Best Fractious Poems
She fell from the light, into a world shadowed in gray.
~ by poet
An angel pouted to protest her punitive plight
No repentant redemption for her serious sins
Wings waylaid, the fatuous one was felled in flight
And from Heaven hurled; now banishment begins
Resentfully she roams in shadows of somber skies
An enraged expression marring her fractious face
A ranting rebel like the dastardly devil, father of lies
Dwelling in darkness due to her decadent disgrace
No earthly escape will she discover through death
Crows circle and caw, crying out in a clamoring voice
With crass words she crudely curses in banal breath
Wicked wrongdoer, condemned for her corrupt choice
With foolish folly she sorrowfully surrendered her soul
and delves within deep darkened depths for eternity
All alone, there will be no one to comfort and console
From shadows and suffering, she will never break free
She sulks upon sullen stygian shores of the river Styx
without a reprieve or relief from tormenting terror
There's no exit from her eternal eviction as time ticks
for Satan's spawn, shrouded in shame for her error
August 30, 2022
Alliteration Old or New Contest
Sponsored by Joseph May
"Happy Easter To You!", is the greeting I hear them shout!
Alas, I just lamely roost here, brood, ponder and pout!
I've worked for weeks making eggs and I'm all tuckered out!
All this hoopla about rabbits, I can really do without!
Me, my mom, aunts, nieces and innumerable distant cousins,
Have been producing eggs by the gross and by the dozens.
Every Easter 'tis those wily bunnies earning the gratitude,
Leaving me and my kin with a very fractious attitude!
Moms send their kids to rob the eggs from 'neath our breast,
Telling them the rabbits made them - this I vehemently protest!
I'm thinking of a sitdown strike come Lent next year,
To frustrate those crafty varmints with a message loud and clear!
The kids make appalling designs on the beauties we produce,
And even tint our chicks in lurid hues, adding to the abuse!
The rabbits get all the glory and stir up all this commotion!
They don't lay eggs! I'll disabuse folks of that silly notion!
If I sound somewhat frustrated, well I reckon I am,
As those cunning scoundrels perpetuate their mythical scam!
Us chickens will just have to press on with our usual grace.
The truth will out, then we'll "cluckle" at the egg on their face!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
Placed No. 3 in A Chicken Poem In Memory of Armano Aurocano Rock Star
I go by myself walking
I hear myself talking;
Then as I deliberate
On the direction of fate
That leaves me so anxious
With illusions atrocious
Invading my privacy
With the blight of absurdity.
They come there unbidden
Like troubles forbidden;
Showing their faces
In my secret places;
Peevish and fractious
Mindless and anxious
Blighting the laughter
With deeds that come after.
Trying to taunt me
To follow and haunt me.
In my mind they come festering
In my ears they are pestering
That my enemies are treacherous
My friends are ominous
And my life is dangerous.
The calamitous confusions
Bring perfidious allusions
Deceptions so diabolical
Fears that are comical
And all these do vex me
With nightmares to perplex me
While Satan sits amused
Knowing I am confused.
FREEBORN
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
Unbounded exultation to survive
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
‘I am still here, a presence, had you doubt?’
Through dark cold months to cling on then revive
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
Each chant communicates to those about
Imperative intent: continued strive
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
No gentle air to sooth a fractious pout
But gesture to persist and so to thrive
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
As sun ascends to reassure all doubt
Lives then with procreation will contrive
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
The cyclic shape of life yet comes about
With each repeat we greet all creatures live
Now ‘cross the fields and woods bird songs ring out
Their voices each a freeborn joyous shout
IN GOOD CONSCIENCE
Heavily tread, are those small fractious steps
On the stairs to my own peace of mind
The sound of transgressions that I'd rather forget
is the pounding of a most clamorous kind
The dialogue I'm having, within my own self
drums on the door of the closed minded truth
I try to rewrite scripts, shoving back on the shelf
But the turbulence shakes them loose
No matter, how buried, how deep I will hide them
My conscience can shovel them out
That child inside me, denies what was done then
But can't deafen the voices that shout
I profess to regret many sins I've committed
The most difficult task is one of admitting
__________________________________
Revised 4/6/13__
__________________________________
(Original Poem....Diminished Hexaverse)
MY CONSCIENCE
heavy on the stairs
the sound of my thoughts-
my own voice resounds
and pounds on my door
of solitary
the dialogue
within myself
never perjured
is translucent
I profess
to launder
past regrets
if stains
can be
cleansed
_____________
2/14/11
___________________________________________________________
Both poems submitted for Roy Jerden's Contest: "Makeover"
Trochaic Pentameter
My love's spirit's gentle like a breeze that
blows cool o'er this my brow, most hot, feverish.
