Best Chilies Poems
Mistress of deception,
as in victual monogamy.
A deceit of one’s perception,
without an irksome homily.
Mushrooms drop into a pot,
with peppers, once pureed.
Zucchini dance as they are tossed
amidst confetti of celery seed.
Onions sing out with Garlic,
part of the tomato cabaret.
They drop, sway, and frolic,
below the leaves of dried up bay.
A precipitation of spices,
fine herbs and hot chilies.
If omitted a possible crisis,
like the heel of Achilles.
Then a most decisive stroke,
wheat pasta hits the stage.
With every furtive jab and poke…
Spaghetti is still the rage!
Categories:
chilies, family, food, imagination,
Form:
Ode
I can’t say
where life begins
and death takes over:
Oh! I know of birth
and funerals--
what the church says
and what my gut
further tells me…
but my heart often
wanders above wings,
parting shadows
to a place alone
where I encounter
a loving presence
my feeling no need
to define...
I have read those volumes
both blessed and cursed
tongued caramel ecstasy
and licked the sacrificial fires
(sweat-making chilies
and artery clogging rinds of life)
but remain
mostly confounded
though comforted somewhat
by the little I know
and concisely name--
admitting more of me
has always existed outside
my libraries of
leather diaries
and embossed references….
Categories:
chilies, imagery, imagination, introspection, life,
Form:
Free verse
They are not from Chiang Mai,
they are a tribal people
who speak a hill language.
They ride through the night
on bicycles to settle at dawn
beside the Ping River.
Girls' unroll rattan mats
squat beside straw hats brimful
with the tang of burgundy chilies
They have vegetables
grown in lime green waters,
parched salty anchovies,
and plump spearheads
of opalescent fish -
all these are bargained for,
bundled in newspaper,
tied with pink raffia.
Our lives cross here.
A few coins dropped into an open palm,
nods and smiles by a river,
a common currency bridging
alien worlds.
Categories:
chilies, poetry,
Form:
Free verse
The ABCs of Things Green
Algae, alligator, artichoke, asparagus, aphids, Andradite,
Brussels sprouts, broccoli, Buffalo Treehopper, and beans,
Cuckoo Wasp, Cabbage, cucumber, Common Green Darner, and celery
Dog Day Cicada, Delphinium flowers diopside and dioptase, (rocks),
Emeralds, eyes, endive, evergreen trees, Emerald Ash Borer, Epidote
Ferns, Forests, Frogs, Fungus, Fork-tailed Bush Katydids, and fushite
Green Macaw, Green Jay, green onions, green bottles and boxes
Honeydew melons, Habanera chilies, and Hellebore,
Indian peas, Irish moss, Iceberg lettuce, Ivy, and Iguanas,
Jade vine, Jack-in-the-pulpit, Jade, and the Jolly Green Giant
Kale kelp, katydid, kiwi fruit, kohlrabi, and the Keel Billed Toucan’s bill,
Leeks, lemons, limes, leaf hoppers, leafy greens, and Leprechauns,
Mint jelly, Magnolia, Green Jumping Spider, Morrisonite Jasper, Malachite
New Zealand spinach, Napa cabbage, the Nile River, and Nephrite Jade,
Olives, Ostrich fern, okra, Oak leaf lettuce, olive Sparrow and onion,
Praying Mantis, peas, potato, parsnip, Peach-faced Lovebird, and Prehnite,
Question is, What green thing starts with Q? Some quarks do.
Runner-beans, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Rose quartz, and Rue,
Saddleback Caterpillars, Southern Emerald Moths, snow peas, Serpentine
Tadpole, Turtle, Turf, Turnip greens, Turaco, and Toxic Torbenite,
Unripe bananas and Ugli fruit (both are green then orange)
Velvet Beans, Vidalia Onions, Vegetable leaves, Varovite, and Varisite
White-winged Parakeet, watercress, winter purslane, and wild leek
Xigua melon is a yummy treat
Yellow onions, Yellow-chevroned parakeet, Yellow-green vireo, and yarrow,
Zuchini is the last, but not the least of the ABC’s of Things Green.
Categories:
chilies, bird, food, fruit,
Form:
Abecedarian
We think them plentiful, like jumping shrimp and tiny crabs:
These mak hung, these chilies, the base for padaek.
The mouth waters with even a mention.
Every heart of Laos knows it well.
Cross oceans and mountains, battlefield and basement,
Oz or Kyrgyzstan, Modesto or Nashville, Phoenix or Pakse.
