Best Implements Poems
They tell me: clean all the closets --
give away clothes, things you'll never use--
toss it all, decorate anew -- but,
must I part with what you
touched -- what you gave life
by using, by cleaning,
by valuing? What to me
had no intrinsic worth
you made precious, and
now these are not mere objects:
the trinkets, utensils, furniture,
clothes, pictures, car, house --
machines, implements, tools, books --
all the trappings of our lives.
Discarding them will be
another step erasing you.
Putting an end. And of
my losing you -- again.
Free Verse
I live not far from humankind the cradle that is of
what and where we are all coming from Johannesburg
so they say and going to one human race of every colour
no need for power domination colonializing margins
The ‘dark continent’ where the ‘savages’ did not abide
by our expectations of what civilized should be and mean
where it was us the other 'othering' cannibalizing our flesh
of freedom dignity compassion lost in money mind and soul
My cradle rocks and sways in the wild gentle winds in
torrents of emotion mood reflection history anticipation
certain of uncertainty of what the intermingling retrospective
past and future web together like a tapestry of life a bricolage
Lost threads there are and double knitted faults and hollows
shallow worn out spins and spiral knots and missing patches
mended winding fabric scars and wounded oscillations
swings and roundabouts cul-de-sacs and four-way stoppage
Is there a pattern to cradling the moment to memories to
fantasies of rooted wings and flapping roots a human kind
of compass joining needles implements of mass construction
subjective individual shining lights and armour idiosyncratic beauty
Are we starving demising suffocating for self-righteousness
loosing the plot and all the marbles thrown high up in the
air with juggled balls we aim to fix the waters rivers flowing
on their own with push and pull of light and lighted gravitation
Just here and now not there and then when sunshine rises
where rainbows glitter melt and wax the wane all of the colours
into violet prisms focussing condensing refracting blinding darkness
understanding knowledge of the shadows and bright clarity
When I write some thoughts on paper on the screen of modern
techniques and ancient art of crafted words and scripted meaning
the cradling of the moment takes its paths of where I’ve started off
and might be going once and only when the moment passes
02nd July 2016 written in Johannesburg and everywhere
Remember when grandma would boil the eggs?
There were no fancy color kits to buy.
She used crushed berries for the royals, purple and blue,
tea or coffee for sunny shades of yellow and orange,
and spinach for gracious green (the only way I liked it at the time).
Glorious golden and regal red – from onion skins! Oh my!
If she had eggplant or red cabbage, she made precious pink and purple.
What passionate pastels emerged and earthy hues of neutral nature!
colors of nature
repurposed from the heavens ~
two times the blessing
No chemical dyes with eggs swiftly finished and decorated in one sitting.
Grandma’s eggs took gathering the eggs from the nest,
food or food scraps, a couple of days, several helping hands, various
utensils and implements, and make quite the mess! A perfect process!
humble beginnings
after a long abstinence ~
a welcome reward
Oh, the love and joy from decorating those eggs.
No kit can ever compare.
Art in all forms
has a certain freedom
disallowed elsewhere;
though art does not
become art
without artful care –
Art cannot be entirely
loose – recklessly scattered
nor restrictively obtuse –
(never obviously defined
by its implements –
though no blossom
can blossom, if rejecting
all rudiments….
we have standard
tools to poke and kneed;
if wind the protagonist
we blow at the reed –
if the point a sharp object
we jab and bleed –
for no art comes without
its blessing and injury –
The time was 1969, the place- Home-Economics class in junior high. While guys got sent
to “shop,” those of us of the softer sex learned culinary skills. I loved those days when the
room was filled with the sounds of our chatting, laughing and clanging pots and pans, as we
busied ourselves preparing meals before sitting down at our group tables to enjoy the fruits
of our labors. That was my first semester. In the next semester came. . . .SEWing.
Gone were the room’s former tantalizing odors. And the tables once used for sampling
our experiments in cooking had been ominously transformed. Now there were patterns
we’d been asked to buy in fabric stores pinned onto pieces of material and laid out
across the center of each table. Those forms for clothing-yet-to-be, strange maps imprinted
with vertical and horizontal lines and codes along their edges, confused and overwhelmed
me. The implements of baking - mixing bowls, pans, and the cups and spoons for
measuring - had been replaced by a much less comforting display of thread and thimbles,
sewing machines, binding tape and scissors.
