Best Jangling Poems
Fantasy sold on a 50’s bottle cap;
a party-girl side-saddle sits
on a double-edged crescent moon
up high —a silver scythe in glamour-night-sky
corners of her cherry mouth tilted up
her left hand raises her glass a toast to the stars
frothy head of champagne-beer flirts
with lips spooning the rim
right hand holds the bottle instead of reality
look! no hands on a razor’s edge
precarious hilarious
a redhead with bouncy-curls and a flouncy-skirt
boot-heels over head when she laughs and Oops! falls
clouds catch her without friction and pillow her fiction head ~
but you with wild escapade eyes fell hard
fell
hard
far beyond Earth with not a soft cloud to cushion you
glam-allure just a sexy lore a filthy lure
but once you’ve been star-dusted and angel-dusted
it’s all the same…
vintage Miller bottle cap
a perfect circle like the fattened moon face
leering through broken windows
shards glitter the floor like fallen constellations
your black pearl eyes two muddy puddles
life drained through rows of tiny needle holes
slip-knot above your elbow just tight enough
your pulse beats its fist against the restraint
—pounding —pounding —pounding
impatient to be bled and fed
you and this dragon’s den a dilapidated pair
abandoned and without family
you share the blank stare of broken windows
veins collapsed like crumbled staircases —
empty inside of empathy and dreams..
a junkie’s spot where shooting stars crash
embers in your bloodstream turn to dust
— you cook in a rusted bottle cap by candlelight
candle’s glow your Sun in a dirty universe
with your teeth you pull back on the syringe
this house unused by the living a cold corpse
but in the warm rush of your skin’s flush
your gaunt gray body melts like hot wax
pale horsehair walls a slouchy silent witness
... your soul escapes as it scrapes across the floor
flurries sneak through broken windows
whirl of wind whistles on its rounds like a jailhouse guard
rattling beam-bones jangling ghost-bones —
user-litter kicked around like a pile of old brown leaves
burnt fingertips and a junky "High Life" bottle cap
all you have left
Categories:
jangling, abuse, addiction, drug, lost,
Form:
Free verse
Armadilly came galloping into Troll Lake, bent on seeking a new life, to unwind.
He’d rode out of the Badlands, leaving only a trail of blowing dust and leaves, behind.
His steady stead Jalopy had been pounding feet, relentlessly with powerful strides.
Rearing up, Armadilly stopped before our Troll Bridge with his slingshot at his side.
I could see, he rode the sleekest mount, and the biggest tortoise, that I had ever seen.
Man that armadillo knew his tortoise flesh… this was the fastest one, ever been!
I would say: he truly looked, the devil’s mount… with glowing, fire stocked eyes.
The stranger named himself as Armadilly, but his true identity, could not be denied.
He was really Armadilly Billy, The Slingshot Kidster, as he bowed to us, so very low.
With a yes Ma'am, and a no Sir, he was smooth and could charm, near any old soul.
The Trolls loved him for the spell binding stories, that at the campfire, he gave away.
He never talked about his past, but we knew who he was, without being told, that day.
The rumor had it that Sheriff Bunny Garret had shot him dead, on one fateful day.
Another said he’d faked his death, heading south to Mexico, his life to live away.
But we knew better, for he was here with us, right now, on this illustrious day.
We knew he was a kind and misunderstood guy, because of what I’m about to say.
He saved our squirrel, Funkundilly, from a hawk diving straight for her, inward bound.
With his slingshot, like streaked lightening, he forced the hawk to spiral to the ground.
And we all applauded that Funkundilly was now, once again, so very safe and sound.
Then he strode, spurs a jangling, to dish out his own type of justice, so very renowned.
With a steely glint in his eye, he ordered the hawk away, or meet his end, he did convey.
And you can say that frightened bully hawk, really high tailed it, as he ran away.
Everyone celebrated that night, with Armadilly, all the way to dawn’s embrace.
Before he left, Armadilly knew from then on, he’d always have a home in this place.
But his mind was set on a wandering, more of this world’s adventures, to unweave.
