Best Anoints Poems
In a mire brewed
betwixt puddles of hell and mute dissent
a martyr wades -
weighed down by chains of shame and disdain
alas the thirsting self-absorbed swamp
distills and swills her stewed silence
and swallows the last embers
from her goblet of dreamer’s fire
pursed breaths are pickpocketed by the shallows
in a breathless vertical twist
an escapist is lost in the swirl of a chambered nautilus
distanced and deserted in the dance of descent
stillness belies the waterline’s greed
as a heroine’s salvage is suffocated -
the slick of self-appointed apathy anoints the surface
and a disquieted wind rises to bend the will of reeds
their flutes airing plainsong in forced supplication
yet carelessly cast away like spindrift from broken crests
while storm clouds blindfold wide-eyed skies
stifling any play of sun on water
Susan Ashley
May 1, 2020
~ Third Place ~
Premiere Contest: 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 1
Sponsor: Mark Toney
~ Fourth Place ~
Premiere Contest: Spiral
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Soft silhouettes sashay by my window
Grievingly gazing out unto a world of which you may never know
Linen curtains briefly ruffled in the breeze
Old drunken Julius finds shade under the huge oak trees
The echoes of poverty ring outside my building
The pleas of panhandlers, the chattering of children
Dope feign Delilah, struts up and down the streets, waiting to turn her next trick
Evaporating into the air, the sulfuric stench
Jared, the jock in high school, deemed all American athlete
Shooting craps in the alley just to make ends meet
Every night like clockwork, the street walkers stand by Ms. Martina’s door
When the sun rises and they scatter like roaches, she anoints the ground with oils
Hakeem stands on one corner, screaming out” Would you enter the Kingdom of heaven if you should die today?
While his brother ShaQuan stands across the street, on the corner peddling cocaine
When we were growing up Ebony and I vowed to always be best friends
I sit on my stoop and she doesn’t even look my way as she’s followed by her six kids
In the evening gun shots light up the night, like the fourth of July
Another wife a widow, another mother loses her child
With not so much as a reason why.
Shrines built in rememberance of lost souls, adorn the sidewalks
Where once laid the body of an innocent child outlined by blood stained chalk
I am here in the midst of a world that I may never really know
I sit here day after day, with my pad and my pen,
Trying to escape the perils of the Ghetto
Every new dawn reigns
as nature's queen to start the day
and her sword of light
anoints us thru the window panes
Sandra M. Haight
Quadro: 4-line verse with 5/8/5/8 syllable count,
line 1 and 4 rhyming
God gave you gifts that you may use them
Omnipresent He is hoping you choose Him
Do press on He will walk with you
Be meek as a child watch God move
Live your life as best you can
Even when disappointed by man
Solid rock is the word and
Stand on this not sinking sand
Yahweh is and He says I am
Oil anoints the head
Understand He has a plan
Draped in diamonds like the starlit heavens
she walks through the milky way and shines
like a burning candle in the thick of night
She is Madrina the sky Princess of love
her sparkling eyes of green dance soft
beneath the blue palatial loft
Golden voices of angels echo through the halls
as she glides in and out of clouds wearing a Celestial shawl
drenched with dew from God's floral garden
Godmother to all innocents who die before their time
she rocks their cradles and sings them lullabies
here in a heaven where no babies die;
Imbued diamonds on a crocheted silver dress
she anoints their little heads then with an angel's bless,
she takes them to her bosom and rocks them,
All Night Long...
Not dust.
A diminutive parliament
adrift in the sun's adjudication.
Wool-memory.
Pollen-script.
The pale errata of a vanished cat.
The mote revolved through lucence,
a gyroscope of dispersals,
field becoming fleece,
fleece becoming cuff,
cuff becoming gesture,
gesture becoming absence.
Afternoon negotiated with the bookcase.
The window acquiesced.
Even the wooden chair,
stoic apostle of corners,
briefly surrendered its silence.
What congregation is this,
where orchard, sheep, sleeve, wing,
assemble their afterlives without permission?
A mote stippled the aether.
Or so I named it.
Yet naming seems
a provincial habit.
