Best Adjudged Poems
A lot of body shifts by an inch,
While vengeful killer teeth they clench:
A prosecutor is addressing The Bench,
Concerning dastardly murder of a wench
By a whisky-soaked German French
Whom he’s sure could also in Vodka drench!
Shovel handy they could dig The Quickest Trench
And from Prosecutor A Talkative life wrench,
His tongue-less corpse for A Disgracing Stench …
And maximally in the next one hour,
They shall all Waiters for Justice devour
Between The Adjudged Sweet and The Thought Sour
All the fine bakery with its flour,
Because read they can the legible unfairness
And God so kind, sharp of awareness.
Back when he was seven, our son won a contest
In his class, his turkey recipe adjudged the best
He was so happy, floating so high on cloud nine
but first prize was something less than 'quite fine'
He had to follow his recipe, cook our Thanksgiving meal
a prize which to his parents had no real appeal
As our son had never used the oven before
we planned on having problems galore
Sure enough, the new chef got off on the wrong foot
as into a pan, a frozen turkey in its package he put
Yet since the poor lad was so new to this game
we simply chuckled a bit, refused to lay blame
at the feet of our son, and explained so politely
that a turkey frozen solid won't cook quite rightly
He listened to us wide-eyed and dutifully
then gave that bird time to thaw proper-beautifully
Only --- so excited to start, he forgot the next instruction
which caused more than just some minor destruction
to the thawed bird, which was still in its package
as it entered the hot oven, awaiting the wreckage...
Well, you can imagine the looks on our faces
hearing the turkey begin to 'pop, crackle, snap'
For a moment, horrified, we were frozen in our places
before opening the oven, to a thunderous clap...
Our son was despondent; we had to cheer him right up
So we smiled our best smiles and said, "Just add a cup
or four of water to the pan--- after we scrape off the plastic"
~ I thought that my wife's laugh sounded a bit spastic
But our little budding chef put his heart into the task
and he basted that bird, doing all we had asked
So. when we finally sat down, and clasped our hands to say grace
~ You should have seen the big smile on our happy son's face
October 27, 2019
Thanksgiving Memory Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Regina Riddle
Sshh…
I can see it
Creeping behind the wounded paper
Fabricated in the surface of the wall
The wall. Yes the wall.
Countless stains embedded
Thousand images magnified during midnights
Raindrop stains transformed into wars
Inkblots turned into murder scenes
A dot of blood resurrected into a horrible monster
And the monster lives in the wall.
Now it’s peeking
Its mocking eyes met mine
Staring at me as if I have murdered millions
I suddenly felt numb
Yet I desired to crush it till it turns to a single dust.
I stepped closer
My body trembled
It didn’t move neither did it show an act of resistance
But instead, its red eyes glowed
And opened wider and bigger.
I closed my eyes hoping it would vanish.
I reached for a hanging portion of the torn wallpaper,
I tore it forcefully—
Mirror!
(an entrant in to the Luzon-Wide Press Conference back when I was in college, adjudged 6th Place)
The Old Man And the Sea
© Ben Burton 12-19-2014
"I'm troubled by the humbling plight of man's mortality"
The old man said aloud while kicking sand
"Why can't we be as timeless as the soulless, salty sea
Or even as the muddy Rio Grande
"Why must we come and go before we've barely wet a hook
And be adjudged for walking cross the pier
And yet the sea is fortified by rivulet and brook
And waves its cap for many billion years"
The old man wandered to the surf and shook an angry fist
Toward the place where sea and heaven met
"Why must I be accountable for what I can't resist
And be exposed for secrets I have kept?"
The sea like a leviathan with tempest in its wake
Did bellow out producing lightening bolts
"Oh, yes, you come and go and leave a trail of endless waste
And yet, you said yourself, I have no soul
"So give me ninety billion years and triple that times two
Is not a tick of time, you mindless lad
The day will come when I shall dry and earth will perish, too
But still, the Great Unknown will hold your hand"
Fill my craving with your zesty rind
In the mist of my longing, come splashing
Ingest my inn with your piquant smiles
Will you rain like dew for my pipe is parched?
Drizzle my windows with decorative light and
Melt your pot in that multihued bend
Be my condiment in this insipid snack
But preserve your liquiscent state
No! Not in the canister
Who says this dye belongs to Freud?
After you entice my eyes and tongue.
Then citrus filled my air now back to stanza one.
Orange
For Nette Onclaud’s Color My Word
Adjudged 3rd Place
Glenn L. Sentes
Damn your feet that crushed and squashed thousands of grapes in the pool!
While we only have eaten those purple drupes in our wildest dreams
And did you just say you would make wine from those feet-ground fruits?
Glenn Sentes
For Nette Onclaud's ON YOUR FEET Contest
01-26-12
*Adjudged 1st Place
Only wheeled things come in traffic
And not the meek earth-tilling brown hands
Coerced to stoop low, dogged to contrabands.
Spirits and bones chastised by stick,
A contract avowed played on a trick.
Now on the edge of cliff justice stands.
Only wheeled things come in traffic.
A trafficker should exist only in the lanes
To impede the hustling racing bands
and not to sell others’ flesh and brand
these humans whore in chains.
Only wheeled things come in traffic.
© Glenn L. Sentes
Adjudged 8th Place in Nette Onclaud's "Rondine the Traffic of Life" Contest
07-31-2012
As I stumbled on the pebbled road
I broke a toenail and it left bloodstains
On the humble stones.
