Best Allegheny Poems
Miss Allegheny Mountain
On her stone back the sleeping lady lies,
while on upward ride to the Western skies,
in blue lavender treeline's veiled disguise,
Miss Allegheny Mountain grows in size.
Azure cheeks are kissed by the dawn's sunrise.
Toward morning stars point her tree lined thighs.
Appearing on horizons in surprise,
Miss Allegheny Mountain fills our eyes.
On hilltops tall the mighty hawk abides,
cross valleys green where daytime swiftly flies.
In golden dress she bids the day that dies.
Miss Allegheny Mountain gently sighs.
Friends and love ones say hellos and goodbyes,
Miss Allegheny twists in lows and highs,
with sights so lovely one would truly prize,
a pleasure journey of her mountainsides.
8/24/16
Categories:
allegheny, imagery, mountains, nature, ,
Form:
Monorhyme
Don't get a bug in your butt because I like to eat
So it's none of your business if I can't see my feet
My tee shirt on the line looks like a sheet
While driving, my right hip's in the passenger seat
One serving of ice cream just won't do
So I buy a half gallon, it contains two
I'd tie my laces but I can't reach my shoe
I bought a diet book and I ate that too
Really, I think I should take some weight off soon
When I bend over the neighbor sings Allegheny Moon
When I start breakfast at eight, I finish by noon
When I wear corduroy pants, they play their own tune
I'm sick of TV shows saying I gotta be thin
I'm very well rounded for the shape that I'm in
When I touch my knees I display a horizontal grin
If there's a pie eating contest in town, you know I'd win
Really, I ordered a pizza because pizza is great
I told him to slice it in six because I couldn't eat eight
Really, don't call me names, that's something I hate
But if you call me for dinner, I'll never be late
Categories:
allegheny, funny, me,
Form:
Rhyme
Let the wild mustard and tansy grow
both tall and prolific, spreading freely
along the edges of the garden, seedlings from the wood.
Beneath the plum and pear, near the sycamore and cherry,
allegheny spurge known as pachysandra spread with runner vines
here and there along and up the fence in shade or sun.
Lily of the valley, once only six small plants
take over like a wave of rushing green oceans
that scents the thickened air with dainty delights and fragrance.
So much grows wild, free and un-contained
held back only barely by mason stone, brick and brush
intended to set the separation of garden and drive or walkway.
After years of carefully imagined plant and cultivation
this garden is no longer mine taking on life all its own
to grow rampant and wild, bold and beautiful despite my every effort.
It is surviving, living, growing, a picture perfect painting
envious lush greenery waiting for the proper moment
in which to flower and bloom beneath the summer sun.
Categories:
allegheny, beauty, flower, garden, growth,
Form:
Free verse
The word "Cherokee" is believed to be derived from a Choctaw word meaning "Cave People". Another explanation says it came from a Creek word "Chelokee", meaning "People Of A Different Speech".
It was picked up and used by the Europeans as "Cherokee" and was eventually accepted and adopted by the Cherokee in the form of Tsalagi or Jalagi.
In their own language the Cherokee originally called themselves The Aniyunvyia
or Anniyaya meaning The Principle People or The Keetoowah or Anikituaghi, Anikituhwagi meaning "People Of Kituhwa".
Although they usually accept being called Cherokee, many prefer Tsalagi Ayili.
Traditionally the people now known as Cherokee refer to themselves as Aniyun-wiya, a name usually translated as "The Real People".
Other names applied to the Cherokee have been:
Allegheny, Delaware, Arapaho, Chilukki(dog people), Osage and Kansa.
Their first encounter with the Europeans was with Hernando Desoto in 1540.
The English traders appeared among the Cherokee in 1673.
They first went to war with the colonists in 1711 and were devastated by epidemics of disease such as small pox during that century.
In 1835 the U.S. Govt. passed The Removal Act . Principal Chief John Ross refused to recognize the legality or validity of the Removal Act and challenged it in court.
The Supreme Court rulled in favor of The Cherokee Nation.
President Jackson said : "Justice Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."
You all know what happened after that.
Categories:
allegheny, history,
Form:
Free verse
Three Rivers
Down the singing, winding rivers and,
under spans of big city bridges,
a steel town grew up out of a fort.
