Best Bipeds Poems
Fancy feast
In my best china dish
How she loves to be finicky
Wearing nothing but
Her pretty pink rhinestone collar
As she tiptoes across the room
Slinky and sleek
With a regal air
Ignoring silly bipeds
Life is grand
Prancing around
She owns the place
Published in The Amateur Poets Magazine, Spring 2020
AP: Honorable Mention 2021
Submitted on September 12, 2018 for contest SEPTEMBER 2018 PREMIERE sponsored by BRIAN STRAND
and on September 1, 2018 for contest PERSONIFICATION OF A PET, WILD ANIMAL OR INSECT sponsored by TANIA KITCHIN
Humans are we with bodies of structures complex.
Death comes to all of us though in varying effects.
Flesh. blood and bone are we, held together by
sinews. Also we have organs on which we rely.
Bipeds are we –meant to walk with postures straight.
We dance and ride and run, adapting to our favorite gait.
Intelligences are we, but few have the audacity
to use perhaps a fifth of our brain’s capacity.
Mortals are we, unlike One who had the power never to be dead.
Had He not been willing, He’d not have sacrificed Himself instead.
We are a mystery. To scientists we come from evolution.
Unfaithful souls refuse acceptance of any Godly solution.
Together all as one, we are called Humanity,
but racism and cruelty show much insanity.
We are parents, siblings, spouses, and the list goes on and on.
Our ancient kin are many. By the time we’re born, they all are gone.
We are workers; we are slobs; we are losers; we are winners.
If wise, we learn that love is all, even love for sinners.
We are members of societies with presidents and chiefs,
many who start wars over differing beliefs.
We are colors of our skin, called black, brown, and white.
And even red and yellow. Such titles don’t seem right.
We are categorized by classes though most the world is poor.
The middle class knows comfort; the rich live in grandeur.
We are sufferers of hardships, of trials, pain and grief.
Joy we also know in this earthly time so brief . . .
We are our brother’s keeper, and none deserve neglect.
All we really need are love, kindness and respect.
GAZA 2014
Which veil b
locks o
ur view of the app
arent , what
purblindness
vis-à-vis this
land s
lice, that we should f
ail
to make
sense of the rebus
it is or to
decip
her the his
torical
hieroglyph it is.
See the man
iacal maw
that makes it more
than a guts-for-garters
clash.But
yet i
t fails the
world’s celeb
rated triage.
Cut through
the curt
ains, take a loo
k at the bipeds
on the other
side and the end-
of-the-world im
ages they s
end forth
Pitted as
they are again
st exist
ential odds,
and attitudes, gun
gho and ra
bid
With human
ity poro
us, pond
ero
us, vapid busy
in ba
lancing acts.
22 Aug 2014.
Hey, I've got me a plan to survive World War Three
And it doesn't involve living deep in the sea
With a mermaid named Maddy from that '80s movie
Or a grey-skinned E.T. hoping to crossbreed with me.
There's a bunch of big blokes known as Bigfoot to some
And they live in the woods where most humans won't come
Though they've entered our culture as the years have gone by
They are still seen as legends and old myths, that's no lie.
See, in spite of their fur and their size they're quite smart
For their fondest desire is to live well apart
From us primates who ravage the Earth without pause
Like the virus that spreads through its host - just because.
Called by Yeti and Sasquatch and still other things
They refer to themselves as "Jemah" and are beings
Who, unlike the poor bipeds that include me and you,
Can converse without speech, like our pets often do.
Though the tallest are known to have grown to nine feet
And they stink like old garbage, not to mention dead meat
I shall fashion my life on this heavenly lathe;
I'll make Sweet Thing my wife, and I won't have to bathe.
