Best Habitually Poems
Oh imperceptible storm looming mighty as we walk,
secure is its claim as volatile manipulator.
The sun hides behind the insensitive violation,
the rugged moor top grows shapeless within the greyish shroud.
The day gives way to manifestation, illusions cast
as folk stagger habitually along life’s broadway.
My mother clasps a tiny hand, just happens to be mine,
the sun fights back peeps through the cloud, a shaft of light appears.
“One day you and I” she says “Will travel upon that light,
sent down every day for us, this the stairway to heaven.”
So many questions come to mind after these pensive years,
the day I buried my mother, a shaft of light appears!
© Harry J Horsman 2013
amid scurrying feet,
in the whirling humanity,
with divided aims,
and sizzling brains,
she paused with singularity of purpose.
never in a hurry, more at peace,
on a park bench, alone,
bent and weird, she sat.
when she moved,
her bones creaked,
on rusty hinges!
ragged in dress, torn in body,
face scourged by Time,
its contours deep like ravines.
her withered breasts,
hanging like nests of tailor birds.
hair lying disheveled,
with eyes shrouded in mist,
she looked out into the sinking sun,
never dreading the darkness that falls.
the park bench was her temporary halt.
she sat there every evening
determined to live on,
with the coins habitually dropped,
into her outstretched hands,
by those sailing past her,
unobtrusive self.
like a monument of patience
she sat.
sat, so alone!
~ First Place Trophy Win~
Dec.16.2022
Brian Strand Premiere Choice Poetry Contest. No.55
I have come to accept the possibility
that I, myself, may be partially to blame (my compost pile of shame)
that I may have stroked the very wheel (unable to feel)
that, set in motion, is the cause of
so much pain (unsheltered in the rain)
Silently suffering through endless winters (embers, cinders)
without anticipation of Spring (hope an ethereal thing)
blind to Mother Earth's gifts (tenuous unfelt shifts)
the colors, the scents of her blossoms (habitually playing possum)
deaf to the melodies of the birds (knowledge lost, language
unheard)
as they sing
She calls to me but my barriers are thick (mentally stunted, physically sick)
densely scarred and wounded (as I am, to the quick)
As the sludge chokes the seabirds (screaming their lost words)
and the fishes (murdering Piscean wishes)
as Her forests are cleared by those
both greedy and vicious
I feel Mother Earth tremble (demons assemble)
beneath my feet
hear Her sigh as I place a hesitant finger (shaking, letting it linger)
on Her weakened pulse
thready and irregular
We are killing Her, Mother Earth,
mother of us all, matricide (no longer can we hide)
listen, listen to Her heartbeat...
I may have stroked the very wheel...
One September morn, Barry is born, one day a little man that society will chastises every day, poisoned with dour memories of a life passing, staggers habitually along life’s broad way, yet still, he believes an ardent player of this earthly cast.
the mould human kind
every one naked the same
circumstance fate plays
One September morn Larry is born not a volunteer, into this place, no developing embryo given a democratic choice, but oh the joy the accolades, freedom of youth rampart significant, carte blanche credit card.
silver spoon protrudes
freewheeling society
so much to tire of
An unknown purpose aided each step, for Barry with holdall and worldly baggage around his neck, whilst trying to escape societies goals and social orders, life’s hypocrisy filed against this frail oppressed old man, living with a menial existence inside prejudiced borders.
daunting are the nights
beneath a blanket of fog
soul destroying dawns
Here Larry the mellow fellow who toast, boast every night drunk with his host, cocaine his specialty, whilst trying to escape societies goals and social orders, now his empire has closed the high life exposed a hobo a bench a lamppost his only light.
Barry and Larry
mix for the first time at the...
crematorium.
Entered 2022 Poetry marathon Mile 20
sponsor Mark Toney 12/11/2022
written 2021
suddenly the bird sings, quite suddenly, startling
the stranger-to-the-dawn of day; he thinks the bird
is where the bird shouldn’t be; but knowingly,
with amusement, having quite habitually heard
the bird tweet, as the morning sun stretches its wings,
the wife informs the stranger to the waning dusk,
“oh dear husband, the bird sings from the tree,”
but he must widen the slats of the levolor blinds,
to open his eyes, to the world that exists above
his office in the split level basement. where did he think
the melody resounded from - the deck? no,
the great by and by, the bluest sky, the sun’s rays…
its hazy, at best. the mind needs a rest…startled
Habitually, feeling an itch to write,
I’m introspective: sitting at the table
over a blank sheet, cherishing my blight
and rust, I think: “What if I'll not be able
to write a single stanza anymore?
What if to chuck it all, to travel, omnia
mea mecum porto*… What is all this for:
the doubts, the all-nighters, the insomnia?
What if…" Oh, wonder! In my line of sight
I have the lines: “…feeling an itch to write,
I’m introspective”.
(lat.) "All that is mine I carry with me", the quote that Cicero ascribes to Bias of Priene.
