Best Countertop Poems
I remember the days
before technology
before computers
before cell phones
before smart tvs
In particular
I remember one summer day
when I heard on the radio
that the microwave oven
had been invented !
I really thought this was it ~
they had finally invented
every possible thing
but then…
they put a man on the moon
and it was only the beginning !
How our world has since
spun out of our grasp
illusions of grandeur
never nearly big enough
exploration beyond our universe
trying to connect with aliens
when we can't get along
within our human race
Priorities askew ~
Who cares about
this endless technology
What if our geniuses focused on ~
feeding the starving nations
sending all children to school
caring for mistreated animals
fixing the environment that’s
damaged beyond repair ~
They could try solving greed
and cruelty
and selfishness
for starters
The countertop microwave oven affordable for residential use was introduced in the late 1970s.
AP: Honorable Mention 2020
Submitted on September 18, 2020 for contest A HISTORIC EVENT sponsored by WILLIAM KEKAULA - RANKED 3RD
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The oven hums,
a steady hymn.
Like December's first snow,
flour drifts across the countertop.
Her hands~
kneading, rolling, pressing~
leave maps in the dough.
I trace them with a cookie cutter,
star-shaped, blunt at the edges.
Powdered sugar hangs in the air,
a sweet ghost.
We laugh,
and it sticks to our cheeks,
to the aprons she sewed from fabric scraps,
to the memories we don’t yet know
we’re making.
The timer rings.
The cookies glow.
And for a moment,
the whole world is warm.
Ah, the bloom was on the Rose
yet, the taint of alcohol and drugs
looms nightmare like behind her baby pink cheeks.
Porcelain skin tones, raspberry rogue
nails to scratch and lift bits of dirty lucre.
She was clawing her way up,
and hopefully out, he hits her, “****,” he screams at her.
a sometime replacement sat beside him.
His Chicano inner-city drawl hurt her ears
and the fake diamonds studding them.
The new girl beside him
giggles…
She’s due at work by nine,
grabbing a smooth wrap-top and a mock
grey skirt, she rushes from the room to the bank.
She can still see his long fingers playing in other girls cleavage.
Rose, well, Rose pays the rent. She strikes a teller’s pose
behind the formica countertop...
Long days, counting other peoples money
kindness, and sweetness sucked from her
like a ripe plum on a summers day.
She needs work, more work.
I asked her to help in the garden.
Long blonde, buxom, bending over weeds,
only six months to go to graduation
an associate degree…
Rose chuckles, “Look who I’ve been associatin’ with?”
I eye the twenty-five thou lottery ticket in my jean pocket.
“You want to move here Rose?”
“What would they do without me?”
I sigh, thinking of her alcoholic mother
off bingeing and her “boy fiend”.
The lottery windfall went for Rose’s college tuition.
The bloom is off the Rose now,
two hundred plus pounds later
strung out beside her Mom on a ratty couch,
she eyes the Diploma in it’s cheap black frame,
and rocks her baby girl
some things, never change….
*Names have been changed, and the amount given, but part
of the ending has truely come to pass already [sigh].
The rest is all true.
Saturday mornings my list was quite clear,
Pull out the comet and toilet bowl brush.
Windex, perfect to polish the mirror,
Finish the toilet with one final flush.
Scrubbing the sink till faucets do glisten,
Empty the countertop, free from clutter.
Scour the bathtub, with so much ambition,
While under my breath, complaints I utter.
Our shower the biggest job of them all,
With its showerhead and sliding glass doors.
Standing inside to scrub ceramic walls,
Finally finished by washing the floors.
Child labor I’d cry when I was not paid,
When I grow up, I am getting a maid.
Shakespearian Sonnet
10 syllables per line
www.howmanysyllables.com
11.27.2014
Contest: Jobs
7th
My dream house
It will be by the beach
Totally open
Bright with a lot of natural lights
Modern contemporary
It will be a 5 bedroom 4 baths
Why do I need that many?
