Best Brier Poems
Mission of the Yellow Songbird
A long highway road stretched its legs before me,
In a place where tumble weeds were conceived,
December evening chasing daylight back to morning
Dusk robed in faded colors starving out the sunshine
Miles put themselves between me and home
With thickets of brier brambles cradled between north and south
Alive with vesper choruses of tiny songbirds.
A gentle tap on my front fender
Roused me from hypnotic highway stupor like popping thunder
I shuddered deeply as possibilities shook my soul;
Maybe one of those gigantic bugs – maybe? Maybe?
But when I stopped my heart seized to solve the mystery
A tiny yellow songbird plastered to my grill wings still open to flight.
Gentle spirit of eternal compassion touched, caressed, my wailing sorrow
Then guided me to a desert tree with perfect boughs,
That welcomed songs of matin mornings from a tiny bird,
To lay to rest God's tiny messenger beneath his favorite tree
Songbird with perfect pitch would no longer sing praise into Heaven's face.
Called to the road again, tears raced down my cheeks
As numb miles raced by with a litany of why in each drop
Time came to take a mountain road from fertile valley to foggy ocean crest -
Screaming round a sharp curve to a screeching stop
Accident, I thought, of two cars only six cars ahead of me –
No ordinary scene -two burned out fiery shells one atop the other!
Realization, like a candle in the darkness, sent out sharp beams
I would have been in that accident had not a precious songbird
Given me a second chance to sing in ministry and embrace this grief;
In the deepest part of my grieving heart, I know our precious God
Gathered to his heart the mission of this tiniest crushed warrior
Who now sings beneath God’s window in the eternal day.
5-17-22
Contest: Divine Intervention
Sponsor: Chantal Anne Cooke
12/14/22
Contest: Poetry Marathon Mile 23
Sponsor: Mark Toney
30 Lines of a 30 Line Limit
a playground’s laughter
fragrant in its innocence-
jasmine soothes old ears
whispered through a seasoned brier
the perfumed blooms of childhood
A lonely figure twirls itself, concealed
by blades of wheat as clouds float through the sky.
The form, a boy, looks up from golden field
and sees the clouds as wedges of cream pie.
He hides despair as if it were that wart
beneath his sleeve. A no-fuss, lonesome lad,
he thinks of things most wonderful to thwart
forlornness. . . He rehearses being glad.
Skipping to the thicket, near a brier,
he spies some lovely flowers; standing there
he uses the demeanor of his sire,
pretends to hold a Bible, thumps the air. . .
and preaching to forget-me-nots, the boy
imagines what might be. . . imagines joy.
For Chris' Anything goes!
Build me a mountain of uncertainty,
A stone of distant fears
Find me an army of losses
And empty hopes,
Some cluster of aimless hours to call my own.
Teach me about heartache and closed doors.
A broken way with nothingness in every direction.
Create in me a heavy heart,
full of misunderstandings and distrust
to keep me hurt and forever confused.
Fuming fires fell four feet
Before they found the flax to flame.
Then off they roared burning
Bush, brier and bramble.
But suddenly they came to sand
A clearing stopped their stand.
Down they died deflated, gone
Defeated by some silicon.
Reluctant tranquility fills the air
Dismissing expectations with her smile
With frozen wishes melting everywhere
She paints the earth in her artistic style
Dreams, dripping slowly from shivering trees
Transparent presents, covering the ground
Leftover kisses now lost to the breeze
Green taking over where white was once found
But tranquility's brush runs out of paint
As her masterpiece starts fading away
Blackberry winter will cause her to faint
While leaving her empty, filled with dismay
Tranquility's brush was made to admire
She'll paint again when blooms kiss the brier
Note:In South & Midland North America,
Blackberry Winter
is referred to as a period of cold weather as low as -6 °C (20 °F)
in late spring when the blackberries are in bloom.
This is generally in the month of May and is known to
last approximately up to 14 days.
"Sweet" applies to all five senses!
At least, I think it might!
Like new-born babies and puppies,
are pleasing to our "sight".
"Sweet" Talk and "Sweet" Mellow Music,
are pleasant to our "ear"!
"Sweet" Corn and "Sweet" Potatoes,
tempt our "taste" buds, have no fear!
"Sweet" William, "Sweet" Pea and "Sweet" Brier,
get our "noses" into action.
Togeather with their beauty,
they create a "Sweet" Attraction!
When "Sweethearts" hold each others hand,
there's a message, loud and clear,
although, no words are needed,
it says, "I love you dear"!
Yes, "Sweet", has many connotations,
that's a fact, there is no doubt!
These are just a few examples,
of what "Sweet" is all about!
Written: 7/8/12
Super Sonic Sonnet
Complete are my lover’s thoughts in dark brier
With airs of aristocracy’s sweet critique
Her mind takes flight, a supersonic liar
Smiles warmth wears deceit like a prize unique
What grows outside your lovely courtyard facade?
Quadrangular, fortified thick gray walls
Hubris, incongruous, flourishing macabre
Infamous fragile beauty flaws, that’s all
Speeding to the grave, your love is there, dead
Daughters take the splendor, learn mother’s ways
Build other fortresses, stronger, to life’s dread
Days go by, to ponder the doomed accolades
Destinations for lovers and daughters pass
Become the past without wealth that never lasts
An advent of raptors haunts the scant gray woods
or loiters over mall roofs.
We wake to their screams as if this were high sierra,
not Ohio where parents try-out or manage children,
open party stores, hunker through the coming
and going of baby Jesus; de-ice puffer jackets,
tend to flocks.
