Best Curlicues Poems
Sotto voce a whisper sweet
if by chance we should come to meet
down in the valley where flowers bloom
shall we enter a two way street?
And if by chance this journey's fleet
with passion's effloresce complete
becomes our season's hope renew,
then would we love this vigil treat?
Inside that meadow of bright hues
will you wrap around my curlicues
and climb the tendrils of my vine
kiss me sweetly by heaven's blues?
Will my colors be rich as wine
when you hold me time after time
like the daisies tallish and wild
do you aim to always be mine
Long after sun has hotly smiled
Long after stars ablaze are riled
will you whisper to my petals,
sotto voce and undefiled .
June 5, 2022
Sponsor Sotto Poet
Contest Name Rubaiyat Contest
Steel Gray skies with threatening rain and restless wind
My breath gathers as mist on the inside of the window pane
...as I watched for the school bus
A slender birch tree with spiral scars
of flayed bark against its white skin
like curlicues of sharpened pencil shavings
Still clutching many bright yellow leaves,
Some collecting at its base like a discarded garment
Sunlight, just a small shaft flickers bright dapples on tiny dancers
Ocherous curtains against the bruised sky
Prodigious vibrant final act
Just for me
The tree manages a sly curtsey
in my direction,
Sacrificing more of her fragile costume
My beautiful rosy-cheeked child kicks playfully
through the saffron sea of discarded programs
“Here are some for you Mama” he says
as he bursts into the kitchen smelling of peanut butter and early fall
There he deposits a chubby handful of my regard
gently into my apron pocket
And into my heart's hiding place as well
Perfect poignant performance;
Beautifully done slender birch,
Most beautifully done
Speaking of Sedoka 5-28-26 Nette Onclaud
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sedoka Dead End
faded street signs point
into overgrown byways
unlit blind alley encores
cryptic curlicues
chant beats of new directions
my heart seeks for sacred roads
OUTSIDE THE BOUNDS OF SISTER CECILIA
the best firecracker
otherworldly seven hues
hiss, cackle, kaboom
Yes, dear ones, I want to own a pen that produces perfect penmanship, the curlicue calligraphy that Sister Cecilia would have hated. Each color, as my mood dictates would jettison from my mind to paper as a musical note, with hieroglyphic fervor. In unity and uniqueness as my lyrical words ignite each heart…each pen imparts the idea that never ends, heart to heart, light and dark, dear poet.
breathless, eternal
wax that never defuses
its bittersweet light
I can hardly stop to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. You, dear loves, like stars grab on - you little prince(s)! You travel light with faeries and dragons light as silk and mighty as giants. We muse together through the galaxy and time. In Athens, we sit down a moment to hear Saint Paul say, “For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
baptism of seeds
in the only plot we know —
glorious setting
inner poet can’t contain
as we head out of the grave
Sincerely, as we begin our journey, it never ends — it goes on and on with friends. Sparks fly - serious, silly, frolicking, frenetic and holy.
let not ruler scowl -
repeat curlicues fifty
times to accomplish your dreams
11/30/2021
Haibun- With A Message
Sponsor: Charles Messina
~ Curlicues and squiggles ~
A skywriter flew by
He drew a straight line
I looked up with a sigh
What if the writing were mine
I'd draw curlicues
jagged lines and squiggles
Loop-di-loops with corkscrews
lithe wiggles and jiggles
I'd fill up the sky
with all sorts of shapes
Apes in red capes
and bunches of grapes
to lure loners and lovers
on fire escapes
and behind nighttime drapes
And then at the end
when I'm near out of sky
I'd draw a heart with an arrow
that you and I'll ride
~ Oh, maiden of light cracks the wispy air open ,
wandering around viscous spaces
like virgin shadow caressing the edge
of sleep… and the days stretch longer,
taller than guava trees dreamingly shedding
laces of northeast streams when
songbirds, orbits, and a pageant of flowers listen
to a single humming breeze… and when all else
is sprawled quiet, waterfalls marry her certain
lingering star straying on mouths of gentleness
past eons bound by nuptials in iridescent realms…
*O, ilaw, sa gabing malamig, wangis mo'y
bituin sa langit… O, tanglaw, sa gabing tahimik,
larawan mo, Neneng, nagbigay pasakit. Ay! *
Somehow ,curlicues drape a fragrant smoke
leaking out a folk sky; dancing in the mirror
of the mountain pool… a serenade weeps;
quivering, moaning along the inland pass that
someone said morning becomes electra,
that learning how to hear her blossom or
pearl stone unravels the very skin from
which it was born is allowing time to
shed her purity far beyond unknowing a
water’s need to keep still: the juice spills…
**Gising at magbangon sa pagkagupiling
sa pagkakatulog na lubhang mahimbing;
buksan ang bintana at ako'y dungawin,
nang mapagtanto mo ang tunay kong pagdaing. * *
Peeling new faces of time, shaping the width of
endless rhyme in sprays of endless mystery...
