Best Hawked Poems
It is a city with its lurid lights lavishing upon the night
Products hawked in gaudy neon
Street lamps form uniform circles upon the pavement
And traffic signals repeat themselves across the landscape
A man with flat eyes pulls a blanket about him
And clutches his dog, he puts his shoes beside him
As if remembering when he had a bed
Whores mingle by the fire plug and eye the traffic
Their dignity sold by the hour
And I walk there toward the same places
As every night
Jimmy told me that you came to the café
Even though you asked him to say nothing of your visit
He said you sat at our table and read a book
He took your order of a coffee and asked about me
And he said you looked very sad in that moment and shrugged
And so each night I walk past the café windows
Peering in like a street urchin and praying
To see your face or that you will look up to see mine
But you are not there
And the excitement of hope drains from me like wet ashes
I go to St. Joseph’s in the village
And sit in the dark corner below the choir loft
Hoping you will come as we did each Sunday
But you do not. You do not come
And I am happy to be in church
To pray for you, that blessings fill your days
And that I might be one of them
Then it is the garish flat where we knew love
To sit by the window and watch the night
Gather in the city like a troubled infant
And to dream of a soft knock at the door
And for our love to come home
As you brandish your corrosive cloak of calamity
And cannons of musty dystopian dust,
I’ve eyed the serpents that tangle your family;
Determined to render my shine to rust.
Their sly malevolence and curious pitch
Tells me more than you ever have,
They smile and nod with a copulous glitch
Bereft of the insight I thought you had.
You played it so well; so naturally felt,
It’s easy to rise with Venus in Hell,
But I walked with caution; reluctant to melt,
With one eye hawked for a devious spell.
Peacefully spooning my enemy in sleep,
On a bear trap bed with a hair trigger set,
Professing to rest while you bide anchor deep
And emit the stale fragrance of past regret.
The gentle writhe and the slip inside;
The trap goes off in this fatal lie,
With all the force of a raging tide,
I crossed your heart and now you will die.
To wake up death and whisper the rules;
In-between lines we ignore the words,
Like crafty creatures or misguided fools
Squinting our eyes at love till it blurs.
And it hurts, I know, for it’s not really there,
Your deception has turned on itself in despair,
Retreat to your hole with your impotent prayer
As you cling to your lies that hang in the air.
There is something beautiful and delicate
Holding me together
That could fall apart at any moment.
And it’s not you.
A musing Mary, quite stationary
sitting with her laptop so still
thinks of limo cars, Broadway stars
and her dream house on the hill
Jill and Jack laid in their sack
wondering about Mary on their hill
making hay about "will she stay?"
tip their bucket to make it spill
Georgie Porgie and the water supply
got fresh with Mary, then up and went dry
and the big bad wolf ate Grandma away
George as the wolf, sang Broadway cabaret
Little Miss Muffet and Little Jack Horner
hawked wares on a New York street corner
pies, curds and whey, discounted all day
and Little Muffet did, a magic trick play
friends Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee
hired a blind mouse to make it three
sang sidewalk duets, with the mouse rapping
shoes clicking softly and tiny cane tapping
Old Mother Goose, a Times Square recluse
did Father Gander's paycheck squander
on baubles and bling and trivial things
why she needed all that stuff I wonder
Ol' King Cole, his kingdom in a hole
decided to further leverage his coffers
with bonds of junk and dollars that shrunk
he's in Cayman Islands awaiting better offers
ganders and gooses are on the looses
and Ol' Cole and Mary and Jill and Jack
are off on a vacation and won't come back
still common rhymes hafta work over time
© Goode Guy 2011-10-10
At eight, Mary started hawking
Supplies, at Creek road market
Little Mary!