Villanelle: The Dilemma of the Non-Violent – 56
To what extent can there be room for free will
If what governs is the Principle Yang-Yin
Since the future can largely be told at will
Since the Yi Jing permits karma to fulfil
Good works compensate pitfalls one stumbles in
To what extent can there be room for free will
For the Principle to work there must be Evil
In living things with will embedded in the gene
Since the future can largely be told at will
At what stage can karma begin the peril
Quadrupeds sans will or when bipeds sin
To what extent can there be room for free will
Does karmic balance-sheet deduct influence ill
Parents environs victims of upbringing
Since the future can largely be told at will
None can be guilty as the mythic Devil
The game’s over what pardon when neither win
To what extent can there be room for free will
Since the future can largely be told at will
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2015
No citadel’s too tall for mortals like you.
Even acclivity of mounts fear of bipeds like you.
Adam’s ale in its ampleness has lost its meaning.
And only with your condonance,
do the flowers un-bud and birds do sing.
But let’s see, if this almighty can pass in my little catechism;
And a test it is; shouldn’t be misconceived with any criticism:
So, in the unfolding, will you also make the butterfly to unfold,
its hued aileron as per your yearn and control?
And As per your hankering, will you as well repaint,
the black calamus of the cormorant?
What has been quenching the thirst for years,
will now go from blue to black?
will you do all this to everyone and
Then save yourself the flak?
Will the new clock scoot a tick?
The viaducts have no brick?
Will the berdas rumble and the cougars sing?
Will the off-springs dummy up their begetters in the forthcoming?
Succumb or give an answer, are the only ways you’ve got!
Cause’ what you’ve been doing, I dub it as prying.
And there exists no amnesty for what you’ve been trying.
You’ve been a fine jeweler for the prime;
Validating the originality of a corundum’s been your style.
So how come you changed your vogue; negative appraisal is all you report?
Since when were you born with the power to transmogrify?
One could not get to azure, if you ever denied?
It’s never too late for home, even if you start back today,
You’re never too late for home, if you grow into a new You on the way.
You’ve been vexing the orb for years and yet go on, cause it owns no speech.
Narcissistic you are I hate to say; You never did as you preached.
But you still get a chance, to outweigh all your flaws,
Capitulate to the architect; cause he’s the only one who knows,
How the orb would relearn to live and the art for the orb to re-grow.
To bend is not for the anemic; But for those who aspire to learn.
Meek you’re not but strong enough to have ‘to be transformed’, as what you yearn.
Believe me when you reach home today,
they will get to see the stronger You.
For yes, I’d still like to admit
No citadel’s too tall for a mortal like you.
Form:
LOOK OUT, IT'S GETTING DARK
Look out, itís getting dark
Time never strode
Viciously before
Treachery, torment
And unleashed lust
Demonstrated route-march
Even at broad day light
Look out, itís getting dark.
Daughter has not reached home
Look out ÖÖÖÖ.
Clutches of evil
So visible, virulent
Brutish libertines
Clung in air embodied
Tender child
She is not at home
Look out-
Sharp beaked vultures
Incorporeal
Invisible,
They flap wings,
Ugly luring of tongue
Resounding rhythm
Vagrant beasts roam, grunting.
Celestial bodies, guardian angels
Keep eyes shut
Look outÖÖÖÖ
Way side brooks
Bogs lay bare
Ferocious shades in darkness
Fireballs roll from gut to throat-
Dispassionate halogen lamps
Hostile streets concealing
Treacherous holes
And ferocious bipeds to pounce
On pray.
Itís dark
As dark as the Black Angel
Our daughter-
Look outÖÖÖÖ.
A wail on wings of wind
A choked scream-
Nauseating odour swells in air
A shadow at the rear end
Of St. Joan street.
Stage sets of a trap pit
Scary shades, bitter fruits
Of calumny, distressing.
Arresting with claws
The black scorpion stings
Prey shivering in fear, disgust
Flames, flesh burning
A self immolation
Crumbling down to ashes.
Our daughter
Look out-
Itís dark
As dark as Black Hole
Devilís stake
Charred body-
My cherub
My blood-
She is not at home.
Night spreads heavy shroud
Over our dreams.
A death knell mourning
Slovenly
Crushing life
Our life
There is no world beyond this one we know
With dominant bipeds and skies of blue
And lack of compassion and love we show.
Perhaps there could be life where the stars glow,
Blinking and pulsating their reddish hue.
There is no world beyond this one we know.
