Best Akimbo Poems
Blood masks the lea, the blasted loam
upon whose breasts soldiers came home.
The earth, herself, held each to chest
the mist of sky killed with each breath
as ruined green became their tomb.
Men strafed by shells and gassed by fume:
cast akimbo, blown to their doom
entrenched, barb fenced; death coalesced;
blood masks the lea.
Eight million French, their valor shown;
most shy twenty lay beneath stone:
Russians, Brits, Italians, Yanks, rest
thirty seven million, our best
slaughtered and listed in old tomes;
blood masks the lea.
An Ekphrastic done as a French Rondeau
after:Flanders Fields by John McCrae
In Memory of Jimmy Dale Still, Barrel horse rider, KIA, Song Be, Viet Nam, 1/1/70
Old Bill,
swaybacked, sand burrs in his mane.
He stands no longer hopefull by the fence up near the house,
but follows the shade around the shed,
switching flys.
Nearby the dented barrels
rust rank and file akimbo,
no longer equadistant prey
of steed and gladiator.
Hay in a self feeder.
The last time Jimmy came to break a bale,
carrot in his pocket, bridle in hand,
they were both young,
impetuous,
fearless,
bullet proof.
Bill's walked a trail, deep,
along the fence to the old arena.
Quiet now; full of weeds.
A place for breaking horses.
The snow mobile stops and sinks to the level of the snow, no more to go
Which way do I take for shelter the sure or the maybe
Deciding on a surety hoped the 200 miles was the best option … but how
can I survive this, gathering the necessities in a bag light enough to carry
leaving a note on the vehicle I start my journey slowly
snow shoes aren’t easy to manoeuvre when you’re tired and afraid
must gain ground by nightfall a shelter of snow to make.
Plenty of boiled water to keep me going today, but hunger tangs can’t be laid
Food: I must make a hole to fish, a fire to make and that shelter to build
I cut blocks of snow and make a shelter for the night
Had means of lighting a fire to give the bears a fright, cut a hole to fish
Am sitting here like a child with stick and string hoping for a bite
A great big tug tells me one is here, I pull with my might to land it near.
Hit its head to kill him with ease, I cut up and cook enough to please….
Suddenly I hear a whimpering noise I look up to see
A husky type dog looking at my tea, I throw it some fish didn’t touch the sides
As with a big gulp was soon in his insides, then he laid down close to me
Sharing my water and fish and the fire …..
Weird sounds of nature all through the night
My sleep was shallow as I worked out my plans
Had an early fish breakfast then started to walk
Had a companion with me didn’t feel so alone on these many days
Looked for berries not the white ones am told…will
Keep up my strength until I get home…..
The greenery I am advised are precarious to devour
Best keep to fish and berries a little every hour
Oh my what’s this lumbering this towards us
A bear , a black one, pulled my anorak over my head, I pray
Arms akimbo so I looked huge and made very noisy yells, bear walked away
A trappers hut smoke I can see, hope he will be as pleased to see me
At picnics Sue's legs are akimbo
No panties, but Sue ain't no bimbo
It keeps pesky flies
Landing on our pies
Our days out are never in limbo!
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Invisible ladies! You see them ev’rywhere,
In sensible raincoats and Margaret Thatcher hair.
Standing at bus-stops, watching the bus go by:
Waiting at crossings,
Letting the traffic splatter mud in their eyes …
Invisible ladies, all in their “middle years”.
Invisible ladies:
No hopes, but so many fears …
SO polite! So ladylike!
Just don’t mind us, don’t make a fuss … Wouldn’t be right …
But deep inside, there’s such a rage …
You’ll catch it too, this vanishing plague
Called MIDDLE AGE!
Invisible ladies … shopping bags all akimbo:
Moving like zombies, each in her private limbo.
Pushing a trolley at ASDA or Sainsbury:
Examining prices,
Searching for bargains – ever more desp’rately …
Invisible ladies, choosing the longest queue …
The one with the baby:
Babies, they’re visible to …
SO polite! So ladylike!
Just don’t mind us, don’t make a fuss … Wouldn’t be right …
But deep inside, there’s such a rage …
You’ll catch it too, this vanishing plague
Called MIDDLE AGE!
Invisible ladies! When somebody barges by,
Instead of complaining, they always apologise!
They oughta get angry, and maybe get pushy too:
Say, “HEY! Look AT me!
See, I’m a PERSON, really very like you!”
Invisible ladies, everyone knows one …
They live in our houses …
You probably call yours “MUM!”
(This is an anthem for all fifty-somethings - Chaps too!)
