Best Crookedly Poems
The old man sighed
Sitting on a rock next to a pond
Crookedly balancing Yin and Yang between his eyelashes
Conversing with the Lady of the pond
Jade eyes and un-wrinkled time
In Her beautiful face
Held in his hands
An old fishing rod
Bamboo
Bends and flexes with the times
It holds and catches even the biggest
Devils in the water
The lotus flowers embrace the jade tide
Soft-hearted water caressing unmovable rock
Trees bent in silent reflection
The ultimate knowledge, the Lady whispered
Lies between the murmur of the leaves
The laughter of the lotus
The bend in the trees
Listen! Listen!
These will outlast everything
He thought
I shall give knowledge to my sons
And teach them
Soul
The old man contemplated
The secession of his life
There is a time to hold on and a time
To let go
This time, his time
Is over, long gone with the Maiden on the Moon
Beckoning him home
He taught the young men
To bend with the rod
To bow to the spirits
To be one with God
To be forceful, to be soft
To listen and to speak
Wise Man’s words
And Foolish Man’s dreams
He told the Old Stories
He sang the Old Songs
Traditions and ancient verses
To light their path through life’s courses
And as each of his sons threw the rod on the ground
Frustrated with the old man’s ways
Outdated methods and foolish wishes
The heavens opened and unleashed
The ultimate Father’s Rage
The rain pounded on the once peaceful pond
Dismantling the flowers and smothering the land
With a wrathful urgency
Drowning the Lady in the lake
Her beautiful jade eyes never again to reflect philosophies
Hidden in the reeds
The lotuses closed onto themselves
Never again to give such a sweet smell
The old man sighed
It’s out of his hands now, it’s out of his hands now
And this,
This will outlast
Everything.
Categories:
crookedly, time, beautiful, old, water,
Form:
Narrative
On an as is where is basis, we fell—
down the elevator shaft of the day,
into the buzz of a fluorescent hum, the smell
of reheated takeout in cracked Styrofoam trays.
The descent began when the train doors jammed,
and I was stuck staring at my own reflection—
the stale grime of the carriage, the paper ads,
my face mirrored against the strangers, expressionless.
I finally made it home, my shoes untied,
the hallway dim, someone’s dog barking through thin walls.
The key caught in the lock, metal snagged on silence—
inside, a burnt-out bulb flickered above the sink.
Bills were piled high, half-shoved in a drawer,
an eviction notice crumpled at the edges,
yesterday's dishes stacked like monuments of failure,
and in the fridge—two eggs, a leftover apology.
Then I saw it: a post-it, bright yellow,
crookedly taped above the empty fruit bowl.
A scribbled heart, in a child’s writing, "You're the best,"
the 's' in 'best' drawn backward, rushed—
a small love, pressed into a square of paper.
That night, I folded laundry in silence,
shirt by shirt, sock by unmatched sock,
finding something steady in the rhythm—
the sound of breathing is as good as sleep
when sleep is nowhere near.
I climbed into that feeling, inch by inch,
with each minute stretched, each dollar exchanged
for time, each deep breath drawn. The city
buzzed outside, the cars skating down wet streets,
but here, it was the small clicks of our life—
turning off the TV, the snap of clean sheets,
the drip of the bathroom faucet needing fixing.
I knew it was enough—this climb, this small scaffold
we built to hold us up.
Now I stand, the city alive beneath my window,
swapping scar tissue out for the heat of the moment,
for the feat of staying—my laughter penetrating
the cracks in the walls—a song that makes each broken
piece of the ascent worth saving.
Categories:
crookedly, care, courage, devotion, hope,
Form:
Free verse
RAIN AND FLOOD
Raining all through the night,
Mum and Dad kept busy
wading water .
Soon, the flood overflew
the wooden bench we
Sat on. And nowhere was
Safe again. Soon again,
The cock crowed crookedly.
He too was drenched in
Rain and flood.
Daybreak
We must go to School.
We walked through the
flooded Streets, groping
to school.
We couldn't go through
the Pako Bridge.
We turned to the New Bridge.
Standing and looking into
the school, flood was everywhere.
Only the headmistress and the
Teachers groped in the flood
Waving us back home.
Heavily drenched in rain and
Flood, my teeth knocked
In drumbeat against one another,
rhyming with the rains.
All Babies, all children cried,
Walking back home.
My sister strapped me on
Her little back.
Nylon bags, dustbin, human
Waste, animal dung floated on the
Flood.
Amidst staccato of crying voices;
Kids’, children’s,
Adult’s, Africans’…
anarchy was loosed
upon Nigeria
AKUDOLU IGNATUIS
akudoluignatius@gmail.com
Categories:
crookedly, rain,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Cascades of stretching autumn ivy
snuggle close to the verdigris hardware
of an intricately carved, but sun-bleached
walnut door under a collapsing portico.
