Best Boll Poems
Long ago, when I was young,
Before my hearing began to fail,
Why, I could hear a boll weevil
Tiptoe across a cotton bale.
But many years have come and gone;
The ghetto blaster took its toll.
Now I couldn't hear an elephant
Dance in clogs with wooden soles.
Photo: RIVERVIEW AMUSEMENT PARK
~POSTED BY MY GUARDIAN ANGEL~
We were just kids in silken ribbons and braids,
Playing cut-outs in Chicago's summers toasty shade.
The clanging streetcars ran in front of our homes.
Who cared, we were licking delicious ice cream cones!
There was no such scare as " sugar is evil."
Anymore than the chance, that we'd find an intrepid boll weevil.
There was no TV till we were a tad older.
But we went to movies every Saturday and laughed so hard that
we cried on each others shoulders.
We shopped at Woolworth's Dime Stores.
Bought "Blue Waltz" cologne and little lockets, girls our age adored.
The big treat was going to magical Riverview Amusement Park,
The alchemy of the stars made it totally magic.....after dark.
Swimming back in the oceans of my heart's time,
I see how God blessed me to read books and learn how to rhyme.
Mom and Dad bought me many books.
I had a roll top desk, such a lovely, bright wooden look.
We loved saddle shoes, boy were they cool.
We'd sit and polish them,so lovely,we would drool.
We sat on the stoops and watched men in uniform, go to war.
Some sadly, with our tears, we saw their blue eyes no more.
On your back porch we sat on the great family swing.
Hearing songs and stories-the essence of my past,is so overpowering!
10/31/2020
Tribute to Joanie, my best friend since age seven!
Thanks for decades of memories!
Love, Panagiota
super boll
boll weevil twin brothers: one was great, one the lesser of two weevils
you killed my father, prepare to die
three-legged dog in a saloon: "looking for the man who shot my paw"
a news headline i'd like to see
buddhist avoids novocain wants to transcend dental medication
somewhere in the middle
she once told me i was average i said she was just being mean
that would be a real night-mare
he tries to not talk like a horse doesn't want to be a neigh sayer
what's a particle like you doing in a place like this?
neutron asks "how much for a beer?" the bartender says, "for you, no charge"
eleventh one's the charm?
i entered ten pun contests hoping one would win
no pun in ten did
Happy New Year to all... may your 2023 be filled with smiles
pure and white as snow
cotton stands waiting in field
boll weevil munchies
The Ballad of Stinking Mick
Now Mick hung close to a Butt verbose,
And the cheese it ran like treacle,
Some said it was on the bloody nose,
That he lived, was thought unbelievable,
For he was a hairy Wombat Louse,
Hitchhiking on a vehicle,
He tried sucking up to a Mouse,
got dislodged by a Gay Boll Weevil,
There came a blast, hot and sticky cast,
Aroma, most unpleasant,
With bowel movement, he was passed,
Hot an steamy, flavoured, masked?
Mick thought it effervescent,
He’d spring and slide upon the tide,
His gumboots trickled full, (Kiwi slippers)
On a passing Rat he snagged a ride,
High speed, for a Wombat Louse,
I aint being snide, no bloody Bull,
On a Tom-Tit sure he’d been before,
The Wren had flown him high,
Caught by a Cat, he did attack,
with some ten thousands more,
Puddy left with an open jaw,
Thought and pondered bloody sure,
Perplexed with thoughts of why?
The food was flapping high,
The itch stuck in his craw?
Poor puddy bloody paw,
Was reduced to sigh
Should I this underscore,
apply?
This part I will deny,
No lice no bloody moer….( new aussie slang)
Don Johnson
Seeds of similitude of things seen , virtually
Icon’s deceive through their image’s
the works of creature’s hands not the creator’s
I see dark light in the sun
I will kick you in the boll#cks if you say ‘hey hun’
I don’t know, so don’t fu#king ask!
My body seems to be in several parts
Emotionally I’m an exploding star
Don’t you dare tell me how you are
I feel mad, I feel insane!
Don’t push me or I will maim!
I can’t feel calm I can’t feel still!
This is more, so much more than being ill!!
You’re a man, you’ll never understand!
My body’s changing and it’s affecting my mind.
This is not like you say a pause-from-men!
Your a man, if this happened to you… there’d be a vaccine, just like the flu!
Fallowed mind on barren ground toils
Winter's cold streams radiant beams foil
No incubating current cuts through the dense soil
Muses' bright glint the dark, thick clouds roil
Blipping sparks can't light my sensory console
A dormant seed sprouts on a rocky knoll
Promising strands on frozen surface stroll
Chilling winds over shallow-rooted thoughts troll
Vapid ideas from stagnant un-imaginative threads loll
Without depth, the promising figments spoil
In due course, Spring's thawing tides do roll
On horizon's mount, azure panels scroll
The brighter patches degenerated conduits parole
Fecund spores with soaring visions cajole
Wispy tufts of dander blow into cranial hole
Into thawing seams, germinating inspiration bowls
Enervating muse, implanted seeds into interstices dole
Granules of wisdom brim from gilded boll
Leaving pod, enthralling, pearly grains silt the soul
The congealed fabric spins around each, sensory pole
Ginned fibers into imagination's colorful tapestry burrow
Nobody here is God. However, we are to do good, not evil.
