Best Caricatures Poems
To see ourselves as others see us --
unmasked images, through others' eyes --
half-formed caricatures, perhaps --
or mere grotesqueries --
barely recognized, telling
what we thought to hide --
we'd label these as skewed
perceptions, not real truth...
But, no matter -- when once
I thought myself unfairly judged
and asked "How so?",
I was reminded of the obvious,
i.e.: all outcomes are determined
by perceived attitudes and actions.
Not truth, but clear perception,
pure appearance, guide others' thoughts
and so create the world we live in.
Thus, however harsh,
"Perception is reality."
Each of us live for the moment
As none are promised time
Not knowing which is our last
We make choices with that in mind
In life we bathe in beauty
Often to drown in sorrow
Paying the price with our tears
From troubles earned and borrowed
Immensely exaggerated caricatures
Overthought problems become distorted
Examining both sides of an issue
Inclinations can be easily supported
Of all of the powers we're given
Choice being the most distinct
Overthinking a problem is time wasted
Be objective but succinct
Every choice will lead to another
But our time quickly remits
The objective is to have a lot of fun
And leave little time to regret it
an original poem by the "poemdog" Daniel Turner
Sue doesn’t sit so demurely in her motorised wheelchair.
She’ll tell folks to stop gawking as it's very rude to stare!
Beneath her tenuous frame is quite a formidable young girl,
born with brittle bones but in her wheelchair she can twirl.
Sue’s parents sadly told her that her condition is immutable.
She is bereft of strong limbs, but her courage is irrefutable.
Despite a recent interlude in hospital, she's always cheerful.
Don’t treat her like she’s invisible or you may get an earful!
She loves to sketch caricatures in her artist’s drawing book
and in her specially adapted kitchen Sue is learning to cook.
Her physical disability will not prevent her from achieving
and her aphorism of life's always been, ‘Never stop believing
Sue loves to spend time wheeling around the garden paths,
watching chirping sparrows joyfully splashing in bird baths.
She paints canvases filled with butterflies and lovely flowers.
Sometimes she is quite content to sit there and read for hours.
If you are feeling sorry for Sue, don't give it another thought.
In her scarlet wheelchair, she's accepted what life has wrought.
Each day she finds something to appreciate that gives her a thrill.
In truth, she sees more beauty in life than most of us ever will.
Eight word Challenge 5 Contest
Sponsored by John Hamilton
Required words: demurely, sketch, tenuous, brittle, formidable, interlude, bereft, immutable
10-23-17
The Mexican midsummer sun
beamed down mercilessly, vertically,
so that men's heads and shoulders glowed
but their faces, and every human expression,
disappeared, dark and intense in the radiant noon,
and their bodies were illuminated
only for a moment at a time
with the pounding of arms and legs.
From almost as high as the sun,
thousands upon thousands upon thousands of eyes,
worshipful and expectant and desperate,
gazed downward, almost vertically, it seemed,
and the stands, foreboding and tall,
were part temple, part cauldron,
and saw some dreams come to fruition
and many shattered in despair.
On fields partially scorched and partially green,
the gateway to triumph was so deep
that heroes almost had time enough
to turn in celebration
half a moment after
their heroism had crossed the line,
yet half a moment before
it had nestled in the back of the net.
Story-tellers, men of many tongues,
celebrated caricatures in their own right,
screamed feverishly to the masses,
to tell of the drama as it unfolded,
rolling cameras projected moving images
and snapping cameras froze images in time,
and both launched their moments, moving and still,
into the eternity of divine drama.
A winter and a summer, and a change in between,
and a summer and a winter, and ten thousand miles away,
young boys and men, and a girl or two,
marvelled at the spectacle, and revelled in the glory,
and dreamed that it was theirs.
From three or six seasons, and ten thousand miles away,
I fell so deeply and dearly in love
with the Aztec summer's noon.
10th August 2018
He's running out of Colour.
*eternity eternal mind over matter
*He forms combative images of daffodils and lilac hedges
The Grey Seeps From his Eyes.
* His heart holds abundance, life close, close as a shield
Nature is Turning Black.
* All of the mind intent melds a joyfull palette into an encompassing black
- Can't You Smell Their bitter Entrails?
* Retching he adds fodder to ripen the ground for rebirth.
He Could. He felt them weave
*Balance sought to assert dominance over discord with the Fathers hand.