So with a HiHo! Jalopy! He took off, leaving in another cloud of dust and leaves.
But I heard him shout that he’d be back again, soon…
And we were sure, that’s just what he would do!
Inspired by Silly Billy the Kidster's--- Billy the Kid Blog
An epic poem by Carol Eastman
Categories:
jangling, adventure, fantasy, funny, imagination,
Form:
Light Verse
Here, within my dark abyss of stark silence,
I hear the jangling tunes of rusted chains
echo futile summer dreams
like wildflower chimes in the wind,
comforting my inner moon~
still bleeding self-inflicted sorrow,
in need of a balmy muse
as my heart painfully exhales poetry,
breathing in the peace of petrichor,
grieving through my pen on paper
amidst procrastinated punctuations,
confusing the columns of calm
between the quiet quotations of healing.
But somewhere between the
unpredictable lines of emotional storms,
you’ll find our forgotten feelings,
sedated by fireflies fluttering
through the musical mists of sleepless nights,
quenched like once upon a sacred quill,
floating amongst salt and light,
like a crescent’s rose blooming into the blues,
learning to erase the unspoken shadows
lining the boulevard of my weathered soul,
for this is the song of the pearl
resting in a sand-soaked bed
of broken shells,
turning oceanic pages
with metaphors that ebb and flow,
like a collage of dancing diamonds,
cleansed with colors of sunsets
softer than the chorus of h o p e
wrapped like souvenirs
laced in saffron and sage.
Categories:
jangling, angst, anxiety,
Form:
Free verse
"That Dark Place"
that place
where hope waits torturously in vain
and strength is found cloaked in the kinder darkness
it waits patiently in that remote singular quiet
a neat corner of solitude back-of-house
where sonnets call to mind jangling contemplation
of under promises and over zealous outcomes
romancing poésies pressed between
the seconds and the hours, the days and years missed
the metronome tick-ticks luring forth integrity
from phantoms outside of imagination
such a rare well-hidden jewel dangling
on the end of a long chain of events
to find courage sorely missing front-of-house
on its card table of tricks that dark place its truth well lit
and the light once switched, changes the shade
of everything
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
Categories:
jangling, dark, light, truth,
Form:
Narrative
Oh beautiful Gypsy,
I see you there, in amber campfire mist.
On the banks of a crystalline pool, a bronze skinned lovely moving with intoxicating rhythm to the strum of guitars.
Sable eyes, gleaming with wanderlust, transfixed on distant dreams. Raven hair sheens cobalt blue, in glow of a pale full moon.
The tethered babushka and brilliant layered skirt, your banners of freedom. Knee high boots clad dancing feet, in a feverish itch to perform on new stages. Your opulence, jingle jangling from dainty wrists and pierced lobes, echoes the hypnotic song of rattling tambourines.
A blissful celebration in your enchanted home of nebulous walls forged of the four winds.
Oh beautiful Gypsy;
Last of the true migrants, paying homage only to purity of your clan. The devout mystic, whose babes suckle the nectar of white magic.
Your larder bulges fat, having labored a deconstructed nine to five.
A harmonious oneness with nature, your forte, honed to perfection in compassionate artistic crafts. With gentleness, you bring calm obedience to the untamed steed. In thoughtful consideration, parleying the fate and fortune of the gadjo, eager to lay down their silver and gold for charms and spells.
You trade in good faith only to be slandered in whispers of vagabond and theif. Your colorful lifestyle, jaded to a monotone hue of envious green.
A hopeless romantic smothered in Judas kisses.
Oh beautiful Gypsy,
Even as you celebrate in this newly discovered place, it's freshness grows stale to your delicate senses.
A bohemian lineage begs you go before the next cock crows.
The insatiable hunger to feast your eyes on unfamiliar lands pangs your very essence.
It has proven to be far too great for you to abstain; for it is the morrow.
A radiant sunrise reveals an abandoned starry eyed reflection lingering on a lonesome pond.
The scent of pungent garlic, rich brew and sweet tobacco hovers, as a perfumed phantom, in the desolate air.