"Beware Of the Ides of the men on black"
The judges and jurors of our fates, blink.
Every time we will, they will reform it
They even gave them new uniforms
But they preferred the black 'It suits them mos'
And more guns,lesser humanity.
The Leaders of tomorrow are forbidden from seeing the morrows.
Put on rags, glorify poverty;
Just maybe, you will live to see another day of this craze of population control.
While the men on black and their rifle embark on patrol.
Pim pim,
Vroom vroom,
Police vans, parked by road sides
And policemen standing akimbo on major roads
With flash torches, flashing bright lights
Into the faces of incoming drivers
And their passengers if any.
A remainder of
'You better hold change
Or we seize the whole money'
'The Police is Your friend' with stern faces
Hello, young man may we know you.
"Paddy mi, make we gather reach town"
4:20pm, Fresh fine boys gunned downtown.
One, two shots!
Another happy-trigger officer had shot his shots.
"Oga Olopa wetin my pikin do you?"
The oceans flowed endlessly, as their mothers cried.
"Tattoo, dreadlocks, piercing not our culture!"
The Police report read.
For dumbness echoes now, while wisdom has been coerced into a deep sleep.
The toils of tomorrow built with the youth's blood.
GHOPS (Pa Shakespeare) x O.C Adolf
SHOPPING TOGETHER
We went to the wood shop together
To select for the job the right timber -
Ooh, - laths, two-by-ones, maybe plywood ?
She was unmoved - finished, unfinished, one-side-good ?
Mmmm, - beech or oak or pine?
See the fine line and polished shine ?
She felt little emotion for my dowelling,
Any more than paper towelling.
She heard no timbre in struck timber,
No note she could remember :
It sent her to slumber
To encumber her mind with lumber -
It was all so much mumbo jumbo.
Standing with arms akimbo
No matter where she stood
It was just wood, wood, wood, wood.
Mounds of papers, ragged, uneven as if elbows flaring at angles severe
Pens akimbo, dog-eared reminders, fading memorabilia
You-Name-It was all piled there only yesterday, only yesterday
Somehow dumpier now that it's been stripped bare of
What gave it character, its empty drawers ajar
Choked by the incense of poetic justice,
I volunteered to be slain for the betterment of humanity.
The paintings of my ink on white sheet were witnesses,
When in Abuja, I drew my poetic daggers,
Against a twin bomb blast that left separated Limbs of men bleed with acrimony.
Eyes wept with sympathy crawling down their cheeks
While our crown boast of a thousand solutions with no one in sight.
Poetic justice shall reign in Nigeria, I prayed
I handshake my communication god when it rang
And cling firmly my peripatetic poetic spirit,
To Didier's motherland, under the cloud of French stimulated Ivory,
I saw a goat-bearded-god mimic the suit of the stars and stripes.
And commands pagan's adoration of the sun upon his throne.
When scions of termites spit at the sight of our dead flesh.
I wept when hunger-lashed beggars’ union
Cling on my feet for one CFA franc.
Poetic justice shall reign in Ivory Coast, I prayed
Under strong loyalty to tyrannical whipping with merciless rod.
I saw my brothers drip blood from the scars of yesterday.
Should religious fundamentalists be blamed?
When a star, firmly crucified on a sickle moon,
Grind the 'holy cross' people of the south.
While the big brother stood akimbo and watch vultures poke our intestines.
The referendum at hand smells secession success on my screen.
I pray for poetic justice in Sudan, Africa and the whole world.
The Final Home Coming
From where the sky meets the high seas
Talking drums rolled out endless eulogies
As we waited, with the shore’s mud up to our knees
Some even did dance to the rhythm - no apologies
The mangrove flanked aquatic expanse
Its inhabitants in rapturous excitation
Announced the regattas' glorious advance
Even monkeys from trees did swing, in celebration
The colorful seven made haste to the shore
Their paddling, sequenced and synchronised
Each propelled by the muscles of twenty and four
The music, all but the drummers hypnotised
The wailing and drumming crescendos
As the casket is hoisted by each pall bearer
Threnodies and praise songs devoid of innuendos
Rent the air, from those to whose hearts he was dearer
Each relative, the other did strive to outdo
And to this illustrious son, give for at least once
With one good deed, all transgressions undo
Impressing the dead - the mind of a dunce
Priests did read Christian verses and made recitations
His soul, confused and standing with arms akimbo
As witch doctors also did chant incantations
Knew not which way led to Heaven, Hell or Limbo
In this carnival of his final journey home
He’d also sailed the metaphysical realm
Maybe, on tranquil seas that do not rage and foam
His first and last without control of the helm
Sue got wedged on the exercise bike
And she doesn’t look so lady like
With both legs akimbo
She looked like a bimbo
Told the trainer to go take a hike!