In and out of His Senses,
*Mesmerizing optiforms presenting themselves
Alienating his Perceptions.
* He strains to hold human concepts dear.
- Count the Bodies, Count the Women
and The New-Borns if You Want?
* From Death, Life, from Life, Death
*the endless circle sustains his weakening heart.
It's Just Math. No longer
*The count down, or up? continues…….
Did Time Stress Relevance.
The Sky was Red: and Empty.
*Empty, yet, the promise of nature abhorrence of a vacuum ..screams.
- If You Wait, They'll Come Back for You
*And you, son of God, child of the Mother will deal……-
He Walked Through Various Flesh
*Seeing the shell for what it was …casing of soul…..
Obscenities, Traveling for Miles.
*Caricatures of Man, insults only to ego long gone.
But The Smell, The Smell Had Followed Him.
- Where's Your God Now?
*………………Now and forever, his soul answers, eternal in the heart of man
*……………………beating with the pulse of the Universe……..
*…………………………Ashes to ashes…..dust to God……….-
*I felt it necessary for my soul to reply, please forgive me Conor? A month of wicked was
too much without a reply.
" Tortured metaphors
spilling from tequila lips,
t i p t o e on my pulse ~
breaking in an arced smile
of the featherless eclipse,
where I waltz as a secluded steel-shine,
sobered s o f t l y
by the taste of satanic stars..."
I'm the loss of a leaf
from gold-dew aspens,
rippling upon
turquoise typewriters,
where drunk fingertips dance.
Turning to ashes,
my heart m e l t s
as a metallic grenade,
and no philosopher's stone
ever reverberating
in its silver-winged silence.
Seeking shelter from smoldering seas,
I curl up in the womb of a guardian willow ~
she's a weeping angel of n e v e r l a n d,
with an ornamented garland
of guns and roses,
enveloping me in the corpse of sunset.
Plunging from diamond cobwebs
into isles of champagne,
like a dynamite dove bloodthirsty for sun,
I l u r k along reefs
studded with rhinestones, unfurling –
lotus manuscripts
as poetic pearls s l i p and t w i r l,
snorkeling in an obsidian oasis.
I miss being
a purple-whisper prophecy,
threaded in fractured letters,
for now, my ink b l e e d s
in the marrow of moon,
where an alchemy is lost and found...
In the chronicles of carnelian clemency
and supernova sorcery,
I've seen arctic assonances
hibernating
in the throats of those,
holding lethal jewels
as a nightingale's neon noose.
So, if my soul is an opal widow
of your thistle-light affection,
a verse romanticised
will be my crystal coffin,
and in the caricatures
of kohl and karma,
our silent soliloquy
shall delicately be shifted.
Surfing in the splitting s i n s
of a salty saviour,
this whiskey damsel
shall evermore remain
a scentless phrase,
scrapped by pencilled brush-strokes,
i n v i s i b l e
in our paper-cut destiny...
Poets dream utopian dreams
Dreams of ideals and perfection
Dreams of places never visited
People never met
Songs never sung
Love stories never written
Passion never experienced
Lives never touched
Hearts never caressed
And so…they dream...
Intensity of emotions
Brilliance of thoughts
Too hard to bear
Too heavy to carry
Inside the soul
Breaking free from within
Bringing exquisite release
From visions on hold
Self-proclaimed artists
Mixing colors on heart pallets
Splashing them on the canvass of the soul
Word colors that bring to life
The ethereal atmosphere,
The very aura of paradise
Paintings of passion’s pleasure and pain
Vivid hues of nature’s finery on display
Humorous caricatures exaggerating life
Holy word pictures revealing mere glimpses of...
The sacred
They write
They paint
Mostly, they just try to live
Vicarious lives
In those lines
Another life
Another time
Another love
Another clime
Another dream
Escape artists from the horrors that surround
Exhibitionists of the naked beauty of truth
Lovers with a prowess that rivals the gods
For isn’t that what love making must be?
The climax of human emotion
In a burst of eternity?
Vicarious lines
Vicarious lives
Yours…and mine…
Eileen Manassian Ghali
Pamphlets of Prophets
And in the barren face of sanity
I scavenged
For hope
Hope between the bleeding
Stain
Full forces littered the bodies
Pamphlets of prophets
In useless streets
Streets paved with dead
Dreams
Burning crosses
Burning flags
The caricatures of hate
Hate in the Holy walls and domes of
Jerusalem
And in the coloured face of madness
I found the ever smile
Of borrowed light
Light in the Holy walls and domes of
Death
Death in weeping children sung its dirge
In the sacrificial arms of
Love
Love ?
What love is there between the ruins of bone and shattered blood
Siren screaming its danger to flesh
This Auschwitz strip
This apocalypse
Is a lament unheeded
Of starved and parchment skeletons
Turning in their graves
Piteous demise of theirs
Wasted
Full forces littered the bodies
Pamphlets of prophets
In useless streets
I am Charlie
Je suis Charlie
I laugh at myself
I laugh at the world
I mock you with love
I love to contemplate
I love for humanity to think
There are no limits to freedom of expression
As long as we have no hate in the heart
Let us mock the universe
In gaiety and laughter
If we learn not to take ourselves too serious
Maybe just maybe
We shall feed a few poor
Maybe an act of kindness
Maybe we shall forgive and open our hearts
Maybe one shall rejoice and clap at a daily good deed given
Maybe our kindness will rank higher than our ideals
Maybe, just maybe, a cartoon can be just that
A Cartoon
We all have different views
Different tastes
Our diversity is our beauty
We can each enjoy that which we see as art
We can each ignore, that which pleases not the eye
Free choice is golden
Cold blooded killers
Have no place in our civilization
Whoever kills in the name of the most merciful
Is a fool and an infidel
If Allah was an artist
The infidels would be caricatures on a sketch pad
To be erased from all of humanity
Yes, I am Charlie
This is nothing similar to a fairytale
Grossly not the packaging of an unwanted mail
Nothing close to a Kafkaesque display
It is FACT!!! On the head I hit the nail
If you're looking for heroes, don't go that far
You might wonder where in the world they are
We are the gratified ones, we've made the par
Look around, you got the super-duper star
Could superman overpower the masters on poetry side
Nor flash run extraordinarily fast in his mind
Ben 10 transform his feelings into written lines
And hulk evolve as poetry's mastermind?
You know the answers if you're not gazing for 'amateur'
We are supersonic... We are not caricatures
We are superiority... We re not immatures
We are superheroes... The best among living creatures
Go back and resurrect that dead pen of yours
Open your book and ink down your elevated thoughts
Speak your mind, Open your heart, don't give up
We were born to do this, We were born to rule the WORLD
Go and reclaim Glory!!!
WE ARE THE SUPERHEROES THEY AINT SEEN YET
As darkness gives way to light and day dawns,
the symphony of sweet sounds begins.
First a single chirp from a lone bird,
next a response from a mate in reply.
Then as if on cue from a conductor,
other birds join in the antiphony.
And the entire feathered orchestra
breaks forth in a chorus of praise to God.
Next, it is time for the sun to serenade,
with sounds of praise quite different from the birds.
In its bowels, acoustic waves vibrate
and cause its surface to jiggle.
Though silent, the sun plays its melody
in super deep bass notes like a tuba.
It also provides the lighting effects
for the symphonic sounds that surround us.
The forests of human caricatures,
dressed in their flowing robes of varied green,
need the wind to make them play their music.
As the wind vibrates their stems and leaves
it produces music so soothing and sweet.
At times, the notes are like those of violins,
or mellow like those of the cello.
A change of wind can make them sound like bass.
Sometimes the conductor pulls out the stops,
and nature explodes with loud sounds that pop.
The wind howls, branches snap and the trees sway,
and then the rain joins in the refrain,
turning leaves into tambourines and shakers.
A loud thunderclap and lightning flash,
create a wild symphony that most surely rocks.
As creatures of the Creator’s hand,
we too must add our songs sublime,
through living for his glory now,
we join with birds, sun, wind, and trees,
and stars and mighty oceans wild,
to daily raise our voices loud,
In thanks to God, for life and Son,
as part of nature’s symphony of praise.
the past recedes and what
was once a tsunami
of energy, exaltation and intent
or a depression of sadness and despair
play out into waves and troughs
of remembrance,
to ripples of recognition,
to a becalmed sea.
So too,
your resolve to remember always,
that awesome victory,
or deathly loss,
dampens down,
to the day you find that
you haven't thought of it
for years,
and now the details are
caricatures and cartoons that
you feel guilty and petty
for even mentioning.