Meet anyone who can say sabaidee or a word of passa lao.
Even if they don’t remember their history or family,
How to nop or how to fon, or the secrets to singing a good mor lum
We still become one again with as little as a dish.
Our bellies fill like an ancient queen, a saint of Laos,
Our heroines and heroes, our elders and children,
The clever beauties and the dreaming scholars.
Pounding away until it’s so hot you sweat,
A mix of sweet and salt, starch and bite
What poet, what priest,
What politician, what legend can truly compete or compare?
We sing of the fine dok champa, but our people also sleep
With memories of mak hung, a smile, a tongue afire.
Categories:
chilies, food, international,
Form:
Free verse
Goes in hot. Comes out hot.
But this may be more than the casual student
Will want to know.
Mom’s grinding chilies for me in Modesto.
Red, green, a dash of fresh cilantro,
Fermented shrimp sauce and a pinch of salt
Between her mortar and pestle.
Dabbing a sticky ball of khao nhio
Into the tiny ceramic saucer, I know
She’s a sorceress
In her kitchen
Trying to find a way to say
She loves me, hoping my prodigal tongue
Is still Lao enough
To understand what her broken English cannot convey.
My eyes are cisterns of tears after 30 years.
I should say “mak phet” and grab some cold milk
But with a smile through the pain I stammer
“Saep lai, Mae, delicious, Mom.
Saep lai, hak Mae lai lai.”
“Don’t talk, just eat,” she says between her tears.
Categories:
chilies, absence, family, food, immigration,
Form:
Free verse
The French expression is exquisite,
fat succulent globes glowing darkly,
but if you're looking for length look
to the East, although they lack girth.
Yet the Greeks do it best
sleek glossy orbs, rubbed with
olive oil then laid in their bed and
immersed in an effusion of
ripe succulent Roma slowly
simmered with garlic, oregano
and perhaps a few chilies, if you like it
hot and then covered with a thick
white sauce béchamel and lasciviously
savoured with a mature rich red.
Categories:
chilies, food,
Form:
Free verse
A latino zone in the base of North America
having an injured past honourably graced by two peasants
known to be the most populated in the Spanish world
but suffers a massive exodus to his neighbor above.
He looks at Texas and says “twas once”
but has long moved on quite wonderfully,
proven by his show of corn, chilies and chocolates
which he firstly introduced to the world.
Rabbit and volcano only mix in his backyard.
The least in stature of dogs is found within his dwelling,
with his living room nicknamed “the Ring of Fire”
And its entire household held by the blessing of the cross.
Categories:
chilies, earth, natural disasters, nature,
Form:
Ode
SSSSS AAAHHH!!
AH AH AH AAAHHH!
Mouth and Tongue Red Hot!
Head Cracking and with Burning with Fumes
Ears Steaming Crazy!
SSSSS AAAHHH!!
AH AH AH AAAHHH!
Lapping my Tongue like a dog ....AAaaaa.....
Wiping my sweaty brow....
Phew....PHew.....
But Still Enjoying my Chilies!
What do you expect next?
Running frantically, finding water!!
Categories:
chilies, addiction, humorous, light,
Form:
Free verse
The restaurant was Vietnamese
And so, for its clients to please,
On each table there sat
Bottles filled with sauce that
Would make someone like me start to sneeze.
For some cultures like heat in their food
Thus for zestiness, they might include
Certain chilies or spice,
Sometimes sprinkled on twice,
So a torridness they will exude.
Though some patrons such heat will exalt
And use hot sauce, perhaps, by default,
I like flavor, not heat
Yet my meal’s not complete
‘Til it has a few shakes of the salt.
Categories:
chilies, food,
Form:
Limerick
red Mexican chilies
hot jalapeno peppers
tasty refried beans
sizzling chicken fajitas
bits of fresh lettuce
scoop of onion
rolled up in a floured burrito
delicacy fit for a queen
Categories:
chilies, food,
Form:
Epulaeryu
Boophilus microplus (Canestrini)
I like the way you tightly hold on your prey
This is your sure way that never sways away
The bond between you two…
It’s tight and tighter at two
It’s even tightest without light
Coz you are always in sight in hidden site
You Boophilus microplus
You like holding on and on
And make your sweet presence known
On this heifer headed for slaughter
You still hold on with a clueless laughter
I wish you could fall off and let go
Your prey gonna be no more, let’s go
It’s gone and sunken in wide bellies
Probably through honey and chilies
You are holding on a discarded container
Void of content, it’s just a container
Wake up Boophilus microplus
Seconds are now minutes-hours-days
Yet I can see you holding on your old ways
Your ways…
Void of bright rays
Lead you astray
With lost and shuttered hope at bay
Hoping to find a way in the same old way
Wakeup Mr. Boophilus microplus
Categories:
chilies, africa, allusion, analogy, break
Form:
Rhyme
In that season when the wind blew
A love note, remains timeless and still
A conversation of close-knit tone began
And abideth like day and night till...
