Best Feints Poems
February Feints
February creeps across the mud
chuckling
knowing it is not her milieu
snickering
as she tats snowflakes
whistling
as she scatters them
icily
on freshly chilled winds.
©2/19/2018
submitted to – STANDARD CONTEST NO 70
sponsor – Brian Strand
How can it be he is no longer here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts me from his battered chair
Though I have money and no needs to bare
I feel the grief, the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he has vanished here?
What is the world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair
Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Unpeaceful, hunted, jugged or humdrum roast
How can it be when love should counter fear?
Into the real, we stand and longtime stare
We’re begging, blaming, badgered, shamed and gassed
Some presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs
Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we ‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts: symbolic, suffered, real.
I searched for you through the endless expanse of night’s long blackness,
The shimmering light from a crescent moon offered little help in my quest for your elusive form. The pale light dimly lit inconspicuous objects and cast shadows of their beautiful contours upon the ground to thwart my pursuit at every turn.
Radiant eyes peered at me from within the cover of darkness,
And mysterious intonations and melodic resonance echoed into the night air, confusing my sense of direction until I was lost in a maze within your protective purlieu.
Fighting my frustration and fear that I may never gaze upon your majestic beauty, nor hold your rapturous warm body against my cool skin, or savor the taste of you on my tongue, I gathered what was left of my strength and resolve, and continued my silent pursuit.
Guided by my heart and uncontrollable emotions and hunger for you, I somehow broke free of the discountenance feints set upon me to mask your true course. The hunger within my heart and the vision of you brazed within my eyes, guided me toward your lingering essence and ultimately to where you now hide, deep within the confines of your sheltering den safely held tight within the cool moist earth.
As my long sleek form slithers into your place of refuge I strike and sink my teeth deep into your neck and as my coils embrace your supple body, I am overcome with powerful emotions emanating from your very being, and at that moment I knew my hunt was not in vain. To taste your sweet flesh wound be unlike any that has ever been known between predator and prey.
Gilded pols with verbal jousts disarm
With statistical ballasts constituents charm
On opponents deceptive feints, sound the alarm
Scout for votes in city, dale, and farm
Broker deals that bolster their position
Deceptive adds initiate their political inquisition
Bribe voters of every walk and station
Recount votes with cunning derision
Conveniently forget every token promise
Accept all gratuities without malice
With honey and wine, fill every lobbyist chalice
Satiate ego with fatuous, frivolous dalliance
How can it be he is no longer here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts me from his battered chair
Though I have money and no needs to bare
I feel the grief, the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he has vanished here?
What is the world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair
Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Unpeaceful, hunted, jugged or humdrum roast
How can it be when love should counter fear?
Into the real, we stand and longtime stare
We’re begging, blaming, badgered, shamed and gassed
Some presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs
Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we ‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts: symbolic, suffered, real.
Who'd dare the exacerbation of the cloud
and cut the fire for the grave;
tell the Epaulette he's a bum;
break the choking silence
and burst the truth for the street?
Night, night oh barbaric night
pregnant with cordite blood and brine
humiliate the essence of life and living
as the grumpy ravenous sword
plant dirges in every field:
the Epaulette.The overlord.The fear.
Mourning morning night morning
talking stars would be in the pen
a-roosting with the cockerel
to plant feints in opposing maths
to see the yet unseen day of light.
The roads are hasty avowals
where Erebus holds the sceptre sway
where life's like a pebble in the sea
where masks cruise with the law in the lawless
leaving in their wake,requiem mass blood and tears.
Who'd break the silence?
Gently probing her vulnerabilities
seeking only the slightest advantage
He parries her feints most delicately
awaiting an opening to do some damage...
When she, shockingly, reveals a secret so deep
then casts aside his sword to weep
and declare: A man who jousts with a lady fair
is mete to unseat in her heart's affairs
As if in a decades long
somnambulant trance
for majority of years
I finally awoke,
three score minus
one orbitz tracked 'round el sol
by this human drone,
a custom made incognito
stitched while in utero
yeah... my birthday suit mask
disguised this bloke
yet plainly visible, aye donned
a permanent cloak
always fitted me skin
tight easily permitting
ingress and egress okey doak
majority of mein kempf
ambivalent about (no...no...no...
