Best Ground Floor Poems
In majestic beauty I stand alone
My lifetime mate included
Together on land we build our home
Preferably secluded
My five foot wingspan is solid white
Hunting is done in the light
Fish, rabbits, rodents and birds are nice
Lemmings are a daily delight
With yellow eyes and beard of black
I rule my frozen domain
Neither fox nor wolf would dare attack
Even eagles are aware of my fame
The ghost like snowy male owl am I
With razor sharp talons to die for
Arctic tundra is where I prowl up high
Where snow peaks are just the ground floor.
Feb 6 2016 an original poem by Daniel Turner
The wind is blowing through my mind
Not gently breezing through.
It ruffles my thoughts and jumbles them
It will take time to file them anew
I like to file my thoughts in order
Of good ones and of bad
Its keeps things on a steady level
And stops one going mad
Happy thoughts are lifted
To the very fore
Memories of when we first met
You were sitting on the floor
The party was a bit of a flop
We left together and walked
And as we got to know each other
We talked and talked and talked
The wind is blowing stronger
The bad times it reminds
We split up for a lifetime
Well it seemed so in our minds
You persevered and asked me out
I decided you were true
My memory of our wedding day
And how happy I was with you
We had a little flat and furnished it with love.
The trouble was we were ground floor
And the water came in from above.
I look back through some memories
All tumbling in the breeze
The hard times the fun and laughter
The winter of the big freeze
We booked a holiday that year
The best time we ever had
I know it scared us half to death because I was so bad.
It’s a pity I missed part of it as to hospital I went
The baby we were having, to be born he seemed hell bent.
The wind is blowing on my head, now I fight with it for real
It’s just ripped off the shed roof, it looks like it’s been peeled
I better shut my memory box and find my hammer and nails
And fight with wind that’s blowing outside and stop my reminiscent gales.
The spiral staircase made her high heels sing
as quickly she descended to ground floor.
She’d pulled it off! Her briefcase held the proof.
How proud of her would be her paramour!
How carefully they’d planned the pefect heist.
He’d groomed her well in all she had to do.
She’d faked credentials and gained trust in them.
Then precious relics she had access to.
From here, the City Churches pierced the mist
where they would meet. Her man made no mistakes.
She’d take a case identical from him,
return to the museum with the fakes!
While making the exchange, she nervously
had dropped the case of relics! He was there
to quickly stuff them back in their briefcase.
He closed it, and now smiling, crossed the square.
The fakes in hand, back to her job she ran,
clueless that her man she’d not see again!
June 6, 2018
for Viv Wigley's One Nine And Sixteen Upgrade Version Poetry Contest
The World
My work is over time to head on home
Made lots of money trading stocks on-line
I told my secretary she could leave
Askance my traders quid pro quo was fine
I entered elevator floor nine-teen
Pushed ground floor button number one then saw
Another door to lift laid opposite
Impossible, turned ready to withdraw
The Devil's Minion
Unable to escape the way I came
The capsule doors on other side agaze
Was drawn out by a large, dark silhouette
Inside a narthex three closed doors ablaze
I listened to malefic force within
Effulgent scuttles have distracted me
With ears submitting to an evil force
On knees established I forlornly see
The Choice
The devil's minion utters chilling words
“You worldly man you face deserving death”
“You will be given one last stabbing choice”
“You get to choose a door with your last breath”
If there's a god I pray you save my soul
The dark and eldritch spirit yield a laugh
He said “each door is named must pick one now”
“Not fair” I said, he showed me golden calf
Door number one depicted the word ME
Door number two was written the word YOU
Door number three aglow with the word HIM
“What in the hell am I supposed to do ?
I looked at evil spirit's saber drawn
With my last breath I ran to a new dawn
_____________________________________________________
My first poetry reading on April 15, 2011 at Café Jolesch in Zittau
This evening I read the first five of my poems before an audience in the beautiful Art
Nouveau atmosphere of Café Jolesch under the direction of Karin Kayser and Rolf Monitor in
the context of the "Open Stage" for the 3rd Lusatian Culture Night. I waited for my first
appearance with a good Czech Svijani fresh draft beer. On the small stage were already
loudspeakers, microphones and musical instruments installed. From 8 pm on the room filled
with visitors. A live band playing rock music and blues and a young woman performed a
belly dance. All the tables were now occupied, and I cleared my place for some students,
listening to the sounds from the bar and watched the dance. There was much applause and
some young people shot photos with their cell phones. Then I was announced by Rolf
Monitor, stepped to the stage and read my five poems for the first time in public. It was
quiet in the room and all listened to me and when I had finished, came rapturous applause.
Rolf Monitor asked me if I could not read more of my poems, but I was only prepared to
read five. I promised to repeat my reading with more poems next time.
Note: The Lusatian Culture Night is a yearly event in April from 7 pm till midnight with
different performances, exhibits and other events. Café Jolesch is a pub in the so called
Hiller Villa.