Don't know
Like to spread out myself
It will have travertine floors
White cabinets
that I can totally drown myself in
Granite countertops
Stainless steel sinks
Island in between
With a sink in it
Six burner stove
Double oven
where I can burn some dishes
Haha
I don't cook
But I will learn
The countertop full of gadgets
Where I can try my hands on things
What else do I want?
I want that and more
But I will get that for now
Until I can dream on some other place
Oh heaven
Yeah I think I will get there
Now
On earth :)
To hell with them! I never think of them
I forget they exist, until I spot them
Then I get mad!
Oh yes, I loathe them so, as much as I do roaches
I loathe them so much I feel like screaming
I wish I could urinate colonies of them off a log just for kicks
I never cared about their infinite diligence
They don't work for me anyway
And they sure don't work with me
I don't care that they carry off crumbs
That break off my bread. They continually invade
My home, overstaying their welcome.
They invade my pantry to suck honey and sugar
They snake across my countertop when they smell the aroma of spilt coffee
I always spray them dead, but they eventually come back two-fold!
I hate that they're too tiny to see from a distance
I take pleasure in crushing them under my thumb
Crawl far out of sight, you unsightly irritants!
And please, stop coming back for sweets!....
A Rant Poetry Contest/Winner(9th Place)
Sponsored by: Shadow Hamilton
Date written and posted: 08/30/2016
single malt sanity, sanitized, ionized,
with a little communion salt.
sprinkle replace, sprinkle to taste,
sprinkle with haste to the holy face.
yet still ground balsa wood icons
perfectly semitrical work to preserve
lesser linoleum countertop grains.
Like in winona minnisota where the midwest
vacuum sealed religion remains intact.
renewed morning by morning
by olive shaded stanley thermoses.
Displaced only on occasion by rubber
gripped cellphones and coffee mugs.
winona Minnesota....
where the Mississippi is the only
true dialect.
home to sugarloaf bluff and
the basilica of saint stanislaus.
that lesser known bishop of krakow
who may have been martyred but first
got stoned at fourteen underneath
the sugarloaf.
See him now stacked up and slid down the bar
the bishop of all cardboard regalia.
Holy under a golden pint ring halo of IPA..
Vexation seeps through sighs
As the pen finds comfort
Sharing the same story
Nonsensical pretty boys
With smoke cloud habits
And bloodshot ponderings
Vaunting on their
Newsworthy delinquency
With incessant metal bar consequences
Promulgating in the same breath
they’re gaining
New ground
Breaking the cleanse
Of poisoning
Their liver
And feeling the linear
Coldness of a countertop
On their nose
With a half glass of water
In a ring of loneliness
On their nightstand
The gulp of insomnia
Rudely digs its hook of candidness
In your empathic being
Melodramatic memories
Of empty dinner table
Upbringings
Spending school nights
Placing cigarettes
In plastic bottles
With front porch
Heart to hearts
With their second self
Pulling the sleeves
Of sweatshirts once borrowed
Over tattooed knuckles
Shivering against the disbelief
That loyalty in this town
Is only face to face
Rehashing
first heartbreaks
With the outlook
That mistrust follows
Demons
That look just like you
The way you
Introduce yourself
With skintight beliefs
Low cut distractions
Met with
Amorous disposition
Abrade their thoughts
Of you from tantalizing
To discomfiture
And their ears
Can’t handle
Opprobrium especially from their friends
When you would
Put fingers
In yours like an obstinate child
Just to keep
Looking at them
With oblivious blissful daydreams
Even if you were
Stumbling drunk
Out of their broken front door the night before
After learning
They sent flowers to someone else
Like a man with his paramour
Leaving your existence
In a blighted state
Surrounded by empty walls
For
They
Took it all
But don’t worry
The guilt of breaking your heart
Is easier for them to swallow
Than the nausea
Traveling up their throat
With the spew of your adoration
Is it the truth that blinds us
If They say God is Love then how can Love blind us
How can lies remind us> minus trust
It takes years to build it and only seconds to destroy it
And as I let ideas fall out into thoughts, that are like drops of rubbing alcohol across the countertop
