Best Craned Poems
Bird of Prey
On Banyon Lake, where waterfowl dwell,
The night was tranquil and held no fear.
Until came a sound ascended from Hell.
I heard a menacing cry as I drew near.
Upon the shore no wave did break.
No whispers on the wind were heard.
Nor was there a splash on the lake.
From any waterfowl or roosting bird.
The anxious cooing of mated doves
Cried out a warning on this ominous night
They heard the screech from far above,
And trilled warning of a hungry bird in flight.
A mother swan, at the edge of the lake,
gathered her chicks beneath her wings.
It was a time to stay alert and awake.
In the face of danger, no bird dared sing.
The predator hovered high in the sky.
I saw her shadow blanket the moon.
With yet another shrill, piercing cry,
I heard the faint wail of a single loon.
There was movement among the reeds.
The hunter circled in search of her prey.
Her only focus was to fulfill her need
Before dark gave way to light of day.
Talons lowered, she opened her beak.
Again she screamed from great height.
Eyes focused on the fish she did seek.
Upon her wings, reflected moonlight.
Down she plunged with swiftest speed.
With keen senses she was able to snare
The prize that would sate her needs,
And enough to feed her fledgling pair.
With a flap of wings she rose in the sky.
A fish clutched in the grip of her claws.
All the birds were safe. I let out a sigh.
Fulfilled was Mother Nature's basic law.
A stilt legged egret came out of hiding.
Swans craned their necks in a swoon.
Doves continued their calls and chiding.
A nightingale whistled a joyous tune.
On Banyon Lake, where waterfowl dwell,
All was peaceful, serene, and still.
Upon the water, silver moonbeams fell.
The bird of prey had eaten her fill.
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the following poem was written as part of an online poetry class; responding to the image above
We tuned the dish to static,
listening for God’s cough~
a blip, a hiccup in the cosmic hum.
The night shift drank coffee
thick as engine grease,
the kind that left your tongue
tattooed with bitterness.
We waited…
and still, the stars
bled silence.
You said, Maybe we're dialing
the wrong frequency.
I said, Maybe God’s just shy.
Then the power died.
The dish froze mid-sweep,
like a man catching
his own ghost in the mirror.
We stood there, necks craned,
waiting…hoping…
for the dark to whisper
its secrets to us.
Night!
Midnight!
Dark midnight!
My world, tight-lipped,
awed by your tightness;
stars, blind in the clouds,
creatures crept, no footfalls.
Hushed, I craned: will I see the
morrow? Crawl past the burrow?
Will my fond desires eye the light,
new dawn? I winced from the pang,
shoulders hunched, head on sweaty
palms, gazing at space for an insight,
groping for a ray of light to think right;
to pry into my future. But for the pain!
Then, trees stirred, branches swayed
awake sleeping leaves; they winked,
the leaves waved while wind sighed.
I jerked, my eyes popped up at a
distant dot. A ray of white light
peeped from the dark folds.
I stared as a ball formed,
growing, blurred halo,
like stained glass of
a clerestory window.
A midnight rainbow!
I heard myself: Light! ...
Then, a bang: A new dawn
smiled, nestling in my bosom.
© 2014
Two wheeled commuters with heads booted with helmets, dotted the highway;
The four wheeled rich hooted at pedestrians daring to cross their path,
While rental three wheelers heated them all, filling even places like foot path;
Traffic winked red, green, and yellow to jam, trim, and brim the highway.
Like water discharged from flooded reservoir, humanity flowed on the highway,
Down to their destined ends, discharging spray and smoke, littering its path
With fed up lives, held up to the grave; lawmakers floated on the crest of the path.
Only the hapless found themselves fighting for space in the helpless highway.
On this highway, at the peak hour, popped up a human head as if cropped
From the ripe body as a yield to the reapers blooding the streets with sickles;
The highway halted; heads craned above wheeled carriers; questions hurried
Everywhere with worries and wonders; “Hyderabad has a head chopped;
Is it for ‘Biriyani’?” Some quickly tweeted like men of booze oozing for pickles;
Cops looking for the lost head, severed by train, at last sighed, with heads retrieved.
[Cops in Hyderabad, India retrieved a severed head from a railway track, put the torso and head in a sack and took it to hospital for postmortem. But on the way, the head slipped down from the sack and caused a commotion]
I can see them
Clouds of voracity
Covering my stars
Shadowing my reality
These civilized consciences
Have raped my protest
Have spun my web
I can no longer pacify
The tenacious circle of hate
That daily haunts me-
The deprived race
What is it I longed to be
Where come this aggressive reticence
Why this intellectual lock-jaw
I longed to be an alcoholic
I longed to join in the ecstatic dance
I longed to leap into the unknown
To preserve my ancestral pride
Neither did I know
I had no ancestry
I belonged
Not to the human race.
