Best Gutter Poems
They elude me now ...words
Drinking befits a drowning man possessed
Swimming off this broken page
Baton winning in a relay race
I breached the ribbon sliced with chest
Joy! I gasped
Grown tired of my own riddles
Those halting jagged lines
Conversely I committed
So disrespectful of my crimes
In dispatchment utter lunacy
Forgiveness once again!
Ive come to claim my lost respect
My place so quick forgotten was
So Zeroed out of ten
Twelve steps from cursed enslavement
Danced to music uncontained
Toi-toi in lone detachment
Side stepping their allure
And tangoed with enticement
And cha-cha'd with no cure
Then dropping over hurdles
Burning through those barricades
All over all these obstacles
So help me God I try to change
No longer need prescription
Still sometimes do I crave
Unshackled is your prisoner
Dispossession freed this slave
There is something about that -ism
A mystery by name
Other than recovery
Benign this deathly game
Be it known that happy healing
Doubles, behind the curtains of shame
Pinchas lives in the museum
Where I volunteer.
His hologram is what I mean
That helps him to appear.
A Holocaust survivor
Born in 1932,
His family shared the fate expected
By each Polish Jew.
But Pinchas lived and always will;
Technology ensures it
And interactive software
By a research team secures it.
Nine hundred questions he was asked,
With cameras recording,
Resulting in a project
Both amazing and rewarding.
For visitors can thus “converse”
And Pinchas tells his story,
Reality more powerful
Than myth or allegory.
Pinchas is a teaching tool
But feels more like a friend
And by his presence we can learn
That hope may yet transcend.
Born in palace of the best
you can still see the skin
smooth and shining show
the teeth bright and white
But something happened
palace was burnt to ashes
smoke still smells in the air
cloth he wears bears marks
The traces of the tragedy
came as a thief in the night
dwellers were unaware
of return journey in offing
Born in gutters rejoice not
when silvery your life shouts
without care back you can go
no one is immune from fate
The neighborhood has been going, to every variety of dogs.
But I simply can’t believe it… We now have Gutter Frogs!
They climb upon my windowsills, and also among the trees.
They climb up my patio screen, is there nothing, they don’t see!
Nightly nestling in my window gutter, where they have safely gone.
My hubby says that he can’t sleep, with so much racket going on!
Shiny, and oh so sleek, unlike any other toad, are these little blokes.
Perhaps I have been hasty. Their voices are only a cricket, not a croak.
Unlike my Hubby’s snores, they are way more soothing, yes, by far!
Perhaps there is no reason, for us, that we must now, declare a war.
But no! I must revise, as the gutters surely do need, to be cleaned.
So up the ladder Hubby did climb, as he now, had a full head of steam.
But, yes, life is never simple, and that seems to be… our very own lot.
They had watched our environmentalist son, as he studies and he plots.
‘Save the Gutter frogs!’ Became their banner song, which truly did evolve!
Alas! What’s worse! They are asking, an environmental study, to be done!
They quoted conservationists, and several even chained themselves to our home.
I’ve heard of save the Whales and trees, but now will it be… the gutter frogs?
This is their habitat! What will be next… a nest of new age lawyer gutter frogs?
Evolution has come quite far, as they mentioned a protest, to visit city hall!
We finally did concede! We could share this house and land, which we do own.
As Hubby descended the ladder… Yes! He was covered in jubilant gutter frogs.
Then to make things right, we made for each, an adorable wattle and stick home.
Attaching them along the top, of the gutters, that they could now, play upon.
The gutter frogs agreed to keep the gutters clean, in return, we will let them be.
The moral is: No matter who is right! We can live together, if we only try, you see!
Written by CSEastman 12-18-2013
In Contest for Honerable Mention
"Gutter Hearts"
He’s got a gutter Heart
bleeds words that birth
diamonds sharp on his tongue
They hit her like
bullets from an Uzi gun
Silent, her heart implodes like molten marshmallow
She’s standing in the cafeteria
moving grease with a smile
that cuts his goat’s cheese like sharp steele
He licks his fingers
his tongue stings, he's still burning in Chile
while his mind calculates her
Unknown to him
She moves white white to black calculated,
his cufflinks are mounted with Pearls
She spells him
a long sentence
dripping from her eyes onto
an empty plate of dreams
He writes what comes to his mind
on a paper napkin, a story
smudged with tears and cigarette ash
the words slip out slippery
antiquated, smashed.