Not one, but three singing, blue rivers
made a daily chorus to the sky,
the Allegheny sings on one side,
the Monongahela, the other.
They all move westward, to the sunset,
and soon form a golden triangle.
There they join the mighty Ohio.
At the junction of the three rivers,
the City of Pittsburgh grew and grew.
12/1/16
Form: River Line
RIVER LINE New Guidelines - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Rick Parise
Categories:
allegheny, city, history, river,
Form:
Verse
I was turning ten and learning the tricks
The year was 1956
I remember that my mother cried
The day that Tommy Dorsey died
I still believed in Santa Claus
James Dean was a Rebel without a cause
Green Door was a rockin’ tune
Patty sang about the Allegheny Moon
Russia’s relation with Hungary thinned
Gogi Grant sang The Wayward Wind
Love was a many splendored thing
I still can hear Fats Domino sing
Carl was wearing Blue Suede Shoes
While Guy Mitchell was Singing the Blues
The movie East of Eden was so fine
A young Johnny Cash was walking the line
Robert Young in Father Knows Best
Gunsmoke was about the Old West
The Edge of Night and As the World Turns
I’ll Cry Tomorrow, my heart still burns
Be Bop A Lu La Gene did render
And Elvis crooned Love Me Tender
In Poland the people fought for a goal
We listened to No Not Much and Heart And Soul
The Navy answered Mr. Robert’s Calls
There was the premiere of Guys and Dolls
Black and White TV had Roy, Gene and Tom Mix
What a wonderful year, 1956.
Categories:
allegheny, history, nostalgiaheart, heart,
Form:
Couplet
Jamie decides today will be the day
we take off to Kansas.
We've both dreamt of it,
driving off to flat lands
where we would be swept off,
cackling,
on our brooms to Oz.
I laugh,
an unfunny laugh.
Chipped and cracked,
it tumbles
across the phone line.
She laughs too,
an unfunny laugh,
and I stare at the phone
my eyes shaking,
clutching my life force
of Camel Jade cigarettes.
Dreaming suddenly of the Petroleum bridge
because it is so black today
and how I want to walk across
in my addled bare feet
like I did when we were seventeen
and find her
at end,
long hair sardonically twirled around her
pinky finger
in the tattered red
sun stained flannel,
and her purple converse
tennis shoes.
She remarks
that we wouldn't be able to reach off the
ground anyway,
as old and wide as we have gotten
and that
menthol cigarettes wouldn't
probably be popular with
midgets.
And I agree with her,
and laugh,
and cry,
and wonder
what silver cylindrical dreams use
when they move away
a slow sail down the Allegheny
a broken down old U-haul
or perhaps,
.........brooms and twisters
farther than Kansas, farther than Oz.
Categories:
allegheny, childhood, friendship, life, nostalgia,
Form:
Free verse
TRAIN – 1958
On a warm summer evening
at North Philadelphia Station
the 6:19 on track three, the "Spirit
of Saint Louis-Limited" from Penn Station
New York, Newark and Trenton bound for
Thirtieth Street, Paoli, Lancaster, Harrisburg
Altoona, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati
Indianapolis and Saint Louis
Twenty cars of elegance named Raritan
Susquehanna, Shenandoah, Delaware…follow
the sleek GG1 that is “Pennsy” power and speed
on the north Jersey flats, the rolling Dutch Country
the Tidewater regions of the Northeast Corridor
prelude to the moaning of the big double diesels in the
cool humid evening pulling silver moon-lit coaches
over the intricate topography of the ridge and valley
province, up the long steep grades, around the narrow
horseshoe curves, through the dark fertile clearings
the dense upland forests, the ancient terrestrial
rhythms of the Allegheny Mountains, and in the
silent midnight hours, falling faster and faster from
the Appalachian Plateau into the shadowed lowlands
of the broad Ohio Country, west through Indiana
a caterpillar of light and noise with a rapid
steel-clad cadence clacking, clicking, roaring through
the dreams of sleeping towns and farms, crossing
gracefully-crafted bridges over black ribbons of
water, and gathering their speed like earth-bound
meteors, drawn by the gravity of the Mississippi
River, greet the pearly gray dawn at a hundred
miles an hour, bursting through the mists with
the early morning sun, their haunting horns
blowing, howling at the crossings on the
Illinois prairie, the great river just ahead