I could no longer trade
That rotting corpse of ancestry
For a dream
Nor could my voice
Accentuated by gesture
Give sacramental significance
To the ailing corpse
I bled from my wounds
I choked in your bonds
I baked in your avarice
How infinite this unity
Of free slaves!
How therapeutic
This hibernation!
They preached brotherhood
Their god issued
Commandments of charity
Which they conveniently
Reserved for the virgins
The silent majority
These invertebrate disturbers of peace
Must always answer with a nod
To those honeyed phrases
Which phased out moral indignation
Only to usher spiritual aberration
The saints had to turn the other cheek
I resigned from imagining, designing
Protesting and even dreaming
Into the routine of living
Without emotional wavelength-
A kind of unconsciousness
What do you say, brother
Should we take flight to freedom
Flee this intellectual tyranny
And accumulated weariness
Should we indulge our consciences
Can one dream thus
Dream of the miracles
They craned their necks
Dream of the great darkness
The ends of the universe
Dream of the wonderment
Of transcendent realms
Is there anything beyond
This shadowy future
Is there another universe
For the spider?
I queried thus and thus
In my ice-age mind
Whereupon emanated
Vast ramifications
Spinning a web for me-
A universe
Beyond which loomed
Irrational extraneous universes
Was that a miracle
Was that nature
Were those her snares
Perpetually gnawing my reality
Could those questions be answered
With a nod- however studied?
Come individuality
Remove these tenterhooks
Let me leap into a new rhythm
Let me split the capsule
And witness how long
The trip of human triumph.
(Apartheid era stuff)
Once thicket thickened
Mossy, leafy
Underlay.
Chance to catch starling
Or barn swallow
Amidst slumbering umber.
Eyes pinched-- tiny prickles
Star thistle glistens
By green-lit moon.
Craned and swoop,
Echoic;
Plume beats hilarity.
Lest they sail asunder,
Beaks...
White capped-- bold and noble
Strand guarded;
Acronymic to the other
Guided by the sea.
It was a night so dark, so damp; the fog swirled thick about the lamp,
a night not fit for man or beast, a night on which tender hearts ceased
to care about mankind's suffering, so nasty was the storm buffeting
the tiny humble New England town, its weathered cape cods all battened down.
When of a sudden a cry rang out, piercing the fog with a shriek and a shout:
Did it herald the dawn of a better day? --Or just proclaim, "Man's lost his way."
Shutters opened, blinds upward flew; Denizens craned their necks for a ring-
side view.
Where was the man who'd issued the cry? Was it a sign of life, or would they
all die?
Just then a riderless horse galloped down, streaking its way through the town,
tossing its mane right then left; of its mystery rider long sine bereft:
Whence the cry had come, no one could tell; when an unearthly voice, straight from Hell
split the night with a ghastly shriek; shutters slammed tight--no one dared
peek,
As the horse veered away, frightened itself, by the Devil's advance along with
his elfs,
Crescendoes of wailing blackened the night--of a poor humble town in a fight for its life.
I looked the other way when I saw the islands part;
I craned my head to see the stars in the Milky Way.
I closed my eyes when the Angel of Darkness showed me the path;
I cried when the night broke into the new day.
I put my head down into the sand when they played my song;
I was silent in tears when the earth swallowed me whole.
I did nothing when madness enveloped my being,
I was a mortal before I drew fire, and
I lived alone in temperate climbs.
I lost my way cause' there was no vision;
I drew contempt because I had no plan.
I will float forever in an endless ether of ethereal essence;
I am at one, with the catacombs of the immortals -
I looked the other way when I saw the islands part.
Once thicket thickened,
Mossy, leafy
Underlay.
Chance to catch starling
Or barn swallow
Amidst slumbering umber.
Eyes pinched--tiny prickles--
Star thistle glistens
By green-lit moon.
Craned and swoop,
Echoic;
Plume beats hilarity.
Lest they sail asunder,
Beaks...
White capped--bold and noble--
Strand guarded;
Acronymic to the other
Guided by the sea.
move over make motions for more
seems the same chapter approaches the shore
history on repeat like a skipping record score
to my life movies pickled and cored
struck my nerves but in tune with a chord
tri tones raise my hair soon too forward
against the grain of my neck craned and torn
I complain about storms till the drains foreign
uh oh let it flow, catch my drift or just let me go
I got no translation for me in my zone
I happen to perform well on my own
It's not as simple as a poetic form
my desire to be kinetic since I was born
sympathetic to the challengers
to match my norm, if you sat in your dorm
meant to be just a so long As
I'm being chased by horns
driven to the ground, combustion from the pressures
muscled out the members, consolidated with embers
tinker with the ventures, till my circle encircles the center
inertia usurping certain pretenders
Brown tears
Dripping down.
