Best Gashed Poems
The ancient anguish of a hurting heart
Bequeaths no beauteous scene to me today.
It’s just a jagged chasm gashed apart,
A stream with boulders strewn in disarray.
Like rusted leaves that bleakly canvas fall
Or barren trees that bear the winter snow,
Its listlessness conceals a stonework wall
That bars the beggar from his bungalow.
A long-abandoned barn where pigeons flock
Beside three worn-out crosses marking graves,
It’s lonely as a lighthouse on a rock
Forever battered by the crashing waves.
Their ceaseless song may soothe a sleepless soul,
But how, I sigh, can sad be beautiful?
---
Date Written: January 3, 2019
Contest: Beautiful Sadness, sponsored by John Hamilton
What, then, is Love but a sword of roses
Which cleaves poor waiting hearts
And thusly drunk with the blood of saints
Exults in its own dissipation?
And mine, a soul it so jagged gashed,
A scarred and wilted husk
Which once had songs to Heaven sung
Yet now but gasps with the fetid breath of dying things...
Oh soft Night's tapestry:meadows, fields,
The courtyards of the Moon!
Now but brittle corpses endraped in silken mask,
Their board and banquet but sullen Death
Mocking of Light, fair Hope, and fond Embrace...
In the deepest, darkest, dankest depths,
the creatures plan and hedge their bets,
they ponder just how bad we'll get,
and smoke their foreign cigarettes.
Concentrating on the Middle East,
they've hatched and raised a hateful beast,
and guaranteed they'll be no peace,
so war and suffering will not cease.
In Africa their foothold's firm,
so many die from spreading germs,
they love to watch the infants squirm,
their bloated flesh the food for worms.
Their goal is to destroy mankind,
plant seeds of hatred in our minds,
their pact with Satan's sealed and signed,
in blood upon the dotted line.
The rain forest is their target, too,
cage all the creatures in a zoo,
cut down the trees and plant no new,
and watch the greenhouse gasses spew.
Make sure the seas are full of trash,
and oil spills as hulls are gashed,
they want to see our hopes be dashed,
the dice are thrown, the die is cast.
They sit and chew on monkey bones,
and laugh as storms destroy our homes,
in league with trolls and hunchbacked gnomes,
they breed in secret catacombs.
The darkness glides on silent wings,
and is repelled by just one thing:
the song of prayer our hearts sing,
with love we can defeat this thing.
Big fight
Last night
Clyde's Bar
Bizzare
Tough guys
Streetwise
Much brew
Fists flew
Thrown chairs
Pulled hairs
Black eyes
Loud cries
One bloke
Nose broke
Heads bashed
Teeth trashed
Knives slashed
Pecs gashed
Cops came
To tame
Powwow
Peace now
All's well
That's swell
Great fight
Last night
We dragged the slopes to our feet.
On the summit, we burnt our clothes
for wood and there shuffled our feet
in the hush of the falling snow.
We had come out of the scuffed grass.
With one look back in unbelief
exhuming the long trek
the silent keen
puffing through blubbery fingers.
We pulled the hoofed trail through
the trapdoor of our unchained links
foisting for new heights.
Beyond the Appalachian Mountains
the hanging fern on pine dripped snow
on moles burrowing in gashed hollows.
We paused. In that doubtful moment
we rued the climb, succumbing to the assault
upon this stilled millennia’s eerie silence.
All that time the swivelling blizzards raged
shifting soil, eroding avalanches.
Below, burgeoning customs
unmaned the silent dignity of bisons.
All bore testimony to a familiar preparation.
And then, suddenly before our eyes
the solemn ground rose with the breeze
the spangled map changing to the quick:
Chicago Pittsburgh Kansas City
wild barnyards dry-coughing, pop-corning garages
horrent timber ribbed the coasting steamboats
the linoleum walls
the mild Indian piqued he was
by the mahogany cubism of our speech.
We wondered if coming so far
only mattered, we would be content
to build a fire, here and now
and unpack our horses.
We saw little need to go on.
