom will climb to clutch their forms
And squeeze their brains along bloody hawthorn.
Categories:
bannered, angstdark, dark,
Form: Lyric