With zero scintillation and after the befuddling explanations from my teacher,
I somehow ended up with a hot pink mini dress(actually wearable!) with white trim
amateurishly attached, and. . .for all my effort, the stunning grade of C.
Thankfully, in high school I discovered among a broader choice of electives, Creative Writing
Class, my time to sparkle!
For Carol Brown's "Story Time" (just one story of many that would comprise my bio)
Do men have a right to live or is it an obligation
for men to survive in this world of full of disgust?
That decision, though no one but men themselves have to make,
the blind evil almighty WILL,
the way, way, greater will than that of men,
does not allow this world as the world that for men to live with
at least comforts—in fact, though we must struggle to survive,
come to think of it, this bitter human world may well be
a better place than paradise, no one ever visited heaven,
but we are told so.
Then, where in this rotten world
the seed of tragedy hides its effects on human lives,
and makes men more miserable than ever?
Perhaps, though, the reason for tragedy may have resulted from blindness of the evil almighty WILL.
It rests on men’s lives for men cannot gouge their eyeballs
out from their eye sockets to become blind themselves like
the evil almighty WILL.
If the blind WILL’s temperament is to exact obedience of men
to its one-sided tyrannous power, all phenomena men can feel:
rains, winds, moon, sun, and twinkling stars
should be the implements of torture to men.
The helpless men under this absolute power,
however, should not allay the will that is to live
with colorless asceticism, the will of desirelessness,
but create gigantic eyeballs and stick them in WILL’s deep
and hollowness like the bottom of a bottomless pit to provide
it with a sight of acute discernment.
And if it can be done,
rains, winds, moon, sun, and the twinkling stars
are just another movement of the part of universe,
the beginning and forever blessing to all mankind on the face of earth.
Nonetheless, there problems in human society
remain still, and that is, even in this great blessing,
men would add more ugliness to the ugliness that men shaped
and carry as a second nature. [History proves it.]
Then, eyeballs that see the world with keen eyesight
should fabricate,
not for great WILL,
but for men themselves, to see rightly.
PROPHETIC DREAM – JOURNAL IX
On the outskirts,
Framed on either side
By a farm house a barn
I discovered this winding path
It is early autumn
The trees about the house
Are full of lingering gold
Various harvest implements are seen
A silo rises in the foreground
With a tool shed beside
And the receding meadow beyond – cut
in two by the path – a luscious green
Far distant is a dense, black forest fronting
purpled mountains
I am just past my 85th birthday
And the mysterious future, creeping ever
closer, much on my mind
The dream vision is so colorful so clear
That when I awake
I must just lie still and wonder
The air encapsulating sound
extremes, while vision gathering quites down
and carries with it stillness to surround.
Does channel imposition to dismay,
the sound, my enemy thus often in convey
sounds first ~ I hide discretely out of way!
Would escalate by choice or lessen ground,
the stance I take, my hearing so abound,
by reason decimates my hostile round!
Repeating hurt, the syndrome so applied,
as deaf to spacious loitering's retried
seek truth and justice' answer in confide!
Sound implements my virtue, or derides ~
so quiet is . . . . the instrument I chide!
Brothers and Sisters
Let us do as Jesus commanded:
Show the world that we are His disciples by
loving one another, loving our neighbors as ourselves,
doing unto others as we want
others to do unto us, forgiving those who have sinned against us,
praying for, doing good
for, and even loving our enemies
Next, let us unite in tearing down walls of misunderstanding
By building bridges to others in the Christian family.
Then, let us join together with adherents of other religions
tearing down walls of fear and suspicion
By building bridges of love to all members of
the human family until war is no more
and weapons of war have been recycled into
implements of agriculture
The whole human family will therefore be able to
blend our voices in the words of the late-great civil-rights leader,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Free at last,
Free at last. Thank God almighty,
we are free at last!”
CU is not dangerous
doctrine—a license to sin
but the most literally the truth of the Christian Faith!
Rev. Dr, Samuel Mack, OMS, DD
Copyright 2015
With bent torso, fenced horse Corso,
Tows corpulent gent Morse into a Kent forest.
This portly source torments tense Corso to such a contentious extent
That he sends them off course with vehement force to show his discontent.
“Whoa”, vents the incensed Morse
With voice tense and hoarse from onerous discourse.
“Endorse a gentle course,
And dissent from one so dense and coarse.”
With sore torso resentment, Corso forewent his horse-sense and sent
Enormous Morse into a torrential watercourse from Trent.
“You senseless, offensive, violent horse,”
Chorused the tortured, drenched Morse.
