Best Downwind Poems
There’s the tightrope for you to walk, wire walker —
defying the gravity of reality and the reality of gravity
you know damn well he won't catch you when you fall
as your sticky grip on the star’s razor edge slips
back away from the black back-alley -
use the street’s angles and curves to your advantage
run! from the rouse of his lure
as the lore is as sordid as it is euphoric -
ruined as you are by the ruse of his rune
fade to disappearance with distance
ride the rift of spindrift; a smoke screen
as if you were never here
but the territorial she-wolf knows…
she dreams of pouring rain pooling on a blurry beach
though she may choose not to open sand-puddled eyes
intuition is not blind and instincts are hackled —
for she’s downwind of dual deception
and her elegant nose is one with the yellow-rose winds
her howls now haunt your hurricane
passion’s kite - once blissfully lost in windy swagger
brash in its stellar flash amidst a hazy starlit pinwheel -
has returned a stormy petrel
dark and hovering over self-inflicted wounds feeding on strife —
incised by the rapier side-eye of your conscience
you seek to stem the red flow of guilt washing up in waves
knowing you can’t dye scarlet heartbeats white
there’s the tightrope for you to walk, wire walker;
the bloodline — that which binds
a sinful sister’s envies to the sinless sister
and divides loaves of husband-lies for the bronze bloodless sinner.
The luscious, long, green grass
Sways and sweeps and flows.
How far, how fast this wind will travel,
No one really knows!
This same wind could stir up
Whirls and waves in all seas.
This powerful force makes nature dance.
Our senses this does please.
Though it can be disruptive
On a minor or major scale,
It can uproot trees, tear roofs off houses,
It can delay or prevent sails...
It still has its boundaries.
This can be assuring to all, to me and you.
We can't see the wind,
But it's effects are in plain view.
Sometimes this wind teases us,
Playing with our hair,
Or has us swatting at thistles and leaves,
Flying through the air.
The wind can also be so kind,
To tell us our coffee's hot.
Or to move our rude cigar,
From it's blowing spot.
Wind can be a gentle reminder,
To put on our kid's jacket,
Or to lower our voice,
During a downwind racket.
It is always there soft or strong,
And never with a hue, that is...
We can't see the wind,
But it's effects are in plain view.
19-September-2021
A.W. Nutter
Trespassing through my domain
Your excursion has become a habit
Sampling your fruit I must abstain
My lustful cravings I try to inhibit
Gliding across the forest floor
Your fragrance filling my senses
Beautiful in your jogging decor
Testing my self imposed defenses
Vows of abstinence I'll rescind
From your virginity I will imbibe
Out of sight, slightly downwind
As I travel stealthily by your side
Wallowing in my lust induced state
The sons of Adam I failed to notice
Resurgence of a long forgotten hate
As I head toward the muffled voices
The men turn, as I begin speaking
Of death and devouring their hearts
Of my demons who are gathering
To collect their souls as they depart
I am Cain, destroyer of Abel
Your lives are required this day
The mens courage quickly fail
Their bodies return to potters clay
I gaze upon the daughter of Eve
Realizing she's a direct descendant
The chosen one who will conceive
The destroyer of the covenant
Pushing down my raging desire
I force my betrothed to dress
She has an unquenchable fire
To feel this demons caress
For now she must be satisfied
In sharing her morning run
With a lover whose life is edified
When she gives birth to his son
Disappearing: A List
• Leave for no destination in particular.
• Plastic surgery.
• Burn my wallet and shoes.
• Buy or steal an identity;
become another.
• Run into the forest,
wear a wolf’s skin,
look and smell
wolfish downwind.
• Yield my being in
an intimate exchange,
to the thrall of
scotch or peyote or cocaine
or intense pleasure or pain.
• Be subsumed into the
collective mind of a cult
or the Secret Service
or the Carthusians
• Become young rather than old.
• Die, just because.
It’s just a list of possibilities.
Nothing more.
Not a complete one at that.