like so, a thousand times before and after,
twilight and daybreak entwine… oh,light elusive,
passing through calm eyes of young maiden’s season
is love’s way of coming back to itself. ~
--------
* O, light, in the cold night; you're like a star in the sky
O, light, in the quiet night, your picture, Neneng,
makes one ache…. Oh!
** Awake and arise from slumber,
from your sleep so deep.
Open your window and look out to me
So that you may understand my true lament.
~ this poem is inspired by a harana, a traditional Filipino serenade. The suitor
is accompanied by his friends who back him up both vocally.
At first, the woman's window is closed. The man calls out to her
and if she's interested, she'll open her window.
Singing harana originated during the Spanish
colonial period in the Philippines.~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYueJU0Ufws&feature=related
---------
For Debbie’s Bi-lingual Poetry by nette onclaud
I’m stealing through a twilit realm, the ancient pale of Whereis,
passing chambers of an Heiress
(though no need to feel embarrassed)
through a magic mystic mirror hanging curtainless.
A glimpse near naked alleyways (denuded by the moon) ex-
poses Ghosts in gauzy tunics
carving symbols, round and runic,
in distended dingy dungeons of uncertainness.
Down misty streets of cobblestone – ancestral avenues –
patchwork paths consume my shoes
(chasing foggy curlicues
twisting, twirling by in twos,
floating anywhere they choose),
leaving footprints that confuse
vagrant wispy retinues
of the threaded wooden sticks that stalk a Puppet wandering.
Condensed in drops of fantasy, distilled in evening dew,
shifting Shadows I pursue
(wearing faces I once knew,
slipping slowly from my view)
turn their backs to bid adieu
leaving stars to tempt me through
Awful Tower residues
mocking treasures time outgrew
in the birth of old from new
framing pageants in review
midst the visions of the painted past I can’t help pondering.
Contorted candelabra claw the skyline’s walled suspension
caught in twilight’s intervention
– still unlit (in stark dissension),
therefore seething with a tension
in the quiet apprehension
of the Watchman’s inattention
to the night-time’s bold pretension
to her power, not to mention,
to her hyperspace extension
(far beyond my comprehension
of the sundown’s bleak dimension) –
on exhausted beaten boulevards of foolish fretfulness.
Oblivion depletes me, voiding haste and hurried hassles,
me, a simple abject vassal,
trailing moonlit floating castles,
– fickle feet, but fingers facile
grasping straws and pendant tassels –
as I stumble through the rubble of forgetfulness.
I think I must be dreaming as I seem to see these things,
neath a sky alive with wings
(hear the Nightingale, she sings),
midst the whispered murmurings
soughed by Phantoms clad as Kings
pacing palaces in rings,
while their hapless footfall clings
to the sagging sinking sands of midnight’s splintered splattered ruins.
Entangled in the swirling leaves that spin in dizzy flurries,
(while the wind beside me scurries
as an ermined hermit hurries)
lurk my sleepy woes and worries
(glowing faint’ but growing blurry)
which, when plundered by the demon dusk, I’d left behind me strewn.
Continued in Part 2
"The Immensities"
I shut out the world
and inside me the
deep azurine blue
jumbled pieces
of unread hues
between the
boundaries
of the lost world
within me and you
becomes Blue Sky
Sky Blue
and further inwards
through deeper true
galaxies in my mind open
revealing mysteries
unopened at the bottom
of a lake where there lies She
the Lady in a shattered cornucopia
her body tattooed
in unread stories their curlicues
shining like rare jewels
waiting to be touched
face turned up
looking through
a reflection rippling
the haunting
Just
above the surface
the inner reaches in
to touch the outer
I shut out the world
and inside me the
deep azurine blue
glistens with
jumbled pieces
of unread hues
that extinguish the jagged
like dissolving cut glass
melting their confused boundaries
inside their overflowing
war torn cries and
their stormy unsorry
torrential blues
a new world
inside
opening illusions true
The Immensities
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
" O, wake once more! how rude soe'er the hand
That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray;
O, wake once more! though scarce my skill command
Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay:
Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,
And all unworthy of thy nobler strain,
Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway,
The wizard note has not been touched in vain.
Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!"
This summer, as ever, there's much to do.
But only one or two things I want to do.
I told Alan that, like him, I'm never bored.
But today, like a teenager, I'm both tired and bored.
The long expanse of summer stretches forward. Alan plans
the next 2 years in advance, always moving forward. I can't plan
the next 2 hours, sitting on my ****, undecided whether
to clean the house, make a list of prospective donors, or check the 5-day
weather
forecast. Fires out west, hurricanes south, drought here
in the east where the garden phlox withers and the corn's stunted. We
hear
prophecies of armageddon, doom, but humans may go on another
thousand, million or billion years
undaunted. What is that to you. A day alone in your room and a year
are inexplicable. Now and then a vacation, baseball game, night of love.
A divorce, a death, a drouth. To survive and prosper we must love
all of it, insect infestations and world wars, cloud curlicues and square
dances, work
and weekends off. Knowing the unknowable = never knowing how the
world works.
Computers can absolutely drive us to drink
It's programmed into their memory
Just when we think things are all hunky dory
It lets us down unceremoniously
To frustrate us more we even lose some data
Though we often hit “command/save”
But wouldn't you know it this was the exception
To these monsters we're truly enslaved
The damn things treats us like a piece of crap
I'm sure there are gremlins inside
Trying to turn us into some raving maniacs
Delight when they see us cry
Can't live with them, can't live without them
They've got us by those short curlicues
It's almost like they enjoy watching us struggle
But give in we absolutely refuse
They can drive us to drink, a bloody caesar
Every single night before bed
Oh for the days before technology reigned
When people ruled the world instead
© Jack Ellison 2015
ears wiggle
fingers waggle
girls giggle
customers haggle
curlicues squiggle
snail-pack straggles
belly-fat wriggles ~
survivors bedraggled
The Saga of dusty roads of Utah
(To the memory of Don W. Esplin, father of Kathryn Esplin-Oleski)
= =
There he was playing with some mild explosives,
in his own backyard, a resolute boy he is;
the June month had swelled like the taut belly of
a neighborhood lady; the boy wanted to be
a scientist which he became. He, of course could not
envision that all these sepia dust of Utah,
the noon backyard and a young scientist’s narrative
would be remembered by his explosive daughter
and a strange Indian was going to pen a saga.
Alfred Nobel was smiling from a page of a book
The boy rolled a cigarette, the smoke’s curlicues
swirl up to grain the picture. A blast almost choked
the bright blue jays and robins. Defused sun slanted.
The end of the road was just an end of the road
where sun could meet earth, warm grass shook off the heat
and the covert window of the farm house would yield
a father and son talk. Strong argument on
future, on an university, on money
on a world that could differ in generations;
of course the boy, as a father, understood
his girl, then living apart. But distance is in heart.
He would grow up midst dreams. A quirky wind would blow him
here and there; navy, marriage and science,
pharmacology and marriage again; a gust
of wind would take him on a ride that, if he could
read this he would have said, resembled his truck rides
down the roads of Utah. But at that point of time
he was wide awake inside his misty night’s sleep
and an American novel is shooting up
its multiple heads in search of fresh oxygen.
The waves of moon were enjoying a full tide.
=© 2009 - All Rights Reserved Kushal Poddar
Variegated yarn slides
and loops through my digits,
shifts from sunset hues to earthen curlicues.
Tension knots the forward carried yarn
like tales of old
in a “Sock it to me!” movie.
Serpentine needles circular as the sylvan sunset
kiss to form dance to born,
hues of orange and puce
on daring pairs of
socks for winter clogs.
Variegated angora wool seams
loop over pointer and linger under
ring fingers caught on the calloused
edges of sorely worn flesh.
Colors dimming to shades of gray
softly singing cotton halleluiahs.
“Sock it to me!” in a Goldie Hawn dream.
Click click the tips kiss pointed tongues
of steel stealing over bamboo yarns…
of jungles and fierce tiger yellow
onward knit the form
of summers socks born.
poet: Debbie Guzzi
a downcast face
stares at the curlicues
forming symbols
he loves me petals
grow upon the flower
SPRING GARDEN
wildflower blossoms
a coiffured carpet of moss
curlicues of vines
calligraphic bold sonnet
intoxicating fragrance
~
budding green love taps
from a small child’s fingertips
on each oaken branch
lucid tickle of sunlight
robin builds her newborns’ nest
3/14/2017
Carlton D Kennedy’s The Love Of Nature contest
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