Best Apothecary Poems
Her man was woven into love spell
By another woman, not of her smell.
Bewitchery, she will not tolerate
To the perfumery she’ll calculate.
Apothecary had the perfect answer
An exotic earthy whiff from vetiver!
Happy she was her man found her erotic -
But, alas, it was only episodic!
She spritzed the air with essence of rose petal -
Then a reminiscence of the betrayal!
Love and romance the attar generated
Very soon enough it evaporated.
Memorable scent of basil she wore next,
Pleasurable things her man not to forget,
In vain, it was she who cannot forget -
In her mind fresh the err her man had make,
Scent of her rival made her green with envy,
Scent of betrayal made her very angry,
Desperate but hopeful, she went to a lone edifice;
Temperate and humble, the scent of water brought her peace.
7/14/14
What's a single mom, overworked witch to do?
School potlucks won't suck up fat vats of witch brew
Green goop soup disinfects science projects
Magic wand deflects coupon blonde's rejects
Soccer field congealed, frogs in fish tanks
Your warlock son mocks the jocks with dark pranks
Your daughter barters love potions, your cat's a Clydesdale
Your cauldron is maudlin; no time for witchy cocktails
There's hearses to disperse, fortunes to curse
Restless pests - even witches need a nurse!
You've cobwebs to thread, graves to rake
Sugar greedy goblins to scare straight
No spells to swell your apothecary
Your broomstick's picked other places to be...
10/28/19
For 'Itch, Witch, Glitch or Twitch' contest
Sponsor: Nina Parmenter
Placed 7th
She was glass,
apothecary blue,
potions cool within,
a cure of sorts.
Some who sipped
survived
and some did not.
Some whose
burning lips
relinquished,
quenched
their thirst
forever,
never to desire
her fire
again.
and then,
there was
i
was there
parched beyond
regret.
afraid and yet
obsession
drove me
on to
shatter all
for that last
drop,
the drop that
fell,
that fell so fast...
and she was
glass.
We hired the neighbor kid
to put it all on eBay. He started
with the train-set you bought me on a whim,
Santa Fe, like the locomotive that pulled me
through Navajo country 40 years ago.
Now, this HO gathers dust, the cobwebs
aren’t to scale. Next we’ll sell
that beer stein from the Schwarzwald,
the potlatch bowl (Athabascan)
from our Alaska days.
No room in a smaller house
for my mother’s blue willow (so many
Thanksgivings) or my dad’s
apothecary jars. The Mexican tree of life
from Oaxaca. It’s time to downsize.
What kind of life, I wonder,
without cathedral pines outside the door,
and deer sipping from the water trough.
My saddle from high school, formed
to the back of a black mare sold
when I went away to college.
Back when I was gathering the clutter
of a lifetime, never imagining
someday I’d have to leave it.
Dear John,
A unique Epitaph you, yourself, penned so well
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Though many have misunderstood your epitaph.
Which means “ Fame and indeed life is fleeting”
Surely your fame was fleeting during your life-time.
Even Shakespeare confirms the true meaning
In Henry VIII, through Griffith who observes
“Men’s evil manner live in brass; their virtues
We write in waters”
So many misunderstood your genius writings
That is why The review called you a disciple of “Cockney Poetry”
And a severe comments on Endymion
“Go back to the apothecary shop Mr. John Keats…..”
Unluckily they did not read your magnificent Odes
Swinburne considered The Ode to a Nightingale
“The final masterpiece of human work for all ages”
Critic Helen calls the Odes, Ultimate embodiment.
Like me, the poets all around our globe get inspired by
“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree
It had better not come at all”
Your words like leaves are still on the tips of every tongue
There isn’t a single moment
People don’t quote you, write about you, speak about you.
I repeat your epitaph
““Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Only all that was mortal your grave contains
Your name and fame exist everywhere like Zephyr.
+++++++
+++++++
May 30, 2014
Form: Free Verse
Eighth Place Win
Contest: Letter to a poet by Monterey Sirak
The Storyteller
he is always there, in those glamoured
dream soaked holy days,
etched keenly into the memory
a fixture of the summers
that flowed then melted into one another
to eddy around the stone bench
at noon, in the park of Ave Lyon.
faithfully he appeared
on the clocks twelfth stroke
elegant fingers pulled humbugs
from intriguing paper packets
white hair tamed beneath a silken cap
soft snowy beard drifted across his chest
eyes a sharp twinkling blue, saw all.
long drowsy afternoons we sat,
shaded beneath an ancient oak,
slipped through the cracks of time
caught within the silver words
of that timeless apothecary of dreams.
our willing guide, to worlds unknown,
could captivate our school freed minds
with chance for magic carpet rides
quest for golden sheep skin prize
knight’s and fiery dragon’s lives
my eyes would see him still
should I chance to pass that green oasis
in summers never, never land.
