Best Arbiters Poems
We celebrate the optimist
Extolling his cheery ways
As the light shines upon him
We think he's worthy of our praise
He seems to have the answers
With him the future's always bright
Convincing us that darkness
Is a form of blackened light
Not a thing seems to phase him
He surveys life from on high
Floating above the misery
With a twinkle in his eye
All the while the pessimist
Occupies a gloomy place
Warning us of the dangers
That none of us wish to face
We want rainbows and buttercups
A world that is cheerful and bright
We fear arbiters of darkness
For we think they will take our light
It's wise to listen carefully
The pessimist might be right
Don't choose a veil of ignorance
Dyed in Optimistic White
Categories:
arbiters, introspection,
Form:
Quatrain
I have found that throughout life
You can be a needle or a knife.
Either you heal, repair, and bind
Or sever, injure, and divide.
With words and deeds we so ordain
To be arbiters of peace or pain,
To fasten tight or slash apart,
To cherish or to break a heart.
Each moment shapes the tool we use
So today, which will you choose?
8/24/2016
Five Rhyming Stanzas -5 only- Poetry Contest entry
Categories:
arbiters, humanity, meaningful, philosophy,
Form:
Rhyme
Nothing important happened today,
according to an omission
in the local newspaper Metro page
The death of my best friend ... my husband,
this sad story of injustice was missing
Such a horrible ghetto tragedy
wasn’t worth one drop of black ink
A bucket of widow tears,
and a heavy casket of stolen years
ain’t much to write about
Their light compassion darkly color my thoughts
The coroner said specifically more,
though the jargon was impersonal and technical:
Six bullets ... cranial hemorrhage,
two collapsed lungs ... four broken ribs
And a beautiful face unrecognizable
from a brutal beating
My loving spouse was last seen getting stopped
by two police squad cars
Handcuffed and whisked away,
my beloved took a cold visit to the morgue
later that day
Nothing out of the ordinary happened
is what the police arrest report said:
Belligerent attitude ... refused to eat his food,
got violent when questioned ... didn’t follow any of the rules
The dry report clinically concluded:
Suspect resisted in the interrogation room,
and reached for an officer’s weapon
Fear for a lawman’s life
obviously was priority number one
Deadly force was justified, so they say
But, what about the beatings before the discharge of the gun?
Oh, all of the accused officers
got a medal pinned on their professional life
The judge tossed the lawsuit out ... said it was simply
the vengeful rantings of a grief-stricken wife
My meek, mild-mannered man
was slanderously portrayed
as a drug addict who went berserk
Truth be told with a graffiti spray can;
pure honesty sackcloth arrayed,
he died going on his way to work
Nothing too important happened today,
just another ghetto funeral parade
Nothing that important happened today;
truth got covered up and buried,
as the arbiters of justice looked the other way
Nothing too important happened today,
only black shrouded pain on public display
Mental distress note to self:
My personal tragedy occurred on a Wednesday
Categories:
arbiters, bereavement, death, husband, sorrow,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
He shocks me. Only a day or so ago
I'm sure I didn't look like that.
I try to part the few thin strands
of hair up top, the patriarchs before me
saw on their own sluggish heads
not long ago--I was not so sure that I
would always wish them peaceful rest;
it wasn't my idea!
But I have joined them now; this role
of wisdom in a geezer doesn't
always fit--and no one falls in love
with old ideas when the new ones
are in vogue. Respect and polity
lacked the concern of youth
that I knew 60 years ago.
'Twas ever thus? Perhaps. I never
long for olden days. I would, however
like to have us all just listen
to each other, stow the fear
and tempest in those heads
that sleepily look back at us each morning,
then forgive them, aged and young,
of all our doubts, for hoary heads alone
are not the arbiters of peace or joy.
It is every mother's son
indeed in saecula and saeculorum, say:
Amen, again Amen.
~
Categories:
arbiters, age,
Form:
Free verse
I do not deny that the heat of life’s bubbly buzz is cheery
But I would instead be the keen silent observer of all,
The keen eye that critiques the chaotic hubbub around –
The solitary judge who arbiters from the windows of a lonely soul.
For a decade or so I have been in the epicenter of societal fuss,
Now my turn to stand a few steps behind and watch the theatrics
Of the chattering mouths that make pink the streets and markets;
For I find so much pleasure in the observance of the varied graphics.
So I muffle my mouth and glue my tongue upon the palate
And I sit behind, and clear my eyes of mist before it’s late.