The Cashier at the 5 and Dime
She does not wear paint on her face.
I noticed, there is no war to be found,
around the corners of her mouth...
only a soft crease,
where a smile has worn a path,
worth retracing...
again and again...
with my lips.
There is no spray in her hair,
she does not smell like a fancy place.
When I passed her in church,
the scent of wild coconuts
and fresh Georgia peaches...
came to me.
It was like a perfume cloud,
from the downwind side,
near the gates of Heaven,
surely.
I can not remember what she wore.
Or, even what she will wear the next I see her.
I can not take my eyes from her very being,
the whole sense of what she is,
lights up the room,
and brings the sunshine inside,
on every gray day.
On sunny days,
rays of gold seem to radiate,
from the ends of her hair.
I am taken,
to somewhere I dare not be,
and pray never to come back from,
ever...
again.
I step up and place my items on the belt.
I have been here a few times,
and no one has said a thing.
But truly, I need...
one more item,
to get one more look,
to see her one more time,
then...
I will be fine.
Kananaskis is
four-fifths a line of haiku
Kananaskis is
With spring’s sudden warmth
serial avalanches thunder
one triggers the next
Winter’s snow melting
laughing, leaping, running to
valley far below
Green slopes banded red
dying lodgepole pine, memories
of last year’s Chinook
Golden larch quivers
as the first storm of winter
passes close tonight
As a boy, I came
to know this quiet valley
father's special place
Leaving highway to
where mountains reach to heaven
we drove the stone road
Fishing beaver ponds
dad came on bees, lost his specs
on return just bees
One night as we camp
a timberwolf comes to call
returns to dark night
On the upper lake
clouds mask the solar eclipse
but fish go crazy
One spring’s discovery
drawdown pools, teeming with trout
who won’t touch anything
A five pound rainbow
beached chasing Peter’s lure
red stripe - jealousy
Late autumn, Lake B
big browns cruise downwind beaches
only we know where
A ski resort appears
wonderland needs paved roads
we protest in vain
Twenty years later
returning with my children
to an unknown place
If you slow to look
irate traffic leans on horns
rushing to their lodge
My kids and I fish
a borrow pit now a“lake”
tourists' put and take
To a grizzly bear
roads are barriers wider
than flooding rivers
Kananaskis is
four-fifths a line of haiku
Kananaskis is
MM
Are you aware that a Grizzly Bear
Is tall and very powerful,
Don't disturb him while he naps
Or you might get a growl full.
If you see him in a forest,
Then seek shelter from a tree,
Make sure your scent is downwind
Or you just might be his tea.
PASSION FOR CYCLING
Coast to coast across England in one day
A hundred miles in one trip.
Bike like a rocket each sprocket fits its socket
With well oiled smoothness of clockwork
Feels good as chain clunks from one socket to the next
And the ticking whirring of freewheel
And zipping noise of fast tires on flat ashphalt
Hum a song to me as I lean over into the bend
And the bike leans with me.
Smooth road; never mind the few bumps;
And air so fresh you could eat it in lumps.
Aroma of York’s chocolate ten miles away,
Bread-baking and brewing downwind of Carlisle
Make me ready for dinner. And the strong
Odour of fish in North Shields,
Stink of cattle feed outside Goole,
Sickly smell of plastics factory, oil newly-refined,
Makes you see even if you’re blind.
Makes me want to pedal for home.
Haiku 113
waxing gibbous moon scudding chiffonclouds drifting downwind
Pardon my condor sensitivity,
but can I be
dead serious candid with you
Everybody look down on me,
and talk mean about me
But, in the future, they’re gonna need me
even nuclear more
I’m nature’s finest,
best garbage collector
My critter pals,
when they get their fill of wilderness lost you
They say to me: pick up the trash, will you please,
when we’re through
So I do what I do best ...
