Best Clacks Poems
A former place this, a patch where roots rattle,
where stubble has a ferrous frizzle.
A long truncated railroad stop
humming still within a surrogate reality.
As dry voices on the wind, they return
- the homesteaders and journeymen,
the harnessed horses.
Pants' cuffs carry kernels
long planted elsewhere.
Caps, coats, and carts
employed again by the magnetic
echos of an iron labor.
The brown weeds are talkative.
Brown boots seem to shuffle.
A hollow clock clacks,
its guts a nest for ticking birds.
Dandelions anticipate
a faraway flight,
A mid-day heat
thrums fragmented rails.
The station seems almost ready
to receive
as if its world
had not disembarked forever.
Categories:
clacks, poetry,
Form:
Blank verse
** SCENES FROM HOME **
The curtain wafts on an open-window’s breezing air, like liquid
Blue in the room, bringing beauty with magic’s tracing
The woman with her still raining, trickling water-streams
Over her calf as she lifts her leg out of the bath
Above the call, “Daughter!” to the girl running outside, her
Tresses and turquoise skirt flying up in a lunging wind
As a red squirrel leaps onto a chipping-painted windowsill
To dig all through a neglected flowerbox, while he’s squawked at
By a blackbird, bowing over her nest, keeping watch
Nearby where there emanates the enchanting sound of piano
Nocturnes that the son (in rolled-up shirtsleeves) nicely plays
While a ping-pong ball rolling, clacks across the cellar floor,
Beguilling the cat into a frenzied attempt to seize her prey
At the hallway’s end, Grandma asks a mirror about her appearance.
“Is there a flower fairy to bring a blooming loveliness to my age?”
Mirror, ready to answer, “Just look! Radiance grows inside every day.”
But, the answer on-coming, found Grandma, chin-on-hand, fast asleep.
————————————————————————————————————-
(c) sally young eslinger 7/14-15/2023
Thanks be to God—-
Categories:
clacks, animal, family, fantasy, home,
Form:
Imagism
In her eyes rises the flames of love,
The passion of care and cherish;
She sings with such a beautiful voice
That the clicks and clacks of her rhythms makes me dance to her tune;
The words she airs and the way she takes me by the hand,
Pricks a call for concern and makes me feel that endless love;
I made her my sugar mummy,
Teaching her the physics of love
And she made me her sugar daddy,
Teaching me the linguistic of love;
Each time I take her for a walk,
She holds me so tight and lean that beautiful head of hers by my shoulders,
Letting that hand of mine to crap her waist;
I spend my time preaching to her lovely ears the melodies of kindness
And she spends her time just doing it to me;
If there is anything I have ever needed,
It’s her and the kinds she possess.
The end
Categories:
clacks, beautiful, love, me, time,
Form:
Free verse
Normal people come in packs of six
Some are born in cardboard boxes
In suburbs, in summer, in campers
In the middle of the middle class
In clicks and clacks on railroad tracks
Rich people shower frequently in power
In God we trust the upper crust to laugh
Normal people want mobility Up
To supper in good company
To be pretty as a picture on the beach
To frolic in the waves of milk and honey
With apologies to Jesus people sing
Some dance in fire merrily
Normal people come in from the cold
Candy sweet and happy to be seen
Some come from baby factories
From across the street in greeting seasons
Middle class people love the poor
They love themselves much more
That is why babies are born
Subways are for the pedestrian class
Travelling from left to right transformative
In nature train people are always in motion
Moving on is always right
The mundane remain the same
With Happy Hour and a six pack waiting
Somewhere down the line the land cracks open
It is another earthquake opened with a smile
Categories:
clacks, culture, endurance, success,
Form:
Free verse
the chimney stacks
of the old power station
claws at the belly of the clouds
and with its sulfurous billowing
it bellows its stench
tinting the clouds, yellowing nicotine stains
as its cadaverous fingers clench
and releases, as it pleases
the painted nails
sport red flashing lights
as the bellowing smoke
for airspace fights
the dawn is cracked open
under the grey steam-pot lid
like a rotten egg
and the horizon is broken
into blocks
between the pedestal legs
of the spindly chimney stacks
progress clangs and clacks
on blood-rusted
unused train-tracks
the scars of progress on an old landscape
- weals healed over in ageless veldts
whilst weeds pimple between the stays
a last gasp of green displays
the gangrene death
of nature
oozing from the suture
as we break the past
to build the future
Categories:
clacks, nature, technology,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
The tall girl with skinned knees hair of straw
Shirley ‘the hag’
Her voice cracks when she talks
Skinny torn knees knock when she walks
She will flavor all Shirleys to come
Her face above left or right of any Shirley
When the hag skips rope
She clacks like a bag of bones
Dirty hair flops
Singing a school room tune
“The frog he would a wooing go’
It fits…….ho ho
Just wait for the rope to tangle
Frog voice break
The descent like a tinkertoy tower
Knees all mangled
Feel sorry then
When tears streak her bony face
Shirley ‘the hag’
Poor skinny baby
To the office run with broken stilts
Stumble again
Ripped to the bone maybe
..................................................................................................