“Why did you let me get wounded,” I asked.
A voice from behind the obsequious hills answered,
“I did not,” the voice said reassuringly.
“I desired that you take the other road, but you didn’t listen.”
I trod on. Pained.
I searched for a band to stop the bleeding.
A long black thing lay on the grass.
Serpent!
“Why did you allow that devil bite me?” I cried.
“I did not,” the voice uttered.
“I sent an old man to give you a handkerchief
for you to bind your broken nail but
you said you weren’t crying.”
“Why can’t you just warn me at once?”
“I tried to.”
“You did? When?"
“I called you but you thought I was your girlfriend.”
Adjudged 8th Place in Destroyer~Poet's COLLABORATING IN THE CLOUDS Contest
June 20, 2012
Menaced by a triumphant chanting of lament
Entrancing the soul of Hades’ kin
Missed eruptions of the sensory nerves
Onomatopoeic of hollow gongs
Resonating, maimed through the indescribable facets of
Your forgotten youth.
Adjudged 3rd Place in Black Eyed Susan's Acrostic Contest
© 07-31-2012
SHOULDA READ THE FINE PRINT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
in bygone days I did the football pools
and always hoped my X had marked the spot?
making sure that I had read all the rules
an agent did the post ere I forgot.
for years not one single problem, until
my draws came up, I had marked the right spot.
on paper, I'd won a fortune! the thrill!
sadly the agent to post had forgot".
oh yes! it went to court, I'd win I thought,
all I got, for what its worth, my stake back.
yeah! so much for rules, taking it to court.
onus, on me, to see it in the sack!
I was wrought, I had read all the rules, but
I shoulda read the fine print, adjudged, shut!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Composed 17th January 2018
Entered in 'shoulda read the fine print' Poetry Contest, sponsored by John lawless
A sword of ice stabbed my chest
My nails blackened, my nose bled.
They’re chasing me, wanting to devour my wholeness.
Until a gentle arm pulled me up.
Mama!
Then I felt heaven.
Her face, her eyes, her smile, her breath.
Everything of her is a therapy—
Fragrance of roses, soothing massage, beautiful music.
Mama, let me hug you so tight so that the coldness wouldn’t come back.
Mama, let me kiss you so that heavens would stay.
Mama, hear my wounded heart saying I love you.
Mama, I love you more than very much.
(An entrant into a Regional Press Conference back in college days. Adjudged 2nd Place.)
The cardinal shattered the chalice
with blood of his former god and
the men garbed in tainted white
glorified their new Son
sheer roars, juddering
holes in riot
meet your god
'neath your
feet!
(c) Glenn Sentes
Adjudged Fourth Place in Nette Onclaud's IMAGINATION Contest
6-6-12
A SEASON OF INDIGENCE
This drought and curse
Of hand to mouth;
An unrepentant encroachment of pauperism
Impregnating our back country
Discern,
Our bigwigs in back country
Stand aloof
While,
Season after season
Millions of Pickneys
Flourish with kwashiokor
I,
A son of the soil,
A citizen of the world
Peruse no light
At the end of the tunnel
Jet age swarmed us with gusto,
An age when birds
Learned to flutter incessantly
Criss crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
Ushering in a pretence
In social change
Only to abscond
With it's tail between it's legs
Information age,
Just stirred from it's slumber
It's lazy eyes struggling to adjust
To our flickering fluorescent
Hard drive here....flash drive there.....
Mouse click left....mouse click right....
Still,
I see no light
At the end of the tunnel
Robots are now delegating affairs
Our barns are empty
Our children famished
Poverty is now an opium of humanity
Alas,
Third trimester of harbor, now in labor,
The Surgeon's predigious epidural hype
Adjudged below the belt, still born!
I will be with you tonight,
Fondly sharing the love of your beholding sight,
Embraced meanwhile by the warmth of your absence,
Blazing passion causes me to be happy,
Distance displays disputes readily promoting a fight.
Thus conflict arouses beeping conscience,
Challenges cautiously undergone spark up our zeal,
Scattered arrangement declares the shyness of my heart,
Always adjudged is I as evidently scrappy,
True to it is our love as the mild touch of a moonlight folk tale,
My Angel; certainly our love is measurable on no earthly scale,
Fortunately I gained the love others resolved to steal,
You remain the key to unlock my passion in the illuminating darkness of a night,
Softly my heart craves for your deserved presence.
After the meeting
She no longer returns my calls
She rather hangs up her telephone anytime I call
save a few mistaken times that fell on deaf ears
causing an irreconcilable hindrance
to the constant flow of our conversation
After the meeting
She no longer writes to me
nor grant further audience to my letters
for which her hypothetical evaluations indicate:
were either lost in transit or consumed
by the Great Depression
and never delivered to her doorsteps…
After the meeting
the climate of her countenance darken
over the spheres of my lonely little world:
her soft cooing voice once curious
of the viridity of my seasons now echoes
like the indifferent shrill of the old screech owl
I hear on those dry nights from my window
After the meeting
She no longer longs for my animal presence
as do her friends who call me demeaning names
because I bargained for a fewer bottles of beer at the bar
than their merits expected of a real man,
the virility of my manhood is in dispute…
Since I decline to swim with them
in their pool of pretence
unlike my fellow Proci* vying for the territory of her unyielding heart
for this I have been adjudged unworthy of possession
and she-my sole witness of fidelity-for whose luxury
I strive in austerity stood wordless at my defence
Just after the meeting…