Best Clinched Poems
waiting
with diaper on
for this woman to get up
off the kitchen floor and
stop bleeding while a man
hovers over her with grimace
and clinched fist
waiting
for our first-grade teacher
to stop crying
over the P.A. announcement
that the president
has just been assassinated
in Dallas
waiting
on the spirit of Christmas
to return days after the news
that mother's favorite song "You Send Me"
had just been shot and killed
a few blocks from our home
waiting
in the backseat of a Packard
for the policeman to stop screaming
at my father as urban soldiers
toss fire from their hands
in our neighborhood just outside of Watts
waiting
at LAX for Wilt the Stilt
to come back and finish
signing autographs after
some idiot just called him a freak
waiting
for the bowtie and scowl
to let go of my arm so I
can shake the hand of
the Greatest of All Time
as he starts his comeback
with an exhibition bout
in East Los Angeles
waiting
with eighteen-year-old trembling knees
for that sheriff deputy
to remove his pump action shotgun
from my temple
waiting
in the delivery room
for the wrong woman
to have my child
waiting
at a motel
for the right woman
to find the time
to slip away
waiting
on the side of
the ninety-one freeway
for a motorcade to pass
shortly after the funeral
of a former president
shamed by the Watergate scandal
waiting
and looking
while holding onto
the entry gate at 875 S. Bundy Dr.
for some sign of what really
happened that night
waiting
along with F.E.M.A. and the Red Cross
for the distraught woman
to come with us to safety
days after the Northridge earthquake
leveled her million-dollar home
waiting
at the hospital
for my first grandchild
to be born while her father
who's been convicted of battery
is nowhere to be found
waiting, waiting
seems like I'm always
waiting
Rushing through each day, as if I had not a care,
head long toward the sun screaming, "catch me if you dare."
Dripping drabs of liquid sunshine burn my deft eye.
While seeking answers to the question, why, why! Why?
Into the sun I run, my skin so hot and dry,
as the dusky penciled pastels of twilight smear.
Through tight clinched lids the sun glares, blind I'll be I fear,
always grasping for truth, but my head just can't clear
my thoughts on the tautly stretched canvas of my mind.
Race and run and fill my lungs, still I fall behind
playing catch with the sun, and all I seem to find,
I'm racing toward the horizon of tomorrow.
Please, one more chance, for a moment I can borrow,
but blithe sun denies me, leaving me in sorrow,
while in the distance the light slowly fades to dark.
Truth or naught, who can say, the end is cold and stark
the meaning is lost in life's fading rainbow arc,
enveloping me in my sadness and despair.
Dripping drabs of liquid sunshine burn my deft eye
as the dusky penciled pastels of twilight smear
my thoughts on the tautly stretched canvas of my mind.
I'm racing toward the horizon of tomorrow
while in the distance the light slowly fades to dark
enveloping me in my sadness and despair.
07/29/16
She is always right and he is never wrong,
Neither willing to concede and the anger rolls right along.
Finding each others faults as they fuel this awful flame,
Both claiming victory when neither will accept the blame.
With clinched jaws and fingers pointing,
Their words so damning, so hurtful, and so taunting.
Then it reaches its fiery crescendo,
Then neither one knows what to do or how to let go.
What had happened, it wasn’t always like this,
They used to hold hands and share a frequent kiss.
Then something bad happened, almost overnight,
Seems now they cannot speak to each other without it turning into a fight.
Little things started escalating and devouring their heart,
With no common grounds for reasoning maybe it would be best if they should part.
She said I’ll take our children and go stay for awhile with mom and dad,
Then it finally hit him he was about to lose the best thing he ever had.
It finally happened like someone turned on a light,
He said I’ve been a fool and I never again want us to fight.
He said I had a vision of living in this cold dark and lonely home alone.
And I didn’t like the picture, you’re the only love I’ve ever known.
Now they both got refocused and once more it is a home filled with love,
And now neither will let a push become a shove.
Just now … crisscrossed sky lanterns
fog the walls of a withering foliage,
like hushed matte from dusk’s greenery
Pouring balm on a requiem in need of shade,
while in her veins drip… a constant gush
as meshed twigs still interlace on leafy ribs
Immersed in the ardor of their moments,
one fragrant orchid and musky trunk…inseparable,
bound together by affectionate, yet lost stars.
With slight acceptance this rooted love will always
meld despite tree of life faintly drooping;
...in clinched angle, she lays on his buried grass
until dim twilight shuts off.