Do they have one arm where three ought to go
Or the same old three per side as we do,
And lack of compassion and love we show?
Maybe they just study the winds that blow
And believe this statement is likely true:
“There is no world beyond this one we know.”
Far away beings beyond sunbeam throw
Would not like me any more than they you,
Or lack of compassion and love we show.
We are building ships to make light speed slow,
To take us to the wall of time, and through.
Is there no world but this one we know,
with this uncompassionate love we show?
Drunk as a Dog
By Elton Camp
Some similes don’t make much sense at all
Like the intoxicated, “drunk as a dog” to call
“Drunk as a skunk” is also heard all the time
But I figure that is because of the nice rhyme
A dog I’ve never once seen shop a whiskey store
Likewise, one has never entered a saloon before
Anyone ever seen a dog with a six-pack of beer?
We sure don’t have anything like that around here
Our old hound dogs all seem to get along just fine
Without a slug of whiskey or even a sip of wine
The dogs might well say it’s unfair to compare
Them to the swaggering bipeds with so little hair
But it might be well to keep old Brutus on a chain
So that “sober as a judge,” your dog does remain
It isn’t likely that he’d be accepted at the local AA
And I never have heard of any groups called DDA
Winter’s hoar…frost..
has bled the maples
Crimson, marks
the torn throat of morn.
Summer’s sullen forays
have scared the natural
blush of Fall.
Would the wood recover
from the toxic fumes of man?
Radiant the sun which bombs
the atmosphere, a blight of cancer
upon the uncloaked skin…
Mutant and mutating man
warring harbinger of doom.
Where sand and soil
and microbes had cleansed
the refuse of man waits…
clogging the arteries of bipeds
overflowing into the roots of forest
Unarmed
Rooted
Clinging
to the seed of an apothecary life.
Feeding on the vials unturned
draining into the Fall finery
a mottled military camouflage
sickly green, to burnt brown emerges.
And all that’s left of life
bleeds with the maple.
Crimson, marks
the torn throat of morn.
Off the train I hit the streets
and start laughing. This is ridiculous,
incomprehensible. How can innumerable bipeds
have individual inner lives. Why are they doing
what they’re doing? I have no answer
New York City but to also go about my business
in this case prepare for surgery, survival.
But why survive with so many exact replicas
to replace me? A swarm of ants or hive of bees,
social organisms they’re called, climbing
over each other, avoiding bumping and amazingly
making way, anticipating the sudden turns
and straight paths of others, strangers but brothers,
sisters incubating, the cells of a small
organ, nodes of a single semi-conscious organism.
The concept of a higher power that cares
for me is also risible yet how else
can I explain the surgeon and his team,
robots and magnetic resonance imaging machines,
all primed and trained to save my life.
They are not particularly interested in what
I do with my time. I am immediately
in love with the Irish brogue of the head nurse,
the Indian skin of the physician’s assistant.
The long extraordinarily thin
fingers of the famous surgeon. All
mine to savor (and the other cancer patients).
Back on the streets, rush to the train.
So many women to choose from! One
in fishnet stockings stands out, tall
calm, still, graceful. No cell, no hair, no hurry.
Yesterday’s suicidal thoughts: the mind
is a clever servant, insufferable master. Therefore,
meditate on this: absolute need, dependence on the Other.
I still like Hombre, The Shootist and Ulzana’s Raid
but realize those dead heroes
were subordinate to society: the gun manufacturers who armed them.
Thus, I go for cancer tests, accepting, not predicting results.
Hero accepting help.
A torrential rain following five days of flooding,
tornadoes out west busting up wooden towns
all because too many of us are hoarding plastic, herding electrons.
None of us know how it will end, what the outcome will be
(of our surgery). The best that can be said is
Don’t forget to breathe. And you might
as well believe in that higher power.
Take leave of this
Veneer of contented containment
Go tell your thoughts
Delineate the shades of
Dusk and the dark
Beneath the ashes sleep
Never renews this life
Little lived over and
Out like a wick
Talk takes the teacher
Like a bishop
To a castled king
Every dog has his
Day to be dinner
This cat brings change
In pockets and spades
To end topside under
Save for the hoarders
Would never come clean
Taken on winged whimsy
Spirited by Whippoorwill whispers
The embodied evanescent manifest
Who will we be
If not our past?