One night the summit might open
up and swallow us all or old age
would come upon us like a lonely neighbour
on a pretext to the door.
© T.Wignesan 1964
London, U.K.
[from the collection: tell them i’m gone, 1983; published in Fire Readings (A Collection of Contemporary Writing from the Shakespeare & Company Fire Benefit Readings). Paris-Boston: Frank Books, 1991, pp. 36-37.]
More things can happen or could have happened,
From a cold metal,
Sharpened in fine fettle,
Making skin nettled,
Damaging the mettles,
To keep minds unsettled,
Provoking to ask, if this is or if this was real or mental?
Blade on arms,
Skin might be harmed;
Skin was gashed,
Blade grinding and gnashed,
Red colors coming in a flash...
Blade on gut,
Feeling a sudden jut,
Provoked as a rut,
But, this was a guff...
Blade on neck,
Thinking about a sudden sweep,
Discord trying to overcome conviction and peace,
Even though, the blade failed again,
Failing to provoke the red gushes and streams...
Blade on heart,
Might be the last battle so far,
Trying to not give in, being so hard,
Though in the past, there could have been to many cuts,
And more deadly slashes,
Creating red splashes and plashes,
As I slowly might have fought, winning or losing,
Against the sleeping and life flashing feeling,
As I bleeded out..
The mist was thick, the hour was late,
I halted at the rusty gate;
I’d heard the stories of that place,
And thought about a crime so base:
A girl was murdered, years ago.
Her ghost remains in situ, though;
She can not leave the place she died,
They say - or had those people lied?
I stepped onto the hallowed ground,
And heard a noise and spun around.
A mouse…a rat…a cat…I hoped.
I couldn’t see a thing, and groped
The headstones, as I staggered through -
Completely lost, what could I do?
My nervous heart was beating hard;
Alone, I crept in that graveyard.
Surrounded by the fog and gloom,
I tripped and fell across a tomb,
And hands were at my throat, I swear -
Although I felt no body there.
The girl was strangled, beaten, slashed;
I knew the way her throat was gashed.
Her killer jailed, she can’t forget
About her murder. Such regret!
A pretty teen who’d known such Hell,
And through her thoughts, I’d die as well.
My larynx crushed, I prayed for peace,
And for that sorry soul’s release.
As blows began to rain on me,
I knew I had to set her free -
Before I also died the way
That she had done upon that day.
I struggled, but alas too late,
And wished I’d stayed outside that gate.
I felt the jagged glass attack,
And sensed there was no turning back.
The moon appeared, the fog had cleared;
I trembled as the spectre neared.
The murder victim shook her head.
“It’s time I left,” she smiled and said.
The birds were singing as she rose.
She’s found repose.
for Knight's story contest
I’m sorry.
I watched you box up the conversational life
And kick it across the sod.
I watched you weep at the rain that softened everything.
Things are not the same;
They are not as they seem.
We wind up the dream
And then we wait for the grass to turn green;
For the explosion;
Something more than just anything.
My head was full like a watering can;
I hit the ground at your feet.
You just dragged along with your high hopes,
Your apron full of the glass walls that you broke.
Picking up the shards on your bare hands and knees,
Wondering if anyone could ever really see.
You are bent and I am gashed beyond words;
My hands just tremble when I watch you yearn.
If I were some tall thing, then you might believe,
That in another life, it’d always be me.
Long ago,
when we were all
primordial slime
creeping about
in the grime,
awaiting our
time,
we decided:
poetry must rhyme
wars passed,
throats slashed
swords clashed
faces gashed
and smashed
before children aghast
in retaliation
against rhymeless trash.
the rhyme preserves a tone
and stiffens a certain bone
in the body of each dusty crone
seated on a stump alone
gurgling a pome.
Now, they try to say
that there is a way
to wax wordplay
void of rhyme, but hey
there're still some rules by which you must play,
a meaning you must convey.
That withered pretense frays
more and more each day.
