Best Fumbles Poems
His mind is dark,
like a night sky without stars.
Doubt sits upon his shoulders,
poking at his face,
irritating his mind,
interrupting his thoughts,
outrunning his words -
laughing at him hysterically.
Demons slay his self belief,
echoing like mountainous valleys.
Playing with his insecurities.
Manic voices vibrate in a percussion of shrieking,
like jesters juggling with his sanity.
Sweaty palms and heavy feet,
leave his tongue cemented,
like a block of concrete.
Curtains ascend slowly.
Microphone has no mercy.
Silence awaits,
as audience anticipate.
His petrified eyes attempt
to ignore hundreds of faces,
focusing at him.
He fumbles and mumbles
apologises and starts again.
Closes his eyes,
to find his special, sacred place.
His hidden spirit roars, as audience gasp.
His soul rises like king Arthur's sword,
releasing the thunder, trapped inside.
Doubt plummets to the ground.
His words strike like lightening,
defeating demons into silence.
Audience applaud in elation.
For a moment he smiles,
but then doubt and demons re-emerge.
Bullying his self esteem,
murdering his short lived joy.
He sits in silence,
wondering what is the point...
Simple Musing
Silent One
25 July 2020
Categories:
fumbles, allusion, emotions, self,
Form:
Free verse
The vibrant popinjay has gone.' The harlequin no more really
Spins in song.' The magic's now all in a can.' Younger female backers
Parry times looming advance plan..' The age'd icon takes his glances
Across the acres, of yearning souls in hopefull trances..Parody banners they lie.' beneath sultry skies.' Echo the effigy of the past, See it burned in the mans eyes.'
Actions Describe.' Writ large the irony of life.' Youth has
Flown.' All hail its ghost, Ronnie strums, the speakers hum.'
Geri-acrity...Fumbles combinations and with alacrity..' 0yet theres really not one chance.' No way back.' All I see is false hope.' Rod Stewart is a husk.' Not yet voiceless.' Nor danceless yet
Its the back end, of the romance.!
Categories:
fumbles, age, allusion, celebrity, emotions,
Form:
Rhyme
the rapture of a souls song plays out inside the mind
as she sits quietly reading in a late fall moonlight
trading the falling leaves for the keys to the kingdom of pain
she scours the printed page for flaws to crow about in the dawn
but she fails to see the falling tears and the raging snowstorm
she feels but refuses to see
all our childhood dreams lined up as toy soldiers
on a battlefield of right and wrong
of love and despair
with one absent minded finger dancing in her hair
she fumbles for the meanings in the steady rain
she feels out the sentences written in summer skies
the novella there in between the covers are the story she reads
but its the long silence in the room between two people
that shapes her fate
writes her tears
the rapture of souls song plays out
with a beautiful melody
and such heartfelt lyrics
but no beautiful song lasts forever
anywhere but in the heart
and her song still plays for me
Categories:
fumbles, beautiful, beauty, sea, snow,
Form:
Free verse
Here he comes, bringing up the rear
So proud to be one of the guys
Blowing me kisses drenched in beer
As he wolfs down several pies
One tortured attempt at a promising leer
Whilst he fumbles with his flies
He’s no idea that I’m sat here
Planning my goodbyes!
Categories:
fumbles, break up, emotions, how
Form:
Light Verse
"The Folk Dance"
On the backs of well formed muscular miners
Working hard in the trenches on a daily basis
For the men who need coal, fat cats and such
Dirty, sweaty and tireless toil try to wear them down
Dehydration and soot inhalation runs rampant
An epidemic throughout lower Appalachia
The jobs they need, for their survival indeed
Their meager paychecks insist they must do it for the love
Ten to fourteen hour shifts and then they collapse on the bed
Six days of the week it's merciless work to anybody
Sunday comes and they can take a day of rest
A certain buzz going around electrifies every last person
Timing is just right to surprise the deserving workers
Since people have prepared to throw down a hoe down!
The good old fashioned type with the elongated dresses
In classic style with seemingly everybody statewide participating
With a do-se-do and an allemande left good country spirits spin uproariously
Twisting and turning to chanted rhythms on a hard packed dirt floor
Inhibitions are nowhere to be found amongst these family friendly folk
Arm in arm with strangers they know each other wants a fair time
Soon the energy starts rocking to the extended company outside
The hootenanny has grown too big for just one barn, they are tireless
"Well Shucks." says the fat cat "I don't work them hard enough!"
Watching from afar he fumbles with his pocket watch just a little miffed
A raucous good time for a genuinely good people
The orchestrator slows it down some and pulls out his granddaddy's autoharp
Relaxing to an old fashioned twang, the couples do their thing
Getting closer to each other rocking calmly to and fro
Feeling four minutes of tenderness with filled loving concentration
Because those seconds are the fleeting ones
Then the banjos bring the pace back up to complement rowdy fiddles
Moving and twirling, elation fills the air for a chance at remembering
Why they are alive for each other, ingenious in its simplicity
While Merriness is their motto
And not even the coal mines can make them forget that
Categories:
fumbles, happiness, life, old, work,
Form:
Free verse
Continued from Part 1
The Beggars ’neath the balustrades,
and broken Children, Chambermaids,
are running wild from wraiths, afraid
of dreams where death redoubles.