25.10.2019
Itch, Witch, Glitch Or Twitch Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Nina Parmenter
Forgiving, forgetting
Remembering, relishing
Incessant irresistibility
Enduring empathy
Noticing needs
Diligent devotion
Selfless sacrifices
Habitually happy
Individual importance
Perfected patience
(To have a friend, one must be a friend.)
© April 21, 2011
Dane Smith-Johnsen
The Snowflakes Precision
What a cruel and un-compassionate fate you bequeath us
A million years of the mediocre and paltry garnish of faith and hope
Given for the consumption of these generations
How uninspired and habitually in denial
We have become
The lost worlds of dreaming
Left waiting
For better times and in a better place
Plied by consuming the majestic expectations
Of living
In the eternal wake of emptiness
What an unloving and unforgiving creation
We have come to exists within
Full to the brim
With uncompromising seconds
And not even in the grandeur of nature’s scenic beauty
Not in the snowflakes precision as it floats
No
Not unimagined complexity of form and chaos
No not even in a perfect chord
Does the merest or slightest of clues
Become existent or reverberate to us a voice
Which whispers to us of our truth
We are bereft of guidance
Untutored in this colossal magnitude and vacuum
Between the myriad stars
Tiny insignificant is this of our awareness
A planet a world
Part of an unending silence
So alone and so self absorbed
So material in the murderous evil
We have done to each other
So disunited in the dark reaches
So solitary
And yet we did not gather the family of man
No not even to look after of ourselves
Awake on a numb dark night he wonders--
tired cells of his existence blazing
on fiery topanga in crushed slumber.
Anxious, chained, gasping at barriers
of individuality or a species that contain
appeasements in layered singularities
or contradictions in linear multitudes.
He drags himself to a paraphernalia,
his search for conquests shivers
in tangled cobwebs his fingers dance
to grand designs of his fantasies.
Oh! how he habitually gets drenched
in warm showers of colliding galaxies,
exploding curses of humanity in hammock,
Aesop's fables plagued in sloth.
His trembling raptures of oceans azure
send chills down the spine of raging coal.
Elevators of his dark realities push him
to take a fall as the Lady of Shalott
atop old cliff of his clueless journeys,
burning mankind, wars, paranoia but wait--
blurred visions of forgotten land arise,
painted from a million oscillations in cosmos,
unwritten pages of blood red stories
crushed and absorbed in soils of time,
simmered to seeds of hopes in his mind--
his fingers dance to tunes of a faint voice,
a dead soul sings amid a snowstorm,
'Oh come crushed souls, let's sleep tonight,
tomorrow you'll squeeze some lost hope in light'.
June 16, 2020
CRUSHED Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Anthony Biaanco
~Premiere Contest Winner: 9th Place
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired." -- Anton Chekhov
Chekhov declared that it's clearly imperative
That a gun given billing must duly be fired.
The bullet obligingly cinches the narrative,
Sating the thirst that the gun first inspired.
Yet the world is awash in objects inutile,
Which clog our disorderly narrative streams.
So why should a playwright adhere to so futile
A diktat pertaining to props in a scene?
Myself for example, habitually arming
The darkness that swaddles me, inkily deep,
My mind so occulted its doubly alarming
To grasp the black Kimber, now sprung from its keep.
The prop having found its way on to the stage,
My untethered demons start chorally keening,
Quite certain they know what the gun must presage:
That this is the moment that holds all the meaning.
Glancing down from breathless heights,
Amidst climey sighs,
The looming colossus awakens from slumber
And stretches across Thelwalls linear skies.
The hot engines hissing steam -
Recalled from fond memories long back -
Tumbling like huffing little rain clouds
Down from the lofty metal track;
Wherein brightly painted carriages:
The publicans daughter, the verger,
The magistrate, the chief executive -
Seated first class, all habitually sat.
Swift grandiose arches, a celebration
Trumpeting the artful masons cunning devise,
Boast loudly of the great towers
Parallelogram of terrific forces:
Crossing over in giant leaping strides.
Here below, like Hercules reclining,
The stoic gates of Latchfords black fortress locks
Lift to brace against the immense swell
Far and beyond the chimming remarks
Of Greenhalls absolute, mechanically proven,
Georgian bell;
When, ensconced within a purpose-built,
Purple brick tower:
Strikes the centuries old brewery clock
On the twelfth
Of every God given hour.
A rich bankers cantilever
Pushes doggedly against opposing, sheer,
Red Sandstone walls;
Again the mauve and azure rock pigeon claps...
And then...coo, coo, cooingly calls.
Dry buzzing heat blurs over
The hum of a high noons imcumbent midday;
The coup-de-gras scimitar wing stoops -
To fasten onto its slower-witted prey!
Steeped sides slipping amidst tumbling yellow
Gorse and sporadic flowers
Balk at the foreboding waters edge,
Where, over the denizens swirling bowers,
The resolute little rusting lugger,
Puffing and chugging,
relentlessly dredges and scours;
Churning the murky Eastham silts
That drab Manchester draw:
Into the vast hollowing quays
On beachless, concrete Salfords industrialized,
High-rise dockland shore.
Through the deepest part of the black
Channel
A salt grimed hulk smoothly slips...
