Best Cruellest Poems
I never again thought I would dream
to bathe my heart and mind
within warm currents of a crystal stream
and leave the stricken past behind.
Never, never can you tell
when the glorious fever will take hold
and melt the harshest snows that fell
a coverlet of cruellest cold.
Dispelling sharpest Winter sting
with touch divine and consummate;
reborn to a vibrant virgin Spring
emotions forced to hibernate.
You touched my life in spite of all,
you gave me all I need to know,
the will to live and always fall
beneath your spell of afterglow...
He looked out at the snow and ice,
As a cold wind whistled winter
Through the door, bringing hope
Of making a real-life snowman,
A special friend for a lonely boy,
At least in his world it was so.
He ran out of his room and leapt so
High, sliding down the banister as if on ice.
Then, putting on his boots and scarf, the boy
Flew out of the door into the depths of winter,
Laughing, scooping, sculpting his snowman,
His pal, his accomplice, his hope.
He rolled about without a hope
Of caring for the cold, and so,
Wrapping his scarf around his snowman,
He skidded about on sparkling ice
Losing his boots to the big mad winter…
And there was no happier boy.
A solitary but cheerful boy,
No others there to spoil the hope
Of finding secret delights in winter
That only he believed in so,
Secrets long buried in solid ice,
Yet found inside a snowman.
He danced and chatted to his snowman
And he in turn smiled down at the boy,
Complete with carrot nose and eyes of ice
It filled his heart with warmth and hope,
Showed him the meaning of life so
Full of love, in coldest cruellest winter.
Back inside he looks on winter
Watching his own precious snowman,
And though the fire roars and sweets so
Tempting fill the senses of the boy,
Nothing gives him more joy-filled hope
Than gazing on two lumps of ice.
The darkest winter, that lies inside a boy,
Is brightened by a snowman, a light of hope
That friendship gives so, through frozen ice.
The Petty Posh-Wahzee - Liberation & Ostentation
The Not-So Distant Past:
The fallen fighters for freedom, are unable to turn in their graves,
their battered, fragmented bones, mixed with a handful of torn rags,
are all that remain, a mute reminder of their selfless valiant sacrifice.
They endured brutal Apartheid harassment, detentions without trial,
torture in the cells, and mental anguish when loved ones disappeared,
they left their homeland, to continue the struggle against racial bigotry,
while countless others fought the scourge of white-minority rule at home.
Nelson Mandela and many, many others, spent their lives imprisoned,
on islands of stone, and on islands of the cruellest torture, yet they stood,
never bowing, never scraping, they stood, firm for ideals for which they were prepared to die,
and many, many comrades did die, at the hands of the callous oppressor,
and many, many comrades perished in distant lands, torn from their homes,
while the struggle continued, for decades, soaked in blood, in tears, in pain.
The Present:
19 years have passed, since freedom was secured at the highest of prices,
delivering unto us, this present, a gift of emancipation from servitude,
a freedom to walk this land, head held high, no longer second-class citizens,
in the land of our ancestors, whose voices we hear and need to heed today.
I do not care much for fashion, Lewis-Fit-On and Sleeves unSt.-Moron,
yet the ostentation that I witness baffles even my unsophisticated palate,
our ancestors' plaintive whispers are being dismissed, left unheeded, as
we browse the aisles for more and more, always for more and yet more.
Asphyxiated by the excess of the Petty Posh-Wahzee, we find ourselves,
perched precariously on the edge, of a dissolution of all that is humane,
babies go hungry, wives are battered, our elders left in hospitals for hours,
I cringe as I scribble these words, perhaps too sanctimonious and preachy,
yet I know, deep in the marrow of my brittle bones, I know, I know, I know,
this tree of freedom planted by the nameless daughters and sons of Africa,
needs to be shielded, nurtured, protected from our very own baser impulses,
so that the precious tree of freedom, may bear the fruit that may feed us all,
for if not, then we are doomed, to tip over, and into the yawning abyss, we shall fall.
How can there be despair when the entire
natural world unfolds with new life?