For Robert Dufresne, my humor-loving friend
Categories:
clacks, childhood, funnyvoice, hair, voice,
Form:
Free verse
Woman! darkly gleam is your work I esteem…love it!
From mountainous mountain top to valley‘s belly
I hear you pluck…on eagle‘s wings…onward pluck
How nice, your device visits and forces in their smelly
Glamorous cells, a glad evening‘s grief to run amok.
Then ever, of flowing emotions savour. Oh their deeds befit!
Skip a stride, hop a stride, and gleefully grin upon
Their seeds too – in their please full bliss and homely homes.
But a seed… …he who wears my face and is adorn
With a talking tongue like that of his majesty Jerome‘s;
When you, him happen upon, spare an empty glance. Clickaty-clacks too,
Mine ears must hear not near. And my nose, free must it be of your flu!
On scribbled accounts, oh read, ever shall you in your shrine;
And content shall I be having inked my fourteenth line.
Categories:
clacks, child, death, space,
Form:
Sonnet
HER WONDERFUL MOTHER NATURE
Once upon her entering and exiting
Her comings and goings
Groceries, gym or mall
Mother Nature made the mirrors love her
All-knowing reflection,
No adjustments needed...
Please...not one correction
Causing confusion, she's unflawed
Everywhere, in every room, claiming, stealing all attention
Gorgeous green eyed-snake women start hissing,
Salivating, half-dog half-men, jaws stuck, stalled
Remember her...Oh, don't they all?
She and I, sometimes engage in
A carefully unscripted conversation
And so from mine own imagination...I will share
She leaves the world, with rare...souvenirs
Letting us know she was near
A trace of her intimidating yet inviting, invisible scent
Where her valuable diamond time was spent
But none free to spare
A lost, left behind, strand of hair
A walking razor
Her shadow click-clacks in,
Legs, classily crossed ladylike, saddled that lucky chair
Sipped only a pair of cocktails,
Her figure a musical note, a cursive signature,
Her FORM flows, dips smooth and full
Stunning, so easily capturing us all
Her smile, does accurately spell
The wonderful definition of the word Beautiful...
Look her up in the dictionary my friend
For she is a non-fictional woman
Strong-her world has gravitational pull you apart
Aquarius without a speck of ugliness
In February she effortlessly
Valentines a fool's heart
Can never look messily
That is quite improbably, an impossibility
Surreally painted together perfectly
Like a Dali nude canvass on art,
Breathing...responding...moving
Wonderful Mother Nature, knew exactly what she was doing
Marvelously done, on her part.
Categories:
clacks, romance,
Form:
Romanticism
Heavenly bodies, heavenly beings;
living entities unfettered by gravity.
Spinning marbles in a universal box.
God’s favorite game,
knuckle busters are smacking planets,
right and left and the debris reforms…
new…marbles…pee-wee dust.
Cat-eyes glow as they sail apart; agate smacks!
The “Big Bang” was…
God taking his first shot.
Heavenly bodies, heavenly beings;
God makes no distinction between his children,
as we humans prefer to believe.
It’s been said that, “reality is an illusion”;
perhaps we are only marbles in the game;
like our sibling planets.
Lost in a spinning swirl of colors;
we roll blindly through life.
Puries and steelies;
clacking out cosmic crescendos.
God knuckles down and shoots;
bluesy-Earth smacks a trilite,
Mars and chips a new crater.
Another steely sends alley Jupiter,
smacking into its own moon and a whirling
Io slams grasshopper Neptune from behind.
In parallel universes, we meet ourselves;
repeating mistakes, we never win;
a hazard of being…lesser gods.
God’s game is multi-universal
and human perception,
terribly finite.
The great hand, histing;
fires…Earth gets another tour of the Milky Way.
As heavenly body-clacks resound;
all heavenly beings sustain injuries,
that will change them.
No one stays the same.
Perigee to apogee;
Earth centers herself for the next attack.
Orion and his daughters laugh and applaud,
as the last shots, miss them.