My veto to open
Wounds which speak softly
Ask water for warmth
And be blue brother
This synergistic system swims
The sun’s waves unaware
Our staple star unsurpassed
Suits in summer sweat
Cares with shares shift
Snow smarts the smile
Forget the global goal
In green smoke screen
Flower followers find bipeds
Take form like frogs
Business positions the tenured
The problem of power
Byproduct of professional profit
Please contact pink pig
For your pension pending
Glycerin unit vesting schedule
Fabricated and economy dressed
To eat your supper
Triangulate solution in vibrations
Sew me sound anew
Blessed songs self orient
Find joy in organization
By collaborative competition clout
Comes together they think
Through this conveyance compute
Corporate costs of copy
The tiny minds till
Their tares of cracked
Cash creates crossed functions
Yeomen wish for work
The biggest as best
Cycle while you winter
Here until your dreams
Tell you how to
Find rest in conflux
Cubed days make mockery
Of our false freedom
The office of night
Abate anathema gluttonous worm
Is light like knowledge?
Copulate nothing she says
Keep a bed about
See the ritual repeated
Growing gives the go
For rockets to assail
The reign of secret silence
Push past these principalities
A planetary pull Possessing
The answer for all
Beggaring questions more able
As balloons held aloof
With room for rain
Safety beneath a roof
Bowing before promise paramount
One day Gaia was doodling
with sharp twig, on scribbly gum.
"Note to Self"
These big-brained bipeds
are getting far too cocky for their britches.
All the dumb-arses
are becoming smarty-pants.
These bloody bipeds are building
bloody big Babel information towers
all over the place.
Plagiarism is rife,
There's no room for original thought any more when:
Google stores every word,
every phase, every sentence,
everything that is written, and ever was written.
Stored verboten in the cloud.
DuckDuckGo quarks and quacks are all up there as well.
Omniscience is their new religion.
We can't have that!
It's time to confound them!
These biped are obsessed with self.
Their selfies, CCTV footages, videos,
GPS tracks, images and snaps,
are stored in huge face book towers,
which now clutter the space time
all the way up from Earth to Moon.
The cirrus clouds are dark,
mumbling and rumbling
with all the chatter, texts and conversations
they must store for ever,
up there for ever more.
For endless mindless biped
re-runs to be replayed.
Biped evolution has stopped.
Too many Babel towers and silos.
We can't have that, now can we?
Time to bake some Babel Bagels
Time to put some holes in their self-centred buns.
I must speak to the termites about that.
"Note to Self"
The big-brained bipeds are done and dusted
Its time for the ants to take over
as King of Beasts
here on Planet Water.
Still of weeping rank
At Blood Bank
And a Monster to tackle
In Transfusion circle;
Donors to save their pints
Or get ready to be clients
For the fiercest legal battle
That could The Bones rattle
Of their counsels: Baker or Sawyer
Widely judged “The Best Lawyer!”
Still oiling The Aids chainsaw
Whose savagery is sure:
A body violating its symmetry
And flying it to the cemetery …
Ever, The Forerunner of Wrecked Gum
That never helps a tuneful hum,
The body of victims a Leopard’s
Whereas they’re rather bipeds …
Yet to send prostitution packing
But much of its thrill sacking.
Black grass dances in the warm winter air
And furry quadrupeds run wild with the
Shackles of instinct.
The metallic creature gives spontaneous birth
To bipeds who desire to kill for sport;
Two worlds and instincts collide.
A Million worlds and a
One-in-a-million meeting
Beneath the glow of a red moon.
Hunger for pleasure,
Pleasure for hunger,
And the reason; existential desire.
In the midst of a pack of quadrupeds,
A hairless creature limps;
Forelegs short; hindlegs long.
A lamed quadruped sees a biped,
Stands on hind legs, and
Breaks the shackles of instinct.