Best Ferment Poems
They start thick—
not the polite kind you stir into tea
not the mild drizzle on breakfast toast
but the kind that runs hot
slow
dangerous
coating your tongue before you grasp
the price of its pleasure.
They start golden—
dripping off the comb
sun pressed into their marrow
too rich, too syrupy—
gumming up the gears of your schemes
too luminous for hands that flinch from light
too wild for walls meant to contain them.
You want squeeze-bottle love.
Clean.
No bees.
No stingers.
No buzz.
But they ferment in kitchens
where no one thanks them—
same way their grandmothers did
spooning fire into each serving
stinging their own tongues
just to stay sharp—
drizzling down your better judgment staining
Sunday shirts
unraveling wedding vows
spilling past boundaries
no one asked them to obey.
They get called—
too much.
too loud.
too open.
too shut—
like they were born to fit into your grip
instead of slipping right through it.
You try to jar them.
Slap on barcodes:
Best before.
Handle with care.
Discount if damaged
for quick sale.
But wild honey won’t kneel—
it contradicts logic
defies preservation
reason
perfumes the air
wrecks your thirst for tradition.
You mistook raw for reckless
Reckless for ruin
Ruin for something to fear.
You laughed when they wept—
like grief was a spectacle
like tenderness was weak
like softness
was a defect to be filtered out.
But by the time you realize
she’s the rarest thing
you ever tasted—
she’s already sweetening
the hands that never swatted her
And now,
we sit here—
jars without lids,
spoons still sticky—
trying to remember
what it meant to taste something
that never begged to be caged.
Maybe—
the glass wasn’t meant to hold her.
Maybe—
it was meant to shatter—
to let something wild
and feral
flood in
and leave you
pleading
for ruin.
—it’s a reckoning,
unapologetic,
untamed,
final.
Somewhere in the pretty petty imaginary illusion of delusion
There lies a truth an edifice of search between obtuse confusion
Windows like brick walls and concrete blocks birthing the light
Nails to be nailed screws to be screwed with monumental sight
A life a building fortress sand castle beach hut nutter’s dream
Maybe a prison with towers barbed wire fences mindful scream
Some multi storied paradise no choke on apple’s stem or core
No passion fruit in torture chambers shackles behind and to the fore
No hidden attic and no cellar no stellar fantasy no quick descent
For now simply one dimension deserted plain hopes to ferment
Scraping no skies a cave hovel card board box a bombed out grave
Nothing to hold onto no graces left spent and ravished naught to save
Is it magic thought provoked delusion of illusion alluded distortion
Who knows does it matter I suppose it does in incomplete reapportion
Some are born in a manger on the fields of labour some with a silver spoon
Surely some would rather have foundations a ceiling not some lonely moon
Get me not wrong as singing the praises of romantic poverty and dearth
Icy cold and freezing bones do not bear up to sound safe privilege in birth
Yet from the scraping nib and luxury of pen in hand and philosophic mind
Not wishing to lack compassion nor cementing over cracks so misaligned
We are the builders of our lives to some extent despite the vagaries so vast
Can we find a staircase upwards some sliding pole to reach out for the past
In such compassion regardless of painful structures and abandoned need
Is some notion some motion of change and nourishment star dust to feed
In God we trust nihilism architecture Karma fate Nirvana hard core grind?
No valid answers but questions loving search for quiet mindfulness in kind
Stand by me my Lord
In this age of ferment
Stand by me my Lord
In your sylvan garment
In this night, let your song be sung
Let the lambent moon be your eyes
Let the flower on your crest belong
To my soul's wisp of smiles
Stand by me my Lord
With an apparel of light
Stand by me my Lord
Be the center of my sight
Stand by me my Lord and bless me with valor
Fill my veins with a surge of blood new and fresh-no pallor
Stand By Me - Poetry Contest
Sponsor Kelly Deschler
11 January,2015
butterflies ferment
like aesthetic Autumn leaves
— sanguine sage’s brush
10/15/2018
ferment - to be in a state of agitation or intense activity
sanguine - marked by eager hopefulness : confidently optimistic; bloodred
sage - wise through reflection and experience
Part 1
Onion
the delicacy of friendship
I found you in the flowers
Standing tall we become one
Looking down from gangly towers
Squash, you burn, you pillage, son.
Follow me you say in tongues
Thy shallow mind reveal me tell
Whisper lies clean load the guns
I feel the burn I rot in hell
Friend folly menacing the liar
I loathe this coffin how it leaks
Dear foe you raped me set on fire
The onion peal itself and weeps
Part 2
Traitor
dear monkey boy
Older eyes eat themselves,
glance and kill the other
Unified in the dance,
they steer the musty rudder.
Pained and sweeter deeper wells,
poised buckets drunk with water.
Singled out the one that dried,
handed weights to pull him under.
Wiser times capture the mind,
death justifies dishonor.
Knife slice neat through the devil's back,
who stares blank and milks the udder.