Categories:
arbiters, life,
Form:
Verse
IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY - LXXXII
for Carlos Bousoño, the eminent Spanish critic, poet and professor
who maintained that if you don't like the "humorist",
you're not likely to find much to laugh at in/with his (sense of) "humour"
IF ever I had a country, a country where every TOM-Cat, Dirty-DICK and Royal HARRY wrote what his fellows called POESY
And if ever I were the only SON of a GUNny Sack-Bag incapable of pouting lines to an astronomically non-sensical degree
And as punishment thereof - sans appeal - if I were to be appointed by the Supreme Inter-Galactico-Cosmo-IL-logical Council of the Arbiters of Tyrannic Taste the one and only ARBITER and JURY
And should my fellow-poets ever so much as utter or let escape a squeak on, relating to or about what they cook-up as stew or porridge of
un-hermeneutical ETERNAL VERITIES which they print publish post (ne’er you mind: plagiarize) and/or pander to their pridefully painted images potpourri
I would first and foremost issue an EDICT - nay, even a DECREE - to CONFINE each and every one of my bumble-bee constantly buzzing comrade BARDS, purveyors and promotors of mutually unintelligible verse within their own ivory PENTHOUSES of phantasmagorical (a)musings
under pain of summary banishment - should they ever so much as "peine in poiein » - to the GREAT ATTRACTOR WALL of GALAXIES and so be it, I pray thee
And this, even if I were to be confined to my very own solitary dungeon and be condemned to listen to - against my will, day and night, for ever and ever - the ethereally soul-uplifting poutings of the Poetasters of Isphahan in their wordy giddy swirls of SUFI
And even if I never ever had no country where POETRY had need of mutually EGO-BOOSTING commentary
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, April 5, 2020
Categories:
arbiters, humor, poetry, writing,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Sometimes for fun men worship a gun
To shoot a recruit, to vanquish a victim
Whose only fault lies in a bun
The poor nibble in a starving team
Barrels and muzzles dominate
In thoughts, actions, deeds and priorities
Held high in fake media to disseminate
Philosophies and heresies propagated in sororities
With convoluted creeds
Infants decry when refugees die
In droves as their faith pleads
On its knees for the dissolution of the lie
Shouted aloud by a boisterous crowd
Gathered despite a genocide
Perpetrated by the mighty and the proud
Who pronounce their side innocent of fratricide
In the DRC, South Sudan and Syria
Where Christians suffer untold humiliation
Malaria, starvation, indignity and diarrhea
And unprecedented persecution and the violation
Of human rights
While the UN watches inept
In the face of blatant veto fights
Pursued with vigour kept
High on an agenda of futility
Arguing a fruitless case
Resting on the volatility and motility
Of the talk shop whose base
Inspires revulsion
At the incompetence and pretence
To take action on the expulsion
Of sanity and competence
Hitherto worshipped as holy grail
By the General Assembly
Whose voice and choice are shot off the rail
By the mighty and bubbly
Who appoint themselves arbiters
To determine nothing gone wrong in Yemen
Despite the death of powerless characters
When the Security Council in unison shouts amen.
Categories:
arbiters, poems,
Form:
Free verse
The wheel upon which the carriage of life rides;
A discipline for the unnoticed arbiters among mortals
A specialty for Nature's brides;
A third eye for them that love to see!
Categories:
arbiters, art
Form:
Monorhyme
Mirrors and Scales
Approached with trepidation
they assault our self esteem,
when we waddle up for judgment
and they destroy our dream.
Cold unflinching arbiters
reflecting just the truth,
of what was long suspected;
aging has borne its fruit.
Saggy baggy bodies
so long past being young,
when skin and muscles fit us
where now they are just hung.
Who is that I’m looking at
and who else is on the scale?
Gone from buff and suntanned
to overweight and pale.
I can’t believe what’s happened
has it been so long ago?
My pride of youthful vigor
is now dangling down below.
My wicked scale and mirror
have turned on me so fast,
showing the shocking present
where I was looking for the past.
Categories:
arbiters, humorous,
Form:
Quatrain
When in my youth I knew the truth,
To all of life's stark questions,
With flippant ease, to please or tease,
I had the answer, could seize the day,
Was sure of myself, in every way.
When in the middle years of life,
I matured a bit, could take advice.
The world, was still all mine to conquer,
But it didn't matter now, if it took a little longer,
Diverted by indulgence, in the luxuries of life,
Whilst coping with the problems, of daily toil and strife.
Now comes the rub, time ticks it's nell
Good intentions, will pave our own road to hell,
And all those things that we thought could wait,
Chances are that we probably, have left it too late,
You can change it of course, it depends on how well,
You react to this warning, only you can tell.
So let us stop tempting, the arbiters of fate,
Grasp life by the throat, and not hesitate,
We have it within us, to map our own course,
The route may have to be taken with force,
But obstacles are only problems not solved,
Just meet them head on until all is resolved.