Tonight I’ll lie in bed and listen to the television
next door, to the sirens in the neighborhood nearby,
but the rhythm of my thoughts will be rocking me
to sleep on the bright city of the night, hurtling
towards the west, opening up the continent to a
boy’s imagination and to railroad
station dreams
Categories:
allegheny, childhood, dream,
Form:
Free verse
BLUES THERAPY
She’d had a tough day,
her aging mother struggling
two siblings wounded and worried,
a gray day with snowfall, darkness
early and long
The husband knew what she needed
and when she started on dinner, staving
off decisions for yet another hour, he put
on Bonnie Raitt, you know, the kind of
smokey blues singer that helps a long-haul
trucker through the mountains of Pennsylvania,
off the Allegheny Plateau, across Interstate 90,
and up Route 81, the NAFTA run to Montreal
in the hours after midnight, gears grinding hard
on the endless up-grades, wrestling the heavy
load on the downhill curves and through the
lake-effect squalls, the tires, and the groaning,
and the roaring of the diesel playing dark back-up
music to the righteous redhead with the big
silver streak who carried his wife through
the sad, and the bad, and the good sure
to come
Smokey blues therapy on a February night
The Hunger Moon hopeful!
Winter wearing them down!
Categories:
allegheny, love, marriage,
Form:
Free verse
This is a growing Pennsylvania community.
Just south of Pittsburgh, it’s in Allegheny County.
This town has been incorporated since 1950.
This is a place with a rather long and proud history.
Baldwin stretches north along Becks Run.
It is just south of South Side Flats and Arlington.
The population per square mile is rather dense.
Baldwin has just over twenty-thousand residents.
With a bright future, Baldwin is a town that grows.
This is a very proud place, and it shows.
Categories:
allegheny, dedication, travel
Form:
Rhyme
The meadow reverberates with delightful pleasing harmony………….
The little brook meanders and dances over polyphony;
Remember the distant mountains surpassed with drizzling snow,
Through the flurry of iciness in night, we came alone.
The desolate land in some way quivers up our spine,
Echo of jungle, calls of the wild coalesce with allegheny vine;
The jagged uneven trail twist and turn as we stumble by tree line………….
The early sun, morning calls, we find the forest glade sign!
You shiver delicately in the cold as I drape my wrap just about you;
Your tender cold lips look for warmth searching for my cuddle high up;
Long have I sought you through blizzard, gale and rain,
Lingering sorrows night and days, aching heart, bottomless pain!
The log cabin on the glade has kept me living for how many days ?
The silence of your dream came to me in speechless ways;
Victuals I lived on were wild and little morning jays,
I was head over heels in love, nobody was granted, but love!
The warmth of the cabin has thawed the cold, hear the song…….
Waltzing by the firelight , reliving your love this is where you belong;
How content this isolated abode is to illumine your love,
I am fond of you; but not, till now, so much I’ll live on love!!
My love is as a fever, longing till I propose to achieve her…………….
In my slumber did haunt your beauty which comes to lie together,
The field-bed is too cold for us to sleep, yonder creeps the chill’
You snuggle close to me beneath the rug and clutch my hand!
The chirping sparrows stretch in the morning apace now with the sun………
You must leave by the dawn, but remember to return with the rising stars:
Around your frail frame wrap my shawl of adoration pure as morning blue,
Rain falls down my cheeks as my tears meet their end, bidding adieu !!
Categories:
allegheny, romantic,
Form:
Light Verse
Have you heard the national pundits scream?
Joe Biden won the election all clean.
But the numbers look crazy
And if you are not lazy
You can take a look and see what I mean.
Observe Allegheny, see what is meant;
Hundred thousand more votes from shrinking tent;
People are moving away;
Democrat county decay;
Record Dem votes implausible event.
See Maricopa, in Arizona.
Look at Kent, Oakland, Wayne, and Washtenaw.
None of the vote counts make sense,
Look; you’ll not be on the fence;
Vote fraud more damaging than the Rona.
Check out Gwinnett, Fulton, Dekalb, and Cobb.