I am made calm by her presence like at
times when discontent doth make one peevish.
She is children's mother never churlish,
meeting needs with day to day devotion.
Seen ne'er showing disposition surlish,
lady having no bad fractious notion.
She doth ease all banes with soothing lotion,
wipes away hurts life delights in bringing.
Problem solver, lessens my full portion.
Oh hark! Listen stranger! My heart's singing.
Gentle spirit, loving mother, my pearl.
These and more are seen in soul of my girl.
A walk-in solitude, putting one foot
over the other, stepping over roots
to listen to the flutes of nature lutes
and silent subtle shift that are afoot.
Away from mental incessant chatter,
solace for the fractious mind. A matter
of time, a sense of elation scatter
and the will to feel the fatigue shatter.
A shaded path tucked away in slumber
in surrounding walls of dark and umber
trees, woody vines, shrubs, and beast that lumber
a realm of nirvana in poised wonder.
Sitting on the ashen limbs and trendless
full of sculptured green, wood thrush nest, restless.
In air a reward glimmer of breathless
hope in a grove of balm doth shine zestless.
Treading determinedly upward, the tree
sunshade is thinning, revealing a sea
of cadet blue sky, glorious to see.
Leaving the world behind upon the breeze.
7/29/2018
Poetry Contest: For Your Poetry Journal
Sponsored by: Dear Heart a.k.a. Broken Wings
5. A walk in Solitude / Rhyme
Tales of sacrificed fear
on scared tortured terrain
wild strengths smoldering beneath
tantrums of the fractious.
Gateway opens, rocks vault, liquids spew
fires burn and soil creep
Vented anger, terrifyingly unleashed
scarped lands and chard boulders
tinged bushes, strewn trees
flowed hard blackened beds
Gateway to Hell, Masaya volcano, Nicaragua.
Cocktail parties are an entrenched American custom, I suppose.
A forum to spew inane babble and where the booze freely flows!
I've suffered through more of them than I care to recall,
And I try to avoid them like the flu - they drive me up the wall!
Alas, an invite arrives and a firm decree from my spouse ensues!
"We're going!" I didn't even have a chance to voice my views!
This one to celebrate some guy's retirement or something or other.
I wish they'd include me out - I have little time for such pother!
I retreat to a corner of the room with my drink to gaze about and pout,
But bless my soul, invariably a gregarious boor always seeks me out,
Regaling me nose-to-nose with tedious trifle I really don't want to hear.
I dodge and parry with him but he insists on bending my weary ear!
I strive to be tolerant when such occasions beckon.
And I'm reasonably adept at observing social niceities, I reckon,
But that uncouth, sotted boozer bent on a gargantuan toot,
Makes me a bit fractious since he also spilled hooch on my suit!
I've heard more about his kids and job than I want to know,
The latest obscene jokes and how his investments are sure to grow!
Thankfully, his spouse appears and notes his besotted condition,
And graciously rescues me from his boring, wearisome rendition!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
I rather watch a kestrel to see
Her swoop and swirl
The skies invisible maze
To feed the inhabitants of her nest
Her milk of gratitude
Morning begins with a bright darkness
And the beckoning beaks for food
There is a wind ruffled mood
Yawing the feathers of the breast
Dawn is a ransom for the truth
Her flight negotiates
The billowing whirlwind
Of dust
Settled in the bowl of expectation
It is the African way.