Categories:
arbiters, life,
Form:
Verse
When in my youth I knew the truth,
To all of life's stark questions,
With flippant ease, to please or tease,
I had the answer, could seize the day,
Was sure of myself, in every way,
When in the middle years of life,
I matured a bit, could take advice.
The world, was still all mine to conquer,
But it didn't matter now, if it took a little longer,
Diverted by indulgence, in the luxuries of life,
Whilst coping with the problems, of daily toil and strife.
Now comes the rub, time ticks it's nell
Good intentions, will pave our own road to hell,
And all those things that we thought could wait,
Chances are that we probably, have left it too late,
You can change it of course, it depends on how well,
You react to this warning, only you can tell.
So let us stop tempting, the arbiters of fate,
Grasp life by the throat, and not hesitate,
We have it within us, to map our own course,
The route may have to be taken with force,
But obstacles are only problems not solved,
Just meet them head on until all is resolved.
68
Categories:
arbiters, journey, life,
Form:
Verse
Do not the ones who preach diversity create the same conundrum as the ones who preach segregation?
To whom must I defer to define what or how society should look like or be organized as?
What are the standards by which diversity is to be judged and who are the arbiters of the standards?
Is my diversity allowed to differ from yours?
How do diversity mandates differ fundamentally at the core than segregation mandates?
All laws or constructs that force the individual citizen or corporate citizen to comply with edicts restricting choice of human association are an anathema to freedom!
Freedom being the ideal to strive for, diversity being a natural biproduct of freedom.
All men secretly yearn to be free, but many are willing to abdicate the freedoms of their fellow man in order to lord power over them.
Power to control others the true aim of both the segregationist and the diversity devotees.
Both being willing to use government power to control their fellow citizens right to free association.
It is by definition a Godly Patriot who will stand up and fight for their fellow man’s freedom!
Categories:
arbiters, america, courage, history, humanity,
Form:
Free verse
A glass stands upon a table,
Watched by arbiters of existential
State.
They observe the glass, to give opinion
As to its contents.
The Pessimist speaks: “There is wine
In the glass, and it is half empty”.
The Optimist, with shake of head
And wave of hand, denies this:
“The glass is half full”.
There is a pause as all gathered
Ponder the wisdom of relativistic
Observation.
The Pragmatist steps forward:
“Half full or half empty, it is refillable!”
Silence shrouds the watchers, deep in thought;
The Opportunist elbows past and picks up
The glass, draining the wine within.
“Hmmm – nice” he opines,
“Is there any more?”.
Thus Heisenberg speaks through wine
Stained lips;
Having severed the Gordian knot of
Fullness or emptiness,
With pleasure and relish.
Categories:
arbiters, language, perspective,
Form:
Blank verse
All creatures in the world are born givers
They’re sprinkled salts giving tastes on earth
They generously offer services or in kinds
Others give themselves for all mankind
Among them, cheerful givers are easy to define.
Cheerful givers render voluntary service from the heart
Don’t expect rewards in return from the start
Like trees in the fields with all comforts to offer
Aren’t like clouds that give rain only when denser
Or give imbalance scale in the eyes of arbiters.
Cheerful givers give what they have out of love
Never count- for them is to forget the past
Like flowers opening their petals from mini garden
While their blooming sounds remain in silence
As we savor their fragrance ‘til across the fence.
Cheerful givers work hard for mission to vocation
Like birds flying far leaving their eggs for provisions
Not minding any penny to come along
Out of generous hands, they share in happy songs
With warm widely open arms to prolong.
Cheerful givers give their best to others for the Lord
They’re Jesus’ co-workers in vineyard of brotherhood
Since the Lord is the most cheerful givers of all
Who created, gave life and redeemed the world
His Divine Provision is a paramount paradigm to behold
For all God's givers, more blessings unfold.
Sept. 26, 2020
Categories:
arbiters, love,
Form:
Rhyme
Tyranny wears no single face—
it dances in silk and iron,
in laughter rippling through marble halls,
in jeweled cups brimming with poison.
Here stand five shadows cloaked in power:
the Jade Empress who penned her conquests in ink of blood;
the Blood Countess who bathed in youth’s final heartbeat;
the Poison Queen whose roses wilted on royal lips;
the Thorned Mother sculpting her son into a golden idol of death;
the Icon-Breaker who crushed faith beneath her boot.
They moved like vultures through court and corridor,
each step a measured echo of shattered lives.
Their eyes—cold maps of ambition—
charted the fall of poets, princes, innocents.
Their hands—delicate arbiters of suffering—
wrote edicts that carved screams into walls.
Remember: cruelty is not a garment stitched by men alone.
It blooms wherever power dreams of itself
and drinks deep from the wells of mercy’s undoing.
Categories:
arbiters, dark, evil, fate,
Form:
Ode