Attached by a twisted hemp to the tugboat
That hauls the great ships.
Stirred by the bow waves
Flowing and ebbing like currents in time:
From the trough to the peak
The jettison and flotsam climbs -
Before succumbing to powerful undercurrents
Of irresistible designs!
Able bodied apple eaters let
lonely lillies lie littering Lucy lake
If inadequate information applies
Then it must be fake.
When thirty three thirsty tenants throw tea
To those that catch it, what we have is
Ice tea for those with ice that fetch it.
Just judges joined jostling Jones gym
Generating gigantic muscle mass
Boisterous body builders blew kisses at
Sisters seeking sameness socially
So since surround sound systematically
Compounds.
Wanderers watched Wednesday's worst
But forgot HEALTHY hands helped heal
Hatred and send forget-me-nots
Afternoon artificial apple eaters
Habitually applied after sunset is
Artfully denied
Naturally needing nourishing apples
On the California coastline gave us all
Sun kissed skin
How? WHERE? What? Why? And when?
Basically boisterous questioning lead to
A NATION OF ALLITERATION.
Since suntans did sustain this is where
Alliteration Nation stakes its flag and finds
Its FAME. Here is where Alliteration
Nation goes forth
To fling fruit and freezing froth.
From coast to coast and way up North.
Corners fourth
This stop is where Alliteration gets off.
“I don’t know.
It’s been just one of those itchy
dry skin days
where you know somethin’ has to happen
but it ain’t;
at least not chet.
I was expecting a call but
it hatn’t come either.
The ‘wild willies’ were settlin’
in somethin’ fierce
an my stomach was feelin’
somethin’ awful.
It was like- -um, uh
taste of bad whiskey
on molded bread
that was tryin’
to be fresh,
but there just weren’t no way.
Even if it could, what
difference would it make?
Not a dab!
So I just sat and stared- -
at the coals,
that used to be lit,
and still could be if I was a mind to,
but I ain’t .
Shore is cold though.”
as the last thought
he ever had, passed
through his head.
I wrote this in a semi-light hearted motif to take some
of the edge off of a sensitive subject.
Do you know someone who feels alone. They are just
as alone as anyone you will ever meet, Loneliness is an
acquired perception, often a gift of good people, though
not habitually or intentionally thoughtless or self-centered, they
“just do not have the time”, They “do not want to get involved”,
or “just do not like someone’s looks”
Go visit an old age home this next week. Sit in the lobby and strike
up a conversation with any old person not interested in the TV.
See how good you feel when you leave, even though you may
have dampness in and around your eyes.
The kitchen, on the weekend mornings
When company came for a visit,
Habitually simmered like a cauldron of furious activity.
Despite a balmy morning on a September day,
The temperature rising by the moment
My grandmother would stand,
Red faced at her kitchen table
Rubbing flour and butter briskly
Through her fingers into a large mixing bowl
Apples already peeled and sliced would lay
Like pale green petals in the pie plate,
Waiting for the crumbled topping.
She may have fallen asleep the evening before
In her big, fat, over-stuffed chair
Long before her house guests had even
Stifled a lazy yawn
But on this bright, sunny morning
She was as young as a new bride.
"Missed"
if you wanted me
to write about
rainbows and unicorns,
I would have to say
romance was never
on the menu of
the grinning soul,
in the days
when war came.
lines drawn in sand, see,
grains easily blow away,
to reveal what of strength,
hard and cracked, yet so
tangible survives underneath
it all, firmly remains.
the thistle with
its royal violet inviolate crown,
its thorns like swords,
persistent, makes its way
to what little light
endures, holds out,
shoots its way through
the fallout clouds.
it blooms
like a revolution.
never changes its
regiment colour.
beauty in survival
allays arid memories
and relishes the rain
to grow new life;
and like a thistle
the petals will-o-wisp
like a halo up into
the sky, far away,
but the roots
remain fixed
strong and
militarily resilient,
day after day.
romance comes
in the flurry of snow
falling on an
upturned face,
faith in something
of grace, offers
a smile that sings
still life doesn't exist here,
tongue outstretched
sensually tasting
a poisonous life
remembering
the last naked
tryst and how
one survived
the assassin’s kiss,
though the shooter
didn’t fare that well.
the shooter
perhaps loved
the target,
too much.
the target saw
the transparency,
reality of truth,
a subtle softness
pouring out
in the bleed, could win
through
the atomic
missed.
(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)
“This is what comes of military training”, she said, ”born and bred from military - both air and land forces - one becomes habitually practiced and intuitively alert to the enemy's position. Strategically, one is always lethally equipped, both psychologically and physically, in surviving wars on the mortal plane. Particularly, much later in the singularity wars, for a neural neophyte piloting those missions of slippery inter-dimension”.
In the days to follow, this quality in her would stand her well, in both dark and light fields, contradictory yet complimentary, the two warring co-ordinates of the Cross Field in the new domain. It was the place of the in-between worlds, where her mission would be implanted and eventually executed, expeditiously and with great success. Much to her detriment.