Best Chapbook Poems
The Messenger
I watched the clouds of afternoon
Gather tempest force;
Now, from a cozy shelter
View October's raging storm;
Watching through rain washed windows
Golden oak trees quake
While from their summered branches
Autumn treasures take.
Drops of glistening rain fall
From the clouds above
When darkening skies of eventide
Hurry bust'ling crowds;
Through storm winds call they homeward rush,
Not hearing autumn sing,
They search the night for quiet havens,
Shelter from the rain.
Children run along the street
Among the fallen leaves
Gathering autumn's artistry
Riding on the breeze;
The wind blows cold, time's messenger,
Of dark days yet to come -
Taking from the land its harvest
Making way for the ice blue sun.
Have published nine chapbooks of my poetry. The Messenger is one of the poems published in a chapbook titled Rhythms and Rhymes - Award Winning Writings.
All of the poems included in Rhythms and Rhymes have won a contest or an award.
My books are available through my website - www.samkservantsheart.com, or through me. That is an amazingly self serving piece of information but I thought I would include it.
A fledgling poet round two thousand three,
I found some friends who mentored me; they led
me to a site called Shadow Poetry.
By mental challenges there, I was fed.
I learned to better write according to
specific forms or themes, and I was thrilled
by all the many things that would ensue
the more time there I spent; I was fulfilled!
The annual big contest, Shadow Ink,
gave not just money, but a chapbook deal.
I paid to enter it and did not think
I stood a chance. How good I soon would feel!
My best friend and I tied. We HAD to call
our chapbook “Friendship Garden.” That said it all!
Note: Shadowpoetry.com was not able to be maintained as an interactive poetry community and after several wonderful years, the owner had to pull out. All our chapbooks were removed from the bookstore and the contests are no longer done. Today it is a website for writers' development only.
[This poem first appeared in the anthology, "The Soul and the Singer," Young Publications, c. 1968. It was reprinted in my first poetry chapbook "The Lady in the Pink Hat," Candor Press, 1969.]
God rises from that distant hill
And surveys His wonder in silence still
Without reproach or bitter muse
For mankind's hostile subterfuge.
Not yet incensed with holy wrath
Against the impoverished aftermath
Of beauty laid in ruthless stubble
Amid earth's bent and broken rubble.
The mount remains in glory crowned
Majestic height is capped and gowned
And quietly repairs the ravaged simple
Chosen for the Almighty's temple
God rises from that distant hill
To frame the noble triune will
Responding to inhuman guise
With piercing but loving emerald eyes.
[From the note at the beginning, this poem was written sometime during 1967. I was twenty-six years old, at the time, but I had been writing poems since I was in elementary school. Most of them have been lost over the years.
This particular poem was always one of my favorites, and I was delighted to have it appear in an anthology by Young Publications, 1968.]
FIRST PLACE WINNER
for "The Throwback Challenge" Poetry Contest
sponsored by Natasha L Scragg
March 8, 2022
My elderly friend and I walk along
the raised flower beds
full of rainbows of blooms,
becoming the mother and daughter
in the famous Renoir painting,
now with the daughter grown up.
We slow our pace,
gazing at pink and yellow dahlias,
velvety purple salvias, blue delphiniums,
hanging baskets of pink bleeding hearts,
red begonias everywhere we look.
Greenery frames the fountain’s dancing spray.
Down the paths of roses,
yellow, orange, white, lavender,
fuchsia, and bright red,
sunlight catches on my friend’s white hair
and the silver metal of her walker.
We stop at a carousel, watching
the pastel horses, the frog, the pig,
the cat with its fish, the goose, and the rabbit
rise and fall, round and round,
until she turns to me.
We part, as I head to ponds of lilies,
surrounded by orange flowers
I don’t recognize.
I picture my friend, smiling amid the roses,
her words echoing inside my mind:
I’m holding you back...back...back...
Go see the rest of the garden.
Go see the rest of the garden.
March 13,2021
Flower or Flowers in Imagism Form Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Constance La France
Note: This is a poem I wrote for my self-published chapbook Song of the Katabatic Wind: Poetry of Travel through Western Canada, which was made for a church fundraiser.
D enver, Colorado was the place that Dave called home.
A fterward, he headed east and learned to write a poem!
V iolins he loved to play and did professionally,
E njoying his years in many a symphony.
R etired, now in Michigan, he thrives on poetry.
A mong the many poets here, Dave’s one of a kind.
