Best Cankered Poems
The Dog is structured,
Always working to preserve,
Familial ties.
Diligent service,
Loyal to love and country,
Strong yet still servile.
The Bear is nurtured,
A hunter in fair weather,
Useless in winter.
Promises plenty,
But bleeds his own forest dry,
Water, trees and all.
The Maggot is cankered,
A hollow soul and stomach,
Skulking forest floors.
Can only scavenge,
ON the corpses of others,
And their fellow man.
Categories:
cankered, america, animal, metaphor, society,
Form:
Haiku
Poison onion rings
Bunion on a sling
Rustic carriage bolts
Shoe string eating antelopes
Cankered bison crying wolf
While dancing under the heated son
No one comes this is the dawn
Categories:
cankered, adventure, allusion, assonance, birth,
Form:
Haiku
Down on row and pit and mortal flower
the undertaker’s men stood grave and bier,
and brave stoic death fills the living hour
forevermore a day, a week, a year.
Where bathed in shafts of exalted light toll
the bells of Mass and vigil in Greenhithe,
when in bound clay an immovable dole
grimly hung the shadows in hood and scythe.
Yet I upon this ploughed earth sullen gaze
and hearken in the blooms the winds of death!
What sting its blow to a full end of days
that dares to breathe on me its cankered breath.
Withered is the bud and brief flower shed
yet for a time its beauty shone outspread.
Written: July 1995
Categories:
cankered, death,
Form:
Sonnet
My love is pink in cheek and red in heat,
Her colors color life with vibrant glows;
Her orange hue has cankered citrus beat,
Her yellow hair foils jaundiced flowers’ shows.
My love is green in proof, a jade in purse,
Her blues are ranged between two naval skies;
Inspiring purple prose and violet verse,
Her boons are sparkling rainbow spectrummed eyes.
But visible light can only brown my bright,
Her excellence transcends all colors known;
She's white in night and shaded black when light,
She colorblinds all prior beauties blown.
My love is ultraviolet, infrared,
Her looks and thoughts lie ‘bove, beyond my head.
Categories:
cankered, color, love,
Form:
Sonnet
Nehanda: The War Prophetess
Nehanda bore the groin
That animated or begot me
With a hardly wrapped loin
Peeping Toms tried to see;
Hanging by the cruel rope
She spun a ghastly surprise;
As she gave up the spirit:
“One Day My Bones Will Rise
Angry, from this grimy grit!”
***
Nehanda met her death
By Hypocrisy’s grisly hand
Her grave bore no wreath
Bones scattered in the Land!
I celebrate this prophecy
Each Independence Day
That begot sweet Democracy
From Throes of Yesterday.
I stir in my mother’s Bones
And lisp tongues of brevity
I hearken as she intones
With cries of typical clarity
For, this inviolable groin
Is not a soft underbelly
Wan Cloth wrapping loin
Is never soft as your jelly!
***
Pendant on Death’s Tree
Killer’s heart filled with sate
She beamed face to see
Ugly grimace full of Hate
Deeply yearning for her child
Thus she cried aloud her last
That sent men into the wild
To correct this Ugly past!
***
Nehanda my sweet Mum
I love you with my heart
I yearn sulking with a thumb
Now cankered with a wart
I yearn fawning on that bosom
Whose nurture had reason
To coax shrubs to blossom
In undue summer season!
***
This is my charming mother
Someone labelled a bother
With reasons quite sallow
Minds shut and so narrow
With Hate quite skin deep
Fated like an obliging sheep!
JM
22nd Oct’ 2013
Categories:
cankered,
Form:
Ode
Carrion kings crow callous things in settled twilight cracks;
Their cankered queens quote noxious reams down croaking fabric tracks.
A patterned noose attentive sits atop a patient peak,
Whilst zephyrs drone from Zaire to home to wheeze unto the week.
Preachers pine an impassioned whine beneath their teething tongues;
'Twixt caustic lips their worm-breath sits to drain their sunken lungs.
Twin servile suns send sullen songs to sleep beneath a cross,
Which frays away it's stiff arms held aloft with burning moss.
Categories:
cankered, identity, metaphor, paradise, religion,
Form:
Verse
iii
A wiley post this early freeze fast makes
Making hard the sugarcane, shedding bright flakes
That covers the city, rivers, streets, and trees
The jet streams cold and meandering breeze,
Wasaburo's joy make us know our frail
Powers limit, we're stranded in its gale.
