Best Diagonally Poems
not quite
White Christmas,
but that'll do.
'tis the next best thing!
celestial confetti
comes tumbling down
at noon time
generously,
incessantly;
palpable excitement
hangs like hope in the firmament
one of several
children at play
extracts her tongue
waiting;
some did land...
and she squeals with joy!
ah, ivory flakes...
down they come;
tiny alabaster feathers
fluttering d
o
w
n
like maple leaves in Autumn;
darting diagonally,
hullahooping
in the December wind.
Quietly filling
deep cups of the red blossoms.
The morning sunrise.
The rock bowl is full.
Filled by the rain for the birds
and for my quiet mind.
Dried stalks of rhubarb
turn brittle in the summer.
Born again next year.
The sparrows come back
to say thank you for their home
I lovingly made.
My red dogs eyes gleam.
Before eating, her eyes ask
is it OK Dad?
HAIKU; MEMORIES AND OBSERVATIONS and EXERCISES
Archery
The strong bowstring sings.
My arrow will find its home
I turn to sip tea.
First Love
How reluctantly
the shy, young man moves forward
toward the full, red lips.
First
In the maiden’s bed
He found his heaven and hell.
Such was his first love.
Alone
Small favor to ask.
Please spread my ashes on the sea.
No wife, no roommate.
Who is Buddah
She poured my green tea
Until the cup ran over.
Now, I know Buddah.
Memory
Cousin Roni was loud.
Married a Samoan man.
They both ate roast pig.
Memory
My old friend, Bucky.
Carried a gun in his boot.
Afraid of himself.
Old Friend
Alvin slapped his first wife
and then he married a man.
I don’t know him now.
Exercise I
Diagonally
he crosses the wide, busy street,
to catch up with love.
Exercise II
Vociferously,
she announces her mistrust.
Not Republican.
Exercise III
She knew the problem.
Incompatibility.
He had to learn it.
All his writing was
autobiographical.
He was egocentric.
SEASONS
The autumn raging
I am blinded by red leaves.
Too many to count.
Surf crashes fiercely.
Shadows lessen, skies turn gray.
Winter storm moves near us.
This Spring, my house burned.
I now have a better view
of the blue mountains.
Fresh ink on blue lines
the words come like hungry bees
to form my Haiku.
Synch
Summer. I feel strong.
Equal to birds in the tree,
and pebbles near feet.
Man you a wizard warlocking written to spellbinding spoken word.
Jargoning prolific prophetic like the bible real truth.
I'm xeroxing you so x-ray this diagonally
Awe inspired me like Edgar Allan Poetically
Your magic wand sleight of hand transform to a mic.
Hand quicker than the eye trick.
You the spoken word godfather - whose
Hawking pen spit out
A magical abracadabra mouthpiece
Poetic secretions flowing from heaven
From page to the stage
A hocus pocus Houdini spoken word escape
Unlocked the handcuffs of the page
True illusionist of poetic illusions brought me to this conclusion.
For your charges
Wear a bandolier diagonally
From shoulder to waist.
Fill it with rounds
Of crayons
The color of a rainbow
With that arched calm
Following a terror rain.
Let this be a lesson
To ring from bell to bell
For children
Without number,
Without interruption.
After the storm, my brother
(all gangly knees and elbows)
bore the brunt of its ferocious aftermath.
Every day after school
I watched his wiry biceps bulge a little
as his handsaw scritched against the tree
which had fallen diagonally across our front yard.
I witnessed the violence of metal on wood,
the violence of The King of the Mountain’s smirk
as he too watched, his greedy eyes
taking in my brother’s razor sharp collar bone,
with jaw set in furious concentration.
This imposed punishment was meant to goad my brother,
meant to tempt him to rage
so that the next time the stepdad slugged him
he would feel justified, holy even.
Kneeling on scratchy couch to watch
I scrunched my shoulders,
Folding into myself like an accordion,
gathering myself up to make of me something smaller;
I pressed my knees together
wrapping my arms around them
and lowered my head,
waiting for the sky to rain trees
with swollen trunks, and branches thrust downward
as if warding off a sickening impact with earth.
My brother, it seems,
must be punished for the crime of
his existence;
for this the stepdad’s eyes shone bright,
bright as the heavy duty flashlights
he begrudgingly loaned my brother
so he could work far into the night.