I pick the bones clean, rotting flesh and all
I devour the things other animals
don’t got the stomach for
Circling up above,
my telescopic olfactory senses
are searching downwind
I see some fool lost drug mules
thirstily water struggling in the wilderness
They’re slowly dying ... disoriented
since wandering out of the way
Now unbeknownst to them,
the desert will be their last score grave
Once they’re dead and baked,
I’m gon have me a good cadaver brownie cake
Those stashed hash mules done football kicked me good,
‘cause I’m flying high ... higher than before
Man, what an extra-point desert score!
After that sickly sweet rancid taste of victory,
I hear my coyote friends give a howl alert:
pick-up on
Death Valley off road tourist route,
cavern aisle four
But it’s too early for a lunch break,
way too rigor mortis early for me to be eating fresh meat
That poor adventurous soul was compass challenged,
and got sextant separated from the tour group
And he just pauper purchased an early expiration date,
but some things I just can’t bring myself to eat —
I hate fresh meat!
As for now, I’m waiting patiently,
perched on a craggy, desert mountain outcrop
Waiting hungrily ...
for that Big Mushroom feast in the sky
Until that special day arrive,
it’s the same ol’ mundane work routine
Garbage carcase collecting is a thankless job,
but somebody gotta do it ... ain’t that right?
Excuse me, Ms. Mountain Lioness,
can you hand me a rib cage toothpick
from that dead prairie dog
Just give me a cleanup call
when you’re through with the rest of it
06 February 2010
Dream of Sailing
By: Noel N. Villarosa
Never sailed on a three-masted sailboat
Where it bustles to find a smooth wave
Where the wind is its engine
And heels above at the wave’s commotion
Feel the quiver of disappearing in a trough
Then mightily emerging to open water
To stand atop the mast
And feels the strong wind to drown my breath
It fills me with gobsmacked
To sail past on the Seine river
Or ride to a replica of Argo
And sails in the famous canal of Athens
To smell the ocean mist
To rein in the wind for propulsion
And touch the boat sails as it moved downwind
Hear the recoil of bow wave along the hull
The beauty and grandeur of a sailboat
Only to picture, my dream is outlined
The anchor never lifted, the mast never stretched
Only a message in the bottle keeps floating on blue water with my dream of sailing
Honorable Mention to Carol Brown's If My Dream Could Come True: 3/18/2010
Hey,
Do you smell that?
That musky scent
with earthy undertones
leading off to the right.
Slipping into a lope,
as silent as the grave,
I sneak through the trees.
The aroma pulls me along
through the cascading moonlight.
I can feel the hunger growing,
snapping at my innards
like a rabid dog.
Crouching behind a low ridge
I spot her
running through the woods,
just a silhouette
frolicking
in the night mist.
The moonlight scrolls across
her smooth form
like living tattoos
writhing along
her supple body.
Daring not to breathe,
I creep
within reach
of my lovely dryad,
keeping downwind.
I lash out
hamstringing her.
She releases an erotic whimper
as I lick her blood
from my claws
and it sends
quivers through my mind
awakening a stronger
Crimson lust.
I deliberately pace around her
drinking in her scent.
Then just as my hunger
is about to drive me into a frenzy
she says
"Will this wolf offer
me his throat?"
Time slows
and the moon turns red
as I subconsciously
hold out my neck
leaning down towards her.
She lushesly
sinks her teeth in
tearing through skin and sinew,
blood spraying into my face
while showering down on her,
driving me
to howl my lust towards
the heavens.
When she stops
feasting on me,
Her
all covered in my blood
and bits of my flesh,
Me
a little weakened
and excited,
I ask her
"What will you do
now that you have part of me
inside you?"
She seemed to consider this
for time eternal,
with the moon
glistening in her eyes.
Slowly she turns towards me,
a smile on her lips,
and says
" Why I will howl my feelings
into the night,
soaking the world
with your thralls.
May you have pitty
on their souls
As I have
on yours."
Above a cloudy jar of brine
That floated greenish hard boiled eggs,
Beside a Schlitz beer waterfall
That told bar time (ten minutes fast),
A taxidermied Jack-A-Lope
With rabbit ears and tiny rack
Stared marble eyed into the dark.