Tracks of your wagon wheels flow through emerald meadows like a lazy river, avoiding stagnation.
Conformity lies choking in the dust of your painted caravan.
A nomadic soul in dreamy persuit of the horizon that looms forever in the distance.
Till we never meet again,
Oh beautiful Gypsy
Categories:
jangling, beauty, celebration, leaving, longing,
Form:
Free verse
hold still, eventide ...
I am a capricious cad among wraiths,
waltzing with a mop in
a Marrakesh courtyard - catching stars
as they drip with waxy and
wild wonder, into the braids of my maudlin
noose, tightening
jangling, dangling ...
rose gold anklets, (wrapped 'round leggy perfection),
shimmer their hammered facets,
kicking smoke into toroidal hoops with
raw regard
while they spin, table-top, to a
Chaabi chant
candles waving their
flames to beckon the darkness close ...
notes from a punji weave
mystery thru the heavy heat, Henna-striped hands
cradling a bottle, jade green, as the
white flowers gush their cold, gold bounty
down a curvy thigh
wetly wrapping an unblemished
capuccino calf, Perrier-Jouët trickles off tender
toes to plop, warm, on my
tantalized tongue
I kiss the fuchsia-daubed nails to
show proper veneration, then spin back to
the murky music, mop-handle
lover in tow
down to the spinning
tie-dyed rugs and pillows, I surrender all to the
callow flesh there, wanting ... willing
her hair and hide and ebon eyes
dark as delirium, while the brass-headed
snake-of-a-hookah waits
for a kiss
long draws bring dizzy
dreams and hypnotic swirls from the lamp,
aromas and an opiate nirvana coiling
around my cares
lost as a lamb, to soft skin ...
and sweet smoke.
( Jemaa el-Fnaa Square in Marrakesh is one of the most active and exciting places on earth, with exotic foods, snake-charmers, clothes and antique vendors, magicians, dancers, haqle or street theater, storytellers, acrobats, musicians, comedians, water sellers, tattoo artists, carnival acts, even organ-grinders with monkeys, and yes, opium and hashish traders. It has remained largely the same for over a thousand years, and is indeed an important part of history, declared by UNESCO as a "Masterpiece of World Heritage" - if you're ever in Morocco, it is a MUST-see! )
Categories:
jangling, adventure, appreciation, celebration, travel,
Form:
Imagism
THAW AT CROWSNEST PASS
Huge mountains massed and cliffs sheer. It’s March
And endless blue sky cold is held back by the Chinook arch,
Snowy prairies rolling into their thousand-mile realm -
The landscape is gigantic, majestic, orchestrated to overwhelm.
But I stand and watch the lake-ice thaw,
Surprised by the tiny delicate music -
Descant ice - jingling, jangling, tinkling
In delicate accompaniment to the giant symphony.
Ice chunks tangled in slow waves with the wind
Tiny tintinnabulation before total ablation.
There is silence and harmony around the sound,
The small melody of the ice breaking into spring’s chorus.
Note: Crowsnest Pass is the southernmost way through the Rocky Mountains in Canada
Categories:
jangling, nature, mountains,
Form:
Free verse
Flickering hazel eyes flecked with cataract silver, glittering this way and that.
Eyebrows high and a piercing pupil saying
'Move this ing thing, lest I punch my left hooded, binded fist a jab hand on these tubes'.
'Zip wire that gagg, tie and choke my goddamn breath'
'I will pull them as a hook on a stuck fishing line and retrieve the barb, bloodspattered, and bubbling.
Frowned lines across forehead asking 'Do it'. 'Do it'. 'Do what I ask '.
So we do. It seems a simple task to give a unanimous verdict.
The intrusive, plastic, invasive chords are cut, pulled like black vine from flower beds.
Then you snore an old bear.
The glove is off. You relax into your last sleep.
The effort to squeeze those exhausted ribs, carried by anaesthetic buzz is cotton buds and breezy, easy.
Between the bright blue curtains someone's shouting 'Kersh come on we've got one waiting for you'.