The particle preferred
other affiliations:
relic,
rune,
diorama of departures.
Suspended in radiance,
it rehearsed some smaller cosmology~
not orbit,
not
d
e
s
c
e
n
t,
but a third inclination
for which language, that old taxonomist,
possesses no ledger.
Perhaps thresholds begin here~
not in graveyards,
nor beneath cathedral vaults,
but in ordinary rooms
where sunlight briefly
anoints the nearly invisible.
The mote crossed beyond the beam.
No elegy.
No proclamation.
Only the sudden vacancy of illumination.
I found myself wondering:
when the luminous thing leaves the light,
what exactly departs?
Candle of Ishtar glints their eyes to taste
where fireplace burns hushed tones, a smoky glide
and dew anoints waxed mouths, sighs collide,
like unspoken quakes, uttered not in haste.
Lay bare night’s scent, unrelenting, unchaste
peeled garment floats on a lounge of mantle;
there, burst of seeds lodge in her ovule’s well
replayed, released, on nipples’ buds down waist.
Releasing logic, their notes pour as flame
on creamy skin, through dusk-time ever bold
and fingers crawl north to east without shame.
Lovers entwining as one in rush of heat
till tresses billow like moist sleet, to exclaim
of Ishtar’s ripe tunes; groans of moonlit suite.
~ Petrarchan Sonnet rhymed abbaabba,
followed by a 6-line ‘sestet’in cdcdcd
~Charlotte's Scorchers
11/25/2013
Frantic searching for my sanity as the odor of explosives and burning flesh assault my soul. Longing for the boredom of stuffy barracks my eyes my friends constantly search for your return I hide all but fear.
We know the death of friends but in our life embrace we conceal all that is deferred for recollection in our final days. For now bravado, lots of scotch, and a Thai stick sets the pattern for our only security.
Lost are the joys of spirit we envisioned as children; gone is the clarity and respect for lives easily expended in the most secret of a nation’s honor, generalities served in a bitter beer.
I know you friend, your dreams your plans you say them softly in your sleep. Our prayers to will keep you safe.
We dare to plan in-country encouraged by being too short not to let our minds drift at the possibilities.
We hope that God is truly on our side and confess only in our eyes the sins we speak to no one.
The blood of those we do not know anoints the heads of those we do and love for now, until our final taps brings us home.
With this kiss of honor I embrace what remains of you my friend and your courage. I curse your departure and salute the honor of our time together.
This Little Light of Mine
I run though with a glow
That seems not to see afar off
But here is my starting point of achievement...
Mighty oceans appreciate every little flow.
Even though the wind blows tough
I will still keep it with my strength ointment.
Have you seen the world of fireflies?
They attract with such a little fire
So is this little light of mine.
I will illuminate where every darkness lies
For My fire ranks than the strength of a sire
I am not stopping until the shinning greatness sign.
With such a little light
I crave within a powerful burning
Tightly shut up for an explode
I sense it, 'tis a new might
That propels my intent yearning
And anoints my laden goad.
Come little lights, I will come mine
Shine, shine and shine...
And teem beyond this strange destructive dark light
Let's make a light uniquely pure and bright…
For this little light of mine
I am going to let it shine...
USERNAME: goodyylan
MOTIF: SPIRITUAL
(NEW POEM)
Sages say it's wise to persist
In striving for respect over love.
Such counsel I readily dismiss
One is set here, the other above.
Respect requires a clinical bent
Empathy-empty in the joints.
But love lodges everywhere sent
Heals, blesses, and anoints.
Respect eschews a pardoned act
Fearing a weakness be exposed.
But loves sustains itself intact
Caring not for what is supposed.
Prioritize respect if still you will
Seal it fast in bones and soul.
Know though when life bodes ill
It's love that makes it whole.
Sultry summer deep south
not only a season
or a climate, it is a dimension
I float in it submerged...
A sinuous southern life
oblique and sometimes slow
old beauty in salty thick air
warm blood sea misty and fragrant...
Come forth my pouting southern lady
hazy honeysuckle in the heat
we lie down in green pastures
Sunday love in the valley of death...