“We don’t have many Jack-A-Lopes
Back home in any city bars,”
I told a man who served us drinks.
“At prices there, that’s no surprise.”
The barman said without a smile
And told us of the Jack-A-Lope:
Time was you looked, you’d find his kind,
But rarely in these mountain slopes.
They only bred in wintertime
And only in electric storms.
It’s rumored round that milk that came
From mother Jack-A-Lopes could cure
Whatever walks on twos or fours
So rare it was most called it myth
As much as Sasquatch ever was.
Until one day a dowser came
Divining where to dig a well.
And gripping his good witching stick
Could swear he saw the front branch twitch.
He scrunched his eyes and looked again.
“No, something’s in that undergrowth.”
Up popped the branchy antlers of
This fearsome critter, Jack-A-Lope.
Now as it was this dowser had
A more than common whiskey thirst.
And had to live his life downwind
From ordinary decent folk.
Like pictures of Napoleon,
He stuck his hand inside his coat,
Produced a flask of sour mash,
And threw it at this portmanteau.
Some say it hopped away afraid,
But those that know have winked and said,
“That animal attacked the flask;
Without their bourbon Jack-A-Lopes
Will fade away until they’re gone.”
Outsiders paid some license fees
For hunting season, dates of which
Cannot be found on calendars.
The most were poached as trophies for
Hotels, saloons and brothels where
The mounted heads amazed their guests.
No hunter had had an interest in
An animal that can’t be killed
Because it never ever was.
But now so heavy was the hunt
The Jack-A-Lope was soon extinct,
So every one of them was killed
To prove one time they did exist.
The bar grew quiet just as if
Some meaning might be understood.
I pointed at my empty glass
And asked the barman pouring drinks,
“What’s on that plaque below the head?”
“Some Latin words, a kind of crest.
A family motto more or less.”
The events that took place in a remote area of New Mexico about 230 miles south of Los Alamos during the predawn hours of July 16, 1945 forever changed the world. In the early morning darkness the incredible destructive powers of the atom bomb, code-named "Trinity", were first unleashed, and what had been merely theoretical became reality. Said General Groves, head of the Manhattan project, "We were reaching into the unknown and we did not know what might come of it". Some feared the consequences of radio-active fallout on civilian populations surrounding the test site. Observers were sent to surrounding towns to monitor the results of the blast and medical teams were kept on alert. But the hope and the focus was on the feeling that we now had the means to ensure a speedy conclusion to the war and save thousands of American lives.
A bit over 400 miles north, north east of the blast on that early morning in July, in a
small Panhandle farm, a girl of 17 rose, as was her daily custom, to milk the cows by
hand, she being the youngest child and only girl of second-generation Polish immigrants who made their living by raising maize and wheat, cows and chickens and selling their milk and eggs in the small town nearby. But less than a month after the July 16th test of the atomic bomb, this otherwise seemingly healthy girl fell into such a malaise that she could not even get out of bed much less carry on with her assigned chores on the farm. She was brought to a hospital in Amarillo and eventually discharged with no diagnosis other than she must have had a nervous breakdown due to some kind of female hysteria. She was sent away to a convent to recuperate but no one, least of all her parents, ever really knew what could have caused her sudden “nervous breakdown” that took place downwind and less than a day’s drive from that first historic explosion of the atomic bomb.
Sincere the word when the planted seed
springs forth from truth the bounty of it’s fruit.
Consuming lies wrought in word or deed,
bind tight downwind foul smell of ill repute
Truth holds firm upon life’s path anon
lighting the course planned by heaven above.
Yet when we lie today, and then beyond
The sham will hide while we seek to find love
Behind each oath and the taste of each kiss
Behind sweet words and each loving caress
The lie, waiting until some short remiss,
ascends to the surface bringing distress
True love waits for the chance to come inside
It should not have to face lies, lies, then hide