Others talk of apologises, welcomes, pats on the back and loving arms.
A pallor comes and little marks underneath the eyes. You lay asleep. No breath. No pain.
In this dark December night your passing saw rock and roll change into a summer of love, then fall into an Autumn of jazz and horse racing.
We three saying farewell, wondering if you want us there or not?
But we know beneath our bludgering feelings of denial.
The familiar ties that span a lifetime make the fit right.
And in our jangling, bangling, tightweb, we hold you and wish you a safe journey Kersh
Categories:
jangling, death, family, love,
Form:
Free verse
Quiet my jangling head
[marbles set loose in a drain pipe]
Silence churning doubts
[acid bath of corrosive thought]
Calm my rasping breath
[jagged edges of restricted output]
Cease excessive activity
[upanddown the spiral staircase]
Steady my stricken hands
[pounding pegs into nonexistent holes]
Undo me.
Categories:
jangling, angst, confusion,
Form:
Free verse
Henry picked a ladybug;
Hadley chose a fly.
Mine was striped but not a bug
I could identify.
Up and down and round and round,
With music jangling on,
We rode the carousel until
The time we had was gone.
Grandpa took the photos;
Nana thought up rhymes
And had to ride, on different bugs,
With Hadley two more times.
Categories:
jangling, granddaughter, grandson,
Form:
Rhyme
A Marriage Creed
So now my little Man, you've gotten tired of grass"
LSD, goof balls, hash" and pills. Someone pretending to
be your friend - decided to introduce you to me,
Miss Heorine.
Well honey, before you start fooling around with me, just
let me inform you of how it's going to be. I will
seduce you and make you my slave, I have send men
much bigger than you to their graves.
You think that you can never become a disgrace and end
up like poppy seed waste. You will start inhaling me one
afternoon. You will take me into your arms very soon and
once I have entered deep down in your veins - the craving
for me, will drive almost insane.
You will need lots of money ( as you have been told ) for
darling - I am much more expensive than gold. You will
swindle your mother and just for a buck, you will turn
into something vice and corrupt. You will rob and steal
for my narcotic charm and feel contentment when I am
in your arm.
The day you realize the monster you have become - you
will sollemly promise to leave me alone. If you think that
you have that mystical knack - than darling just try getting
me of your back.
The vomit, the cramps, your gut tied up in a knot, the jangling
screaming for just one more shot. The chills and cold sweat, the
withdrawls pains can only be cured by my little white grains.
There is no other way and there is no need to look, for deep
down inside you'll know that you're HOOKED. You will despertely
run to the pusher and then you will welcome me back to your arm
once again and when you return ( just as I foretold ) I'll know that
you'll give me your body and soul.
You'll give up your morals, your consceience, your heart and you'll
be mine untill DEATH do us part...
)2/26/2014
Written by Lucilla M. Carrillo
Note: This will be the last poem that I'll
write on this. I don't want to bore you.
I just feel that more people need to know
about this problem...
Categories:
jangling, addiction,
Form:
Acrostic
Frozen flower punch
Hibiscus blossoms for your ears
Luau skirts and fire rings
Streamers hanging in the air
Cocktails soaked in pineapples
Roasting pit to coals
Anklets jangling on your feet
Ambrosia mint in bowls
Smiles to pass with every song
Laughter jewels the moon
Eating the afternoon away
with a Polynesian spoon~
Categories:
jangling, childhood, happiness, life, nostalgia,
Form:
Rhyme
Hour hands clock back sixty minutes of Autumn
Round about this same of month every year, what a bum
er, and inconvenient truth diverged from this chum
purposelessly manipulating a hold over
sans yesteryear doth drum
a sensation of jet lag (with earth in the balance)
as if flying within time machine at warp speed from
this station, where bumpy ride invariably finds me
feeling a bit ticked off and glum
and in no mood to rhyme, nor be leer re: cull
juiced barely tantamount to gather scattered wits
sin tide, and express mood as hoe hum
fortunate, this chronological seismic shift nada wide, ah assume
nonetheless, mein kempf cerebral hemispheric plate tectonics
comb pluck hated off jangling black keys helplessly boom
fancifully drifting and booring into quick ribald sand trap doom
ming an inducement for emergency convoy, when pitched from
sea to figurative shining sea – gram ma mother earth glum
where live yikyak wired vanguard trulia tried optimism to hum
nonetheless, swallowed down behavioral sink went – me mum
bling bloviation, once worth matchless peerage, now pitched numb
lee into morass of temporary confusion, where plumb
line delineating circadian rhythm offset, when athwart pilot rum
man strait ting and bickering with Lilliputians slum
bring within islets of langerhans defiantly thumb
ming nose, where body, mind & soul weeknd viz a bully did cower
hence mister clock, who got high-jacked 3600 seconds per hour
experienced head, thorax and abdomen diminishing in power
wrought indistinguishable Whitsuntide as sour
grapes imposing ill fitting sea legs, which folded like a faulty tower
crumbling skeletal carapace, resoundingly surrendered,
and back slid vis a vis space/time continuum did devour.