“What would you like?”
she takes his order
“A Normal Girl,"
he passed his payment in cash
She smiles
and thinks, he’s the No Go Zone
He’s living in another world.
(LadyLabyrinth/2019)
Welcome to Gutter Ball Saloon
Where careful words waft through the tavern;
Serpentine swirls with evil intentions.
Watch your step and pocketbook.
Observe the chap in the derby hat.
No, the other one.
No, the other one…with the honeycomb vest.
That singular sap is one of kind.
Or one of ten; a soldier-still pin at full attention
Standing in formation on the glossy maple
Eager to be wrecked, toppled head-over-heels.
Spare.
He’s been gassed, you see.
Some fancy bouquet of honey perfume
Mingled with cheap cigars and one too many.
He’s feeling lucky and takes a gamble.
Throws in his hand and a couple of dice for good measure.
Snake eyes!
Just look at that dame.
Her dark velvet accentuated physique
Candy apple lips that drip pearls
A string of words she drapes about his neck
Intoxicatingly beautiful.
The phrasing…and she’s a bit of a looker too.
A real up-and-comer with a knack for bowling.
Spare.
A quick spritz and yank of the string.
I dare you to look away.
He’s choking…but of course he is.
He never had a chance in that bowler hat.
Just look at those red cheeks.
Flush.
She’s got him by the balls.
Snake eyes.
Now if you’ll look closely…
I’ve got your wallet.
Strike!
4/26/15
The best waakye in the community is sold by the gutter,
Gutter choked with rubbish and litter,
Litter that stops the flow of water,
Water, contaminated as it is, the breeding grounds for mosquitoes,
Mosquitoes that cause malaria,
They hover around the food that we love,
And so we eat,
Eat to our hearts’ content,
And we enjoy every single bit of it,
And we fall sick; we get treated for cholera or diarrhoea,
And we still run back to the gutter-side,
We run back for more, more of our destruction,
Because that is the home of our favorite food, the gutter-side.
… scattered jazz,
haunted gnarls of
octupi-night staggering
between semen-splinters of stars
pain-fornicating in
my collective gutter, my disheveled
cells oozing your
black and
softer gold
burning silence
in a heathen writhe between my ears
dancing on the cusp: my dead-zone ecstasy
defiling
corrupting and
seduction-raping the
industry of numbness,
toilet-scream from
between legs: slave of avoidance
whore of denial
death in a vacuum
naught ever happening
until it’s time to drain
blood from the radiator
in the cross-hairs of crucifiction,
copulation of seven-inched nails
click of steel, snap of heels,
tails,
tongues flickering to embrace
the gutters of my cells
reaching for unopened chapters
strewn through sanctified pain,
and I waiting
for your drive through
the brothel of my mind,
forsaken
lashed to the altar,
my anguish screeching
our prayers,
your black, softer
gold annihilated to smoke
ravishing the reek spiraling up
from my nostrils,
your unspeaking
crawl through catacombs
whispering mouldering truths
under my fingernails scraping remembrances
from your hair
caressing cathredrals rent into
matchsticks to prop heaven
apart,
shriven thighs
toxic-anointed sighs,
poison of my ache for
the healing venom
of your eyes,
soothing darts of darkness bathing dead-zone paramids
with the musky
perfume of sorrow and
floundering celebration
dug from primordial pits
by scrabbling fingertips
clutching for a remnant of your heart
wrapped in wonder
around my pulse staggering, ragged edge of jazz
scraping across windowpanes
in a shriek freezing the soul of god
and dried ice
begging to plunge into embers of your blood
lost in my veins
running from room to room
in my house, our house,
teddy bear, knothole yawns and
oven with gaping jaws,
medicine cabinet of numbness,
sobbing pills
ceiling lowered to a stoop,
tatters
patterns
snow-crystals following a trail
through our window into traffic jams of children
cascading out of the chapel – my gutter-cell
longing to be unlocked
by the sound of your voice…
… ressurection in the
octupi-night…
My life that never goes to sleep
And kills me everyday
My life that always pulls me in too deep
And leaves me with this price to pay
My life that always falls into pieces
And suffocates my happiness everyday
My life and my heart that continuelly creases
And my depression that never goes away
My life that always twists and turns
And confuses me so
My life that always burns
And doesn't know where to go
They were swilling blood from the road
into the gutter,
policemen with buckets
of cold water.
And all I could think of was you
and how you had left me.