Tween shifts of spheres, "We are coming soon,
Convenient theories of the moon
Holds not with planned expectations" we weep
While gnawing to the bone these zephyrs seep
Crude power deserts us, the white ruin
Of farmers, changes the cold cashier's tune.
Lord, in time more subtle changes I see
Dreams wilt in time, now comes eternity.
iv
It is more than a sizzling globe's convictions:
Weather changes and earth's rotations.
My soul looks up steadfast in sweet faith
The changes are openings of heaven's gate
And some who keeps a homeless vigil stirs
Barren of bed, false friendships, and dead furs
Leave us cankered of feelings, blurred of trust
We stagger on through whiffs of whitening gust
To find our berth that drives us daily here
Harassed and haggled denouncing despair
Lost is Christ control of the moral lust
O, flaking, worn, weary, the brittle crust
Void, no seed grows here, barren our cold heart
Empty this winter scape, earth falls apart.
Categories:
cankered, mystery, nature, seasons
Form:
Sonnet
This imprisonment of clay,
this putrid jarred tint subjected to time's defeat,
this cankered vile contagion.
tossed to and fro as on a sea with unrelenting anchorage of ease,
this worm, ephemeral in the bay leaf of existence.
this dirt of appointed time, fixed by irreversible decree,
fleeting by clipped tickle,
here mere mortal toiling to gather stones, hay and stubble.
with diseased brow,
worms fighting worms for passing fame.
Finite frame transiting through ceaseless vanities
myriads from these pains,
willingly oblivious of the power of Time,
throng the gates of mammon to hideous and dreadful apparition,
little minds, unwilling to enlist in the real battle.
And multitudes ignoring the signpost in rush to gaiety
several on sensuous doorway to doom.
As captives of Lust, enslaved by Ashmodeus
This Frame wears Luciferous garbs
Pharaoh and Herod bodied
The beast of pride, despising the breath of his nostril
conjures theories of atheism from his erratic emotions
arrogating his existence and all to “second cause”
despising the first cause preceding all causes.
They go on and on they go.
There were abject who in time past, cut the cables of belief
sailing over the tempestuous ocean of free thought.
reviled the coast of revelations
seeking Life among the dead,
and rushing on the mad voyage,
wondering through confused obscurity
In search of life in all vice to the very extremities,
wearied by wasted years,
came to their senses.
Looking up to His hill,
To Yonder Light through the Cross
casting all dependence aside
they enter the Ark
These now deal in matters of eternal realities,
unknown, unsought, conscripted to miseries still,
pangs shot through their faces as arrows piercing a foe,
These have deceased bodies and suffers too,
Longing for the returning of the King
these likewise are subject to the monstrous ills of the decaying filth
but for a time,
the dying body, taunted, Jeered and calumniated.
carrying about a third force unknown to all, the Spirit.
They do battles with unseen foes to keep a pace with Him
unseen spirits their attendants.
Myriads watching the match from vantage confines,
though among men, mere men no longer.
Come in No Luxury required
Categories:
cankered, analogy, bible, conflict, faith,
Form:
Other
Fealty's door was satin stained
Durable wood pulped from reliable strain
With blithe trim and decadent frills overlain
Lofty mantle Love's precedence to ordain
Interior with taut, strong fibers ingrain
Golden chain to seal our matrimonial domain
O'er time, your jaundiced mind did abstain
The frilly vows from the lacquered surface drain
The bonding fibers your incontinence could not restrain
Crown molding shrouding romance cankered with disdain
Titular mantle with self-serving goals rent in twain
In unrepentant rage, severed Oath's melding chain
Categories:
cankered, family
Form:
Rhyme
Child Dispersal
Polygamy we openly denounce or loath
while promiscuity we commit at will.
Should Retribution be borne in both
why the last we spurn with inflated zeal?
Scattered children teem universal
while we all agree that a few is better.
Are we to subscribe to this dispersal
and not agree to observe the later?
*
Public truth is cankered with overt risk;
an honest preacher is easily blamed.
Yet, an Impostor who is stiff and brisk
"Greatest One," is vaunted or named.
Man Folks who look straight to observe
in both, Fidelity they cannot detect
Wherefore if both Honour fail to deserve
condemn both with utter disrespect.
*
Children are bound to suffer the most
Where we "say" this and then "act" that
Humanity pays Life's unbearable cost
where mankind asks not why or what.
Misfortune in Babies of Snake's eggs
is being abandoned 'fore being hatched
Worst, they are then born with no legs
on the patched Earth to be stretched!