" One man's junk is another man's treasure" - author unknown
To some, old collectables and antiques are nothing but junk,
even heirlooms kept safely in their grandmother’s old trunk.
They say antiques sales are diminishing and not as popular today,
but I believe antique collecting is still an interest and here to stay.
It’s fun to go antiquing on the weekends for old forgotten treasures,
buying trinkets to discover their provenances by researched measures.
Exciting to imagine the energy and stories the antiques may hold,
and delightful when finding collections of history so rare and old.
An old empty apothecary bottle that once held medicine to treat the flu,
or helped saved the life of a sick family's toddler when he was only two.
The old handmade quilts and lace doilies that are now dull and faded,
some kept as cherished family gifts and some bartered and traded.
The beautiful Currier and Ives fruit print I found today for sale,
with foxing and colors not as vibrant and some getting pale.
I wonder the story it holds, was it in a mansion or a small home,
displayed as a collection of art or in a shack on the wall alone?
Garage sales are popular places today to find antiques and old junk,
seeing the large number of people who stop can’t be debunked.
Antique collecting is here to stay and will regain popularity,
and still exciting when finding a treasure that is a known rarity!
3/4/23
Contest: Writing Challenge -" J " words Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Constance La France
John Styth Pemberton, do you know what you have done?
You invented something that is popular with everyone.
You occupation was as an Atlanta apothecary.
Whatever you cooked up in your kettle seemed contrary.
Fans of one of your recipes became a plethora.
However, none of them knows the exact formula.
What was intended as a medicine for the head,
became popular as a soft drink beverage instead.
What you were looking for was a cure for headaches.
What a strange path destiny sometimes takes.
In all the lands where different flags are unfurled,
your product can be found anywhere in the world.
It is a brown syrup with coca and cola nut extract.
Other imitators would soon get into the act.
People do not drink cola all of the time.
That is why there are beverages of lemon and lime.
Soft drinks of many other flavors exist.
The numbers of them make a very long list.
Among many fans, your product is number one.
The spot at the top will never be undone.
Species sundry sentential
Line the lost lowered loft
Whose weary wayward-ceiled
Roof raises itself over the lot:
The diverse specimen bottles of pharmaceutic potations,
Mortared and mixed as by the Hawthornean sawbones
And apothecary, yclept, poetically rendered: "The Quack Haunted."
(Aye,) Haunted and hunted he was, by that vile old crone,
Whose life he did not decrease one iota nor span,
With the ingested application of one of his odious elixirs,
By the harridan so quaffed.
Yet, the obstreperous host of the soldierly soldiery of dozens of nations,
Yclept herein by the appellation, "Plagiarism," they fairly encroach upon
The tableau naught but ominously.
And thus ominous be also the tone of this,
Which 'tis my most perfervid and prayerful hope that
'Tis utterly unclassifiable, unidentified and unidentifiable.
I do not care for the onerousness of being pinned down,
For living up to the hoary and draconian standards of the vast
Collect of poetry-of poetries.
This I will not brook.
(But before I end this ebullient and elliptical encomium,
I must turn once again to that species of alliterativeness that
Provided the nutriment for it and me: the "grist for my mill,"
As the archaic idiom has it: )
Therefore, these things
Have henceforth
Come casually
To their
End.