They fritter time with tattered threads
(from ragged clothes they’ve left in shreds),
crocheting hoods to hide their heads
and faces, full of rubble.
But many things will not remain
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
when goblets filled with cool champagne
evaporate in bubbles.
The White-Robed Maid adorns the trash
with charnel urns awash in ash,
then fumbles with an untied sash
while pacing in the Palace.
Her hopes congeal in coffee spoons
with memories adrift in dunes;
yet, still she smiles with teeth like prunes
and lips of painted callus.
And long before the midnight drains,
the Saviour wakes, the Loser gains,
the waters of the Hurricanes
will fill her empty chalice.
The storm (behind the clarinets,
the silver flutes, the castanets,
the foghorns belching in quartets,
the bagpipes, puffed and swollen)
is keeping time to tambourines
while Tom Thumb and the Four-Inch Queen,
pick up the shards and smithereens
of moments lost or stolen.
They’re trekking through the Dim Domains
(where fountains weep, the mountain wanes),
yet can’t escape the Hurricanes
with trundling eyes patrollin’.
The Crowds (arrayed in jewels) in jails,
stoop, peering through a fence of nails
while light behind their eyeballs pales
with plastic flame that sputters.
They huddle there because they must
(with eyelids hung like peeling rust,
their tears, palled pellets in the dust),
behind the bolted shutters.
They’ll reawake without their pains
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
without their sores, without their stains,
their agonies will fill the drains
and overflow the gutters.
End
Categories:
fumbles, fantasy,
Form:
Rhyme
"ORDINARY PEOPLE"
In a world full of some billion people
Only a trigger of fear and the heart would be rendered cripple
All men alike, are prone to react with fearsome ripple
No matter the colour, our actions define us as one people.
People need to know people
Those other people need some other people
To fill their rough face skin called pimples
With a smile and a long lasting dimple.
Along the way we strife to know people
All by the way, we go wrong with people
In the same way, we ask forgiveness from people
And we start all over again for we are ordinary people.
Why do people hate their own people?
In like manner people kill people
We hear so many stories of some other people
Threatening to destroy the works of the people
With the brothers of their own very people.
far in the North, I hear the voice of my people
Crying out loud like " oh Lord please help your people"
Save us from the mayhem brought to us by our own people
Re-unite us back in Peace for we are meant to be one people.
Yes, I am dark and you are fair, I know the skin of my people
Tall as the Iroko, short as dwalves, so is the size of my people
Sweet and Soft like the hibiscus, so is the heart of my people
Oceans of wine, vegetations so green, that is the land of my people.
Arise oh Compatriot, in one voice, sing loud my people
To serve our father-land, with love, so simple my people
A beautiful nation , a rainbow coated land, a paradise , no fumbles
Together we can be better again, for we are ordinary people.
I know God alone will fight for his people
And put joy in the heart of his own people
Who follow the ways of his son's examples
And upon the heads of our enemies we will trample
To that place of rest we know in the bible.
THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE INNOCENT NORTHERN CHILD,
WE ARE ONE PEOPLE....
Categories:
fumbles, africa,
Form:
Prose Poetry
OOPS!!!!
When the man in charge stumbles and falls
Stops all the laughter and happiness stalls
He fumbles and falters as each decision he goofs’
But declare that his weakness is only an OOPS!!!
When those all around him do the same thing
He lashes with his tongue to give them a sting
No pardon or mercy for all of his or her goofs'
He gives them no right to call it an OOPS!!!
He may be important in the position he holds
His merciless styles from a heart that is cold
The shouting and screaming as on them he swoops
But he carries on with his acceptable OOPS!!!
He climbs up the ladder of life’s’ success story
And grabs to himself the fame and the glory
But time will go on till this man with his goofs’
Will no longer be able to blame it on OOPS!!!
Categories:
fumbles, anti bullying, beautiful, care,
Form:
Rhyme
His brain’s barren like
the surface
of the moon – alphabet
could never
grow there. I fill up the
money order
form at his request. Our
tongues are
diverse –doesn’t matter –
necessity fumbles
and finds its way. He’s
one of the
inter-state coolies sweating
for our state.
I decode the signals from
his mind –
he’s soft within a hard shell
like a coconut.
He stares at the strange
words falling
from my nib. He rewards
me with a
smile like a cashew nut.
His ‘thanks’
drops into my mind, and
makes a sweet
ripple. It’s an illiterate, who
truly values letters.
(Tamil Nadu and Kerala are neighboring
states with different mother tongues in India.)