When the anhinga alights from the Nowhere
he was into the Somewhere you are, negotiating
his spectacular landing, spreading out his
Gulliver wingspan to warmth and healing on
the grassy knoll that rolls down to the lake--
manmade it may be, but the green-gold ducks
don't know that. They swim, they scan,
they disappear into its mysterious depths
for what nurturance is there.
How can there be sorrow when the male cardinal
darts across your line of vision with his red reality
twice in the same day into the Crape Myrtle
as it readies to burst its rooted heart? And, when
he comes again at dusk to rest on a budding
branch to sing a song you never heard before--
allows you to tell him how beautiful he is.
But when you ask him to stay, he darts away
because you are not the regulator.
How is there is no blessing when the stone
gray Buddha in his prayerful place on your porch
with his folded hands and bare feet reminds you
that the gods we respect do not always look like us.
When the Northern mockingbird who fell in love
with the South offers his limitless songbook
in the Laurel Oak, that wise grandfather, whose
leafy language writing the Braille of the senses
says Hold On, Hold on, and So, you do.
The singer sang from beyond the grave,*
Or in his grave, to be true.
His voice reached up to the architrave
And vibrated in every pew.
The vicar called on the choir to sing
As loud as loud they could.
But the voice had an even louder ring
Sending quivers down the rood.
Oh Lord, they sang, oh mighty God,
Gloria in excelsis deo.
But the singer sang of life’s hard rod
And of Hell's undying blow.
The women looked up the pillars tall,
While big-eyed children cried.
The singer had them in his thrall,
But was not to be descried.
The vicar read his sermon out,
As if proclaiming from the mount.
The singer responded with a voice so stout,
He sang of fear’s rich fount.
The congregation lost relation
To the good man’s godly word.
They stood in helpless trepidation,
Their souls so far disturbed.
The church’s doors swung open wide,
To a cascade of chattering leaves;
The screams and panic and terror inside
Shook the church to its very eaves.
And then, oh then, oh horror pure,
The spectre appeared at the door.
His bloodied hair, his sombre allure,
Chilled the living to the core.
The vicar clutched up bible and ran
Through a hidden door to the side,
The singer opened his cloak like a fan
And wrapped all the children inside.
The women bemoaned this cruellest loss,
They wailed to the crucified Christ.
But bound and weak and nailed as he was,
There was nothing he could do.
* This Poem should be read in conjunction with 'The Pauper's Grave'
Me like a speck in the gizzard of mother earth,
Sitting coldly, my short time, waiting to be grind,
Didn't I wear any power? embracing odd of all unpleasant kind,
My faith like dry pumpkin, hanging on top of grandma's hearth.
I watch the cloud go crazy, but can't scold,
For, am already drenched more than a Hippo in the sea,
The sun stings like bee,
For, it has been tortured, upon me to grow cold.
Jokey dance of wilful whirlwind,
My fearless heart, before me zoomed away,
Maybe declared in this garden, to be king only " in the castle of my mind"
For, builders of earth now the cruellest aliens fighting my kingly way.
Whether, am only a lusty dust, waiting for soil tribute, to pay,
Jehovah himself has the final say.
Locked up in an enclave
With no threads nor bars
Confined to a gaol of wit
Tied upon the folds unkind.
So weary from an inkling
As the moment's trance pound upon my thinking
But this heart is pure
Not fit for a hole as filthy as foul.
In a prison called mind
My legs do tremble within its walls,
Like every convict seeking the air of freedom,
I seek mine from the hands of boredom.
Darkness spreads upon the moment's reverie
Far across the land and the skies-
They taunt and haunt our very being
Setting our foot upon a land of thorns.
What if I watched from this dark walls
And paint a gloom of what beholds man?
What if I remain as meek as a muted flute
And fail to sound from the towers of justice?
Will I still be free from this prison called mind?
My nerves seems restless
Wishing to be subdued by this poetic recess,
But every sad tales-
That grace the moonlight
Is of woes and callousness.
Those woes:
Of broken homes and shattered dreams,
of grief and death beyond pity's sill,
Of hunger lingering on crumbling hill.