His eyes fairly burned with lust—
The lust of sadism’s glee.
I saw him lick his lips;
You’d have thought he’d conjured up this
Columbus Day Storm all by himself
for the sole purpose
of proving to my brother
that he had no right
to co-exist with him in the same universe.
I watched until my eyes burned
and my head ached dully
and my brother, sweating and chilled,
laid down his saw
swiped his arm across his forehead,
and straightening up, met my wary gaze
with the scoured look
of shame whittled down into hatred,
sawn away into stumpy pieces like an old tree trunk.
After the storm my brother cleaned up nature’s wrath.
He stood a little taller and his eyes, when they met his abuser’s,
burned unflinching.
After the storm we feigned memory loss
Pretended that nothing had shifted in our family dynamic.
We sat down to meals silent and repressed and picked up our forks
as if the stepdad hadn’t just won a major battle,
as if my brother’s days in that household were not numbered.
Oh, Marianna Grazia...
was my friendly neighbor,
a lovely lady in her eighties!
She became a widow when her
husband died of a brain tumor,
he was a sailor of many oceans;
how evident was the sadness
of Marianna Grazia!
She had a Grand Piano, made of cherry oak,
not covered with a speck of dust, and smiling
she played an improvisation with style;
and it depended on her mood! The rays of sunlight
entered diagonally and rested on it, while
her feeble fingers played the same, harmonic melody;
and her hubby liked to hear those notes enthusiastically...
that's how I remember Marianna Grazia at her best!
Oh, Marianna Grazia...
went to church every Sunday,
and passing by my gate, she always said
hello, and asked how things were going!
She gave every kid on the block candy
and flowers she grew in the back-yard;
oh, I miss how you hummed that song...
oh, Marianna Grazia!
Today I walked by her house,
the Venetian blinds were closed at noon,
I was overtaken by a sudden gloom;
her youngest daughter approached me
and mutterred very grieving words,
" My mom has passed away in a tragic way,
she slipped and fell, and hit the cement;
she passed out as blood gushed from her forehead."
Oh, Marianna Grazia...
never will I have another conversation
about her experience in Normandy,
and the stories of a nurse during World War II,
were as inspirational as her vocation!
Oh, Marianna Grazia...
look down below and wave gracefully;
life is not as everlasting as that love given by you,
oh, Marianna Grazia!
Beautiful stars twinkle in the clear, midnight sky.
As the stars align in the hemisphere, the twinkling begins to magnify!
The stars emerge, row upon row, diagonally and horizontally.
As light begins to surge, words begin to glow, and names are spelled out above me.
The names seem to be engulfed in flames for the whole world to see.
Although the phenomenon is unnatural, clearly the words spell: "Jimmy and Audrey!"
Wrote for my dearest friend XOXO
Oh! for the wet warm South Westerly
after the cold white North Easterly leaving
sparkling rain on each window pane South Westerly.
At night this rain paints all inanimate things a vivid
hue, while humans look care worn, some even sickly,
no longer New Year spick and span but of a drearier hue.
New snow in the Wolds as yeast in England's east, another
feast for children and adults unable to bring home the bacon.
Drains turn into ice topped streams that underneath show
water swimming like eels in a race to breed. Across the North Sea
diagonally from The Wash, heavy snow is falling in the Norge
fjords like so many Vikings on a raid for plunder, trade or conquest.
Criss-Cross Acrostic*: Ai My Eye !
I Was Saw Eye
Eye Saw Was I
Eye Was Saw I
I Saw Was Eye
*Construe as “words” not as “letters”:
Lines 1 and 3 read alike reversed;
Lines 2 and 4 read alike reversed;
likewise vertically and diagonally
from up-down or down-up mode.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Criss-Cross Acrostic: Ai My Eye
Criss-Cross Acrostic:
Note: *Construe as “words” not as “letters”: Lines 1 and 3 read alike reversed; Lines 2 and 4 read alike reversed; likewise vertically and diagonally from up-down or down-up mode.
"Ai Ai My Eye !"
I Was Saw Eye
Eye Saw Was I
Eye Was Saw I
I Saw Was Eye
Another Permutation:
« Ai Ai My Sore Eye !"