despised) self as
apathetic behavior did evoke,
yet slip out from
under the Harris tweed,
Scottish door Matt,
parental tender caring folk
now, such indifference,
whether dead or alive,
tummy this thinking haint write
especially nearing quotidian,
the terminus twilight
of existential parabola
fifty nine submucous cleft palate
nasal note more'n slight
chalked up to biochemically, right
hermetically, and neurologically quite,
though not profoundly disabled,
a riddled quirky
psycho-social plight,
(cultivating an unhealthy
absent self esteem inferior complex)
I exhibited half
hearted feeble feints
to muster willpower morning till night
oft times nobody home,
and nary boot faint light
doth shine on me
(feeling comfortably numb),
a puny white knight er
rather pawn on chess
board of life with 20/20 insight
while standing at a paltry
just shy of seventy
two inches in height
shortchanging latitudinal longitudinal
maximum parameters to attain
but more critically, detrimentally,
emotionally constitutes current bane
analogous to Atlas
hold the world
did more than force him to crane
his neck, but imposed
a global estuarial drain
as all the seven seas underwent
gravitational pull that's
the best aye can explain
oh...but such fiction a mythological sling
shot across the bow civilization
the metaphorical resonance
pertains to me, and doth ring
real asper millstone over bearing
worth repeating here,
no matter mentioned in previous poems
bitterness of mine despairingly cathartically airing.
Does an ‘act’ that gets praised by a stranger reveal an act’s worth
Or reflect more the generous heart that observes? To feel love’s
Sure a gift, a response I return, no receiver can earn.
All the good man perceives, a brave witness ‘Love’ lives in all hearts,
Its expression’s no accident, roles that we play are bit parts.
We are actors, in touch with Bard’s beautiful lines that we clutch
At like straws, though we all sink and rise in life’s play. And the dove
That returns to the ark of our being, Bard’s gift (and God’s mirth?)
Am I brave to embrace the worst parts of myself (like the best),
And to love each ‘mistake’ that has helped me to grow? Can I touch
‘Like a wife’ my life’s pain, trust to feel joy, all sadness is gain
(That our God must feel too if He’s Love?) Must Creation reflect
Who God is (the ‘I AM?’) and if not, then why not? Is respect
Owed? God ‘needs’ to demand one prove Love? A dad sacrifice son!
Owed a God who creates ‘in own image’ but feints in the clutch
To let ‘man’ feel pain too (his God feels)? By pain’s ‘gift,’ are we blessed?
Can you dare to presume that you understand God, that His Word
In the Bible’s a ‘Truth’ you can deal out to others as if
(Are you God?), ‘our thought’ win true God’s nuance? Man’s ego ‘IS SIN!’
Your soul fries at the moment you step in-between me and God!
God’s relationship’s intimate, never a mob scene! Sound odd?
My faith’s ‘Colored’ to you? Might that mean God uniquely loves too!
‘Faith in God’ is not one size fits all. You’re NOT God; faith’s His riff!
Don’t compare yours to others, and Trust Him, else prove faith’s absurd!
Did Christ die for your sin or to show you God’s Love that was there
All along? “Greater love has no man’ than he lay down his life,”
But God’s Grace, (if God’s Heart can save man, it’s been there from the start),
Did not need Christ to Die! Ten commandments in truth more a ‘joke’
Meant to help us be humble? Does God by Christ’s death then provoke
The thought ego’s a ‘pipe dream,’ that service to others supreme
If we’d please Him? Let ‘Cross’ be my pride; the Church blush to be wife,
For Groom’s blood is the dowry He paid. Pray, “God’s real!” Does He care?
Brian Johnston
14th of August in 2019
Violets
by Michael R. Burch
Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to an indiscreet height
and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:
suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed.
Later, as you braided your hair
into long bluish plaits
the shadows empurpled,
the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air,
we watched the sun’s long glide
into evening,
knowing and unknowing.
O, how the illusions of love
await us in the commonplace
and rare
then haunt our small remainder of hours.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Muse Apprentice Guild, Victorian Violet Press, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Poetry on Demand
Distances (II)
by Michael R. Burch
There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.
She has never heard of Faust, or Frost,
and she is unlikely to have been seen
rummaging through bookstores
for mementos of others
more difficult to name.
She might imagine “poetry”
to be something in common between us,
as we write, bridging the expanse
between convention and something...
something the world calls “art”
for want of a better word.
At night I scream
at the conventions of both our worlds,
at the distances between words
and their objects: distances
come lately between us,
like a clean break.
Published by Verse Libre, Triplopia and Lone Stars. Keywords/Tags: love, relationship, relationships, communication, distance, distances, convention, books, bookstores, art, literature, poetry, writing, chasm, abyss, divide, Faust, Frost, clean break
Job Interviews
Infinite feints
for a lane
to go driving.
Still there’s
no opening.
Jump shot
pumped from afar
spits in the net,
sole sound.
The bucket is made,
but the ball
the ball is still bouncing.
Donal Mahoney
Just as the eve has come
The joy of mourning has become undone
We tell ourselves each day is one
Expectance is the claim of none
A harrowed trail of battled drums
The humming sum of rains to come
Acceptance is the aim to some
While rejection feints the cause of shun
Epiphanies are all but done
The roar of morning has just begun
Harrowed hum will become