Best Heaped Up Poems
Rodents can be loquacious
That includes your average gerbil
They love to prattle, chat and blather
They really are quite verbal
Hamsters are talkative too
Just as garrulous as can be
With running mouth and wheel to match
They are a sight to see
But I am loath to squander words
Sparing usage is my way
I gather them like so many acorns
Against a rainy day
Yes, word collecting is the passion
Of this precocious squirrel
I garner adjectives, verbs and nouns
Be they singular or plural
The park is fecund land
There a plethora may be found
Vociferous, vehement and vex
I lately scooped up off the ground
The verb tree is prolific
Its discovery quite a boon
The other day it bestowed upon me
Flaunt, foster and festoon
All along the sidewalks
Concrete nouns lie strewn about
How blithely I did snatch up
A lummox, a laggard and a lout
To command a better view
I nimbly scampered up a pole
From this lofty perch I spotted
Wheedle, coax and cajole
Away in the distance
I spied a tempting pile
Heaped up for the taking were
Enticing, alluring and beguile
What do I with so much verbiage?
You would be fair to ask
Squirreling away so vast a lexicon
Must prove a mammoth task
The answer lies in my arboreal abode
Where these many words I stash
In alphabetical order they are arrayed
From zealous to abash
In a capricious mood one day
I grouped them by part of speech
Such a cacophony arose from clustering
Banter, badger and beseech
No matter how I sort them
The wasting of words I spurn
Reserved for rarest use I keep
Reticent, laconic and taciturn!
_________________________________
by Brian McClain - Feb 17, 2016
Originally posted Feb 17, 2016
Accidentally deleted Feb 22, 2016
Reposted Feb 22, 2016
No Bread. Why?
By Dane Smith-Johnsen
Big round dark eyes staring at forgetfulness.
Eating nothingness, feeling helplessness.
Scavenging the streets for morsels finding hopelessness.
Foraging to fill a swollen abdomen full of emptiness.
Holding death securely within mothers’ bleakness.
Too hungry to show love and too hungry to cry-
But not too hungry to die-
Why?
Mankind’s blindness and heaped up forgetfulness, sighs.
Sweet potatoes, special cuts,
Grandma's spices, nuts,
Raisins cooked in every bite.
Flaky crust baked light,
Cool whip heaped up high.
Thanksgiving –
Pie!
BROKEN FLOWERS
i.m. Ann, my sister 1947 – 1997)
Heads of fine purple strewn across cement
And yellowness heaped up in an airless room –
Travesties to which your heart’s golden fire-dust
Is an increment on pain. You asked
If the pretence of caring had now vanished,
Was it real now, under the cracked sky-line,
Like your memories dammed up under the rain.
Surely some vital drops will float
To pull your rootless beauties into holiness
Even as they die in a still vase –
There is no picture to quite stir the heart
As these fallen crowns, noble as the chalice
Of Gethsemane, which yet held the terrifying
Dark secrets of the world’s crime.
As you winter in your youth,
Beheaded flowers your beauty, your truth.
By Rosemarie Rowley
Let's do dinner tonight at the Covid 19, the hottest new restaurant in town.
We won't need a face mask, we'll sit with a crowd and dine on Pandemic Stew.
We'll start with a creamy White Supremacist Broth served with Storm Trooper
Croutons
And then there's a cocktail of rare Racial Strife heaped up on a bed of Brutality Ice.
For dessert, there's an End of Democracy Cake infused with Suppressions to Vote,
From the bar we can order a Vodka con Putin dumped into a large Diet Coke.
There's no entertainment, the band has left town but there's reruns of Trump Photo Ops.
There's a two for one special that's running this week, no need for cash on The Spot
'Cause the sign on the door makes it perfectly clear, "Your Soul of America card Welcomed here".
Shall we go there tonight to the Covid 19 and dine on Pandemic Stew
And not wear a face mask and sit with a crowd?
Depends on what life means to you - it's to die for!!
We've heard all about the stockpiling,
the toilet rolls, lettuce and beans,
but secretly more of this is going on
unnoticed, and behind the scenes.
The Government, in our best interests,
(which translates they take us for mugs)
have warehouses scattered all over the place
in which they are stockpiling hugs.
They've seen that we haven't been using
our quota of hugs for a year,
which normally we all quite freely discharge
as a greeting, or after some beers.
Close facing embracing, a clinch is a cinch,
but all of our arms unemployed,
since in this pandemic the orders are strict
and so hugging we haven't enjoyed.
So we live all our lives by the orders
the Boffins have said is our guide,
we greet with a bump of our elbows, but then
our arms all hang limp by our sides.
And while we all fight for survival
and live by these laws as we must,
all heaped up in stacks on their pallets, on racks
are the millions of hugs gathering dust.