For Broken Wing’s Entwined Contest
2/12/2016
On The Prairie
Congregated on the prairie western clear with beasts
Cowboy chews tobacco, swirls black liquid, spits
Projectile clean, target hit, lizard quick
Long tongued creature stunned
No time to snatch a timid bug
So much hungry love undone
Reptile rolls over rounded rock pin ball like
Looks both ways before crossing into dark
Cowpoke silhouetted, floated on campfire
Smiles Clint Eastwood style
Slips a small stogie through cracked dry lips
Moves it from left to right
Lights it, inhales harsh life
Jagged teeth, yellow, tinted by time
Clinched while he thinks about old wars
A warrior down to the core
Grins at the beans bubbling up
Old iron skillet and the western sky
Gazes at the long lost stars through smoke
Shakes sand off hat and boots when done
Speaks not a single word
But with a sigh he rises and rides off
my pen utter words
my heart hankers to say, clinched
thoughts inflict anguish
unless I whisper them through
my pen, then I smile again…
How dare you take advantage of me like that ,
Leaving me stranded with no way to go forward or back.
Using the friendship that we had led me to believe,
That there was trust and honor between you and me .
How you layed me aside and left me for dead ,
You have caused these hateful thoughts inside my head.
Never could I have done this to any man ,
I can see you have no concious so I know you can.
There just one thing I really want to say about this ,
It's been a long time since I have made a clinched fist .
You have no idea how much hurt you have caused,
It won't be me you'll have to face That's up to God
But you will regret mistaking this kindness for weakness girl,
Bad Karma will surely consume you this is my word.
Yes you were able to catch me completely off gaurd ,
Never again because now I know who you are .
TAC
He was angry when they came
And said he wouldn’t go.
“You can’t make me leave this house!”
“I’ll fight you all, you know!”
He spread his arms like giant wings
As if they were set to soar,
And grabbed the facing either side,
To hold himself in the door.
Mom clinched tired eyes and dabbed her tears.
She tried to say a prayer.
She knew that once her mate was gone,
Only she’d be there.
When we broke his iron-like grip
He took a final look
At what a man could call his own.
And remembered the work it took.
Friends stopped by to visit him.
Buster, his Best Man was one.
He smiled as they recollected
The days when they were young.
Robert and I, at Dad’s request,
Sung the chorus of “For the Good Times”.
Ray Price was his favorite—
And he smiled, a final time.
Analysis read—and wronged—and pulled
Lulled into our idealistic mess
Words no longer ours but hung distress
Farced in carnality—they are ruled
Soundness remains what we will believe
And all else is but tethered nonsense
Clinched tightly in unfriendly absence
Overcome in overwrought relief
The judges judge on behalf of tongue
When ears and eyes close achingly tight
And perhaps in woe we find them right
For witches sought and bound must be hung!
Lower than the softened dirt that cures
Where worms in halves blindly come to eat
The higher crush with tormented feat
And the suns scorch what is left of hers
Answers never tried—and cured to hide
They look to superior sources
The rotten are the strongest forces
Ripened and toughened with bequeathed pride
-Iambic Tetrameter
Contest: Metrical verse
Sponsor: Giorgio Veneto
Laura Breidenthal
Glory goes to they who blaze
Their own trail upon the west.
They will be, if nothing else, remembered.
Their morality ambiguous
Scruples questionable.
At best, an antihero to be scoffed at and spit upon.
In fear of the fiends in the tall grass
They are burning every acre of the field.
The children search for the bodies
Of their parents for approval
To praise their newfound freedom.
Free from being dumb and useless.
Fleshless carrion bakes in the noon sun.
There are footprints in the ashes
Inhaled into our lungs, all due
To the sick remorseless reasoning
Of one sick individual.
Do we blame the match?
Or the flame it started?
Or the grass that lit
Too easily ablaze;
Or the fingers that clinched
The matchstick
As it dragged across
The red phosphorous
And the powdered glass;
Or the eyes that beheld
The light of the flame
Before it was thrown
Upon the scenery;
Who can we blame?
Rhetoric is useless
Language is a luxury
Vocabulary grows best in a vacuum.
Land is only valuable
To those who walk upon it.
We must realize how truly insignificant
We are to the vast expanse
Of the landscape beneath our feet.
Footprints disappear.
We can burn the farms and prairies
But we cannot pretend that we
Will outlast this dirt, outlive
This earth, or understand this universe.
It is all but a blaze and then a blur.
Young people go marching, the boys and the girls,
thinking like we once did, they they’ll change the world.
They claim government can be the cure for our ills,
they seem to be forgetting that socialism kills.
Lenin and Stalin put twenty million souls down,
left them to rot in dark pits in the ground.
The gulags and purges were the work of their will,
the Holodomor just clinched it, socialism kills.
China under Mao was the state with the plan,
a great leap forwards needs ever woman and man.