While the gibbous cheeks of dragon Sun;
Spit fire-flares in self defense.
Singed Saturn loses another precious ring.
It doesn’t matter in this game of marbles;
God plays and wins, every time;
then collects us all,
for another game.
Categories:
clacks, poetry, space, star, stars,
Form:
Free verse
My world spins round
too fast most times
from Greek deep roots
on Black Sea ports
crossing Jordan's River
on Catherine's Great
trains meet sailboats
greeting sea planes
flying off to sports unknown
throughout Lake Odessa Highway.
Where Ottomans
blend Spanish matadors,
heroes for Earth's day
and night bleeds forth
a calvary of SunGod force
to please titillating whims
of Lake Odessa's middling class czarinas.
I can't go home again
to straight places never born.
My mind can wavey roam
and try to swim
and fly to where and what
and whom and why
we might have been
if we had built
a fine fair fortress
for peace that loves to rock
and sing sad songs
of what brilliant sights have been
in resilient Lake Odessa.
Instead of gangs
and clicky clacks
we learn monopolistic quacks
to flap and honk
like disturbed Canadian geese
Transubstand she ate
where great America
begins to end
through Lake Odessa's mean clean streets
Not too busy
self-righteous
sleep deprived
and deprogrammed lose to lose
to win our way
back home again
where Lake Odessa healthy meets
and wealthy greets
Love's polyamorous EarthMother role
as played by odysseys of We
writing comic operas
only eros kids can consensually see
was what Me loved
most secretly
in long lost Lake Odessa.
We need a better god for now
bringing peach tree jams
singing immortality
of love as healthy wise
Reframes lost unwealthy loves
to live in jesting jarring jokes
of honeyed sweet corn
thorn tested streets
tasting ancient salad Greeks
on shores of Lake Odessa.
We reunion back
to save each other
from what might have been
without sly rudders
Tipping posts from wu wei mothers
restoring crystal castle love
of unformed flows
that buzz with lifetime mystery
and retiring tours
that sag with straightline history
Spinning sprays
bewitching licking waves
lapping soft and sandy
on long gone sacred skies
of sanguine Lake Odessa.
Categories:
clacks, america, history, home, journey,
Form:
Free verse
Turtle by the Door
The bears and wolves are few;
one threadbare widow mourning,
two grays as consumptive as smoke.
The large dwindle,
their bodies grow more awkward,
more at odds.
The heavier beast's sway
like drunks in the scant woods.
Under a pelting dark they come.
Beneath a stabbing ice, one by one-
the animals.
I listen to their shuffling,
the scrape of delving claws.
They are scavenging,
pulled closer to me by visceral prods.
Hesitant paws withdraw as they near,
a restlessness keeps them gnawing
a middle ground.
I crane my neck from its ribcage;
they fall back and return,
wanting - always wanting.
The small creatures enter
where cracks fill with moonlight.
They scuttle and hesitate,
a little way,
a little.
I am Turtle,
a makeshift thing,
cloud-splashed and sullied.
I sing back the needy shadows,
cast my lamplight eyes
onto their weltered
hair-streaked hides.
~~~
Turtle Speaks
I did not bundle this day’s flesh,
nor did I carry it to a pathless end.
I merely watched it pass over black mountains,
slip away over thinning trails.
The sky-tent will catch fire again.
I am a roughhewn turtle.
I am starlight in a mud-pool.
A blind faced mole has carried
the moon up from the dirt once more,
though it is only a white bone,
only a hollow tooth.
Turtle am I, an unwrought creator;
one who watches,
who knows not to say
what cannot be said.
~~
Turtle Goes to the Light
Turtle's carcass is nibbled
into threads of brown river water.
His empty shell tumbles lazily
in slow currents.
Turtle stays where the starry mammoths
beat sunlight into skin and bone,
and he waits.
Mole, beaver, and badger
heap the dead upward
until light licks them away.
The world feeds upon itself,
time weaves new moth wings
from long buried evenings.
Then turtle reappears.
He hatches from an egg pushed through
green sludge and marsh fire,
he returns as a burnt shadow.
Turtle's leathery tongue clacks
he calls to all the blood-filled:
“Come again,
come around and around” he calls.
When his song is done
he perches on a scorched log
in the middle of everywhere
as silent as a stone.
Categories:
clacks, poetry,
Form:
Blank verse
Clickety clack, it's alright to say,
time doesn't stand still,
as the train clickety clacks away.
Time never stands still,
no, no, it can't and never will
rolling on these beaten tracks;
the train keeps rolling on, that's fact
along these same old tracks a going,
the beaten steel, a river flowing
and the youthful mind alive unknowing.