Black hole event horizon indeed kept lock step as das joint mill hoard
Sucker punched the band wagon of father time, whose riffs a silent chord
nsync with atomic fractional second bored
quirky shenanigans toying with chronometers
counter point of view shifted to oppose this minute accord.
Categories:
jangling, allusion, assonance, autumn, fun,
Form:
Free verse
The Sound of Distant Ankle Bells
Memories of those delicate tinkling bells,
casually fastened around calloused feet,
take hold of my waking moments,
and fling my thoughts back to a distant time,
where folk-songs were heartily sung,
joyful, yet hopelessly out of rhyme.
I barely saw her, a construction labourer perhaps,
hauling bricks, cement, anything, on a scorching Delhi day,
while in the semi-shade of a Gulmohar tree, her infant silently lay.
A cacophony of thoughts such as these swirl around,
yanking me away from the now, to my cow-dung littered childhood playground.
Now, a lifetime of displacement has hushed the jangling chorus of the past,
to a faint trickle of sounds, as distant as an ocean heard inside tiny sea-shells,
and,
I know, that the orchestral nostalgic crescendo, rises, dips, and swells,
as tantalisingly near, yet a world of time away, as were the tinkling of her ankle-bells.
Categories:
jangling, child, childhood, growing up,
Form:
I stare at the world through slats in the blind
Which are partly obscuring the dazzle at times
There's nothing particular to spot there today
As even the birds seem to have all flown away
But once in a while a tractor growls down the track
Hauling a jangling old plough or a planter at back
Then later the post van is speeding here with the bills
Soon I watch our Postie get in and out of the chills
In past times we chatted when the dogs were inside
But now I'm in here while they bark out their pride
He'll stop at one house though and sample some tea
But there's nowt going on - it's his sister you see
Just across the river in the giant glass houses there
All trays have been cleaned and stacked with such care
Not much more to do now for a good month or two
Soon be time for their rest in the warmth of Corfu
Not far from their place is a great old machine yard
See bright yellow lorries sport scuffs where they sparred
With anything that didn't yield to their determined path
'Another post over' you may hear their drivers laugh
A few hundred yards more just out of sight on the bend
Is a specialist scrap yard with old machines that they mend
And sell back to farmers for much less than when new
In these cash strapped times there's a few more in view
When times past we ambled my old dog Griff and I
Some walls were crumbling and I thought they might try
To patch up or rebuild them but still they survive
If they fell in a high wind it would be no great surprise
At the jetty quite near there is a boat on the Glen
A spot where a while since I fed our ducks and their friend
The swans have moved on now and the grebes cannot be seen
For the best pickings have gone though the waters still green
It's time for a drink now so maybe I'll potter off to
The kitchen where there is much less of a view
Some soup and a sandwich will be nice I do think
Just as soon as I've washed all the pots in the sink...
©Rhumour
October 6th 2008
Edit February 2016
(Note: this edited version is different from that in the paperback 'Rhumour Has It'
Categories:
jangling, life, poems,
Form:
Rhyme