20th July 2015
I sleep. The hours tick by mercilessly;
unfilled, purposeless, full of potential
"What to do? What to do???" I mutter,
tumbling, like Alice, down the rabbit hole.
My hands push down ballooning petticoats,
careful not to show or touch anything.
I twirl beneath the pile down comforters.
The hours tick by crimson red
and in the dream,
the rose Queen shouts, "Off with HER HEAD!"
An eyebrow is plucked whole from my face.
It falls matted and to the ground leaving me,
brow akimbo, surprised, and horrified.
"What to do? What to do? What to do???"
Half shorn. Half drawn. Half born?
A painter's pallet appears before me.
A brow is drawn… for me.
Yet, the Rose Queen still screams on.
"Off with HER HEAD! Off with HER HEAD!"
Haibun 1
He kicked the doors open with his one good foot clad as it was in a beat-up Converse laces removed a tough and battered old man wildness in his eyes long hair akimbo dirty clothes to match he rolled his wheelchair straight to me hand extended. Close to my ear his hoarse whisper Jesus, Jesus he’s all you need brother guessing that I too was a patient. I probably did look like his colleague that day a somewhat bewildered grin no doubt cautious uncomfortable body-shuffling sitting as was he. Jesus... We don’t need all this crap they’re giving us and (to the orderly) get your hands off my chair I want to set by this man. Take your troubles away he will we don’t need their damn pills just Jesus do you pray you have to if you ever expect to leave here. He held my hand again a tight grasp with both hands he never intended to relax. Remember me tonight when they come to you remember Jesus tell them to go to hell. His hand separated from mine as he was rolled back through the doors his voice fading still instructing me how to be, here.
memory of light
no bridge across the chasm's
raging untamed storms
I wandered the desert alone, oh, what a dream to remember!
'Twas a place of extremes. Gorgeous yet frightening. A swelteringly hot
Barren terra incognita that stretched far beyond the horizon.
I walked for miles and miles; feeling more lost by the hour,
I turned, following my footprints back to civilization.
But unbeknownst to me, a sandstorm roared, erasing footprints I made earlier.
Staggering, fighting my fatigued body and moribund spirit, I paused briefly,
Barely standing upright, with arms akimbo trying to catch my breath.
"Where am I?", I wondered in a panic. Sweat streaming down my
brow, I continued traversing the never-ending stretch of desolate wasteland.
The chances of finding my way out of this vast sea of sand, improbable.
"Is this how it all ends? How will I make it out here alive?"
I asked myself, drowning in an ocean of pessimism. Thoughts in my head
Dark and morbid. I'm lost. A nightmare come true! The chances for a rescue
In this unforgiving no man's land couldn't seem more unlikely.
An oasis, a needle in the haystack. I'm increasingly asphyxiated by thirst.
Before long, I chanced upon a tree trunk still standing tall, frozen in time.
I took shade on its shadow across the sand, defeated, begging God
For a quick end to my misery. Instead, heavens opened up, and down came
The rain. An augury of hope...my salvation! Oh, what a dream to remember!
Date written and posted: 10/02/2018
Today I boarded an aeroplane for the very first time
but things didn't go too well...
As I stepped into the entrance
I stumbled , I tripped and I fell,
as I crashed to the floor,
it made an almighty sound,
when I looked up
there were faces staring from all around.
More embarrassed I could not have been,
with my legs akimbo,
all must've seen.
there I laid in a heap in the middle of the aisle,
must've only been a minute or two
but it felt like quite a while.
The more I struggled to get up,
the more embarrassed I became,
I finally made it to my seat
and could have died from all the shame.
The flight attendant came over and whispered ...
" Are you alright "?
She handed me a Brandy and said " Relax and enjoy the flight ".
Before I knew it,
I had knocked back the drink...
So I ordered more,
quicker than you could blink.
The booze wasn't helping,
so I took the Drs Pill,
I'd got for good measure.
because it was then that I freaked out,
thinking that we'd lost cabin pressure.
Then I swear I saw a creature jumping around on the wing
but that was due to me nodding off
remembering a film that I had seen.
When the pilot finally announced
we were coming into land,
I got that excited ,
I grabbed the person next to me's hand.
I dont think I'll ever fly again,
especially on my own,
instead I'll watch travel shows
from the safety of my home.