There is a smell of a hospital that reminds me of newborn life and then death flashes and i lose my sight
Its untrue that the definition of the first person that hesitates here, really converts over and spills positive enrgy into the rest of his life
Cause its like you stall and the lightening strikes
The tree falls down and your a second behind it
The dark barks that it hates the light
The light shines and its basically the truth that blinds you
The brillance of the the giantest star draws you like a bug to the lighjt
you get suck in because its your time to die
You cant change it, its evrymans destiny,\
thats why you must be in the postion that god places you
Work on earth to be done and men are lazy, they dont even want to be a family provider
i seen this i didnt understand it was truly overwhelming
Its like i knew the veiw you see is a little different
you say hes just goin through hard times are you any better
I was like damn i help the man by leading him to water
And he was like id rather sleep than feed my daughter
Thats why mommy goes to work and on the face of the earth men are dying
Little boys are born to suffer this woe of society
Woman are supernatural acts of kindness
But you bring out the dormant side and the one who gave life becomes a destroyer
No matter woman or man God is my employer
I work for virtually nothing but to see a hurt soul rejoice and i smile in satisfaction
Im like the truth never blinded me it set me free from the darkest whitest lies
That are actually darker the this side of what you think is compatible
couples marry and then they hate each before the first chapter of the story
and unfaithfulness derives out of the unsatisfaction of dissatisifaction
Then the children suffer from the lack of harmony in a family inviroment
NoW truth come take the blinds off the mouth that sugarcoaTS THE DECEIVING TONGUES
OF THOSE WHO DONT LIKE YOU
THERE LIKE ITS OKAY TO SIN BUT DONT LET THEIR LIPS COAX NOR ENTICE
The zenith is exactly crossing the horizon
The lies blind and basically the Truth is silent
You will never know the language of
lilac and lavender
carved from discarded countertop
granite for you,
each symbolic crossing inching
forward a leaden trail
of footfalls grown heavy by distance
measured from their genesis,
their sum, in whole, a silence slabbed
like an obedient daughter
at a Sunday supper suppressed by
quarrelsome parents.
Yours only to last was my first ever
endeavored, the poem,
which by any modest measure,
measures my worst:
an orphaned sonnet left to incubate in
fields forgotten
by memory lacking the oil we used to
burn in worship of sun,
its dark riddled with murk-water
wells forged from cobblestone
and feigned acceptance of distant
realities’ deep end look.
But you will never know which colors
vanished
the day that saw me leveled by
imbalance swung by fire:
the braided flame that drew a hopeless
breath to shorten
distance between life and death, home
and without, me and you;
the empty sky where you once spotted
a beautiful white heron
as it floated above infinite ripples of
love and liquid, like
the smoke I inhaled to pick up this
tattered page, burnt on
the ground next to Ashbury, Oliver, &
Keates, where I stood still
while I could still stand, holding the poem
you promised never
to read - the poem I promised never to
finish - defeated in words.
When life gives you lemons
You make lemonade
I am a banana
A beaten and bruised banana
Too ugly to sit on the marble countertop in the kitchen
Wouldn’t want the house to look poor and unkept, right?
The good news is that there are layers to the banana
The bad news is that when you peel the unappealing-looking exterior, a mushy interior meets your eye
Too soft to enjoy without leaving a bad taste in your mouth
When life gives you a banana like this
You make banana bread
I am a banana
I can’t make banana bread because I am a mere ingredient in the delicious pastry
I am the unwanted ingredient that can magically turn useful by the powers of others
I need flour to hold me together and keep me from going all over the place
I need sugar to make my softness appear sweet to others
I need baking soda to help me rise and grow out of my imperfections
And I need someone willing to put in the effort to make me into tasty banana bread
Damn, I want some banana bread right now
Who’s cookin’?