Hawking
Up and down
In the hazardous market
''Buy your ice water''
Every now and then
She would cry
Many a kids
Also hawked wares
Hence, their continual cries
'' Buy kerosene''
'' Buy your ice water''
'' Buy your ice cream''
A customer's beckon
Always triggered chaos
The struggle to sell their wares
Some kids crossed without
Watching
Upon one hawking day
A reckless driver hit Mary
Slowly, she lost her breath
And went down in a thud
The driver escaped like a mad dog
A folk of traders like an ant colony
Gathered about the child
Shaking heads with folded arms
Soon they dispersed
With a tale to tell
How Mary, the hawking child
Died with the night
But shall arise with the sun no more
Ooh...this... just an amazing grace note
recalling how I felt like an ass
and wanna toot 'bout me getting steered
(as a heavy metal kid Rocker)
toward befriending a brass
see gutsy, horny,
and MainLine snooty upper class
action button down
(grace fully slick as vaseline), airily glinting
forcibly hawked, laundered, and pawned
by the instrumental
Mister Deangelo O'Donnell, High School
(mud flapping, ornery hearing,
and quid juicing Ska Welch ching)
music teacher oompah crass
tone deaf when aye trumpeted desire
to master the Coronet
analogous to pursing lips
blowing tightly held grass
blade between two abetted,
cinched fastened opposable thumbs,
which tooting a supposed aural aphrodisiac
to attract a zaftig well proportioned lass
(ideally shaped like a miniature Tuba)
with one steel funnel like mouthy mass
that probably explains, how such a gal
could easily emulate
facial pucker earning pass
to illustrious honorable first chair
and blasts gratitude akin
as Gabriel would declare
heavenly expressions conducting
angels thru atmospheric ether
alighting on mortal ushering melody
with rites of harkening
springtime Renaissance Faire
solar rays golden raiment
splays rainbow fragments off
beveled, bellowed, and
bedecked polished flare
audiological sound waves trick
saw toothed reflected
silhouetted orchestral shadows
to dance as conductor's baton gear
musicians horns ensemble
epochal feast to hear.
ACE CANNONS' CANON
Through the morning, shimmering with colors that wavering, fade
from a desert where heat is a hue, and history's due
cactus and trees, knotted and sparse, a portrait some mad god must'f bade
into being, into the "Otherwise Sane"; set apart from the world, lived in by you
dust lays 'pon the ground, puffs upwards with resentful complaint
as my mount plods onwards towards some tumbled town
Town?
a few homes, in a land where grown men could grow faint
weary, thirsty, sweat-soaked; riding, walking, falling, down
down...
town
Ace Cannon's my name, should anyone ask
you may have heard, or you may not
at times that's quite a task
as i'm found wherever battles are fought
and those who stay behind
are often quite dead
they thought, or they didn't, or dint really mind
that those men who pushed, cursed, threatened with lead
disrespected ladies, dint tip their hat, just hawked and spat
raped, robbed or rustled, or horsethieved from towns
and thought to back down the good folks with that
more often than not, were buried with smiles,
'stead o' frowns
i'm a gunslinger, in the olde sense of the word
a hard man, a good man, a gunman, driftin' along
light as a feather, fast as a bird
i enjoy playing, Guns' melodious song
"abandon all hope,all ye who hear,
with nary a sound to accompany fear.
the blackbirds are singing, as i draw near;
the tumbleweeds roll, as leather i'll clear"
a few townsfolk stroll from home to store
a few, even this early, stagger from saloons to squint
as at last, i ride past houses, where happy people live poor
knowing each other, when last year they dint
a traveler, through beauty and badland
worthy of trust, friend of strangers in need
dangerous at times, yet loyal to brand
the code of the west, that noblest breed
a stranger, hatbrim pulled low, all dust and sweat
a horse noble as Knighthood, and muscled in trailwornest tan
this was "the West", that hadn't quite yet
met the Man
Ace Cannon
-esquire-
Death of The Half Monkey King ( for my friend Neil Lloyd )
Cave men half human monkeys
Sat gibbering and snarling
Perched all around his garden wall
Bestial vandals waving sticks and spears
Pointing angry at their own reflections
Fingering him as hidden
He peered nervous through his dark dim kitchen window
One of the brutals held a stake
And to crude spike was thrust
The rough severed golden crowned head
Of the Half Monkey King
Hawked on high
As if to salute a battle cry
The cave men humanoids
Squawked and raged their threatening
From the ledge of his garden wall
“My first thoughts were of escape” he said
“But then NO ! I’ll go out
“chase them away
“do battle
“if I have to.”
And so grabbing his own ready stick
He ran out challenging
Shouting and yelling
Out into the thick of them all
Surprised confused these monkey android animals
Retreated and ran their cadre
Running off up the back alley way
And so slinging on his back
Another ready sack filled weapons
And other assorted machine guns
He gave to the chase
To hunt these noisome villains down
“RUN ! RUN ! From the Monkeys
“HIDE ! GO HOME !” he yelled through the streets
and loaded his riffle as he went
hunting until he found them
a gathered coercion of a crowd
he shot one
just one
as it was edged on by its cohorts
the brute made a dash screaming its madness
only to meet the quick controlled shot
The others all fled
And then he woke up
And then in waking
With the strangest thing he thought
Heard from out his bedroom window
A muffled snarling
Caught him drawing back the curtain
To see about his garden wall perching
A thousand cave human half monkeys
Gathered and sitting quietly
Patiently waiting
While awkwardly passing
A rough golden crown amongst them
This Year
This year is Annabel's list
A pi chart of expenditure
For sure my enemy's treat
I say I am breadwinner
Please no more adventure
But Annabel is a bombshell
She squawked and hawked
You have more lies to tell
While shopping I am not balked
She bought a watch for me and talked
I know its not the end
Its just an exposure
I know she will never bend
And I must keep my composure
At bed in her enclosure
Sponsor Francine Roberts
Contest Name This Year in English Quintain
Poet: Rajat Kanti Chakrabarty
04 January, 2015
OSPREY
On skies, you glared predator-proud talons and beak curved so
sharp as narrow-vision> focusing on doubling plenty to millions...