It was not your blood but someone else's
that the curious had crowded to see.
You were walking, talking, laughing
elsewhere in this city
and I know I might see you someday,
which would be a pity.
I found myself wishing and hoping
this blood had been part of you.
Your going would shock me, of course,
but such shock would soon pass through.
They were swilling blood from the road
into the gutter
and had it been your blood and you dead
such thoughts would not matter.
(25 April 2023)
(written 1970s, then lost, then recalled and reconstructed)
It is two o’clock and the sun is shining.
Its rays are shimmering on the ground.
The rain had come with perfect timing.
School is out, and boys fooling around.
The rays are reflected from high above
and the rain has fallen at the usual time.
Why does it happen always at lunch?
And yet again for afternoon tea?
Those were the days on the high veldt
when summer days were predictable.
School is out and shoes are off
some are paddling in the gutter.
The water is warm, but not from the sky.
Warmed by the road that was steaming hot,
after a brief shower it then becomes dry.
The warm water flows only one way,
until it finds the grate of the drain.
With a gurgle, a swish and a sway,
it will be in darkness until it emerges again.
Now as a stream it will see the sun.
It’s hard to imagine that some of the drops
will find their way to the mighty ocean
and start all over again.
You say you are braver, superior, smarter,
Your pride, ever swollen, has poisoned the air.
In fact, you are already deep in the gutter,
You've merged with the shades of the earthly despair.
Your crave for respect, much more cash, a career,
But luck's velvet fingers won't grant you a touch,
Your purpose is being in front of the rear,
You cannot believe that it costs one too much.
The same elevator, the buttons in rows
From Monday till Friday. The same boring week.
You press button ten: you are taken below -
Regarding your dwelling, emotion-sick.
You crave for respect and life-long recognition,
But rich-colored life is behind your bent back,
You don't realize it's a bitter position,
You've never considered the change of this track.
You say you are braver, superior, smarter,
But you are deprived of the pleasure of thought.
In fact, you are already deep in the gutter,
The look of a shadow is all that you've got.
Blank;
I spent my days talking a lot;
I tell a lot of things about myself,
I tell a lot of things about my dad, my mom, my brother, my sister;
At the end of it all, I ask myself why.
Some days I can feel myself bearing down upon her;
She too deserves an attending ear;
Who listens without pardon;
Who asks about her;
What she has been through;
What she is going through;
How she spends her days;
That much I know;
Some days I try;
Some days well, I let myself be.
I know there is a truth I am running away from;
A truth I have to face every time I shut my mouth;
I trying to make myself matter in the wrong way;
He is no longer here;
Him who accepted my counterfeit gold,
And treated it like real gold.
Everything feels blank and stale;
I somehow disappear;
I feel like there is no longer a me,
But I can't go back to that gutter;
I have shunned it long ago.
There is a lot I don't know;
A lot I don't understand;
Things I wish I had answers to;
I keep meeting these interesting people;
But I can't commune my thoughts;
I am at this beautiful place;
I know I could have enjoyed it more;
If he had decided to stay by my side a little more;
It's forever raining nowadays, but because there is no you I don't enjoy it as much
We never thought we'd sleep in a gutter.
But, your words were sweet and smooth as butter.
"Just another shot," you whispered in my ear.
Your eyes gave me shivers as you sipped a beer.
"One," said the barkeep as he slid over the glass.
A flame slid down my throat as the liquid passed.
We stumbled down the stairs at the front of the bar.
"If we keep it going like this we won't get far."
He laughed and I grinned at the wrinkles around his eyes.
He slid behind me and his hands grazed my things.
Down the road with no sidewalk,
Stumbling through our entire walk.
My feet failed in a second I was on all fours.
We rolled down the slope my hand still in yours.
You were on top of me, hands by my face.
This maybe the wrong time but, there is no special place.
Lips met, fingers twined,
Two bodies of new treasure to find.
Wet grass pressed in my back.
Rolling around till muscles went slack.
You rolled off panting into the night.
I looked into your eyes and saw them bright.
Consciousness left us both.
I'll learn your name in the morning was my oath.
Sunlight pries open my eyes.
The light of day lifts my guise.
I felt warm arms around my shoulder.
I'd just made a mistake of someone ten years older.
Sliding from between your arms,
You'd lost your looks and lost your charms.
Your eyelids flutter and I guess it's time to run.
I turned and sped towards the morning sun.
let the talents go
gutter's the best place to keep
if that's not for good