From the cruellest of lands
On the streets children take to arms,
And mothers wander helpless in search of alms.
Poverty and ignorance are still to hang on the scaffold,
Like a flood it sweeps across our land.
In this lone wall
Where thus peasants call
And the trampled in dusty mash-
Order the day to a gallant march.
To bring relief to the people
To stand by men when comrades call;
Never to languish in this prison called mind.
(William Hammer, Thomas Alva Edison's assistant,
has reached the end of his tolerance. His boss is
planning to electrocute an elephant for a publicity
stunt.)
If he goes through with this, the dam has burst.
I'm done with him. Of all the tricks he's pulled,
this is the lowest, cheapest, cruellest. Worst.
Yes, Edison. He can't be serious,
can he? To execute an elephant?
He's out there, grinning like a Barbary ape.
Where two or more newspapermen are gathered,
Alva loses all his self-control.
He'll be there now, perspiring, shouting, lathered,
excited to his flinty, vulgar soul.
I'm William Joseph Hammer. Who are you?
A quarter-century I've spent with him,
but now the scales have fallen from my eyes.
The man's a pirate and a charlatan.
Inventor? Him?
Well, since I'm stranded here
in shabby Coney Island in the rain,
ignored and slighted, spited yet again,
I'll tell you. Edison did not invent
the light bulb - that's what he employed me for.
Besides, I'll name a dozen scientists
who'd made a working lamp some years before.
What is he good at? He's a patent-mill!
He takes out patents like a dentist, teeth
(except that dentists never put their name
on what they've pulled). The man has got no shame.
The team has all the talent, he the grin:
we think the thoughts, and Alva cashes in.
I think he's met his match in Westinghouse.
The so-called war of currents. Who will win?
America will buy one set of goods,
and where this country leads, the others go.
To get his system in American homes,
He'd kill his grandma.
Hence this all-time low.
He's worse than Czolgosz. At the very least,
the latter had nobility, although
misguided. Alva has no other cause
beyond himself. Those motion picture-things
are here for Alva's glory. When the blow
extinguishes that poor beast's life, you'll know
whose self-promoting hand was on the tiller.
Saint Thomas Alva Edison's a killer.
Tongues destroy what monasteries built,
And blessings fall on those consumed with guilt.
Angels visit the demon spawn ,
Watching whilst dusk turns to dawn.
The cruellest of all hide in corporate burrows,
Yet God's brow barely furrows,
And so the world keeps on whirling.
As Man's morals keep burning,
The tide is turning.
The pasture is filled with rams.
The farmer takes no notice of the silence of the lambs.
Trailing clouds of glory do we come
When first our cradles do us home.
Smiles beam down like gentle rays of sun
As our parents on us do fawn.
Their hopes are great,through love refracted
But Fortune their hopes has oft redacted.
Creeping to school like a lowly snail
The bard has told the schoolboy's tale.
But palaces of pleasure are now our schools
Where mischief reigns and ignorance rules.
April is still the cruellest month
Where a teenager in confusion runneth
Not sure of who he is or what to do
And sees his life drift far askew.
But once released into his brave new world
To more temptation is his soul unfurled,
Leaving him adrift in a bewildered state
To take drink,do drugs and fornicate.
Yestreen it was better to marry than burn in Hell
Today no such union on him doth rest well
And so his rod on different rivers he will ply
In vain his spirit to satisfy.
Time,the subtle thief of youth,does parade
The body's restlessness to shrivel and fade
And so of potions and pills he does partake
To revivify his lusts the more to slake.
In the foul rag and bone shop that is the heart
His end is so different from its start.
An aged man is but a paltry thing
With his strength gone he cannot sing.
Morphine denies his raging against the dying of the light
And so at last he sinks into eternal night.
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t born at all.
Wish that this life I live never existed.
Wish that I had never met you!
Sometimes I wish that I lived someone else’s life.
Wish that for once that I was perfect.
Wish for once I was happy.
Then I realize I have it easy,
That I can walk away and leave you in my past,
But you…
You are stuck with yourself forever!