We, two beings, entwined in spirit
Have the pleasure of owning the world
The shadows remain just as long
Time limited as ever before
Sweet sunshine cures our love
To a smooth velvety silk
Our stream is cool like the furthest cloud
Our fierce fire is contained within our wings
We’ve had chance to dance to our laughter
The roar which destines anguish in to blue seas
Where each wave rises and crashes in rhythm
The tune of a pair bound by a single algorithm
In our world there is a lake of clear waters
Where my boat once dropped a shank
There was a ragged shore that threatened one
Not to go that far, a timid breeze that bent reeds
Cute and slow like the tilapia dorsals, from the bamboo
Grove nearby a call from a lazy quail to its roaming mate
A bubble of black water from upstream where ungrateful
humans lived, a piece of cloth drifting on the stiff waters.
That was all to see and hear.
I could hope and learn from the evening toss
Of the lake how the lone quail earned its keep
But the lake was dead silent
In that brief moment of time stasis
A fable has it that the goddess of the lake
Would come to accept the sun’s goodbye
Alas! Behold the lake was a flaming pan
Like ripe red chilies in a windy sunny day
Behind the hanging clouds that evening, stood
In a frock of the pattern of the floating cloth
A succulent beauty, long nose, creamy teeth
Whose long tresses will my days and hers entwined
Categories:
chilies, adventure, africa, best friend,
Form:
Verse
Many come to live out their dreams
In the city of the golden gate.
Here the people are bright
And always calm in state.
Many fade into each other
As blending paint colors do.
Very few stand out so clear
With ideas so fresh and new.
Tradition shape the city
With historic houses abound;
Owners waive their colored flags
Begging for change to come around.
Smells of chilies dance in the air
Flowing through the Mission.
People work long hours while
dreaming of their ambition.
Fame, fortune and opportunity;
The dream is they want.
To walk down Market street
Dressed in names to flaunt.
For them life won't change
A new world has come in stride.
A modern place where many hope
But has many in divide.
Techies and everyone else,
The upper echelon is the former.
They push life into screens
So time can be cut by a quarter.
Among buildings of age are
The glittering glass towers.
A menagerie of architecture
Built by men of great power.
Creation and innovation occurs
Behind the gleaming glass walls.
Ideas flow as people do
Through these intrepid halls.
Life is moving forward
To a new progressive realm;
Only those who can code
Will be seated at the helm.
Others will fade away
Standing on a side of a chasm.
Movement coming so quickly
They won't be able to fathom.
What will the future be
In the city by the bay?
Will many come to live their dreams
Or will they be pushed away?
Categories:
chilies, america, city, imagery,
Form:
Rhyme
woman, oh woman
even after your
constant, daily
treatment of abuse
I demonstrated
I could have been
your karate kid.
In your defense
did I not impulsively
stand tall between
two warring giants
me, a whippet of a kid
arms outstretched
like sabre swords
pleading don't hurt
her....
taking blows
meant for you.
You the one that
inflicted pain 24/7
twisting the
tender skin off
my arm flesh and
leaving huge welts
that stung like
scorpion hot chilies
the umpteen mountainous
goose-egg bumps
you planted on
my tiny forehead
with knuckles
constructed of iron steel.
I demonstrated
a compassionate heart
in dreadful moments,
woman, oh woman
where was your
loving heart
standing in as mother
to an abandoned child
now trapped in a
poor, blazing hellhole.
With fresh eyes anew
...my learned enlightenment
I now understand your
sole/soul's motivation was
the almighty dollar
... hard cash that never
came through for you.
Pure and simple ...
avaricious by nature
most certainly
not nurture and,
please excuse me
while I laugh
you claim
to be a
christian!
Hmm, I say
hypocritical
and evil
to the core.
Categories:
chilies, abuse, childhood,
Form:
Prose