Colors
Here they are, in no particular order
follow no protocol of precedence
the colorful patterns of the mindscape
the planes of its sensitivity, the
triangles of its premises, the
circles of its surmises. Their reds too
coagulate in blood, they ruffle in
the form of blues, could be black or white on
purpose or green in a teen . Don’t confuse
them with the colors you perceive or the
lab- reconstructs-in- color of dinosaurs
or the latest of them, lycopod .
Mere caricatures, these are, which exist,
without dispute, within your eyes too.
14 April 14, Form: sonnet
** The reference here is to the recent digital life-like reconstruction of a long-extinct species of lycopods into its FULL-COLOR image based on a 400 million year old fossil- lycopod.
All avenues are amphibious arenas
Bubbles belch-burst, bitter Bacchanalian bombs
Clouds' cast-iron crescendo creates cold cantankerous caricatures
Drenched - darkness descending, daylight dying, disappearing duskwards
Every eye echoing every eye, emotional evidence enveloped
Fake furs, fashionable fools, firm friends fleeing flowing firmament
Garrulous girls giggle, grizzled gangsters get going, gravity gyroscopes - ginormous gloomy grey gusts!
Hapless Harry's hairpiece hovers, hesitates, hovers higher, hurriedly he hopes he has his hat,
Intimate iciness infiltrates irrepressibly inside,
Jaunty Jack's japery, just jaded January jokes - jigsaw justice
Kilted killers, kleptomaniac kangaroos...
Lame laughs, low lamplight, laser liquid lines lash lustfully
Mercurial miasma mercilessly merging, mournful men mutter miserably
Nobody needs niceties, navigating newspapers, nothing new now
Ordered out over oof owed, obstinately offering old objections
Pavement pool-puddles pose problems, precautions probable, prayers perhaps...
Quintessential questing queens querulously quarrel,
Rain rushes relentlessly, rudely, rapaciously
Sizzling, steaming, slip-sliding silhouettes, soaked saturnine suits seething
Terry the tiger-tamer, tastefully tattooed, taking time talking tactfully to trembling tramps
Undernourished underpass underclass, underwhelmed under useless ubiquitous umbrellas
Vulgar victors, vim-vigour-verve, voraciously vanquished, vanity virulently violated,
Waistless waifs, wasted wastrels, wrestle with wicked westerly winds
X-rayed, X-rated
Yesterday's youngsters yellowing, yawning, yearning
Zero zest. Zilch.
Here are six tales of six relatives of mine
Now all have passed in the passage of time
Mostly seen through the eyes of a child
Poetic licence used for I’m no Oscar Wilde
~~~
Aunt Ada and Aunt Edie were a scary pair for me
Ada wore a real live fox fur dangling from her neck
And as a child I really thought this is where it slept
Of course it was not breathing as the poor thing it was dead
But nothing could convince me ~ for to me it was asleep instead
Edie was Ada’s companion or that is how it seemed
Much smaller in stature she walked behind Ada
Who strutted ahead when her mind it was set
Each day Ada dressed in her Astrakhan coat
And walked to her ‘bookies’ where she placed her daily bet
~~~
Another scary person whom I only met the once
A cruel step mother came to stay
When I saw her face I ran away
Her face was pointed
Her nose was too
Her countenance a paler shade of blue
And with her came her daughter too
A spookier pair I never knew
From whence that day the day they came
Their names we never spoke again
~~~
My dearest Grandpops ~ loved him lots
A character through and through
He wore a black beret perched upon his head
With a loosely tied dickie bow draped round his neck
A master magician with his performing dog named Win
Performing caricatures by his favourite Dickensian
Wishing he was here ~ passed in his 84th year
Wanting many answers to questions unasked
For the young have no time for to stop and to hear
When young, one can be so selfish I fear
And that is the reason I wish he was here
~~~
An uncle in the navy spent months away at sea
Like Father Christmas he returned ~ I sat upon his knee
His knapsack overflowed with gifts for family and for me
Exotic lace and silk and dolls and fancy fans and herbal tea
Ivory figures large and small he'd bring from a foreign land
He would sit for hours spinning yarns of the Orient exotic and grand
~~~
his visits stopped so suddenly no more gifts were sent
to this very day I have no inkling where my uncle went
Written 15th November 2020
Contest Six relatives
Sponsor Caren Krutsinger
FIRST PLACE
Contest ALL YOURS POETRY
Sponsor Brian Strand
FIRST PLACE