The villa was built at end of the 19th Century. It was for decades the home of the Jewish
Hiller family. Gustav Hiller, an inventor from Großschönau, using the proceeds from his
first patent, a machine for manufacturing curtain strings, founded Zittau's Phänomenwerke.
They were known in GDR times as VEB Robur Works Zittau, in which bicycles of the brand
Phänomen, the Phänomobile and later the Robur truck were produced. During the Nazi rule,
Mrs. Hiller, could be bought off for an annual payment of 300,000 Reichsmark from
deportation. After the war the family moved into the West Zone. Today the Villa Hiller is
home for the Multicultural Center (MUK), a nonprofit organization. In 1993, the
granddaughters of Gustav Hiller, Mrs Anne Frommann and Mrs Claudia Siede-Hiller, now
living in Israel, donated the villa to the MUK. The ground floor houses the Café Jolesch.
There was a castle on a hill
It only took hours to build
Buckets and buckets of sand
Two pairs of children's hands
A vacant high spot on the beach
Just out of the low tides reach
Two kids, plastic shovels and pails
Construct a castle minus hammers and nails
The ground floor must be the driest
As water seeps down from the highest
A little shovelful here and there
Customized architectural repairs
A spectacular four story sight
The envy of Frank Lloyd Wright
Onlookers and passers by
Give congratulatory high fives
There's not much time to gloat
Changing tide is filling the moat
Once the water spills over the side
The sand will swim out with the tide
an original poem by Daniel Turner
A young girl got the first nursing job in a private hospital
And was assigned to check the ground floor patients.
Room 1, 2, 3, as she got to room 4 the door was opened
Inside the room a man was lying covered with a blanket.
But in the patient list the room supposed to be empty.
She ran to the preceptor to report it in a frenzy state.
The head nurse and others visited the room, found none.
She said that last week a patient committed suicide in the room.
The security was called and then the room was closed.
But a word went round about its suicidal aspect.
The next day, out of curiosity, as she entered the room
Was caught by a strong man and forced to sleep with him.
As the time passed it became her regular daily routine.
To her surprise, once she saw her boss coming out of the room.
Slowly there was a decrease in the patients of the hospital.
Another surprise was waiting as she found dead in the room.
The whole corner was declared as a haunting place.
A day was not far when the whole hospital was closed.
A ghost is a person whose life ended abruptly and violently
Known as a haunting as they are haunted by a life gone.
Haunting from thoughts and presence becoming testimony.
If one thinks sensibly about it, the ghosts are just you and I.
All talk about love, ghost and God, but does anyone see them?
+++++
Date: 27-11-13
Dr. Ram Mehta
Fifth Place win
Contest: Poems from Vampire by Just That Archaic Poet
Dodo the dead had halcyon days on her native shore
Like halcyon birds she was happy in heaven’s ground floor
Hounds and crews did her confuse
Struck the land with evil cues
Filled the air with wings of greed, naive Dodo was no more
black knights resentment
carnage on checkered pavement
stale mate’s contentment
RECIPE: "Poulet Roti" French Style - Le Chant Royal (Instalment 5)
(Note: Rhyme scheme of “Le Chant Royal” where capital “E“stands for refrain, thus – Stanza: ababccddedE, Envoi: ddedE)
STANZA IV
One thing's to find fourteen-storey toilet waste
Stealthily creep up your ground-floor shower drain
Another's to watch the migrant surgeon paste
Some part of your body he cuts up - in vain
Yet another: watch nurses scowl in pleasure
As they stuff some part of you with germs for sure
Unaware that some medicine or remedy
Can do you more harm than climate tragedy
Know not which doctor keeps Hippocrate sermon
Nor which in patriot secret society
The State always fears for its reputation
ENVOI
No place in such a State for chicken curry
The secret service thrives on Poulet roti
If wisdom tooth hurts guess who drills canine down
If glasses need changing better change body
The State always fears for its reputation
© T. Wignesan - Paris, 2017
The city doesn’t need any elevators
Or escalators or anything to push people up
There are no clouds in this brightened city
no bourgeoisie emancipation, no atypical beauty
silicon bosoms out on the overstretched skies
mechanical tirades of the undiluted selves
the cubicles at Grande elevators are full of
lowered shallow spaces of begotten lies
should the company now start manufacturing soaps?
or narcissistic pleasures of the condescending physical realm
and illegal sex tapes with real orgasms?