But soon, when we're all vaccinated,
and hope we're not killed in the rush,
our arms will rise free, full of hugs, then we'll see
loved ones short of breath in the crush.
No longer will hugs be illegal,
as torsos are all gladly squished,
our arms will flap up like an Eagle's
making up for the hugging we've missed.
My Grandmother’s Kaleidoscope
The stones and the planks of her heart
resonate with the pick-axes and the
hammers. My grandma’s mansion
loses its head, arms and trunk.
His hidden life in the Malaysian
woods during an old war, usual
silence of the empty nights near
her granary, which was always
filled to the brim, night wind
rattling the lone window of her
top scary story, her maid’s
calumnies tickling the eardrums,
haunting forebodings, ecstasy of
the reunion… I see all in her
yellow kaleidoscope.
Broken stones and planks are
heaped up before her wrinkled
emotions. She watches all in
silence from the kind veranda
of her son-in-law. The present
is only a ghost of the past.
First published in my book, 'Kanoli Kaleidoscope' by PunksWritePoemsPress, US.
A canticle I think I'll be,
A rimed thought, hoary and ancient,
Stinking as the dust heaped up empyreal on the hills of
The Judean sands;
And as dulled and dimmed as an archaic coin tarnish'd.
This is what I think I might be.
I'd as lief be this as any other you might care to name.
Valid is this, my remote and removed claim,
And it all began hereon.
O, that was an age ago, that remote and bygone time,
Rimed with hoar-frost and the whitishness of ancientness,
When as blood-soaked, cruciferous hills remote and circumvallatory or else
Perhaps circumferential to the great, walled city, itself circumvallatory;
When all this began.
When this particular beguine to which we've all been dancing lo this many score of years began.
It was as a woman bedecked in black on a Sunday morning newly kissed by the auriferous dawn,
(A goldener dawn than even that on which she met the man whose coffin she was now appointed to follow in a moribund processional, a macabre and solemn, ceremonial dance of death,)
Going down to the fixed graveyard.
That day was as the day on which I first deigned to join this,
And adopting unto myself the sobriquet, shibboleth "A canticle I think I be"
(For I was not permitted to use the full appellation I wished to apply to myself,
Owing to some stupid and recondite rule regarding and regulating the use and due conservation of characters: Yet not those as those of the mainstays of literature, no! I mean to say the characters that are synonymous with words and spaces and punctuation and the like,)
And here the tale ends, though 'twas not Moschean nor Noahide as
I perhaps meant it to be.
Oh, well: All's well that ends well.
(For was this not an idiotic tale, yet a harrowing one, whose lightest word would harrow up the young blood of any and all who saw it, read it, perused it?)
the leaves fall not from the tree
because of their own weight
but the weight of anxiety
heaped up like unpredictable tomorrows
and days after days of dismal weather
compel the leaves to leave the tree
pretending to be feelingless
without leaving any sort of emotional reflection
the leaves fall and roll on the ground to find a place
where they can take their hearts’ misery away
the leaves roll over the street
not because the wind blows
but to forget the meaningless days they have spent
because the past of the leaves are full of embarrassment
the leaves cry in unbearable pain without a sound
while kicked and tampled by indifferent passersby
a last leaf hangs on the tree
as if saying “don’t cast me away
but let me just hang on to…”
filled with sorrows unbearable
this one fell as well
sobbing soundlessly
heaving its shoulders
at the tavern in the darkening hours
a drunkard swallows the small world reflected in his glass
at one gulp, emboldened, he dances with inflamed eyes
brandishing the ornamental sword taken down from the wall
and yells “I conquered the world, I unified the country”
“wow, be careful! you may hurt the others”
when the sword, however, fails to find the sworn enemy
to thrust or to slash
the aimless point of the sword flashes through the air
and each time he wields the sword sparks fly
when the sword dance becomes wilder, the world
under the drunkard’s feet staggers; the drunkard
pours the unbalanced world into his glass
and shares out his spoils looted while dancing the wild sword dance
“hey, you! haven’t you heard of Hess’ Law before?”
it’s pitiful to watch the defeated ones lying on the floor
bleeding from their wounds, the horrors heaped up all day
turn into darkness, and as darkness thickens
a stray glimmering star appears in the sky above the horizon
the star looking at its own image
reflecting in the little world in the glass
falls from the sky intoxicated by the smell of hard liquor
becomes a drop of dew and sleeps lying on a street lamp
Last night I slept
And last night I dreamt
Of what has come and gone
And that which is to come
It was a revelation
Of an impending revolution
The dream made me to dream
The dream is my dream
I saw my kinsmen in chains
In foreign lands
I saw them in pains
Working their oppressors' lands
There were times there were tired
But were deprived of rest
So they worked without getting tired
Unhappily doing their best
Then I saw the same people
Who came to us like eagle
And took our kinsmen from us
In our own land oppressing us
We became slaves in our own land
We were oppressed in our fatherland
But when the yoke was too much for us to bear
We fought and gained freedom
The dream I have for my nation
Is bigger than I can say
And this is my aspiration
To be the change all the way
I have my inspiration
From the heroes of yesterday
Who heaped up motivation
To outlive everyday
I see people everywhere
With middle fingers in the air
Curses fill the atmosphere
'cause life itself isn't fair
My biggest dream for my nation
Yea, my biggest aspiration
Is for everyman in my nation
To be his brother's inspiration.