But it was a leap to nowhere, sixty million graves filled,
the greatest mass-murder in history, socialism kills.
Socialism kills, yes socialism kills.
It never brings fairness, it never will.
One hundred million paid the steep bill,
they’d tell you if they could: socialism kills.
Cambodia promised its people a golden age,
beginning at year zero, to build better days.
But Pol Pot’s killing fields, the whole world chilled.
One-third of the people lay dead, socialism killed.
Cuba and North Korea both slaughter and starve
the citizens they hold back through force of arms.
Not nations, but prisons, innocent blood they spill,
all you need to understand that socialism kills.
Some say it might work with better people in charge,
though it fails every time, in countries small or large.
Venezuela is the latest to swallow the bitter pill,
it descends into chaos because socialism kills.
Socialism kills, yes socialism kills.
It never bring fairness, it never will.
One hundred million paid the steep bill.
It can’t deal with human nature, so socialism kills.
Look at your hands.
Tell me the stories they would tell.
Will they speak of the deeds you have done??,
the good, the bad,
the decisions they've pondered,
the wonders.
Eyes caught in stone-faced modes
while being next to chins,
or cheek bones.
Look at your hands.
what journeys would they explain.
will they speak of warm embraces,
while standing in the rain?
have they been met with warm breath
on a cold winter's day??
or maybe even swam through cool waters,
on a hot day in May.
Look at your hands.
Tell me they stand they have took.
what clinched fist,
at injustice as the world watched and looked.
Look at your hands.
What miracles have they done????
giving some a fighting chance,
when others say there was none.
Look at your hands,
as they wipe away your tears,
blocking up the things unheard,
by covering up your ears.
Look at your hands,
give them a true thumbs up,
they work you through this life,
whenever things get tough.
Thank the creator for giving us,
such wonderful tools as hands,
but the package would not be complete,
without they eyes,
that are looking,
and a mind,
Understand????
As you look at your hands.
I'm not quite sure if she is lost or in route
Tornadoes of passion wisp her away
But inevitably, they cause dispute
The ironic glue that makes her stay
Excited, confident, proud and ashamed
A soup of emotions, each extreme
A recipe only God could explain
A frozen water droplet and a puff of steam
On her tip toes, atop the Eiffel Tower
Dangling by a thread of hope
Don't inquire time, for she knows not the hour
Clinched tightly to a swinging rope
She rides the little hand around the clock
Her defense remains the same
Beneath par, but it will tick and tock
Til half past time to claim
The heat was high and rising
A shower came, but left too soon
The temp was quite surprising
It wasn't even noon
They thought it was a mirage
As they stumbled upon a spring
The backdrop created a beautiful collage
Their hearts began to sing
Steady hands unbuttoned her blouse
Desperately he dove under
Trying to distract that he was aroused
Hungry eyes, full of wonder
He was just a boy, at the brink of manhood
Had never felt a women's touch
Wearing nothing but a grin, on a rock she stood
He never wanted anything so much
She nonchalantly tied back her hair
Took each ginger step with intention
It seemed as though she wasn't scared
Deep breaths relieved his body's tension
Once immersed, she giggled with a shiver
He tried rerouting his imagination
The closer she came, his efforts would wither
He couldn't deny her artistic creation
He discretely put distance between him and his desire
As she ignored their humbled skin
Their mutual emotions bore an invincible fire
This flirtatious chase soon came to an end
She experienced a moment of shame
As she traced his pure skin
She knew their expectations weren't the same
Searching for youth, she was committing a powerful sin
She convinced herself that she was doing him a favor
To put her guilt at ease
Though his parents should have signed a waiver
He was the first to please
He placed his fingers in just the right spot
First time was the charm
He knew much more than they both had thought
Intensely, she clinched his arm
To both of their surprise, he came to power
Forced her to land with slight aggression
Took her body for just shy of an hour
It was a forbidden love making session
She lie in his arms in disbelief
Forgetting the summer's heat
To think, she thought that she was the thief
Now hooked, it was his defeat
His golden delicious red lips
Rosy with a hint of distaste and betrayal
His grassy green hair
Compromises the diseased brain rotting from within
His tall plush shoulder pads
Thin waist and frail stature–demasculinizes
Yet adds weight to his corpse-like, ghostly-pale complexion
His tightly clinched teeth
With his brutal and merciless laughter
Entertains sarcasm and mockery
Revenge he seeks
For his defacement by way of acid
His personal symbol
The two-sided coin
A silly game of life or death
Mastered by none other than the Joker
Gotham City’s most notorious vigilante
A corruptive force
Rooted in civility
By Marckincia Jean
By Marckincia Jean
6/5/15