Best Canterbury Poems

If I had time enough to climb
this Everest of rhythmic rhyme,
I’d find my mind is wandering,
meandering through desert clime.

Each ancient word seems so absurd,
countless of which I’ve never heard.
The ear may hear, though wondering
and pondering what just occurred.

If days had space to ever trace
such epic...

Continue reading...

O to be there again
Little boys dancing for calypso dimes
And the US marines, angelic in white
White rum frolicking in the chapel of their brain
Laughing like water on the ships grey side
Sons, fathers, husbands
Finding respite in the sedulous arms 
Of intinerant lovers
Milking their wallets with sugarcane...

Continue reading...

Canterbury Cathedral Cant

Cold silence
On that stony floor
No man or woman walks where he was killed
brother of your heart
Murdered by your careless slip of speech--
rash threat 
Uttered by you-- brother of blood since childhood
Lifelong friend, Harry, 
 king -- raged a childish rage
brought your world crashing
murder...

Continue reading...

When we retired we were so inspired:
To live free and rest from our labors.
This mobile home park has lived up to the mark,
But oh, goodness gracious, the neighbors.

Jay the old peeper can snoop through the creeper
And tell if the ladies are bathing.
At times he's been...

Continue reading...

85
 Feedback comes to those who apply and post and expect to receive the same 
when you place a silver dollar in your mouth you scratch it with your teeth to see if 
it is real a man bites down upon it and then looks...

Continue reading...

“An Addition to The Canterbury Tales”

By Nicholas Giro

There was also a CANDYMAN, a fine seller of his trade,
Who went along the countryside selling the candies he made.
He was a portly, jolly, and merry fellow
Who always wore red and blue, avoiding the color yellow.
With his short...

Continue reading...

I use to hike through Flankers’ un-cobbled street
                       With easel and canvas hawking my mind

Sketching the apiary’s tenement
 Dull gray boxes densely scattered

...

Continue reading...

That bridge hanging precariously
  Across the threatening gulf
Was the only escape to mortality
                   For we were safe then
Playing in the litter under it
Without the pretense of...

Continue reading...

Write their names in better than the dark mud 
Where they died; their life like the wasted sud 
Of washed out things; they were the soldiers of the village 
The warriors of a hidden war 
They saved us from plunder and pillage 
And wore with...

Continue reading...

For the benefit of any non-Middle-English
speakers, a literal, word-for-word translation
has been provided beneath each line of
the original:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote!
  When we've already had enough! of April showers

Whan priketh hem Governeur in oure corages
  Our prick of a governor locks...

Continue reading...

I saw Possu
And we stood beside the old Calvary church
Where the banks now run their business
From the old house of God
Two old men out of a place stitched with poverty
Remembering the patches 
And how our noble heroes died
Before the slander of the state
Before the river...

Continue reading...

The west winds of springtime
Brought forth April showers
That rained on the pavements
Of Southwick for hours.

It was standing room only
And full to the brim
As people sought shelter 
At the old Tabard Inn.
           
A man with a...

Continue reading...

- Readers, I hope you forgive me.
I’m retracting some words I once said:
I'd planned to write just five of these tales
But I've added a sixth tale instead..


Night

The preacher was searching for Duchess
Also known as 'The Tabard Inn Cat'.
Scared by the storm she'd run out of...

Continue reading...

Escape
rondel/roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
translation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will...

Continue reading...

Three Roundels by Geoffrey Chaucer

I. Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
translation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their...

Continue reading...