Courage cannot wear shackles
When the protest comes
This transition
Have shaken superstructures
Not roots, but leaves
Any grafted branch can bear
We did not invent this way
This democracy
Churning chaos out of selfishness
This way of bridging men's hope
This inclusion that is exclusive
This decomposition of old bargaining
Of parables under ancient trees
Strange shifts happen
When we disrobe our cloth
Baring ourselves of familiar primitives
Was not the old ways good enough
Why did we not transform it
While the time was transforming us
Into spectacles
Since we did not want to be invisible still
Will we transform what we
Have borrowed
Into a resemblance of our sense
Of equality, belonging and value?
The base fumbles into sectors
Carved by streets intersecting villages
Divided by self interests
More than any division of our origin
We who came from Jamaica
Barbadoes, Trinidad
And Guyana
Leaving Elmina, Shama, and Sekondi behind
Cattled in the coral that was not pearl
Permitted by a sympathy of the Unites states
Came here forming a new state
Out of forgotten memories
Of lost addresses and broken grief
Of kinship disillusionment
Called this Liberia
Clothing the construction of autonomy
With the identity of freedom.
Is it surprising then this tension
This fractious existence
In a dark forest of genocide
That each sit not well with self as stranger
For this group have no social memory
Beyond the coming of the ships
Until a common bond is forged
From the sorrow of years of fire
To form a new collective identity
Nothing speaks to the deep insecurity
Where there is a need for belonging
Like the suckle of the milking breast
Soft on the flesh of the tongue
With kindness
Telling us our faults
Teaching us to be brothers again
Telling us how to feel the humanity
In our forgotten hearts
Straining to build out of the pain.
Time to think, a pondering, non action's prime.
Thank you Life for the always affirmative actions of folks with intent sublime.
~Thank you for the good intentions of the pure pacifist’s present lifetimes.
~~Thank you for their prayers, non action relates richly random over time.
Thank you Heaven, they do not “Jump the Gun” an early expression, excerpt, crime.
~Thank you, this daft, deadly, denotation, fails; this mantra of sometimes.
~~Thank you, when the furious, fractious, fall in actions error aforetime.
Thank you Mother when waiting wonder, goes slowly, prayerful to Prime.
~Thank you Father as in action, breathe, beauty, brevity, pantomimes.
~~Thank you All for the smiling, simpe, shining, days of springtime.
Thank You when the hate and horror heals and with the end of wartime.
~Thank You with the creation of many more merciful pastimes.
Enrich our earth journey with patience, prudence, providence, sublime.
Praise the people of peace for all of time.
AMONG THE TREES
Among the trees the storm’s a distant roar
As treetops thrash in fractious discontent
The dry leaves barely stir on forest floor
Adjacent worlds contrasting lives consent
And so in life we seek a shielding grove
Safe haven with world gales a distant sigh
Though should we a brief journey choose to rove
May find space torn in tempest hue and cry
How distant yet how near the chaos reign
How fragile therefore might our hedges stand
A genial forbearance cedes to bane
Complacent comfort truly a dead hand
The bounds of freedom, should they be neglected
Could we assume to live in realms protected
Autumn saunters in
Silent as a new spring breeze
Stirring fallen leaves
Blanketing a cold worn earth
A year of greenery molted
Brisk wind dips treetops
Naked arms stretch fractious
Shivering in the chill
Creaking, groaning with cold ache
Arthritis here now till spring
Copyright © 2010 By Caryl S. Muzzey
two tyburns
anxious
specious
precious
righteous
When they released anxious, specious hate,
they woke to a precious, righteous state.
pious
gracious
callous
fractious
Potentially pious, gracious souls
were redeemed from callous, fractious roles.
Your Turn for a Tyburn Contest
charles messina, host
Heavily tread, are those small fractious steps
On the stairs to my own peace of mind
The sound of transgressions that I'd rather forget
is the pounding of a most clamorous kind
The dialogue I hold deep within myself
drums on the door of the closed minded truth
I try to rewrite scripts, shove them back on the shelf
But the turbulence shakes them loose
No matter, how buried, how deep I will hide them
My conscience can shovel them out
That child that is me denies what was done then
But can't deafen the voices that shout
I profess to regret many sins I've committed
The most difficult task is the one of admitting
_________________________________________________
For the Contest: "Regret" sponsored by Black Eyed Susan