But would any of these have any upsurge
On the emotionless lonely workers
who have thrown people up all this while
keeping a low profile in this profane job
the crowded elevators do not inspire any orgy
or clichéd electricity failure induced seductions
there are just too many of them (not the orgies!!)
the office of Grande, meaning big and great and great as desolate
is densely illuminated with the low intensity money saver bulbs
waiting to die their organic death as they are un-switchable
the products, by the way, are now “auto maintained”
the elevator which doesn't work well
changes itself
the one which is an escapist shoots itself up,
beyond the last floor, turning into precarious ash
the loneliness in the office, which is on the ground floor
is only equal to a fugitive bird
without a pinch of shelter in this extended, tall,
gyrating and syrupy city
Friday Night Check-ins
The days have been calm and collected.
The guests have been happy, content.
The weekday staff scurry out from the hotel
To avoid the upcoming event.
Weekend receptionists tremble
As the Friday night check-ins approach,
Fearing the tsunami of wrinklies
On their three-day excursions-by-coach.
The first vehicle’s brakes squeal their warning
As its door opens up with a sigh.
The girl at the desk and her male teammate
Watch the porchway with dread in their eyes.
The first wrinkly disembarks backwards,
Reaching up to be handed her Zimmer.
The scowl on her face giving more than a hint
Of the litany of protests within her.
Slowly the vehicle disgorges
Its fifty malcontent arrivals.
The front desk staff offer a brief heartfelt prayer
For their sanity, composure, survival.
Like an unerring wave of displeasure
The wrinklies shuffle in through the door,
Shoving aside anyone heading out –
They’ve made this manoeuvre before.
The party’s predominantly female,
Determined and far from benign.
Apart from one chap, in windcheater and cap
Looking hen-pecked and toeing the line.
They descend on reception like locusts,
Complaining, demanding and cackling.
The staff at the desk have nowhere to hide
From the surge of objections they’re tackling.
Ground floor room! No steps! Wheelchair access!
Why no lift? Single occupant! Porter!
The tottery old girl with the big Zimmer frame
Demands a young man to escort her.
The onslaught is tough and relentless
As the wrinklies press home their attack.
Then, deftly dealt-with, the tidal wave thins
As they head to their rooms to unpack.
Pleased with the way things were handled,
The reception-staff think they’ve survived.
But outside the lobby, brakes hissing with glee,
Another full coach has arrived…
IF ever I had a country : LVIII - LIX
LVIII
IF ever I had a fantasy country
And if ever I were left to choose a country existing in reality
I'd certainly opt for a country not run by one who studied philosophy
For the simple reason you can blame any other kind of dope for sheer hypocrisy
For not having studied philosophy and pretending to be very democracy savvy
Especially when the victims* of the country's secret services can hit back at the ruling party
That is, if ever I were left to choose a non-hypocritical country existing in reality
And even if I never ever had no country (not) up to my fancy
Note : * It's a published fact that a French writer and literary anchor on French TV (whom I once met, in 1974, selling his self-published book in the streets of the Latin Quarter) never slept in the same bed for fourteen months for the late President François Mitterrand had ordered the secret services to snuff this son of an Admiral out. His " crime d'Etat " happened to be a manuscript he authored on the President's daughter whose mother was his mistress while in office. The " crime " however was expunged when the author in the presence of TV cameras burnt the manuscript at the portals of the Elysée Presidential Palace.
LIX
IF ever I had a phantasmagorical country
And if ever I were left to choose a country existing in reality
I'd certainly not opt for a country where the S.S. and the Police drug gang-rape and press-gang the mother of your infant son with impugnity
Nor opt for a so-called champion human rights country which hinders your every step and plunges you into solipsistic ignominy
Keeps you embroiled in litigation instituted managed and obstructed by near-sighted authority
While it siphons and floods your tiny ground-floor apartment with the precious toilet refuse of fourteen storeys of family
That is, if ever I were left to choose a country existing in reality
And even if I never ever had no country to fancy
© T. Wignesan - Paris, August 17, 2018
I still remember that old barn so red; a center point of my youth;
Pickle barrels in the cellar; cows on the ground floor and hay stored in the loft.
I rode the John Deere a thousand times in and out of her wide, always opened doors;
Plowing fields near and far, but with her redness never out of my distant sight.
She housed the cows we milked and the tools we used throughout the long, hard day;
And, she was our playground on those summer days when chores were done by noon.
I remember her beautiful, natural smell that our city cousins abhorred;
And, I knew every nook and cranny that I could hide in to get away from their whines.
We would swing on the rope out of the loft, landing on piles of freshly cut hay;
And, just lay quietly in the night with a cool summer breeze passing through her doors.
It was in this red haven that I birthed my first calf and learned how to set a broken leg;
And, it was high in the loft with my high school sweetheart that I first became a man.
The farm that housed that wondrous red barn is now a mall parking lot;
But, the memories of lessons learned within are forever blazoned upon my mind.
Senryu 4
Is graffiti
A plague in our cities
Or beautiful art?
Life in big cities
Is lived on street levels
Not in skyscrapers
Was Jesus Jewish?
Has he got a birth certificate
To substantiate it?
Most drinking holes
Are on the ground floor
Isn't that a blessing