28th Sept' 2013
Categories:
cankered,
Form:
Quatrain
Birth Pranks!
labour....a baby cries
then popcorn of exploding smiles
yet, he's wary of lies
will he quickly talk
before he can do anything or walk
to tell if he is his folk?
"why not like his brother
nor at least the face of his mother
or me his ugly father!?"
common labour pranks,
aftermath of protracted labour pangs
is wagging of tongues!
*
let's wallow in mirth
not by small but by a large girth
for the infantile birth.
recalling the pot
burned on fire to simmer hot
and cook this lot.
womb is not defied
cankered or be it of lineage wild
that yielded the child.
no sooner is he out
than there is the malignant doubt;
"this is not dad's snout!"
law of the bush:
baby survives overturned in a rush;
in atavism check by Cush!
**Conceived when a friend's wife gave birth at home. The poem casts a slur to rural births that took place those years when a child had to really resemble his father.......! Infant mortality and divorces then were pretty.
13th September 2013
Categories:
cankered,
Form:
Verse
I’m not beholden to you,
certainly not because of your riches
I’m not compelled to do
any of your narcissistic, selfish wishes
Your vain thoughts
of having me under your control,
it ain’t happening ... oh, no
What?
Become beholden to you
and lose my soul —
You better hold your breath some more
I’m not beholden to you,
therefore I will not comply
Don’t attempt to legally enslave me,
but a rich fool always gon try
Nevertheless, if you persist:
May you get a cankered sweet gold tooth,
may you get a devil cake gout belly
Let gourmet delicacies become worms inside of you,
let your hardened mind turn into soft, infirm jelly
My soul is not indebted to you,
I’m not beholden to your power in the least
Like lightning striking out of the blue,
the judgment of God arises always from the east
Categories:
cankered, conflict, how i feel,
Form:
Rhyme
On a fact finding mission, I traveled one day
Observing obstructions that got in the way.
I found, when I wandered too close to the hole,
I kicked loose the gravel and cankered my soul.
And, sometimes, I wounded some helpless one
Who hollered and scolded until I was gone.
"Forgive me," I offered. "I really am sad.
I hope to see good and put stop to the bad.
I know I've offended. I fell when I tripped.
No injury was intended, I'm sorry I slipped!"
"You really are careless! You ought to be flayed!
Get out of here mister!" But, somehow, I stayed.
The ranting and raving had gone to my heart.
I truly was sorry, but I still couldn't part.
I want to mend fences. I want to fix things.
I want to relate to all positive dreams.
I even am grateful for hurting and woe.
I accept of life's sorrows. But,
The Blame's got to go!
Categories:
cankered, forgiveness,
Form:
Rhyme
Substitute happiness
modeled on material things
Buy new iterations of the same
every seasonal change
Improved, your life will be
from promises of acquisition guarantee
Ersatz ecstasy ...
cankered desires rotting the spirit from within
Manufactured joy
bought with paper and plastic
Non-biodegradable debris
tossed away in a cobweb attic
If every item sold be advertised as perfection,
why don’t the products last forever?
Ersatz ecstasy ...
weak imitations trying to pass as the real thing
Man-made idols
coined as possessions of replicated paradise
Substitute garden of Eden
in need of repair by machines without a soul
Ersatz ecstasy
loses its potency when the expiration date gets old
Leaving you with empty happiness that can’t be sold
Categories:
cankered, happiness, paradise, truth, vanity,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
Mother taught me
When pride cankered me to climb
Trees upside down before the crowd
She scolded me
The higher the monkey climbs, son
The more he will
Expose. Her lessons truth has won
Feel now the thrill
For when took gold
And tongue, and people from the land
Nothing was left but tears and dying
Of human soul
All that gold was cankered with our blood
Things fall apart
Everywhere, the old systems melt to mud
Mother was smart
Blood money gone
Misery shakes the clouds of coming dawn
Confusion fold the banks that genius brimmed
A naked fawn
Alone and vulnerable, shivers in the sight
The trigger pressed
And Europe gropes through thickening night
Greed is careless.
Suicide haunts fear
Of the coming apocalyptic readjustments now
The wounded fawn rushes to the cliff, but blind
Nor can it hear
It is not the hunter but the wind in its chase
It's climb too far
I made impotent cannot rescue or its debt erase
Time healed my scar.
Categories:
cankered, black african american, history,
Form:
Verse