Gloom is plowed behind snow dunes.
The red-tails roam in loose federations.
Their young, mob-handed and loutish,
the mature work in pairs
scything small birds, ripping through
the thinning, the hold-outs,
the weakened and walking.
And the first born listen with the last of us
while the hawks dance proclaiming their time.
A time of fervid litany and electric barricades,
of bobble hats and mittens,
while a black brier
raises bloody thorns in chary praise.
~~
An Anonymous Lover. By Anya Cook
How do I prove my love to you?
Shall I compose a speech dictating my heart’s desire?
I swear all you want to do to me is bid a desolate adieu.
My heart has been tossed by your heartless hands into a vast brier.
Do you relish tossing my feelings in-between your cold fingers?
Wandering whether to crumble my life to ashes?
You enjoy determining where my love for you lingers,
And it drives me insane and when I am near you my life flashes.
Even so, your flawless character is killing me,
I don’t understand how it is possible to love so much,
And my eyes flutter with glee.
My consciousness has fallen into the hands of your wicked clutch.
Your love can do what no one else can,
And it has got me crazy in love,
So I am begging you to stay the perfect man;
Because together, we could be the perfect dainty pair of doves.
On the first day of a year long ago
We walked the path to the glazing wood
Peter, Michael, Seamus and me
We cut hazel wands to swing
Severing the tops from offending fern and brier
Some spark of our ancestry
Made us hunter gatherers
As the dogs rose and caught startled rabbits
Proudly home, ‘Mam, here is the dinner’
The rest sold to old Mrs Power
Six pence each we were rich
Every three rabbits bought five cigarettes
And a flagon of cheap cider
In a fern hid den we sat on damp ground
Sucking sweet apple from brown bottles
Cupping acrid smoking sticks in children’s hands
For a while we were men, our fathers
That was a day far off in my youth
Before life filled my pockets with stones
I was young then
Blackberry brier
Juicy blackberries, so sweet
Breeding ground for ticks!
This fruit I plucked, though tightly entwined
(To hide from birds) in a thorny brier vine
I had hoped to pour from a goat hide flask
A sweet bouquet of blackberry wine.
To drink -a smile, from my true love's glass.
The thorns which saved the fruit from birds
Were sharp and long -filled with poison burrs.
A drop of blood from a brier thorn prick
Death came quick like a mute priest's words
Before wine turned sweet, blood turned thick.
Around my grave grows a thorny brier vine
Entwined, grows the sweetest berries, yet dry.
My beloved visits my grave no more
But for me in the fall blackberries cry
And stain my grave with a blood red lure.
There’s a burning yen nomadic deep within entrenched,
to absorb fresh environments ambrosial on foot,
where incidental hue or august colour wash abound,
or that March bloom tantalising shady patch,
with its dreamlike mystic wide-flung allure,
some blue pigment dawn whisper tempting spur on,
that hidden orange-red sunlit prompt I can’t curb,
I follow blindly without oppugning brier cloak
pitfalls,
yet noonday mishap neither blight nor wanton cross,
as other fellow venturers might script a manifold offshoot,
but from sound and slant sentient aspect,
I can awaken fond galvanic episodes,
of uproarious elation emanating from a golden grained beach,
where energetic offspring unleash their zeal,
adjacent to labyrinthine thriving townscapes,
ancient river, the stuff of verse and bard,
parallels its salted surging thunderous ripple,
with its indigo bold rush beneath a stoic wharf.
to capture lush spots
with the pourboire of bright eye
as timeless haven
Yet late phase hours settings have cachet,
in tandem with the peep of day burst,
as I reveal a harvest swept ashore,
flotilla at a dock and day boundary,
so nocturnal bliss enraptured round each plinth,
and plethora of svelte unearthly steps,
where haunted hair-raising halos splash,
adding lustrous night fly element,
beside the raucous alleyway caper,
inchoate, invisible, intriguing inlay,
shards of boisterous daring impishness,
cast at my intrepid moonlit atman,
enigmatic echoes chase skinflint shadows,
whoosh of splintered black ice sepulchral,
under reckless swerving car manoeuvre,
muddy slush speckled rim upshot,
street lanterns wondrous wide arc madrigal,
spoon wink and woo lambent opus,
banisher of eerie eve ghost glow silence
earth atmosphere shall
watch bemused as moonlight orb
peers at globe beneath
Well, I suppose that I am again revealing my age,
But I grew up when Burma Shave signs were all the rage!
Could it be that those 'masterly creations' sparked my poetic bent,
As I soaked up a tad of 'culture' as down the rural roads I went?
"Buddy, if its a bit of romance you crave;
Best you slather yer mug with Burma Shave!"
"Why would she deign to give you a cuddly hug?
Better use Burma Shave to smooth yer bristly mug!"
"Fer a smoother shave here's the latest buzz;
Use Burma Shave to rid yer mug of all that fuzz!"
"If you really want to set that romance on fire;
Use Burma Shave to smooth yer mug of all that brier!"
"If you need to clear yer mug of that five-o'clock shade;
Use a heap of Burma Shave with yer razor blade!"
"If scratchy whiskers are causing romance to be rather grim;
Perhaps a dab of Burma Shave would smooth yer trim!"
"If yer love-life with her has nearly disappeared;
Maybe its time to lather-up with Burma Shave on yer beard!"
"If yer whiskers are as scratchy as a field of thistles;
Use Burma Shave on your kisser to rid it of all those bristles!"
(To learn more about Burma Shave signs during the 1920s/30s go to your
search and enter "History of Burma Shave Signs")