Yet, Morse lamented and swore to descent his portly content,
As soon as Corso implements his chores back in Kent.
And to mend his sores
From his hell-bent horse,
Reinvented Morse reinforced his orders
By tensing the cords toward extensive fence borders.
With a consenting snort for repented gent Morse,
The contented horse, relented pretenses and wended a short decent course.
For Sheri's couplet contest
Trees bending overhead, shadows fully employed
Fish resting 'neath the surface, their camouflage enjoyed
Abundant insects frolicking, diving and skimming the stream
Predators hungrily watching, nature's bountiful cuisine
Anglers stealthily wading, with implements designed
Perilous imposters, dancing on a line
Imitation insects, alluring and derailing
The angler flicks his wrist, often times prevailing
With skill and precision he tosses the bait
Dancing through shadows the imposter skates
Fish exploding in total captivation
Writhing about in lustful aggravation
Recoiling he jerks, prepares for the fight
Adrenaline rushes, as his trophy takes flight
Netting his prize from the crystal clear stream
Reliving a memory of a wintry dream.
an original poem by Daniel Turner
The suburban pressure cooker expelled its multiethnic horde north. Laden with implements of leisure, bicycles, kayaks, canoes and camping gear; world weary travelers of urban and suburban bent surged north ever, north. Bucking, they wrenched in unison at road repairs, shunted into single lanes by flaming orange cones of warning like so many track horses at the gate. Tail bitten, truck locked windows up; the denizens drove forth cocooned in metal steeds seeking the clean air and open expanses, north.
Few, freer souls dare the unfiltered air of the artery, north on motorcycles or in convertibles, hoods down, or windows down, blaring an enlivening mantra of sixties rock as they shimmied forward in the in the endless conga line of commerce, past urban blight. The trip north became a Chaucerian Pilgrimage from Nutmeg State to the Green Mountain State of Vermont.
The border crossed, the sky opens wide-eyed, ridge rimmed dolphin gray clouds swim in a cerulean scene. Roadside picnic tables fill. Monarch butterflies flit in the breezes between majestic rows of pungent pines. The whoosh of traffic dulls and the robin’s call emerges over the roiling hills and gurgling brooks. Silence falls, complete; upon the entrance to the first gravel road. Heaven is immersed in the scent of fresh hay and sweet purple clover.
The baker had a busy day,
Making pies, cakes and bread
He was hot and bothered
And was looking forward
To rest his weary head.
He made some gingerbread men
And put them on a tray
He switched on the oven
And cleared his implements away
The cookies smelled delicious,
Good enough to eat
No one was suspicious
Of the effects of that oven's heat
Eventually, the gingerbread men were done,
The baker examined them
Every single one
Some looked perfect
Just as they should
Some were an ugly shape
That was not good.
Some too soft
Others were brittle
Some too brown
And some too little.
The poor weary baker
Felt very sad
As he looked at the biscuit tray
He was upset and mad
Because he did not like to waste
Any imperfect biscuits, cake or bread
They had the same taste
So he crumbled up
The disfigured biscuits instead.
As the workworn baker put his hat on the shelf
At the end of a long day
The perfect gingerbread man mumbled
That is how the cookie crumbles
Beneath billowing sack cloth tent
An auctioneer jibber-jabbers his words.
Below his red mahogany dais
Sit Fifty Amish American women and girls.
Black-bonnet-ed, bidder-number in hand,
they chirp for cowl or coat, yelp for yarn,
raise bid card for church books, wool hats, many lengths of linen,
plethora of patches to sew into quilts.
Each lady bides her time until she points or winks or nods.
Calling to mind a measure of a time past.
Suspender-ed men inspect implements laid firm against gray fence,
even to the unused chamber pot still pure and winter white.
Rake, hoe, watering can, all is offered, noticed, taken for a price by love.
Untimely winds spin dust from the fallow fields, through the tent.
Coarse black garments now dressed in manure brown.
The whole crowd moves down
at the last to the front yard to bid home the furniture.
Magnificent bed- one hundred years old-, mahogany desk,
cherry wood breakfront seven feet tall,
shaker chairs, porch rocker and a modern recliner are claimed.
Auction done, the cows, horses, dogs and cats are led away.
As Kate and I walk to our van, an old man speaks English to me
saying most items stayed in her family.
Leaving, we were only strangers looking for a bargain,
happy with a four dollar end-table we took from her friends .