We raise the waters of the mighty Mississippi
to a rolling raging boil
our fingers do all of the praying
she anoints my head with oil...
Holy humid sultry Sunday
I choose not to spend it alone
swing low, sweet chariot
coming for to carry me home...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You’re an enduring eclipse of quotidian winsomeness,
Existing in front of all others, compelling the aforesaid into your shadow:
My Beautiful One…
Surpassing their talent for beauty,
By allowing the world to witness your gift for it:
My Beautiful One…
Rejuvenating a word once relegated to becoming depthless,
Its affects near fleeting, Beautiful showed few signs of standing peerless as it once did,
Though within your presence, Beautiful is brought back to its quintessence, to its inception,
Shown the miracle it was conceived in, you’ve promoted its ordinance even over that of the beholder’s vision:
My Beautiful One…
In your arms, embosomed by you, Beautiful is free from its superficial cellar,
No longer just vernacular, the “B” word for pretty, or merely our lexicon’s adornment.
No, My Beautiful One…
In your face, Beautiful finally returns nature’s true reflection,
Your facial features burn incandescently and uncontrollably, fueled by a lifetime of beauty all in one place.
My Beautiful One anoints Beautiful with her grace, returning its virtue,
Granting it renewed potency…thought lost for always…
Written in Afghanistan -27 OCT 2013
Therewithal, profluent life ettles it's while.
Thitherward, from Death's bleak campanile
Grim antiphonals serenade.
A capriccio, the slashing swipe of the reaper's scythe
will serenade.
Stringent Death forthwith anoints the mithridate to
Life's cantankerous and rankling ado
Hither now come, anon recondite Azrael, neither protend
nor annex this throttled contretemps.
The antiphonal of the reaper's cavalier scythe
Shall now serenade.
Awhirl, like kerfs demarcated
Years, bollixed, muzzy and brattled
shall holus-bolus expire.
No retaliation to death's gloomy surcease
No ingenious riposte to the reaper's final cleave.
Bootless now to don the amulets,
squeeze the jujus,
Kiss the talismans,
clutch the periapts or
Attire in steely cataphract.
The serenading of the reaper's scythe,
it's efficacy shall blithely cleave.
Bedim mine eyes from life's assailing
Bedim mine eyes from life's poltroonery
Vocabulary: barghest-a goblin fabled to portend misfortune; monody-funeral song;
antiphonal-chant; protend-to protract in time/lengthen; riposte-n. in fencing, a quick
return/thrust; brattle-v.-to make rattling or clattering noises;
cavalier-supercillious/disdainful/haughty; muzzy-hazy; attaint-v. to condemn; rankle-to
give pain/nettle/gnaw; contretemps-untoward accident/hitch; throttle-v.to
choke/suffocate/strangle/stiffle; bollix-v.-to bungle or botch; holus-bolus-adv.-all at
once/altoghter; mithridate-antidote against poison; cataphract-suit of armor for the
whole body; poltroonery-n. cowardice; a capriccio-musical piece characterized by
improvisation; ettle-to intend/to prepare; campanile-free standing bell tower; kerf-a
groove or notch
Azrael-the angel that helps souls from living to enter the afterlife; recondite-not
easily understood/abstruce;
periapt-a charm worn to ward of evil; juju-object believed to contain magical powers;
contretemps-disruptive unforeseen event; protend-to hold out or stretch forth
The accordionist (haikus)
To the accordionist playing on the streets of my hometown, Agrinio, Greece
Nectar of a tune.
A bee am I, harvesting
my memories’ buds.
A bitter tune.
Pollen on the wind’s eyes,
in the shape of tears.
Tripping the sound is
into the veins of my soul.
A rosy sunset.
Silence scented sound.
Aura of angels anoints
my prayers.
Sliding the tune is
Through the fingers of my heart.
Travails of a poem.
Lord is my shepherd
He’s with me. I have no want
Always forever
I am in pastures
Verdant green with cool waters
Beside the stillness
God shall protect me
When I walk through death’s shadow
He shall be my guide
At this large table
He anoints my head with oil
My cup runs over
Goodness follows me
All of the days of my life
In my Good Lord’s house.