Written by Kanu Ekpezu
© Laureates' Media 2018
Now see a fine display in market hall
Where fishmonger's stalls sell the freshest catch.
A world of wet white tiles and melting ice.
Seafood displayed, arranged in rank and file.
One Scottish salmon commands centre stage
Stretched out upon its own tray of crushed ice
And next to a few Icelandic haddock
Along with cod trawled from the Dogger Bank.
To one side are some plaice all flopped and flat.
Seems they are staring up with fixed focus.
A side display of small fry, placed parallel
And herrings heaped up in sad slump of grey.
Some calamari, tasteless rubbery squid
Are off stage with other seldom sold bits.
In the corner there's offal bin with heads,
Guts, skeletons and several layers of skin.
Take for your cat. Put pence in charity box.
A fine display we see in market hall.
And how the wind howled around
the old container,
wheezed through the cracks,
laughed devilishly,
fed demonically on our emaciated
living remnants.
Huddled together, the small flame
of life and heartbeat pulsed
slowly, throbbed lethargic
And how the snow heaped up around
that old container...
Where in icy fear expectations rose
as time passed
When will be next
Who will be chosen
In arms clasped around near frozen
shoulders despair cried out in muffled
sobs
For knowing nothing, nothing would
matter.
And how long would in the creeping cold life
remain in this old container...
***
February 23, 2017
© Darren White
It is as if I strangely sit between unfoldment and the
pit turn the heart and bend the lip of ageless silent
sun and trees of passing pageants aimed to please
the garish and the blinded throng from heaven sent in
hellish garb of bodies blown from end to who
have no goal but to amend raise sails and forward
step by step into the gaping jaws of death whose
heat and dust is lust to men who search for pleasure
here and call the flush of genius to stand before the
whirling throng of those who would be gods and dirt
where chance stands up and stares at passing
shows on empty streets and fields laid bare by
greedy hands heaped up on aimless needs
this play is not what you have made but is the
evening’s splendid ray that fall on ruins old and new
on tower street and avenue where tired feet that
cannot stay fall on and on monotony and pave the
way to gluttony
Fascinated by a word ‘lofty solitude’
I, as a tall and dignified pine tree,
once stood high on a mountaintop
that stands there from a time remote in antiquity
the unfathomable height.
However, I have burned the pride of the pine tree
to ashes in the sunset glow
because no one ever noticed the trail after trials of hardship
the pine tree underwent to sustain the self as pine tree
on the summit of mountain, and, therefore, I felt offended.
Bewitched by a word ‘tragedy’
I was, as a fluffed giant rock,
stood on the cliff no one ever stepped on
in one of those stormy night,
the roaring thunders, dazzling lightening
and the darkness reigns with flapping huge wings.
However, unable to hold own weight any longer,
wishing to mount on the back of a cloud,
I tried to hold a drifting cloud struggling with tiptoed stretches.
Becoming a captive of a word ‘anguish’
I wandered the wilderness
with thirst under burning sun
and hunger in chilling air at night.
However, the word anguish was the fierce torture
the whip inflicted on no one but self,
and, therefore, the deep wound never be healed
gives sharp pains unable to bear.
I thought the word 'loneliness' becomes to me,
I sat by the window counting a lot of stars in nightly sky
heaving with sighs as many as the stars I have counted.
I spent the sleepless night longing for an unknown love
in the ripples of moonlight,
the breaking surfs by the window.
However, throughout a night’s loneliness
I was overcame by sorrow, and became the drops of tears
and heaped up to overflowing in my heart’s river,
the solitary stream had nowhere to flow.
For a word ‘moksha--spiritual awakening' is so awesome
I roamed here and there wishing to find it the meaning of life,
and when I found it, I have collected it with joy
and packed it in old beaten knapsack I was carrying and returned.
However, when knapsack was unpacked and found was,
neither the will nor the way as I was expected all along,
but full of useless stones the darkness that is darker
then the raven’s feathers.
After all,
I think I do understand the meaning of the word ‘life’
though vague and fragmentary, now, I am standing
as a stem of reed in the marsh by a river
while swaying about in the wind
to tattoo the word ‘life’ on my sick and weary body.