Tongue Twister Time
There once was a Queen I was told
had a passion for Quartz but not for gold
Her lust for the mineral
To the point of being criminal
Left goldsmiths in awe of her quirky flaw
The King was appalled and told her to STOP!
We don’t need another countertop
So she gave up the quest
And decided to rest
And dropped the subject from her mind
Until Alabaster she came to find
QUIRKY QUEEN QUIT THE QUEST FOR QUARTZ
Tongue Twister Time Contest
Sponsored by Mystic Rose
November 9, 2016
A venetian red yearling’s head
Pops up
From behind a fallen log
Licks rouge from its lips
And the syrup sipped from dark maple bark
Ears tweaking
To the snow-crunch creak
Of my dog and me approaching
From down the trail
Forest
Tamed by these trampled snow-winding paths
The deer doesn’t flinch
Up ahead
Top of the trash receptacle
Is aflutter with cardinals and sparrows
Though observed
The object has not coalesced to solid reality
Remains a quiver of particles
Withering with infinite probabilities
This should not be
Ah
I see
What it is
Slices of strawberry apple orange watermelon banana cherry
Have been perfectly aligned spaced and placed
By somebody
As juicy trails of treats for the starving
Collection of fruit on a countertop log
Tapped across a fencepost
Table-topped to a stump
Necklaced across a trailhead sign
Little delectable rainbows scattered by a hand
All over the park
Flamingos may come
Hearing these rumors
I imagine
The feminine work behind these succulent lifesavers
The work of a woman
A mother
An older lady
Who was determined that morning
Packing plastic baggies the night before
With morsels carefully counted out
To be fair
With a lovely variety of fruit
Pinched and selected from grocery store shelves
Sliced precisely by her parry knife
Sorry if that presumption is not acceptable
In this modern age
But we all know it’s true
And is beautiful
Call her a wayward witch
An angel
Messalina
Daughter of Cleopatra
Mistress to Van Gogh
Wife of Jesus
A goddess of which we’d be so much better
If she were
To rule over
The velvet corners of the Earth
From a garden throne
Men like me
Bowed to her knee
Like these animals and birds that she’s fed
Today
Beholden to the world of majik
Yes
We’d be so much better
If we were fed from the broken-braceleted hand
Of a woman
Who
From her kitchen window
And snake-led dreams at the flight of her feet
Is unafraid to say
I do not fear you
I will bring forgiveness to the creatures of winter
Startle the men who pass by
I will feed them all
The fruit of my Knowledge.
Two femmes, gauntly fit in the prime of adulthood.
Short, professional cut on one. The other bore crisp brown curls.
Are they lesbians?
A question birthed of weariness from I, my hips slouched against
the speckled pattern of the countertop.
One approached, and I knew at once the truth.
It was the shorter-haired of the two,
also short on curves and cuteness,
which,
believe me,
is no large insult.
It was, of course, in her eyes: the irreplaceable glint,
that weird flame within some women that burns all
who smell and taste its acrid smoke.
This is not to say that lesbians are not crazy-
there are certainly some demented ones out there-
, but there is a certain breed of straight white woman
that shatters the legends and forges new ones, circulated
among moose lodges and taverns globewide.
She spoke: 'Do you have skim milk?'
For sure, I was right.
TO DO:
- glove box: happy hum, sad hum
- back seat: her quiet cooking (clinks, clangs)
- trunk: awkward reading pose she loved
- rearview mirror: hang the wolf stare
- shoebox: green clouds and lightning dances
- ziplock: deep laughter stomach ache
- newspaper wrap: the Lost Glove/Beach Incident
- coat pocket: spine-pricklies when she spoke profoundly
- front pocket: patience, sure-feet, velvet voice, cedar/clove perfume
- wallet: night we tossed rocks in ravine; first kiss
- countertop: record scratch, key jinglings, lightbeams in morning milk
- ON BED: - (her side) - crushed glass, pain of crash
- lights off, lock the door
- passenger side (don't forget) - her bubble wrap