Part 3
Tempest
patron saint
Inside this box
Goodbye tempestuous fall
My puppet of steel coiled thread
Smashed buttons and twisted dread,
Alarm these doors, and
Escape this delusive bunker bed
Stamp the spiders
Thief, vulture of the deflection
The mocking patron of the sinners
Erase this affliction
Relating inward at the reflection
Rise you fool
Part 4
Phoenix
i love you
close the grip
cinched hematic grip
drenched, clawing
seeking the sheave
becoming the counterweight
i absorb, now
extracting the heat
rise like a phoenix
away to be gone to be free
fix me! i have fixed me
i am alive and i love you
Part 5
Aye, Damager
Abolish her state of disrepair
Scattered, spattered drippy thoughts
All around this box of soused leaves
Soak, ferment in the faith of our love
I can't fix this, you know
I loathe this misunderstanding
Of what I am speaking, projecting
To me, Aye Damager, to you
This devil in me
turned and twisted
A wrecked elevator in rejection
Years locked painfully aware
...
You start out green and new, as a brand new shoot, nurtured by a ‘Loving Mother Tree,’ and surrounded by lush, growing sibling leaves all
In relative, naive Harmony.
You mature and grow into The Most Beautiful Version of Yourself, peaking a little too early, given the length of your life cycle.
After you’ve served Your Purpose (you were never told what it was), your kindly mother turns on you;
Once she nurtured you, watered you, and warmed you by sunlight.
You were whole and thriving and complete.
Now, She cuts off these vital nutrients.
All of a sudden, you’re given no light, no food, no water.
And no answers about WHY.
Your sibling leaves are going through a similar situation,
So they are of very little use to you.
Frankly, they’re every bit as confused as you.
You slowly starve and dry up until you’re officially “desiccated.”
Then, the Mother Tree drops you.
The winds of change blow you onto a completely random path, forcing you to intermingle with leaves you don’t even know,
Making one last splash as “fall foliage,”
Which you don’t even enjoy because you look so differently than you did in your prime , you barely recognize yourself anymore.
The next thing you know, you’re 5 miles down the road, in a Stranger’s yard (not even a nice one),
Being raked into giant piles and stuffed into suffocating black garbage bags,
Kicked to the curb to ferment a little while, and then
Carted off by some rather grubby-looking men to be burned and cremated.
By that point, you welcome it.
Shall I liken you to a corpse bouquet?
You are certainly ripe and more fetid.
The fond zephyrs of May waft your decay
Up the addled noses of us wretched
Hordes famished for flesh, lurching on the moor,
And me amongst them clawing to your scent
Putrix beyond the spitty chum’s allure
Propels me well beyond routine ferment
To you, though Fate’s sickle blade shall flail
My congealed member’s once firm resolve,
And fire inflames us just shy of the pale,
Our passion will continue to devolve.
Ever, shall she be my prime cadaver,
O to undie again, and to have her!
Come my love past the beauty of the hill
Ablaze with ginger sunset and fall fire
On a fast downhill wagon hayride thrill
In festive saffron and amber attire
Celebrating with tambourine and lyre
Autumn’s gift of new harvest abundance
With an improvised Abu Barn floor dance
Circling around ginger and umber mound
Pumpkin carving for the Jack-O- lantern
Eating chestnuts fresh gathered from the ground
Racing rolling barrels to the caverns
To ferment before hitting the taverns
Cinnamon flavored pies and crimson wine
Ginger spiced to flavor the night is fine
These quakes and shivers of mine,
Are they tales forebode?
Language spat, drool untold,
Encrypted bits by line.
Does the anchor sit?
Cracks in dorsal fins,
Pinch the nodes whose nervous system knows,
Better than to think.
Juniper pine, ferment pepper mend,
The ache of later hours,
To quench the essence ever tends,
To that which self devours.
Canticles of echoed places,
Hummed in spaces felt at once,
Coded corpus, temporal traces,
And seemly more than nonce.
If only I was less than this,
As only now's enough,
To be all, I'd be remiss,
Missing all the stuff.
How I miss what I never had
Long hot kisses kinetic cranberry flavored
As I struggle with my need to breathe
Every breath in and out for you
The deepest fuzzy feelings ferment
In every fiber of my body my soul
We are so close yet so far
Long distance love challenges so unique
Yet we climb each mountain peak
Standing victorious in each others heart
Violet veins pumping the same goals
Hopes purple passion and old fashioned needs
I’m unable to flee from you
Because you are inside of me
It’s pleasant and peaceful
How you make love to my mind
With only your words so kind
And I am grateful for whatever
Way we connect be it chats
Or email or internet
We have only a moment to blink
And find reasons why we think
Time is on our side
And we surf it like ocean tide
I think we are very special
And as you say
The heart wants what it wants
So it’s not really a problem
Being apart when we are an island
Intellectually connected and destined
We have beat the odds
And now we can be sweethearts
For as long as blessed by God
Snakes in loose tongues
Proclaim one message, doing the opposite
When lie bangs and sty clangs
Identify and typify the hypocrite
Who declares faith in one moment
Swims in seas of sin
Inviting the ferment of torment
The hypocrite in his din
Can’t shove away
Despite claims to sainthood
That conscience can’t slay
As sin neighbourhood
Captures and raptures pretence
Leaving in the shell of loose tongues a yawning gap
In every single sentence
That in a loose tongue traces the map
In need of prayers
To bring about greater understanding deep within
That faith lies not in pretence layers
Concealed in a thin
Façade bereft of true faith
Where the chasm between light and darkness
Needs to lose its strength
To make a way clear to the meekness
In which faith lives
In both form and substance
Although in the end God forgives
Hypocrites whose loose tongue pleads for silence
As salvation sought
Salvation granted
For Jesus bought
Salvation for all even for tongues loosely slanted.