If you can explain it, I’ll shut my gob.
Voter participation,
Would hold gratification.
If it was not so constricted, but broad.
Examine the vote count and you will see,
Numbers you never see in history.
Vote by mail, horrible plan;
Feast for a dishonest clan.
The numbers shout out, there’s no mystery.
Categories:
allegheny, abuse, betrayal, corruption, evil,
Form:
Limerick
OCTOBER 6, 2022
Fall in the Finger Lakes,
a meeting in Canandaigua,
a nature reserve visit on West Hill
north of Naples, the season at early
peak, all the colors including green,
the thick, deep forests of the Allegheny
Plateau chasing the underfunded farms
North to Lake Ontario
Back up on Interstate Ninety,
heading home to Syracuse, farm and forest
blowing by, tractor-trailers slightly menacing
at over seventy miles per hour, global commerce
heading home to Portland, Maine and Boston,
to the Port of New York City, the territory
in-between drenched in the colors of confident
change, fanning the flames of our faith
in the future, calling attention to the
numinous rhythms of this beautiful place
where we live!
Categories:
allegheny, seasons,
Form:
Free verse
Near the local library in my sweet little town lies
Greenlawn Cemetary where peace abounds..
An open field bursts in tawny golds like a Monet.
Flitting yellow butterflies land briefly and then fly away..
The Allegheny Mountains provide a panoramic view for
those demised and their visitors too.
Each engraved headstone, a tribute to one whose gone is
meticulously spaced a part on it's well manicured lawn.
Miniature flags were planted so one never forgets the
wars of our past and all are brave vets..
A few sturdy benches coated in gloss offer up a place to sit
and mourn the one you've lost..
It's quite serene, dignified, I remain seated in my car,
sharing in their solitude from a far..
From flesh and blood to earth's rich mud, so many stories,
so many lives.
All are born and all must die, death doesn't know compromise.
Categories:
allegheny, death,
Form:
Rhyme
Last call for alcohol, embargo
on the cargo headed for Fargo?
Bootlegging articles of?
"ConfederationNow",
Boot logger, droned Over all? Foggered... Froggers, sprawled. Farms attacked by competing vows. ++
Blood drained Cows.
Imagine, Gaia hype- our brainwashing, a
sacrifice to a Paul Bunyan Nephilim type, "Savior" moonshining wormwood tea in exchange for Sheep. Believing them to be. Stoned blind in Texas, right wing.
Liquid Media medicinals, points for eveyone West of, Diagonal the Allegheny, best of show, suggestion,
allegiant, allegory. (Oh...allegedly.)
As The King of the North fights zombies that believe the Game of Thrones just fantasy. Conspiracy_ Storytellers of propagandolf, minds of Sauron to keep
eyes Wide-Shut. By Aristocracy.
To "pass" on the proof of those stoned blind in Texas, shekeled, bought, brought a Rose, of Sharon,
from Ticked Karen's, in their own Eden.
Those non-Citizens,
"Christians of the un-Enlightened" l"unacy of Old',
thoughts? NoahmadicHeathens!
Of the tide turning; going South.
The dark side of the moon,
a journey scape of wet dreams in swoon.
To partake the half empty side of drink.
Salt of thirsts.
Cup of wrath of the Directional Winds.
A piracy bloodbath of Nationhood in martyred demarcation zones.
Cusp of swilling blood of the swill,
Apocalyptic feel, fills,
notes of the unveiling of the Whore who Rides the Beast on the Seven Seas. Leviathan is leavened,
rising, ready to eat.
Now, there is censorship on speech on the internet,
then is, when, is then en-Tyrely.
The Gatekeepers at Fallens keep,
keeping freedom, voices "Crying in the Wilderness"',
Peeps out of reach.
Accept for Government (entities) with algorithms, keyloggers, identity id thieves, imagers of the Beast.
Spell binders binding
their articles-of-New-World-Sourcery-Cheaping-Rumpelstiltskin-Seamstitchery-Tailoring-Truth- blinding-digital-mining-slaves for the Wolves,
Kings of the East, Trading Company.
Trading souls for an hour with the Beast.
Categories:
allegheny, america,
Form:
Rhyme