Clickety clack, it's alright,
on these beaten tracks,
rolls the train of clickety clacks.
There it was early in our pact
the itinerary for this song
along some distant tracks;
picking us up at dawn
and rocking rolling us along
riding on the pulse of the tracks,
on the train with its clickety clack.
Clickety clack, it's alright,
teetering on the unseen parallax,
on the train, hear the clickety clacks .
Too late we realize, we're at the end
starting toward home again.
the sun rising in the east
western light released
through the northern cold and southern heat,
in the heart beat of the track;
train thundering steel clickety clack.
Clickety clack, it's alright to listen,
on the rhythm of weather worn tracks hissing;
here it comes again a clickety clacks whistling.
Speeding passes on the life train
with its panoramic view
where the line at the very end remains
traveled well with you,
no reason to be blue,
along these familiar tracks.
Clickety clack, life's train
one way tickets, no return and heading back.
Categories:
clacks, analogy, , western,
Form:
Rhyme
On the streets of Kamora,
a man sits at the Fountain of Angels,
eying the days offerings
which lie at the bottom
of the tepid water.
The man remembers when he was
one of the click clacking masses,
on their way to work,
in the Main Dome of Kamora,
ready to pass ordinances
which allowed dogs on leashes in the park,
bettering and improving the city,
keeping it cobblestones,
which were erected in eras past.
The man remembers losing his position
and being put on the street
because the cost of living in Kamora came too high.
He sits where he can,
sleeps where he can
eats what he can.
The underbelly of Kamora is paved with grease and dirt.
The great unwashed populate the parks at night.
No clickety clacks.
more ting tinging and swish swash.
The man notices all the details of Kamora,
what he was too busy to notice in “better” times.
The mosaics of the great buildings
with the echoes of it’s former prominence.
Not the tiles of the great shopping center
which resides in a newfangled
behemoth of a building.
The birds in the belfry
and still the click clacking of those who work.
The man swoops up a handful of silver and copper coins
and notices the faces of Kamora’s founders
on the bottom of the fountain.
Like an onion,
the city unfolds with new revelations,
while the man sits and waits,
watching the clickety clacks
and the ting tinging swish swashes.
Categories:
clacks, epic
Form:
Prose Poetry
I may not see the Wind,
But I know it's there.
I see it in a shaking leaf
The moving clouds
The empty soda can as it
Clackety clacks down the street.
I feel the Wind as a Summer's breeze
I see it's force in a hurricane and tornado.
Without the Wind,
my sails would be lifeless,
My mill wouldn't turn,
My kite wouldn't fly.
Wind....just because I don't see you,
does not mean you don't exist....
Categories:
clacks, mystery,
Form:
Free verse
In the cages at the zoo they crowded around each other
A million milling from father to brother
All speaking in a babel a million languages
From clicks and keyboard clacks to switches and bandages
A group is seen on a higher levee
They understand all, the interpreters you see
While some lower below compiles the dictionary
That translates to what is used by the assembly
A little farther around a table three Gs sit
they’re a python a Ci and Jav a’ Script
Sadly they discuss an end to their spec-ial woes
And thus the weird discussion goes
We hear the Ci talking first wheezing (he’s old)
What do you think makes girls so cold
To us our relationships’ are no success
And that’s the principal source of distress
Well as for me a girl who can’t commit
(Python interjects) I can’t have here cos she’s a git
And by the way Ci you need to have some class
There are some social functions you should pass
(An argument ensues)
Well I’m not the one who treats them like objects
That’s why they hate you, the Ci interjects.
And Jav a’ Script forget all the hype
You really need to settle on a type
Jav retorts, You’re the ones behaving slack
When they leave you simply call them back
Console them too if they cry
Be prepared to catch them if they try
Ah yes the man who always rejects
The promises he promised, (Python interjects)
(A lull in the storm, they begin to examine others)
Assembly’s got to make himself understood
Most of what he says goes under the hood
Swift’s got to slow down and not dart around
and Vue needs to react to their sound
There’s a theory I’d like to test
Says Python (although it’s half in jest)
If we work together as a unit
Then maybe we’ll be able to git one init?
And have mocha babies like Sinon no thanks
I’d rather throw myself on the express
Outside the cage the label reads
An endangered species with special feeds
Only pizza and soda strictly junk
For the whacky programmers inside this hunk
Sorry to say but you may regret it
Cause only programmers will read this and get it
Categories:
clacks, computer, humor, language, love,
Form:
Rhyme