Droplets of sweat trace jigsaw trails
through the clinging film of dirt, revealing
the white of fluted pillars looming crookedly and
hunched by centuries of unappreciated exertion.
An eerie nostalgia laps at my consciousness
fettering my imagination to that very portal.
What yearning is this, to peer backward through
the impenetrable curtain of time?
Curiosity gives way to fearful dread;
wandering thoughts to waking realization;
that it’s a frightful thing indeed, to love
as death relentlessly pursues the same.
What can be built that cannot be toppled…
What can be polished, that will not erode…
What can be loved that cannot be taken…
behind that impenetrable curtain of time?
08/13/15
Categories:
crookedly, age, destiny, future, lonely,
Form:
Free verse
In this crooked chair i sit
at this crooked table
at this crooked desk
and write my crooked thoughts
looking out the crooked window
out onto the crooked crooked street
thinking about how crooked the world is
when suddleny is top and realise
the crooked people arent crooks
everything is crooked
crooked jails
crooked hospitlas
crooked business men lawyers and politiicians
crooked churches crooked steeples
crooked believers crooked people
it was perfect perfect and crooked
crookedly perfect
perfect people
perfect houses
perfect airplanes
and perfect yachts
perfect make me sick
keeping up with the joneses
perfect white teeth
perfect bodies
perfect hair
perfect health
thwey werent crooked?
were they?
croooked like me?
crooked like them crooked in a world full of rooked people and the crookedest
thing to do was to stand straight
and make a show of it!!
whose going to replace all of this crooked ness and turn this beautiful now?
Categories:
crookedly, art, confusion, depression, funny,
Form:
Free verse
soon all that will be left is a jar with
a vertibrae and rubbing alcohol.
methusela growing long exo-sceletal fingernails
in his seven hundreth year steers crookedly.
soon all that will be left is grocery isles filled
with bleached teflon he says.
rows of miraculous white wonder bread.
methusela tells how in the 80's outside of
berlin he used the psudeneum
sir diedrich chronograph.
apparently he was a well known grafetti artist
along the ribs of the autobahn.
methusela smiles a little dodging children down the
isle playing with plastic sabre swords.
Categories:
crookedly, allegory,
Form:
Blank verse
Once there was an elder who possessed a fortune vast.
He was the proprietor of lands he had amassed,
dwellings and retainers and a mansion huge and wide
but with just a single doorway to depart outside.
Though this house was broad and spacious, it was in decay.
Yet it teemed with countless people, plus a large array
of living creatures big and small, all about the place.
While in the halls the pillars were rotten at the base.
The plaster and foundations were cracking all around.
Its rooftops and verandas were falling to the ground.
With crumbling walls, beams and rafters crookedly askew,
that building was quite dangerous, as the elder knew.
The fencing round the house was broken-down and twisted.
Emanations human-faced eerily existed,
evermore antagonistic, with humongous greed,
trampling on one another in their reckless speed.
There was filthy matter scattered all about the site.
Various beasts were snarling and lusting for a fight,
quarreling, snatching food out of the mouths of others,
showing total disregard for their sons or brothers.
Poisonous bugs and snakes made it more repellent seem.
That mansion had degenerated, to the extreme.
Thus demons had settled in to dwell, that devoured
the vitality of men, hence to be empowered…
The aged man was in decline, nearing his demise.
He was prudent, very seldom taken by surprise.
Suddenly, fire broke out and set the house in flames.
His sons and daughters were within, playing at their games.
That father always felt concern for his children dear.
Seeing this inferno, he was overcome with fear.
Tongues of flame flared up in all directions round about.
With only just one access, how would they make it out?
[Continued in Part Two]
~ Harley White
Categories:
crookedly, allusion, desire, destiny, fire,
Form:
Narrative
Crookedly cunning,
Hurtful and sly;
Always a liar:
Risky to buy.
Lacking integrity,
And a willingness to try:
This true chameleon,
An artful scallion;
Not likely to change,until he die.
--- Princefreakasso {Artist and Poet}
Categories:
crookedly, mystery
Form:
Acrostic
an old shed leans crookedly in the tall
grass.
a door is lifted and opened.
like a warn vinyl record to the needle
rusty hinges
snap and crackle as they turn.
between slight variations in tone metallic
yesterdays speak through hinged lips.
i am apart from the decay.
now little is inside except some dust with
a
few oddities scattered around.
a dented paint can that had been knocked
over,
the paint lieing on the floor in a puddle.
dried and splintered out in an ornate
pattern
in shades of dark yellow.
it seems to pure for its surroundings.
the paint speaks through its flat chipped
throat lowly.
i am apart from the decay.
outside the sun overhead has learned
to speak in parables but the dandilions
dont seem to mind.