The sow beauty queen’s
favorite color is money green
The cloven jaw cutie’s
favorite sound is “cha-ching”
Miss Piggy Lips loves how the cash registers
throughout the land constantly rings
That jade oinkment noise
is a pigmentary salve to her greedy soul
She’s got a glut appetite for mo’ and mo’
Her imperial motto is:
“Mo’ money means mo’ toga rest,
and much less queen bee stress”
This regal swine loves to sit
in her towering pleasure palace pigpen,
and peso whine
and ruble dine
Miss Piggy Lips,
with the Pillsbury hips,
enjoys wallowing in the miry green dough
Mudslinging filthy lucre nods covetously so
Miss Piggy Lips,
with the greasy palm grip,
silver tongue yields coin swallowing squeals
Jade oinkment noise forfeits her unpaid bills
This oral apothecary fatty substance
is pocketbook soothing to the queen Midas soul
Gold pursed lip smacking
is how this triple jowl lady low down dirty roll
Those hog heaven eyes
got them snout gobbled green eggs
gulp hasty safely cracking
Her pigmentary belly rub etiquette
is sop share burp lacking
As those rotund royalties
never piggy bank lessen one lil’ bit
Jade oinkment noise
is very spit pernicious green
Pigmentary salve for the thin-skinned cries
of the profiteering unclean
Dyed paper lust has an emerald sheen
Phat bags under dollar sign eyes
be the makeup blush
for the Oval weight sow beauty queen
Miss Piggy Lips,
with the mint green painted toenails,
she loves the excess gossip that dirty tales sell
Flop sweat sleeping
in her palace penthouse pigsty,
she snore ignore the kingdom’s po’ travails
Wrapping herself in a muddy blanket of lies,
surrounding her obese body
with a methane swarm of toady tongue flies
Miss Piggy Lips,
the dung awful smell
coming from that
jade oinkment perfume trail
is just too much nasal pain to inhale
It’s so sickening to brain fart expel
Fat chance the stench makes anyone well
The reaper rhymes a rhyme to Riddle me
"Your Castles gone", he said, "now go be free"
But "What" I pray, "will be my Legacy?"
"The air you breathe, these words you speak to me"
"But man", I cried "is judged by his possessions"
"On earth", he said "these things are mans obsession"
These truths I fear lead only to confession
"Confess" he cried, "let that be your progression"
I only craved the Wealth that others claim
The money, the lifestyle and the fame
The Celtic Tigress roars within her shame
A Nation left unbridled writhes in pain
You say your faith is strong, yet you despair
Again he says "you speak and breathe Gods air"
For this alone my friend should bring you cheer
"There are far harsher crosses you could bear"
Oh can't you see I struggle, day by day
These Tears I cry can't wash my Sins away
The debt amassed is more than I can pay
"Have Faith", he sighed, for "help is on its way"
Apothecary ease my wearied thoughts
The battle flares again, each time it's fought
As time it flies and leaves me here distraught
God knows in time, it's only time I've bought
"Behold the Gifts you hold within your reach"
"Are you not Blessed with Word enough to Preach?"
"Preach what" I screamed, your favour I beseech
"That Love of God is Fading out of Reach?"
While 'Naked', peoples lives unfold in drama
A shirt and tie, be the Politicians armour
We wait in line to gather Heavens mana
While drowning in a sea of Celtic Kharma
High up here,
amid this cold and alone,
my tools might best be
forgiven if they've
long-since forgot
that they deserve better.
But the only lips my teacup
have known are my blurburing two.
The only ink my brush has known
has been that scolded into some
sorrowful form on this not-mulberry rock.
The only skin this robe has known
was that of this persistent perpetrator.
It's yet to feel a worthy monk; the only sage its known
is the sage I've crumbled into my pestle
in pitiably inchoate mockery of an apothecary
when my knee went turned and grew as big
as my dreams.
The only ears or heart my poems have reached
up here, in this thin air,
have been,
has been my own -
Source and resting place of my
ignoble offerings.
I forgive my cup.
I forgive my robe.
I forgive my brush.
I forgive my flesh.
It never knew better.
It always deserved better.
It never knew better.
Come on down to Pleasant Pharms:
Apothecary quaint with charm.
Motto here is 'Do no harm'
Sometimes we sort of miss…
Grab some psychedelic fungus,
Mushroom that are quite humongous
On the trails right here among us,
And colors when you piss!
Don’t need any antidote, see
Mescaline’s here, and peyote.
Howl the moon like a coyote,
Then go chew off your arm.
Drop some acid; be discrete.
We’ll hide ‘em in a blotter sheet.
Perforated little squares, neat!
They say no long-term harm...
Come on down, don't be a stranger!
There’s no clear and present danger,
Just neural pathway re-arrangers
Down here at Pleasant Pharms.
I speak of cash crops, refined
apothecary powders (staples really) bought to
sate, to feed the scarred artery and the
diseased mind, the lover and the slave.
I speak of madness.
Jean Neuhaus had an apothecary store in Brussels.
He started covering medicines with chocolate, to make it more palatable.
His grandson replaced the medicine with praline.
“a spoonful of sugar”