Prey abounded, you soared, till rivers faded to an unseen creep
richly sipping of bounties seeping DDT, while in your high tower
eagles hawked tainted by death unaccounted, until eggs fragile
yielded cracks in their oval, speed-plummeting to cries of: why…?
(10/13/2020: '89 Hacker-Craft; Truckee)
The place began to settle
With birds calling the night canopy over
Hawked flights stilled to silence
Like the closing of blossoms.
Chiefs of mischiefs are-
Vulnerable honourables
Who wear the outfit of oppression
And vicariously dishonourable
Upon putting our nation to recession
Chiefs of mischiefs are-
Magnanimous messengers of doom
Offspring of greed, kindred of impunity,
In conspiracy who prey on our security
Piercing our gallant soldiers with gloom
Chiefs of mischiefsare-
Peaceful promoters of poverty
Constantly canvassing continuity
In power and personalization of public property
Turning we entity into a nonentity
Chiefs of mischiefs are-
Juristically judicious judges
Who swap judgment for payment
Transforming prisons to lodges
For penniless paupers to torment
Chiefs of mischiefs are-
The various ambivalent voters
To whom tokens be given
In lieu who hawked their quota
Of fortune and their children’s children even
Chiefs of mischiefs are-
Impartially official officers
Whose working formulas be tribalism
Absenteeism, favouritism. And those Lucifers
Dwelling on the deck of vandalism
Chiefs of mischiefs are-
The series of sinister citizens who
Art devoid of fear of God
Perishers of our betterment at home
Crushers of our dignity abroad
Once came a smart tinker to Baltimore
He peddled his pots near a dry-goods store
He hawked them all in one day
For whatever folks would pay
Then hurriedly left and came back with more.
written January 19, 2022
My moment in eternity ...
A drew drops from a leaf
In a ocean of green serenity
Etched in the beginning of belief
And you and I
When we took our registers in cashless hands
And turned light on
To eyes tap dancing our brains
And heard sounds
Singing before our cry of pain
And smelled day
Breaking without fragrance of the night
And tasted blood
Of self and mother in the ocean flood
Of begginnings that touched our skin
Before our hearts poured cries
Of jubilation against the miracle of our ears
We are nothing more
Than a finite store of universal memories.
With the senses which we ... hawked them
Swallowing on the aimless sight
We made them for our siren flight
Wrote them on stones, papyrus scrolls
And books in mask of syllables
Like Adam's figment of leaves
Or squirrels digging leaves
To hide their nuts
So with our memories we lose
The reality ... we die desperately to meet
Words too are symbols in the mask of meaning
As we remember the understanding
Of where we are coming from
More than where we are going to forget it all
So sensing, spading, stone chipping at imagination
Dreamers and archeologists
We come telling new histories
For forgotten beginnings ... we only know to find
In God. We poor memory makers
On the vain voyage of codebreakers
What shall we do with the dust of the sun?
somewhere (as you read this)
a young person who has been slaving away in a diamond mine
loses their hand on the chopping block,
or perhaps their whole arm is mauled off in front of others
to make a point that
those who are poor should not attempt to take from the
rich
&
far away (maybe not too far away)
a young couple who’s been together 6 months or so
get married in a quick thrown together ceremony to
celebrate their enduring love
with the diamond responsible for the loss of a hand, an arm or a life
sticking out from the young woman’s finger
to symbolize her proper & acceptable behavior,
in the eyes of society &
in the eyes of “god”---
while the two are seen as mutual possessions of one another now,
in two months,
while at each other’s throats, they decide to bail the whole thing,
having made such a rash decision &
the ring gets hawked for a percentage of its original value---
if only it was so simple to get a hand, an arm or a life back.
You cannot know the depths and darkness I have seen
You do not know that challenges there have been
You do not know the heights of insanity I’ve seen
You do not know the road I’ve walked
You do not know how others talked
You do not know the shame I’ve hawked
I do not know what I have lost
I only know the paths I’ve had to cross
I do not seek pity
I bear it with humility
I wear it only within me
Others I cannot or will not envy
I face it alone
I do not seek pity
In the end everyone faces it alone
I laugh but have no pity
It was just meant to be