Categories:
fumbles, life,
Form:
Free verse
In alternating bad attempts;
To reach a puddle of regret.
A bathing suit of scales he weighs;
His mouth a circle of dismay.
Flip flop he fumbles back and forth;
A feeble wish he will retort.
A final honourable sway;
A gulping down of water may,
Entice a drama too excite,
Enough to one more time ignite,
A jerk of flesh, elliptic course;
Too infantile to sense remorse.
To land within a puddles’ shallow;
Missed the creek, forget the paddle.
Categories:
fumbles, animals, funny, nature,
Form:
Couplet
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.
Categories:
fumbles, black african american, history,
Form:
Free verse
Blood sucking leeches
They suck until you're blue
Robbing nectar from your peaches
From the day you say I do
They believe you want to fit in
Boy are they mistaken
You would rather swallow phlegm
Than eat the family bacon
To the females, you are prey
To the men, a face to lecture
Derived from a good lay
Preceded by a nice gesture
Once referred to as an outlaw
Rather than Inlaw, you see
Blinded to the stupidity I saw
They laughed hysterically
It's just how the cookie crumbles
After my third rodeo
Every player fumbles
No matter how great the throw
Categories:
fumbles, family,
Form:
Free verse
Flipping Heck! - they're at it again!
There's a shuffling noise from the drawer
It's clear they're having a promiscuous party
And swapping their partners once more
I'd paired them up with duty and care
Matching them as they should be
But I left them alone for 10 ruddy minutes
And now they're loose and free
The reds are sleeping with the blues
The greens pair with the brown
The stripes are getting together with spots
To make me look like a clown
The cottons are getting friendly with wool
I hope they don't breed like livestock
There's enough of the blighters already, I think
Treating my drawer like Woodstock
I swear I can hear music in there
That they're dancing to every song
Can't tell if it's "The Who" or Jimi Hendrix
But that party is sure going strong
Their rumbles and fumbles are driving me mad
They really are running amok;
I can never find a matching pair -
I'm becoming a laughing stock
"What's going on?!" - I shout their way
"Go figure it out, Sherlock!"
They're laughing darkly, while going psycho
Like characters by Alfred Hitchcock
One day, I'll get the better of them
One day, I'll win the war
But I know too well, it'll never happen
They know how to even the score
So what can I do? - I could sit and stew
Or just let them get on with their lot
If I was left in a drawer all day
I would surely be losing the plot
They bring me comfort, keep my feet warm
And protect from the rub of the shoe
Though boisterous and brash some of the time
I know just what I should do
I shall leave them be, to have their fun
And play all their days away
I'll live with wearing odd socks, for I know
It's not such a high price to pay
Categories:
fumbles, clothes,
Form:
Light Verse
The first invisible hand I saw, was the hand that appeared
in the banquet hall of the Babylonian palace, inscribing
letters on the wall, with its fingertip,
the letters, written by the invisible visible hand, on the wall
may be an astonishing revelation, the inscription on the wall
is not as impressive as the visible invisible hands stretching
desperately on the canvas in ‘Guernica’.
By the time I learned of the existence of an invisible hand,
it’s an embarrassing situation but the invisible hand disappeared
from our surroundings, already; a crow flew away to the place unknown
carrying my poor soul.
Presently, however, every hand has
its own color and goes loose in the marketplace
the clean white hands called holy
dipped and pulled out from holy water;
the bluish hands dyed from bruised people treated cruelly;
the dictator’s red hands stained from the blood of innocent people;
other hands,
messy hands stained from oil spouting from the well;
the bright gold hands of the man who found a vein of gold.
Nonetheless, there still is, the invisible hand, out there,
this hand occasionally fumbles into my breast, pulls my heart out
and tattoos an unsightly tattoo which can’t be removed or cut out
and when becomes bored of tattooing my heart, the hand squeezes
into the brain, connects and disconnects the delicate linkage of my thoughts
and beclouds my judgment
it’s really annoying, but what can I do?
since it’s an invisible hand.
That’s the devil’s hand a dog plays with,
the dog tosses, chases and chews it in his mouth.
Categories:
fumbles, metaphor,
Form:
Free verse
Hooray!
Wet grassy feet fill my soccer cleats.
Hot sweaty teens run fast track meets.
She skis down sugary mountain tops.
He begs his coach to play shortstop.
Footballs, field goals, fumbles.
Touchdowns, tackles, tumbles.
My mother keeps warm with hot brown drinks,
as I learn to skate on chilly rinks.
A sadly splintered hockey stick, from a two-quick hat trick.
A winning catch is cradled in a well-loved mitt.
Tiger wins with a hole in one.
Miniature golf is much more fun.
Double dribble the whistle blows.
Excitement on the court grows!
Busy balls dunked in their hoops.
"Hooray" the three cheers for the ALLEY -OOP!
Categories:
fumbles, baseball, football, fun, softball,
Form:
Rhyme