What If My Beauty
How do I enter my poem into Beauty Contest?
I thought that all beauties had to be bathing.
What if my beauty was to run abundant?
Me and my poems people thought were repugnant
And always on other Soupers I had relied
On ways all of my poems could be beautified.
Use articulate adjuctives and each adverb
Do eliminate all of the things that disturb
And cause much mental endangerment
Drank too much wine that did ferment.
So sorrowful to others my poems may seem
Could never exist or be found in a dream
Why in much sorrow have to be drowned?
Before you forget write each poem down.
Beauty exists in each eye of the beholder
As they grow up and become much older
Some thoughts to you they may occur
All my beauty had become one big blur.
By many each of my poems have been read;
Over and over all of my prayers I have said;
If beauty was found in my poems must surmise
Will be pulverized when presented with Pulitzer Prize.
James Thesarious Hilarious Horn
Retired Veteran and Poet
I left the Earth and walked to the Moon passing the Sun.
Along the way a Star I did meet full of treasures and fun.
The Star had a story to tell so I listened carefully so keen.
It told me of Earth’s history and mysteries setting a scene.
There was a King a Queen a Prince and a princess before.
Not born of Earth but of this Star that made plenty more.
The Star buried them in the Earth’s core where they grew.
It took years and years for this mixture to ferment a brew.
In the Earth’s core were diamonds as big as Mountains.
They sprung forth showers of fires like huge fountains.
Under the diamonds was a huge magnet pulling the Star.
They stayed together and worked as one to build a heart.
So they gave the heart to the Queen and the princess.
The King and the Prince were able to take a recess.
They went on and built the dome around the Earth.
But in the core lies a timely date for a new rebirth.
So they grew and woke up and jobs were assigned.
They had to gather the crops and all planets aligned.
They had to dispense kingdom upon kingdom by a breath.
They had to experience a multitude of life and one of death.
But they hid treasures upon the whole Earth and stored.
They sealed fate conquering life and death until bored.
So one day they decided to go away leaving treasure.
They’d build galaxies and more Stars hard to measure.
They stayed together and lived happily ever after.
Each with a skill and a talent cheerfully in laughter!
® Registered: Ann Rich 2006
I
School bag, blue shirt, hair parted on the right,
Dal-rice, clock ticking away in delight;
Cycles stop, wagons with seasonal crop,
Get to her class before the gates shut tight.
II
The obsession froths beyond the eavesdrop,
Secrecy brews a moral of Aesop;
Friends don't yet know, the fear that the eyes show,
Grows the need to shout it from the rooftop.
III
Geography is boring, the maps tow
Useless details such as where's Kosovo;
It's all pretense, the absorption intense,
But her attention sets the world aglow.
IV
The wistful heart struggles to make some sense
And accept pain at misery's expense;
Then her comment, and the motives ferment,
The surging tide sweeps over the heart's fence.
V
Evening is drunk with sunlight, the day's spent,
Menthol erases the cigarette scent;
She fades from sight, the mundanities write,
A long ride back under the clouds' intent.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Date: 24 / 10 / 2016
One of the reasons I used present tense is, for me this is a memory trapped in time, like a photograph. A day in life from simpler time.
Come my love past the beauty of the hill
Ablaze with ginger sunset and fall fire
On a fast downhill wagon hayride thrill
In festive saffron and amber attire
Celebrating with tambourine and lyre
Autumn’s gift of new harvest abundance
With an improvised Abu Barn floor dance
Circling around a ginger umber mound
Pumpkin carving for the Jack-O- lantern
Eating chestnuts fresh gathered from the ground
Racing rolling barrels to the caverns
To ferment before hitting the taverns
Cinnamon flavored pies and crimson wine
Ginger spiced to flavor the night is fine
Fourth Place: Brian Strand- Premier Contest 1183-2/8/23
Fifth Place: Julie Leigh Rodeheaver- Autumn Romance-9/28/17
Sixth Place: Dale Gregory Cozart-Autumn Royal Rhyme-10/5/17
Ninth Place: Brian Strand- contest 110 -11/9/17
Fifth Place: Brian Strand- contest 355-10/31/17