Sitting in the audience
behind my eyes
content with my popcorn
i watch myself and
my all fellow actors
perform our epic drama
I’m not sure what to call it
tragicomedy perhaps
here on the world stage
Our script is sparkling
trenchant and deep
the characters so real,
and we have the most convincing
props and scenery -
mountains of joy
rivers of seduction
flamingos of silly hopes
kangaroos of impulse
heroes of grim determination
clouds of possibility
chasms of loss
I am especially charmed
that not only all the other people
but all the things - cars,
houses, trees, baseballs,
thunderclouds, etc. -
everything in fact -
is every bit as alive
as I am myself
with my bit part
no longer the tragic heroine
in her gashed black silk
just the cat
purring
in a puddle of sunlight
Morning is pale now, late to the starting
Softly in brisk air a year is departing,
Trees burn with colors, leaves fall and flutter
Hiding the lawn fringe by roadside and gutter.
Sharp scornful squawkers, cranes vee over farms,
Cornstork-gashed fields, with tall silos and barns,
Far edged with the flourish of deep red and gold
Which will carpet the banks as days become cold.
Smoke from the bonfires by garden sheds swirling
Drifts up through the clear air where clouds are curling.
Driven by north winds hastening along
The season has turned; winter coming on.
Crisp apples await for a Thanksgiving pie,
Dig out the sweater, a book and the “chai”.
My man from youth grew
Your life was full of superiority;
You dazzled and demarcated,
Who does not belong must be sacrifice,
And laughter were the mystery of your horror tales,
To all animals not wild should cut their tails,
Freudian legacy that governed the tribe of the bookish
And trickles down to wild youths,
The Mafioso cum in our midst
As he found landlocked in:
This is a, that is b and those c, d, and e,
Alphabetically symbolize the allies
Who seemed not to care;
We washed different hoe-hands
Together into the same potluck,
But I decided to follow the king;
It is an experience, whatsoever or whatever,
Expressed what I looked for,
And clapped a song: immortal invincible God only wise,
In the conclusion of the matter
All that needed done was half done,
And tomorrow packed belongs and begone,
Gone on mission and came back with some spoilt,
The pathetic sweet–hearts you hate to remember
The one there and here and lived with in ransom,
And terribly pity, the one discarded, multi-distressing,
With all diseases in her mouth and in belly,
The executioners used darkness to mask
And covered up in shielded shadows,
With weapons drawn and the meat
Surefooted walked into the trap,
The in humans unleashed the superiority tussles:
A dagger slit esophagus,
Knife carved out eyelids
Axes butchered wrists,
Cutlasses designed gothic gashed all over;
Sliding and growling the pain shoot in his vein,
And tore through him the devastated dream,
Soon it was time to go as he lay
And the juice poured out of the vessel in torrents,
To perish, eyes and mouth agape, surprised;
To the moon looking down terrifying,
O! God we lack and want,
O! God provide us our daily bread,
O! God we are crying for injustice,
Mother cried of crushing, crashing heartbreak for
The lamentation of her killed beloved: 'Jealousy inflamed brawled'
Poor mama, she has not been there
Even when she went there,
In agony, sorrow and deep mourning, merely comforted;
But, Eman story had been contorted.
The cabin door was slamming against the raging wind,
The cabin door was slamming
Banging, it was loud,
She fumbled in the darkness the fire had burned out.
Her faithful dog pricked his ears, continued with his bark,
She reached for the flash light she found it in the dark.
She went out in the dead of night, wearing just her gown,
Lighting,
Thunder,
The rain was pelting down.
Her flash light it was failing, the battery was low,
She did not see it coming, delivering the blow.
The cabin door was slamming against the raging wind
She lay there in the darkness, her forehead gashed, it bled,
The dog continued barking licking her wounded head.
She did not move a muscle, nor blink, as rain it fell,
The dog was smart to hurry, the neighbour to go tell.
Together back they hurried, He picked off her off the ground,
Her white gown now was sodden, it had turned slightly brown.
The cabin door was slamming against the raging wind
She stirred with rapid fervor a sweat had formed on her brow,
She felt his arms around her, He parted her matted hair,
She was content and happy that he was really there.