I may not be the prettiest girl you’ve seen,
I may not be the happiest,
But you are the meanest, cruellest, person I’ve ever met,
I can change my looks,
And I change my view on life,
But you…
You can never change your past!
You will have to live with what you’ve done,
Until you die.
You’ll have to sit in the misery you have caused yourself,
While you watch everyone you love leave you.
You can change it,
But you don’t know how anymore.
You lost that part or yourself a long time ago,
You don’t know how to be kind,
You don’t know how to be gentle,
You don’t know how to be nice,
You don’t even know how to love anymore!
You lost that part of yourself a long time ago
I was one of the few people who would actually do anything for you,
But like your old self,
You’ve lost that too!
Sometimes I feel lost,
But then I look into the faces of those who love me,
Of those who I love.
Even of those who I don’t even know,
And I realize I’ve never been more found then now!
I’ve found my true self,
The self that has never met you.
And to tell you the truth,
Not a day goes by,
Where I miss my the old me!
Only the old you!
This year hot April
The cruellest in two decades
Picnic in your shades
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April 16, 2016
If clocks ran backwards and time did chime
The hours and the minutes of your life and mine
Would tomorrow be written by the poets and the bards
And the cruellest of sorrows in the deck of life's cards
When salvation is sought at the end of a bottle
Should we drive there directly, open road and full throttle
How I'd love to bestow all the beauty life holds
For each suffering soul, put an end to life's woes
A hitchhikers fate may be yours to command
Are the cards they've been dealt in the palm of your hand
If the tale of each fate's in the past that we've penned
Are we destined to travel the wrong road again
Should we crawl on our knees, bow down when He calls
Should we cower at heel in Elysians Halls
Is faith but a chore under tightening reins
Is religion the cure or the cause of our pains
If peace has a place in rhe hearts of all men
Could hatred be quelled at the stroke of a pen
Lay claim ro your lives in rhe Game of all thrones
Carats cut like a knife the most precious of stones
If tomorrow's been written in the annals of time
To what lies the purpose of your life or mine
Do we stand tall and proud like our fathers before
Or sink like a stone to be lost evermore
Alzheimer’s
is the cruellest disease
tiptoeing silently
inside your head
devouring your mind
slowly
bit by bit
until there is nothing left of it
The family are feeling so helpless
watching their loved one fall into decline
it is breaking their hearts
to witness the change
wishing they could turn back time
To see their beloved
turn in on themselves
slowly enter another world
wanting so much to hold on to them
as slowly their brain comes unfurled
No longer able to do simple tasks
getting muddled and so confused
but ask them about their childhood - their past
they return with a smile
as if waiting to be asked
So please don’t despair
they are inside somewhere
just waiting to hear the right question
a song
a book
a photograph
can bring their smile back into action
Look into their eyes as you speak each day
be tactile with kisses and hugs
do things that they loved and enjoyed in the past
read them a book
sing them a song
to awaken their memories of days long gone
they may give you a smile
or maybe a look
that says…
thank you for reading my favourite book
Talk gently and softly don't heighten your tone
letting them know they’ll not face this alone
Make memories to cherish before they depart
a life shared together is with you forever
in your mind - in your spirit - in your heart
Written for my dear sister-in-law - 2018
Contest Your Choice 9
Sponsor Brian Strand
Copyright © Ann Gilmour | Year Posted 2018
Each spring the fig tree bursts at the ends
of bare branches like Fido in heat, and
there's one empty bird nest: an epigenous
ornament out of season in mid-March.
"April is the cruellest month," T. S. Eliot
wrote. He who understood growth
is pain, a thrust of agony. So, be about
your birthing, little bush--push out leaves,
cringe at the episiotomy of knife and shears.
Hear me crooning, "There, there, I will be quick..."
No blood spurts out in slash of azalea, in
burst of bottlebrush. No inky ooze in purple
periwinkle that slept all winter. I prune
the shove and shaft of elm, as it fulfills its
promise of shade and safety, behead
the poisonous crawling vines, their deadly
embrace, shake the pines for cones,
so perfect, so concise. Would that I might
morph that way each spring--perfect,
concise, whatever the price.