U tter fun and introspection in his work you’ll find.
S upport of fellow poets, Daver likes to lend.
T hanks to him I give for being a good friend.
I njustice I have done you, Dave, with these lines so few.
N ine cats you shelter know there’s no one else as sweet as you!
*Daver is the name that Dave Austin goes by. He was among the
first poets here to greet me and become a very good friend of mine,
even doing book exchanges with me and later buying my most recently
sold chapbook online. Daver, I appreciate your support and am very
glad to have met you here at Soup! (also, he loves mythology and
has written numerous poems based on myths.) One of the outstanding poems
of his that I love is called “Brother - Billy.” Just type it in with his name
and check it out! It’s on one of those last pages that few people visit
past our regular 200 poems that are easier to see.
For the Gift Exchange Contest of P.D.
Thinking about Brian's recent Footle contest (my crazy eyes had been seeing FOOTIE all this
time and just realized yesterday it is called FOOTLE with LE on the end) I proceeded to drive
to the movie up in Salt Lake, only place I was able to catch a showing of Chloe. As I drove
up there, I was racking my brain for a Footle, and suddenly, they started coming to me.
They are so short, I could easily jot them down on paper atop my steering wheel and it was
a great way to occupy my time. Brian's little contest was a great inspiration for me. I ended
up with more than thirty (I thought they needed to be rhymed on both syllables) so now that
I know I can do the first syllable unrhymed, that should make it all the more easier to think
up even more. Please let me know your favorite of the bunch and the ones that are too
stupid in case I ever do a chapbook on these! YOu guys gotta try these. The trick is to
rhyme the words and then make a title to fit the poem! LUv, Andrea
Pickpocket Bunny
Grab it
Rabbit
Offspring of Tinkerbell & Frodo
Hairy
Fairy
Gerber’s Strained Peas
Easy
Pea sy
Shirley Temple with a perm
SURELY
Curly
Mrs. Ed on Laughing Gas
Silly
Filly
A Greeter
Hello
Fellow
Art of Love
Hold ‘er
Mold’ er
Survivor Food
Lizards’
Gizzards
Grape Jelly Kiss
Smucker
Pucker
Sour Lemons’ Motto
Blew it!
Screw it!
The poet dreams, and with a simple glance
at trees or sky or at a mountain spring,
begins to write, endeavors to enhance
each sight of beauty with imagining.
He paints midsummer as a day of gold,
the song of birds at twilight as the tune
for his beloved, whose aspect is extolled
and likened to the splendor of the moon.
At times, his heart is pained. It seems that doom
pursues him in that chasm where he grieves.
He finds he still must write. . . and there may bloom
sweet wistful roses on his journal’s leaves.
Though meager be his assets, he bequeaths
to us a treasure with the words he breathes.
Entered 10/22/2020 for Line Gauthier's Have You Published Poetry Contest
From my chapbook: Dancing the Unicorn: Lyrical Blooms 2
I had won a chapbook deal for my Lyrical Blooms 1 entitled Dreaming the Unicorn, and I followed it up with a part 2 Dancing the Unicorn, a 44-page chapbook pubished in 2008 by Shadow Ink. The book contains poems of various themes with about two poems per page and organized by types of poetry forms. Blue roses are scattered through the book. Shadow Ink sadly stopped publishing.
We were beginning
to gather
at the "Shut up and Write"
workshop on Broadway
I brought a couple
of chapbooks of my
poetry
and an article published
in a collectibles journal
A Hispanic woman
told me she was writing
a memoir
I showed her my
chapbook - she smiled
Last time I came
there was a
prosecutor who wanted to write
"literary fiction"
Also, there was someone
who was heavily
into finishing his
comic book
It seemed that only
the Hispanic woman and
myself have come to
"Shut up and write"
She is busy typing
up her memoir
I start work on a story
Across from me
two young Asians have begun to work
on getting their Series 7 license
They are working intensely
A writing workshop in a coffee shop
"Shut up and Write"
Indeed!
FOR EASTER
Humpty Dumpty – From the Chapbook,
A Neighborhood Child. Repost
Humpty Dumpty
You’re a mess!
Fat egg
The moment of your crash a fright!