I Sore Was I
Saw I Sore Eye
Sore I Saw Eye
I Was Sore I
FURTHER PERMUTATIONS for SORE EYES
Eye Sore Saw I
Saw I Sore Eye
I Saw Sore Eye
Sore Eye Saw I
Saw I Sore Eye
Eye Sore Saw I
Sore Eye Saw I
I Saw Sore Eye
Eye Sore Saw I
Sore Eye Saw I
Saw I Sore Eye
I Saw Sore Eye*
This last quatrain diagonally reads as:
"Ai Ai Sore Eye" (phonetically): « Ai Ai Saw I"
Loves lost anatomy
It’s heart resides in each body
To each there is autonomy
Some loves comes freely
For others the headlines are gloomy
You could search there necrology
Heartbreakers live in infamy
Wandering forever endlessly
Are the victims searching for what could be
They cry for they are so lonely
Living in the painful memory
Longing for her he
He longing for she
Living in misery
Pretending to be happy
There own undesired agony
Then there are those who seemingly
Receive love so easily
Give it so honestly
It touches them gently
Two souls far from a dichotomy
Becoming one in this vast empty
The heartbroken watch in envy
Cant grasp this concept mentally
As they see lovers and their loyalty
Holding hands softly and openly
Intertwined for all eternity
Only wanting to receive that sincerity
And their two worlds spin diagonally
As some become loves lost anatomy.
tracing lines on the syntax of multiple personalities
grammar cascades down resonant folds
and drops to its knees in silent rage
hand over hand over hand over hand over
mishandled hands lost grip on the handholds
and slip and fall into empty spaces
travelling through time diagonally and sideways but never forward
unfortunately
found by no one for infinity of days because i did not really want them to find me
lost for never
yet at the same time always
but isnt that a good thing all things considered
Gone
and forgotten
but only by everyone in this time and place
(Even Poetry can recall the warm days of summer.)
** In the August Heat **
———————————————————————
August roasts the red pears
Sitting crowded on the sill…Spoiling
With no protection from
The open, lime-tinted curtains
Speckled with tiny violets.
Shimmering sunbeams stream diagonally
Through the room’s air, while outside,
A lost cricket, cornered under a deck step,
Chirps! A repeating string of chirps!
His true place is elsewhere
In the night, by a willing mate. The natural
Balance of his 250-million-year-old species
Is upset — with only the heat sustaining him…
With his chirping! Chirping rondo!
With the promise that she will come.
So, there he crouches. Night…Night will come.
Heat will stay. His summer life yet has time to go.
So he waits. Chirping! His chorus repeats!
She will come. They will touch when meeting
Then flee on to their otherwhere.
The coming night’s course will please.
So he waits…Earnestly chirping!
Feeling the vibrations along his black back,
He waits. In his summoning melody,
He chirps! And, she will come.
———————————————————-
(c) sally young Eslinger 1/2022
tussled hair
fringed by an aureole of curtained morning sun
bare legs walking diagonally across the
rectangle of light spilled by the window on the
living room floor
body, nude between the sheets a few moments ago,
now draped in an unbuttoned white shirt
one size too big for her
mine
her face, undecided between sleep and wakefulness,
has done the opposite,
shed that last piece of clothing,
the makeup,
as if confessing a total abandoning of distance
as she crosses the last few feet of space
separating her and me
Morning stubles off in near slumber
as Afternoon finally comes over.
I am still sleepy.
My heart beats quickly
as I lose my balance halfway
down the stairs, catch myself
on the wooden rail,
and continue down to the couch.
Charlie Mingus is on with
Better Git it in Your Soul.
The room smells of dead tobacco
from smoking periodically throughout the night.
I tossed, turned, struggled
to keep my eyes shut.
It did not help,
but it makes insomnia more bearable.
I light one more, walk to the window.
I watch the February 16th snow
as it drizzles, gusts,
then drizzles as the wind dies down.
The snowflakes begin to swarm
in a mad flurry
as they scurry
to join their brothers atop marble heaps
on the ground.
The wind seems puzzled.
The snow close to the window
hurls to the earth going
diagonally to the left,
and further, to the right.
I think of all the others
who approach the same sight
at the same time.
That's all we truly need in life,
an occasional moment
of clarity, serenity
to keep us from the madhouses.
Amen.