She felt him kiss her gently stirring her from sleep,
Her bed was warm and cozy, her gown a brilliant white,
The fire now was burning, radiant and bright,
Her faithful friend was quiet, as always by her side.
She was relieved she was breathing and had not really died.
She looked around the cabin,
She saw him sitting there,
She fondled him with a stare.
Before her heart could leap,
Slumber took her in his arms caressing her to her sleep.
The cabin door no longer slammed against the raging wind.
Brave Men Wade Into Shadows On Death's Ground
Power of one secret word can shatter all,
send men into war and deadly harms way.
Dead and dying on battlefields they fall
for dead glory and pittance of pay.
Brave men wade shadows on death's ground
duty bound, praying for divine reprieves.
Bloodshed reigns, ghastly deaths are found
Dark Lord lies, that eternally deceives!
Curse not legions of those fallen brave,
honor rests in dying for a true cause.
Heroes die in pain, as madmen simply rave
wasted lives best give deeper pause!
Blood gushes from spears with iron tips
lives depart in battles forgotten.
Charon sings out about his many trips
ferrying bodies gashed, dead and rotten!
Honor embraced those that fought dying well,
others lay in dark forgotten graves.
Charon took their lost souls deep into Hell
where misery lives, nothing ever saves.
No record exists of battlefield dying words
testaments of mouths gurgling red blood.
Rotting flesh, meals for hell's carrion birds
maggots feasting upon blood soaked mud!
Fear one secret word that can shatter all
duty, honor fail when wrapped in lies.
True warriors live to answer a just call
seeking life later in Vahalla's skies.
Serving truth in defending freedom's fate
they may find death to not be so hard.
Each knows with death they do have a date
a joker resting on at least one card!
Power of one secret word can shatter all,
send men into war and deadly harms way.
Dead and dying on battlefields they fall
for dead glory and pittance of pay.
Brave men wade shadows on death's ground
duty bound, praying for divine reprieves.
Bloodshed reigns, ghastly deaths are found
Dark Lord lies, that eternally deceives!
Robert J. Lindley, 02-10-2015
Note--Bringing this from my private writes in my journal.
Here are four survivors of a rocket that had crashed.
For a great distance, they had walked through rain that had splashed
so long, and so hard, that everything was turning white.
The downpour continued steadily through day and night.
“Does it ever stop raining on Venus?” one could ask.
A journey through the planet’s ceaseless rain is a task.
It requires the strongest earthmen to endure the rain;
a challenging test to withstand frustration and pain.
Venusian jungles are thick with vegetation.
Survival is usually of short duration.
The torrential downpour cuts through the trees and the land.
It is steady and so strong. A man can hardly stand.
It’s continual pelting of raindrops on his head.
It does not take long before most men wish they were dead.
On this planet, there is one thing that they would call home.
It is a round, yellow building known as a “sun dome”.
Inside, there’s a man-made plasma giving light and heat;
where it is dry and comfortable, with food to eat.
Thirty days and nights had passed since their space ship was downed.
They blindly tread through the rain until a dome was found.
However, inside, it was dark and cold with no sound.
Gashed holes in the ceiling proved there was no one around
Venusians attacked here and killed everybody.
These creatures were infamous for their savagery.
On the map, another dome was shown to be nearby.
Only a few kilometers away, it would lie.
They would leave in search of the next dome they hoped was near.
Their compass readings were off; their position not clear.
Suddenly, their ship with two dead crewmen would appear.
They had traveled in a circle, causing them great fear.
A dark, ominous, electrical cloud they would see,
spewing thousands of lightning bolts, a monstrosity.
This caused their compasses to show inaccuracy.
The group’s leader yelled “Everybody get down right now”,
but one man stayed up and tried to run away somehow.
He was struck by the lightning, and was burned quite badly.
Remains of this man were charred beyond identity.
The raging storm cost the crew another casualty.
The three remaining men continued on their journey,
blindly hoping a sun dome was in propinquity.
Based on the short story "The Long Rain" by Ray Bradbury