Fear nears
Without a sound.
Soft eggs
Slide across.
Craned neck
Looking in loss.
Green wafts
Towards nose.
Bile laughs
Way up my throat.
Air parts
For putridity.
Day starts
With stupidity.
Expiry of chocolate milk: 1 year ago.
A story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
When sledgehammered, pickaxed
Excavated, craned and the progress of
The ceaseless destruction of
Demolished construction railed.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
With wings flapped and heart ached, the dove
An emblem of peace hovered for some tranquility for itself,
As the stuccoes tore to rain
With rusted flatirons and hanging windowpanes.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
Her silent shrieks and mum squeals
With chaos within and mayhem sealed,
As the bricks crumpled down
And built heaps on heaths.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
Then some final cavalcades,
And encroaching gust
Of wrecking ball reconvened
And collapsing of the structure prevailed.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
Thrust onto the ground,
Smashed and crushed
Her nest that was on the old windowpane
With two little hatchlings dead and broken.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
Soaked and smeared was the sod
With trivial bloodstains,
As a merely existing mother
Lost her kids to developments.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
As the smokes of ruination came to rest
With dust of mourns settling on her crest,
Flew she away with unseen tears on facade
To an unknown destination of maybe another catastrophic shade.
So is a story
Of an insignificant mother trailed.
From: India
Copyright ©: 31 July,2016
A tissue like a white hibiscus like the one in the garden of Demetrios
It fell on my shoulder, as if from the scarlet mist of my unconscious
Emitting a maddeningly possessive aroma
Forced me to look at the spotted cheetah
Seated under a very old yellow forest birch in an appetite ageless
As I craned my neck a little up my eyes came across the pink furnace
His flowing hair resembled an amber cascade in a hill in Darjeeling
His face held the finely drawn painting of Michelangelo, revealing
Hypnotic heat of passion for my deep river
At the bend looked up the restless shiver
The crimson coloured crests rushing toward the inevitable healing
In reckless submission to the cuddling curving crashing and crushing
What happened then is not difficult for you to visualize dear readers
An elegant embroidery of diamond desire from the rainbow breakers
Looked down in delight the birds from the clouds
How in sweet heat dissolved the cultural shroud
In the fountain of eternal flesh and blood the lilacs of Atlantic laughter
Thousands of butterflies under sunlight set sail in flamboyant lustre
October 24, 2017
Men grow beards to feel more free,
But looking like a caveman isn't freedom,
It just means you'll always have soup on your face,
Nor does sipping softly on organic green tea,
Or turning a book to page ninety to seem more accomplished than those around you,
Smoking electronic cigarettes for the sake of your health,
Or loving the planet just a bit more than every school kid you'll ever meet,
Pecking away at keys on whichever fruit related piece of plastic now controls your life,
Signing petitions but never quite handing them in,
Despite the four hundred and thirty two other believers in grass fed donkey,
Published support in one hundred forty symbols,
Hashtag vote for Zombie Lincoln,
If that guy's still alive,
Or maybe Hulk Hogan because 'Oh! I take vitamins too!'
Planting a tree in someone else's yard,
Because it's your land too yes it is,
And it's time to save it!
We're all drowning in ourselves but don't forget to save it!
Craned necks lead to hunchbacks,
You'll find yourself perpetually always looking down,
So amused by 'life' that you forgot about living,
The only stars that you see are dancing on TV,
And the only water you'll drink has been filtered at least fifteen times right from your tap,
But it costs more so it must mean more,
It must mean more,
It just has to.
Impecunious news hunters on Oxford Avenue
Craned over newspapers spread on the floor
To gather ammunition about who knew
The last gossip about a politician shown the door
By hacks in his political party for consorting with the sworn enemy
Sent to Coventry in corridors of power
Or which celebrity a court of law ordered to pay an alimony
Or who among supporters of Venomous Vipers FC sent a rose flower
To a big carrot’s girlfriend, raising the temperature in her home
Where her incensed husband puffing and huffing threatened to disfigure the alleged culprit
Whom he accused of destabilizing the genome
Insisting the culprit he would ill-treat
As news hunters speculated on merits and demerits of the law of the jungle
The aggrieved husband contemplated inflicting on the innocent man
News hunters felt didn’t deserve the bungle
The husband riding a rickety van planned as a ban
That would serve his wife right as she could no longer go to the market
To buy beef, cabbage, tomato
Even if she wasn’t involved in any racket
To sell or buy at low prices an Irish potato.