Best Denizens Poems
Mother Nature, divine and yet so whimsical
Her flowing streams fall warm, healing and abiding
A darkened blue-green sea, maroon and sapphire shores,
cradle us asleep, with your gentle waves
harboring the dour rude awakenings
when eddying rapids currented by the tide
Consume the uncertainty and the lies of the day tearing the heart apart
Suspend judgment and attain tranquility of mind
White light and red, filters a pink-tint, nebulous fringed rose gold
I’m graced in your stellar light, a cosmic pearl
Garnered from my poems:
Mother Me
Weeping Nude
The Ocean Beckons
Human Nature
Lissa Marie
Strayed Sheep
Tell It Like It Is
Self-Existent Light
Woven Worlds Of Alice Lidell
The Pursuit of Contentment
twisting in tingled arcs
through a cold late september
breeze, dancing in serpentine
patterns to the puppeteer strings
of the wind, a scrap of paper
gracefully lands upon your windshield
it says
"GET F*CKED"
Part 3 of ? in an unfolding Denizens series
Spring came; Penelope left with a company,
bodyguard, chambermaid, there at her side.
Ten days of travel now lay there before them:
the passage maintained well, the way open, wide.
For six days, the journey was most uneventful.
Then the air thickened, felt heavy to breathe.
When they made camp in the moonlight at nightfall, the
sounds of the forest disturbingly seethed.
Guards were dispatched all around the perimeter;
sentries, no issue, for nobody slept.
Then, in the morning, dim, gray and quite overcast,
what was before them was hard to accept.
Though none could prove it, the clearing felt smaller, and
there was no evidence forward or back;
of the trail they had been traveling eastward on:
briars and brambles now, thorny and black.
Two of the guard stepped up, withdrew their broadswords and
labored to cut a way farther ahead;
others were scavenging downed trees and branches to
throw on the bonfire to hold back the dread.
As to what happened next, none could be certain. One
moment, our two knights still hacked a way clear.
Then, though none saw it, there was a loud rustling, and
muffled cries trailing, as though far from here.
For a brief moment, before their way closed back in,
wizened and old, a man leaned on his staff,
then like a panther, he bounded off, crying out
like some strange bird: a maniacal laugh.
With little fanfare, the forest just swallowed them,
Tilted its head back and opened its maw.
Cat-like, a beast sprang forth, straight at Penelope;
That was the last thing the rest of them saw.
(To be continued)
part 1: https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/denizens_prologue_-_1_1445556
part 2: https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/denizens_beginnings_-_2_1445687
Lone snowflakes drift in
As anorexic, claustrophobic bats shiver
Wrapped in their bat wing sleeping bags.
A field mouse plays “Three Little Pigs”
With a patch of straw.
An eerie wind whistles wickedly
Alarming an itinerant mole.
I snore, noisily unaware,
That my brother sub-let
His half of the den.
John G. Lawless
©1/21/2023
Part 1 of ?
Clippety, cloppety, clippety, cloppety
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
mounted for battle in all of their armor; they
rode off so gallantly through moors and fens.
How could they possibly know what awaited them?
Would it have mattered, or turned them around?
Six days out, there has been nary a sign of them,
and not a hint of a trail to be found.
Two hundred horses do not up and vanish, and
neither do two hundred knights and their squires.
Gaining the high ground, they scan the horizon, but
naught can be seen of a help signal fire.
Clearly, they passed through this meadow some days ago;
grass is all trampled and easy to read.
There, at the edge of the forest, the trail dries up.
Here, they make camp and start looking for leads.
Scouts have been sent out, but none are returning; it’s
harder to justify as the days pass.
Finally, they find a knight barely breathing; he’s
whimpering, muttering, eyes are like glass.
There at the campfire, they bind up his wounds and they
spoon him some broth and a shot of strong ale.
When he awakens, and once he stops screaming, he
gains his composure and tells them his tale.
—————
(To be continued)
Quatrains written as dactyls in 12/10/12/10 with xAxA rhyme:
3:3:3:3x, 3:3:3:1A, 3:3:3:3x, 3:3:3:1A
Part 2 of ?
How did we get to this point in our story, and
why was the army the king had so small?
It would appear that we need to go farther back,
tell you about this sad king and his fall.
All great adventures come with a sweet princess, and
ours is Penelope, as you will see.
She was adored by the least in the kingdom; her
mother, the queen, had passed when she was three.
Proud as he was of his beautiful daughter, the
king did not judge others’ character well.
Treaties established to further the kingdom had
landed them all in this hot, bloody hell.
When the strange king from the east came to visit, he
fell for the flattery, missed all the signs.
Spellbound, he made an unholy alliance, and
missed the intent of this dark king’s designs.
The son of the strange king was handsome and dashing;
union of children: an increase in lands.
He and Penelope would rule together, and
after all, why not? It sounded so grand.
That had been years ago; they were all older now.
Plans for their wedding could now be arranged.
Then just last year, she went east for a visit, and
that’s when the plot took a turn for the strange.
—————
(To be continued)
part 1: https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/denizens_prologue_-_1_1445556
2022 was the year the flights disappeared
Cancellations mounting as Xmas neared
Hope gave way to despair
For denizens of the air
The year's imprimatur ~ a cross to bear
Where the sandhill cranes gather,
I stand and watch the swans preen
In the morning sun near the bridge
Alone, except for a circling vulture
All denizens of the lowland culture,
Passing high over the flanking ridge
A red-tail hawk hereabout rarely seen
Above the warm, crystal blue water.
written February 19, 2022
(Using the reverse rhyme scheme
which I have discovered in so many
of my poems: abcddcba)