I’ll never forget
The lightning flash of yellow and white
Did you fall face ward or back? -
I can’t tell
With yoke plashed over your shell
With all the king’s men
The ovaries of a hen
It’s still quite ridiculous
A job so meticulous
When Rico said, Thirty days will go by
and I’ll be forgotten after I die
I knew what I had to do
I’ll make a book for you
At least the cover will catch your eye
I decided to do this in case he croaks
It's a chapbook with his incredible jokes
Double-entendres filled with sex
At Kinko's-AKA-Fed-Ex
Obsessed with Vladimir's power, a hoax
Thousands of words it cost me some chen
Kinko’s gets it—they always have been
Lucky for Rico Leffanta
I have chosen the right fonta
At my source where they make things happen
Mana'o wau e ola mau 'oe
translation: I hope you live forever!
I dream of magic lines but they elude me.
Chapbook on acrylic tube palette, janus-faced cave in
at the crack of dawn,
crescent moonlight awnings turn to circus of the soul,
images that colour dullard pages leave furrow on my
hayrick haggard brow.
Backwater sonnet form leaning towards some meadow compost rot.
Ghost written silhouettes, shatter fragile eggs on
loop pile Berber carpets,
yolk stain and pale brown chicken hash tags.
Tight rope knot escarpment found in tripod camera verse,
cliff edge heart-stop paen is just another
blue-sky canon over billed by birds of prey.
Poetic licence pointer to a learner permit doggerel,
aspiring metre patchwork but a tapered column
lost in grey day whimper.
Guangdong province text in lychee pink for window glaze.
Fleeting notions dangle at the sparrow hawk crossroads,
while grazing skinny red ballon formations overhead.
Mother of invention please shine your convex beam
upon this wellspring drought abandonment I swim in.
Sudden brain cell drafts a Jack-o’-lantern of disjointed phases,
stretcher bear the legless phrases that leave me
wheelchaired and infirmed in woolly states.
Timeline mainstream woofer whose lagging jacket hemline falls apart,
areole reduced branch slowly bleeds its cactus juice of inspiration.
A rush, a fever, quotidian fever,
no greater longing can us writers have.
The last hour lies down
in mid-winter’s gully
a frosted string of light
spooled into dark
stitched into fantasy
Flying birds gather the city
in their wings
Ah, to love birds and their flights
to love the moon’s obsession
to love the softness of light
in stained glass windows
Still glowing a bit from daylight
I turn into evening
Thus in the astral darkness
a figment of ghosts
bobbing their heads
Between rain and clouds
a cool breath opens the uneasy sky
a spindle of dust leaps from the ground
Ah, all of this magic seen
with my human eyes
is everything I believe
everything I stir and drink
O eager child
kindled fire of youth
bare heart of zeal
I stretch my imagination
to little boy impressions
I believe in fairy dust
so that I can exist, so that
fairies can exist, so that
fairies are here, always
and never frightened
----------------------------------------
from my Fairy Tale chapbook-in-progress
©dah / dahlusion 2016 all rights reserved
"Astral Darkness" was first published in
'Liquid Imagination' a creative writing journal
(Poem included in the Poems of Yosemite chapbook.)
Ineffable –
Still, I write these lines
trite.
A scaffold of words
which whence removed
casts only a silence
of long shadows.
To you, the paradigm
of living time,
I write ephemeral
wordless words.
You say nothing
though the wind wafts
words which speak
beyond words to each.
The sound of wind
continues in the stillness
and reaches into
the logos which
spells the visitors
deeper than these.
You speak centuries –
the entire time
of our adolescence –
when you’ve watched
as we wrestle with
the worst of nature.
You were made for fire
and your cambium grows
thick bark and fibers
over the scars.
Does too our tissue
grow over scars?
Wars, devastations?
Will these as well clear
the understory?
But you don’t create fire
you endure it.
Is that the difference?
This is your nature,
share and compare us ours.
We see your exposed rings
and the markers
telling us which ring
belongs to Christ
and the Inquisition.
I see my ring
but not the current
as only the living
scribe those rings
and they are being written.
Poetry overcomes time
and endows the ephemeral
with permanence.
Your permanence
is presence and in
this silence of time
the visitors sense
then understand –
they’ve come not to see you
but themselves.
He
opened
the window-
in streamed his first
love
with
flowers,
dressed
in white-
she haunted his
art
THE POEM APPEARED IN 'Poiema'- a selection of Ekphrasis poems ( a chapbook published by QQ Press isbn 1-903203-562)
Dark
lady-
feminine
beauty,coupled with
strength
Dama de Blanco by Frida Kahlo 1907-54
read my ekphrasis chapbook Poiems on line @ http://poiemaekphrasis.blogspot.com/