We save lives of animals, even the boll weevil!
Oh, how we weep over dead elephants!
But to save a baby from death, we say, I can’t !
Putin is a killer, what about you?
Afraid to be pro-life, what might others think of you?
One must fit in and say not a word?
Because the screams of a newborn will not be heard?
Murder is paid for in the USA.
Saddest of all, it need not be this way.
Hitler’s ideas are from Margaret Sanger.
Millions of Jews and now babies dead, from fear or anger.
And we think we are so innocent?
Watching from poetry texts?
Who are we, and what have we become?
When the value of an innocent human life we shun?
Catholics at Mass, on Mother’s Day, will be attacked.?
While free speech, is now in a DHS sack!
Americans who love God, have courage and speak up!
Stop fearing no popularity from the poetry cup.
God help us to be totally courageous!
Not supporting human life is so disingenuous.
5/6/2022
I have held my last pot of hot soup
I've come to the end of my threads
Befraggled and muffed
Bedraggled and fruffed
A raddled cloth corpse that's dead
Frayed so soft and shabby
As the cotton boll that bore me
Worn to a frazzle
I have lost all my dazzle
Faded and haggard and tatty
So tattered in my casing
My splayed stuffing is facing
The dog who has chewed
What was left!
May 11, 2020
The Potholder Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Craig Cornish
boll weevil, be evil
gotten, wotton
wrought in, brough in
rotten, cotton
5/21/18
written words by James Edward Lee Sr.
Copyright © 2018
Cotton Picker’s Lament
Feet burn soul blends with the earth, the heat, the picking season
Hands, hard calloused leather punctuated by picking scars
Drag that long sack behind me across black bottom earth—
Cottonseed tucked into its sprouting place, waiting for the sun to make it spring
White from its deflowered purple-black boll
Exploding like my brain in the heat--
That old river floods into my fields cooling’
Leathered hot feet in muddied delta earth
Leaving part of Memphis between my toes—
I go into those off beat juke joints at night to drink my pain
Away and listen to the blues reach deep into my soul
Crying for me and for all of us, those Delta Blues!
Toothless, grinning, strumming cigarette smoking, whisky breath fools breaking sounds across early morning light lamenting love, lost times, freedom.
Freedom? Man is never free, just gets new masters--
Straggle home- dawn breaks Sunday- Church
Calls, songs of belief echo across Delta flats
White shingled churches hold the promise of another freedom--
Jesus where are you when I call from those fields
Cotton boll hard, painful against my moving hands
Must be like you felt, thorns pressed into your head.
Back bent never straight from years of bending
Shoulders strong from hauling that sack
Cotton sack breaks my back--
Sunup - misty Monday morning in the Delta
Mississippi fields where cotton is king and I its slave
Old muddy river runs faster then I do- at least going somewhere…
Bend my back, twist that boll, never can straighten up and walk like a man!
Alabama’s Top Cash Crop
By Elton Camp
If you think Alabama is the Cotton State
You are behind on developments of late
More profitable & boll weevils don’t stop
Is marijuana, which became the top crop
In fact, twelve state share that distinction
Though the law tries to bring it to extinction
Law enforcement isn’t actually especially lax
But it’s a big temptation since you pay no tax
To the harm it causes, growers can’t well relate
Since the costs they don’t have to compensate
Tobacco users who are harmed, makers can sue
But when damaged by pot, there’s nothing to do
Smoke from fire is a thing humans usually flee
To inhale it into our lungs make no sense to me
“It’s no worse than tobacco,” some might say,
But what’s so great about tobacco anyway?
And there is an epidemic of its use in the nation
Despite how much it harms health & concentration
Alabama is called the buckle on the Bible Belt
So many strong church folks in pot have dealt
Marijuana by itself is a strikingly beautiful plant
But to justify its use as a drug we surely can’t
Any who buy & use it are guilty as those who sell
They think they’re sophisticated but they just smell
(
The mayfly hated the caddis fly.
Although she was not quite sure why
All she knew was that she was supposed to hate caddis flies,
and so she hated him, with all his sneaking and his lies.
Despised him with all of her might.
Hated him morning, noon and night.
The handsome Caddis Fly was rather taken with the Mayfly.
Had no knowledge of her hatred, and she had caught his eye.
He baked her a fresh-water cobbler, and took it right over.
Luckily, her axe was dull from cutting today’s pink clover.
She softened a bit, when she saw Caddis Fly was not evil.
Was not sure why she had hated him as much as a Boll weevil.
She and he started dating, and they decided to give each other a fresh start.
Caddis Fly had truthfully stolen Mayfly’s hardening nonsensical heart.
Moral of this tale: How can you hate who you do not know?
Second Moral: Mayflies are Caddis Flies, and Caddis Flies are Mayflies.
In my left armpit a big boll
That made me with anger boil…
Then, nurse began to water boil.
“Please, don’t touch it now: let it boil…”
“But not like breakfast tea I boil!”
I’d prayed fluid would spill on the soil
And had begun to like snakes coil
But her next move, I on that soil,
With the planned help of a sir Doyle
Who made steadying me his toil…
Several attempts to escape foil…
Treating a boil could a day spoil;
Two friends in arguments embroil.