Categories:
crookedly, allegory,
Form:
Than-Bauk
i could not find muscle in your milk
so i starved until i found out that
bread was just as good.
i could not hide a moth in a whisper,
so i learned to speak loudly and throw
things across the livingroom.
i could not wait for tomorrow so
i filled my pockets with yesterdays
and grew gray daiseys in my front yard.
gray from birth they say, so very, very
wrinkled and gray.
but you should see them at night
how they glissen in the grass.
when all the nocturnal threads have been
counted the moths come out and gather
round my front porch.
flying closer and closer to that celestrial flame.
illuminated by a seventy five wattt bulb fastened
crookedly just above my door.
Categories:
crookedly, allegory
Form:
in the back of the bus they sit akwardly across from each
other. the smell of pabst and pall mall cigerettes magnetically repells against strawberry
revlon lipgloss and hairspary. he is trying not to hear her headphones blaring fergy and she
is trying not notice the stains on his shirt.
he is thinking of neon exit signs and fishnet stockings on roominghouse madrigals who walk
gently in the street under the red lights like cranes on a concrete pond. she wants more
watermelon flavored chewing gum and to write endless pages about
vanishing teddybear boyfriends and fluffy heart shaped clouds.
the bus driver looks in her mirror at the pair and instantly thinks of rust on tinfoil. after that
the bus pulls slowly to the next stop at the community library, charles crookedly raises from
his seat and dissapears into the night... the end..
'it takes more than time to live to long' bukowski
Categories:
crookedly,
Form:
in the back of the bus they sit akwardly across from each
other. the smell of pabst and pall mall cigerettes magnetically repells against strawberry
revlon lipgloss and hairspary. he is trying not to hear her headphones blaring fergy and she
is trying not notice the stains on his shirt.
he is thinking of neon exit signs and fishnet stockings on roominghouse madrigals who walk
gently in the street under the red lights like cranes on a concrete pond. she wants more
watermelon flavored chewing gum and to write endless pages about
vanishing teddybear boyfriends and fluffy heart shaped clouds.
the bus driver looks in her mirror at the pair and instantly thinks of rust on tinfoil. after that
the bus pulls slowly to the next stop at the community library, charles crookedly raises from
his seat and dissapears into the night... the end..
'it takes more than time to live to long' bukowski
Categories:
crookedly,
Form:
Weathered Windows
Savor the meadow as far as eyes grasped;
Wildlife walk gingerly;
Walked behind them, nodded.
Purple and orange wildflowers
Just didn't fit.
Twenty one posts with mildew
Surrounded the thrown out periwinkles;
Left their fate to cover a virgin path.
A path followed by newly dismissed seeds, pods;
Shown with individuality.
Brown, stiff stalks topped with feathers.
Where did the passion fall away.
With gusto and charms, looked high and blinked.
Imagine so.
Sharpened vision chased the clues;
Brought them closer, fractured two or three.
Saw a wood pile stacked
Oh so crookedly yet seasoned for the coming cold snaps:
Carried two by two, four by five bundles.
Took only two to stack back away.
Cellar doors, grey colored, worn away
Weathered down to the granny apple color
Which, by the way, wasn't so offensive at all.
Known by those passed to another time;
Not to be abandoned nor evicted.
Gave faith with brilliant touches;
Gven to those with arms held out.
To envelop with the reached up hope
To culminate what was a yesterday, then.
Categories:
crookedly, seasons,
Form:
Prose Poetry
When I shut the door
reduce your blatant name
to silence, I don’t caress
but sob your skin.
A pen carves paper.
as I shrink and crookedly
sip the lack in a
missmiss, miss you
Categories:
crookedly, devotion, hope, introspection, loss,
Form:
Free verse
a grandfather clock in the corner of the
room turns its grayhead and sounds.
it is the hour of salt... it is the hour of aged reason.
and i have lost all affection for the sweet naval of
oranges, which clamor one on top of another
on the kitchen table.
perhaps if i was an expressionist
i would express in driest terms the preservation
of ramses II, or the way of the fermented dill
pickles in the back of my refrigerator.
it is the hour of the second cup of coffee,
it is the hour of the coptic eulogy, and i am
as horus or osiris in the twelfth dynasty
at midnight.
now in the kitchen three chairs sit crookedly
next to me. with crystaline hands i gather
upon the table morton salt from the cupboard
and pour it into a gray dispenser.
i set it next to the fruit bowl with ornate
green vines drawn along the sides of it.
but it is the dried antiquities of cumin and
saffron that i seek.
i seek the harbinger of life after life.
but all i have is a 15 jar tiered spice
rack sitting on a shelf across the room
and a little less time.
Categories:
crookedly,
Form: