Best Carapace Poems
A sunflower sun blooms high in the sky;
sowing its rays on the sand and the waves.
And seagulls assault the air with their cry;
as crabs dart in and out of flooded caves.
Their orange carapace, in stark contrast;
crabs seek algae as the mud flats expand.
And chase the tides, relentless and steadfast,
o'er coral shards and alabaster sand.
As a moist mist coalesces offshore,
fog swallows the sun, consuming its light.
And its face isn't visible anymore;
till brisk breezes disperse this ghostly sight.
As the heat of Sol's rays intensify,
a sunflower sun blooms high in the sky.
Categories:
carapace, 10th grade, beach, beautiful,
Form:
Sonnet
You don’t have to pitch a tent
Nor build a house to stay
When thousands of us wander desperate
Without a home or place to rest,
You own a house with a magic door,
That opens at will without a key or latch.
Well protected from all wicked wight
Safe from all robbers, rowdies, and rodents
No evil spirits, vampires, or ghouls
Dare to disturb it at any rate
It is stronger than all structures extant
Built-in mortar, bricks, or rocks
You are the monarch of a larger empire.
Land and water are under your sway,
Free to enjoy the treasures of the sea,
And feast on the wonders of the land.
You are a companion to the ravenous shark,
Darting spectres through the azure dark
And also monsters that roam the deep
With their uncouth gambols and abrupt leap
You love strolling along the slimy strands
And dive down along with the laughing waves
You bury your eggs on the sandy shores
And guard your progeny from all snares
You are another name for alertness and caution
You make sure that all around is safe and secure,
Before you come out from your rocky shelter
And shrink back at once when dangers lurk
You carry on your back your home and shelter
Built so compact to guard you from all external threat
Oh! Turtle, we deem you blessed under your carapace
But perhaps you may have a different tale to narrate
For all that we see or seem to see
Aren’t they truths far removed from the truth?
Categories:
carapace, animal, home, sea,
Form:
Ode
Like bullet holes in a starched white shirt,
they prop the gravestone in the dirt,
a ruby stitch across the face
of veined pale marble carapace.
They held my gaze that winter day,
beneath black clouds with streaks of grey,
the wind howled for the distant dead,
ice crystals bit the greatcoat thread.
Stiff cards bore words upon each stem,
five mourners and the names of them,
each severed bloom, blood red and still,
clashed colours with the graveyard chill.
Five flowers and a funeral done,
alone stand I the wayward son,
and no one cares that I'm alive,
imagining six instead of five.
Categories:
carapace, death, introspection, life, sad,
Form:
Verse
The burden of the power of men lay heavy,
As the sword in the stone erect and buried,
In our earth, our mother of all, nourisher of many
Birth giver of trees in turn bare fruit when ready.
In time you will emerge from your carapace,
Unveil yourself, Venus guardian of love, keep faith,
I see value in the mystery of your eyes,
In the depths of your desires beneath lust, trust lies.
Lizards wait restless in this world and not the next
Men whose hearts are concealed behind their chests
Only those who wear their hearts on their sleeves attest
To the true value of a woman, that remains intrinsic, ageless.
Categories:
carapace, love,
Form:
Free verse
I have a carapace shiny and black,
And when I visit I do more than snack!
I scuttle about in the dead of night,
Never once do I need to use a light.
If I am seen people get a big fright,
Why do they all have to get so uptight?
I am always under constant attack!
They chase me about and give me a whack,
Though peppered like a plane flying through flack!
Away I must dash to the nearest crack.
These people I seem to overexcite,
Yet I am so small and always contrite.
My PR stinks you can say what you might,
Definitely not a mother’s delight!
But when I am safe in my own little shack,
Playing with a piece of unsmoked tobac .
To this accord I will hang up a plaque,
You wont catch me I’m as sharp as a tack.
You need not worry about the invite,
I’ll be the last at your party tonight.
Categories:
carapace, humorous, insect,
Form:
Rhyme
Swept by waves of nostalgia
Afloat on longing tides
I assessed this oyster compound
where my heart could not abide.
Aphrodisiac pulls of Neptune
were as lava cooled to stone
What use were pearls of luster
when one had no collarbone?
Heralded by sea trumpets
kelp banners flying high
Sentinels of sea urchins
with pink coral by their sides
Calamity, with determined madness
shoved sponges from his path
Provoked by clam injustice
Spurred by mollusk wrath.
I searched for an escape exit
from that cruel, moronic clam
This myriad ideology,
naught but an oyster sham.
When a seahorse bobbing aimlessly
moved closer to my side
I unhinged my oyster carapace
and grasped its roughened hide.
I was jolted and I was jostled
as I settled on its back
Calamity watched in amazement
standing frozen in his track
When an agitated octopus
released an ink black kite,
a galaxy of starfish
sank into the brackish night.
I focused my attention
on my lost and nervous steed
We were climbing ever upward
at a most alarming speed
Breaking through the surface
I swallowed back a scream
Afraid of finding Calamity
I found it all had been...a dream.
Categories:
carapace, funny, sea, longing, sea,
Form:
Rhyme
It blows all around us.
Zig zagging in front of the eye.
A million bits of lemon dipped confetti.
Tapping on the carapace of a life.
Fawn dappled-silver maple leaf- days.
Spotted leopard-howler monkey nights.
Everything summed up in gossamer skin.
Infinity licks the newborns fresco face.
The asp of life threads the eyes shut.
In a generation or two tombstones are forgotten.
No more granite tears meeting salty stone...
or plastic flowers flanked by crows.
The whole damn thing just a paper bowl
filled to the brim with put on.
Life gnashes at the neck with lion teeth.
Sad pitter patter of an actor's eulogy...
Sugaring stumps and bitter moons
every word twists in the air...
Like cancer riding a stream of confetti.
Categories:
carapace, adventure, cancer, death,
Form:
Rhyme
The beach gathers its dead. Thousands of horseshoe crabs
come home on the full moon’s tide. Their courting dances,
scrawled with claw and carapace in the wet sand, leave
with the ghost hands of nursing Autumn wave.
Their nests of jewel-colored eggs, covered and soothed
seasoned in salt sea, gestate beneath a slurry of debris.
Right side up each skin colored husk with its barbed tail
rocks in the bubbling broth of Cape Cod’s bay.
Belly up, they appear as an open invitation to the plovers
who flock overhead and arrow down en masse to dine.
Piping plovers, masked in black, hopscotch through the
detritus, connoisseurs of this turquois egg-like caviar.
Among the life and death of sea we walk, barefoot, and
cautious wary of the scramble, the jutting barbs, the bits
of un-soothed glass, the desecrated cairn which barricades
the dying life from the living sea.
Published First in Sounding Review 2015
Categories:
carapace, age, autumn, ocean,
Form:
Lyric
A round I'll write on a turtles shell
in hyperbole you'll be borne
on each carapace a story's traced
of when the world was first born.
How Sky Woman fell from blackest night
through a hole Great Spirit made
she glowed with light and greatly excited
the sea creatures were afraid.
They dove to the bottom of the sea
and waited to see her drift down;
a story's traced on each carapace
of how Sky Woman found ground.
The beaver, the loon and the muskrat
dove beneath the endless sea;
and greatly excited she glowed with light
as they brought the earth to be.
From the bottom of the sea muskrat's
brave form rose, earth in his claw;
on each carapace a story's traced
of the land the Great Turtle bore.
An island formed on the turtles back
a place for Sky Woman, land!
She glowed with light and greatly excited
as swans brought her down to stand.
Two children were born to Sky Women
one bad and one good, her sons;
a story's traced on each carapace
of her death by the bad one.
The Good Son took his mothers body
from her limbs stars and moon spun;
and greatly excited she glowed with light
as from her head, he made sun.
To this day the Good Spirit guides
the souls of good men at death;
on each carapace a story's traced
of good and bad, her behest.
An attempt at ZaniLa Rhyme don't copy it isn't correct ;). Phew hard!
See About the poem
Categories:
carapace, mythology,
Form:
Rhyme
I lust for sightless soil
navigate between rock and root
eating so much darkness
inhaling so much darkness.
The only sound ... my sticky body.
Moving the reddened earth.
Back and forth breaking, into smaller pieces.
Others doing much the same...
(ghost ships-gliding over crimson waves).
For me, to breech the surface is to gather eyes.
See the blossoms that I've oxygenated then promptly set afire.
It's a miracle, I've found yet another petal soul to devour.
Climbed its jewel encrusted face.
Cleverly burrowed my way in.
Seduced an ember deep within its carapace.
While you were gently sighing out angels,
I was licking you into pieces.
My banner carries no oxygen, only the soil of past conquests.
I'm your heartworm, your sticky rosary of death.
Categories:
carapace, desire, fantasy,
Form:
Free verse
Let's presume all is well
Though we know truly in our minds
That we are still crawling
Like a snail under its shielded carapace.
Let's presume it is well
Though we know we are not yet there
Midst nepotism and bureaucracy politics
In that which our nation is canonized
Furtherance into our country web of hierarchy
Will renounce your reliable imaginations,
Your emotional inappropriate findings,
And your shortsighted quest around time and space.
Believe it or not
Their says must be well felt
Since they are the holder
Of anything go transient tools.
In doubt or not in doubt
Mysteries will sooner than later
Unveil themselves in due time
This is not far from our reach.
Categories:
carapace, adventure, confusion, fear, inspirational,
Form:
Ballad
Hour hands clock back sixty minutes of Autumn
Round about this same of month every year, what a bum
er, and inconvenient truth diverged from this chum
purposelessly manipulating a hold over
sans yesteryear doth drum
a sensation of jet lag (with earth in the balance)
as if flying within time machine at warp speed from
this station, where bumpy ride invariably finds me
feeling a bit ticked off and glum
and in no mood to rhyme, nor be leer re: cull
juiced barely tantamount to gather scattered wits
sin tide, and express mood as hoe hum
fortunate, this chronological seismic shift nada wide, ah assume
nonetheless, mein kempf cerebral hemispheric plate tectonics
comb pluck hated off jangling black keys helplessly boom
fancifully drifting and booring into quick ribald sand trap doom
ming an inducement for emergency convoy, when pitched from
sea to figurative shining sea – gram ma mother earth glum
where live yikyak wired vanguard trulia tried optimism to hum
nonetheless, swallowed down behavioral sink went – me mum
bling bloviation, once worth matchless peerage, now pitched numb
lee into morass of temporary confusion, where plumb
line delineating circadian rhythm offset, when athwart pilot rum
man strait ting and bickering with Lilliputians slum
bring within islets of langerhans defiantly thumb
ming nose, where body, mind & soul weeknd viz a bully did cower
hence mister clock, who got high-jacked 3600 seconds per hour
experienced head, thorax and abdomen diminishing in power
wrought indistinguishable Whitsuntide as sour
grapes imposing ill fitting sea legs, which folded like a faulty tower
crumbling skeletal carapace, resoundingly surrendered,
and back slid vis a vis space/time continuum did devour.
Black hole event horizon indeed kept lock step as das joint mill hoard
Sucker punched the band wagon of father time, whose riffs a silent chord
nsync with atomic fractional second bored
quirky shenanigans toying with chronometers
counter point of view shifted to oppose this minute accord.
Categories:
carapace, allusion, assonance, autumn, fun,
Form:
Free verse
impassioned sky mumbles tasteless rain
a soaking measly carapace collects muddy remains
weather overbears a confessing cloud.
For Carol Brown's 'Nature comes to life' Contest.
Categories:
carapace, inspirational, loss, lost love,
Form:
Haiku
THE BREAKFAST OF SCANDAL
Once upon a lofty testament
The blue print of a rhapsodic love furls
Among the two betrothed by a mutual affection.
Their love echoes and here to stay and born.
Their twin love merges to one
By the highly acclaimed folk,
A great éclat from dawn to dusk;
The world transfixed with joy;
Those who could not attain such,
Wish themselves the devil's blow,
And a few carapace of such great virtue;
Their footprint on earth the words of all.
Their matrimonial altar lay upon trust,
They stay in quietude and harmony,
None will one-day dream to dispute them
Or to harmonize their grievances;
They stay like the two eyes that never share a duel;
If all could by a means be like them,
The world forever shall glamour and clamour peace,
They love so much, both at the table
And in the "washing room" helpmeet they are.
Sometimes cited by the arbitrators to their client,
Sometimes a pacesetter to the religiously inclined;
A perfect example to the world around and beyond,
Both the dramatist and the poet their critics they always be.
And the kings sit and take no decision without them.
While the works of men decay,
At the credo of indecision,
The ploughing of scandal overtakes the bedrock of trust.
Her faux-pas display a maximum foolery,
In the eyes of the fire on the cloud,
She burnt their property,
And sent her lover to hell,
And swallowed a knife.
A mystery to the world unraveled,
Each hand on the chin awaiting solace.
The world is borne and grieved;
Ours is to bear and stoically shaved.
Categories:
carapace, anger, angst, anxiety, betrayal,
Form:
Free verse
A sudden awakening,
An urgent hand shaking my shoulder,
Through weary eyes I see the valley blackening,
Their steady thunderous march animates river and boulder,
Allowing only a moment's reprieve in the timid morning light,
Somber clouds and solemn faces,
Ashen skies and scarlet fields,
Shattered shields and fractured maces,
Orphaned swords with scarcely an arm to wield,
The shrieking wind rattling through the city wall's carapace,
Echoed by scouts' shrill cries from atop a battered tower's terrace,
Marking the end of the end,
All eyes turn to me,
Warriors and brigands,
Farmers and merchants,
The infirmed and elderly,
Their condolences and pity cannot allay my crippled conscience,
When staring at my daughter's lifeless body,
I ignite her boat and set it adrift,
Trusting that the flames surrounding her will mimic her father's touch,
Silently praying that my own death will arrive as swift,
And let go this life I tenuously clutch,
So that I may rejoin my wife and daughter,
A deafening crack and the gate is cloven,
Their arrows spurn the sun donning the land in a decade's first night,
With mechanized frenzy they swarm the city,
The rational flee while the courageous fight,
I lay down my weapons,
Embracing my family,
As the first spear pierces me.
Categories:
carapace, dad, daughter, death of
Form:
Rhyme