Best Kneed Poems
Trying to recapture the joy of those winter days is difficult. School cancelled: sun shining through the sheer, white, curtains into an all too girlie room, the sound of a tea kettle's whistle, the ice cold feeling of oak boards on bare feet, between scatter rugs; I ran to the kitchen. The transistor radio sounded, still calling out school closings. The snow sifted down.
bright sun
sparkles on snowflakes –
the plow roars
Quick phone calls, punctuated with giggles, roused a gaggle of neighborhood girls. White skates in hand, I burst out the door. I rushed toward the swampy area behind the neighbor’s house. My rubber boots crunching crust above the powdery fluff. At the edge of the watery wood, I stood staring. Boys, I see the boys in there. They have their skates on already. Tommy Maloney, my crush, skated toward me.
his black waves
dusted with snow –
whoops of delight
A hummock of snow-topped grass served as a seat. I removed my boots from beneath the zip sides of snow pants and try to tie laces new white skates. Once done I stood wobbling, weak-ankled. Tommy laughs, as knock-kneed I attempt a glide toward him falling on my butt. Oh how his eyes sparkled, an Irish rogue at twelve. Kneeling, Tommy began to re-lace my skates. I remember wishing, so much, he would kiss me.
First Contemporary haibun online Fall 2013
Published in Winter Legends 2014
When eye was eating my serial this mourning
Aye red the hole rules four the contest
Eye sore it inn black and white
It was plane for all two sea
The sponsor said wee CAN make miss steaks
Butt too me this practise isn’t write,
Nun are aloud, they are usually band
Yule have guest its throne me off coarse
Ewe awl no wee kneed too right perfect poetry
How can wee expect two win
Hour poem mite bee bard
Weave always bean tolled Anne error can't bee maid
Sew is the fax I didn’t ewes my spell chequer a gambol…
May bee I knead a lessen how too rite inn the write tents two
Tell me strait, do my versus make any scents too ewe?
Who nose, my poem mite sale to a plaice at the top of the podium
Contest Don’t fight it ….write it!!!! – Sponsor John Lawless
08~13~15
A Letter to Myself
Should I give up writing
Seems all this bleating and wailing
Bemoaning this lot of love
I am allocated to feel
But never touch
Should I stop showing the world
Such a pitiful and pathetic face
As it twists and grapples
Dug in my heart
With its suffocating blade
Of aloneness
Where I am lost
When are the fluorescing lines
Of my gratitude
What are my words praises to love
With this eternal gift
Floating me in the fires
Of hot air balloons
But still gut wrenches out my soul
In this separation
“Come on,” I tell myself
What wrapped delight have I known more
I should be proud of my hunger
Feed it with all the imagined embraces
Just for her
More a rock I should
Than this wet dripping weak kneed flannel be
More colourful and joyous
In my need
In deliverance believes
Faith it should be
For the ever bonded
To such a fate
Allows my love to consume me
Her heart so tender
Must needs better of me
Than this whimpering sop
Who’s begging and pleading
Has no real foundation in my bones
More eloquent is she
More rapturous
Than the blazing anthologies of Isis
The hymn and rhythm of her
Calls to me
Shout of exultant
Piercing forever’s follicle
Permeable
She saturates
More a kin to glory I should be
More humbled
And less bent to paupers knee
To lift her ankle
And kiss her feet
Rather I should not
Die so
But
Live
Every Sunday afternoon we’d go to my grandparent’s home,
those were the trips I’ll never forget with my siblings and I-
My grandpa would greet us with that pleasant smile shown,
and I’d always smell the sweetness of my grandma’s apple pie.
Looking back at those memories it makes me want to sigh.
One time she taught me from scratch how to make her delicacy,
the correct way to kneed the dough, how much sugar to utilize-
I remember grandpa whistling an enchanting Christmas melody,
and to this day every year I still bake those homemade pies.
At the county fair in two thousand and nine I won first prize.
My mother never could get the recipe right, so much time wasted,
but I prevailed every time, I guess I was a natural from the start-
My husband says it’s the most delicious food he’s ever tasted,
as I bake those warm apple pies from my amiable and gracious heart.
Last year I taught my daughter to bake, with the recipe I shan’t part.
The Scent Of Baking Bread,
The Scent Of Clean Sheets Fresh Off The Clothesline Poetry Contest
Sara Kendrick
February 16, 2018
“You have to get a job, my son,
Your mother and I agree.
You can’t spend your life just loafing around,
Sponging on her and me.”
And, although it went against the grain,
I realized I must.
So I got a job as a baker
To earn an honest crust.
My father and mother egged me on
And, to make sure I wasn’t lazing,
They bought me an alarm clock,
So I could be self-raising.
I made the occasional bloomer,
As anyone new might have done.
I forgot to turn the oven on
And invented the cold cross bun.
My rich fruit cake was sometimes poor;
My sponge cake sometimes flat.
But now I have the hang of it,
I’ve got it all off pat.
I’m really on a roll now,
Forever on the go.
I have to keep on working,
Because I kneed the dough.
31st May 2022
Merger With Food poetry contest
Sponsor Natasha L Scragg
OLD BOB
Tell ya bout old Bob
Long bout O-One he lost his job
Twernt much ova job I fear
Hadn’t been fer many a year
Standin out front a this here super store
Welcoming folk in kind of a real dang bore
Best thing though bout old smiling Bob
Didn’t mind goin ta work
Kinda liked his job
Standin out front through weather foul or fair
Helping even the infirm with lovin care
Ya might say that there super store was Bob’s true home
Cause after hours Bob sat and sat quite alone
Sat in this one-room pad above a whiskey dive
Listenin ta noise all night all kindsa rock and jive
And as nature will Bob got much older then ill
Standin in front a that there store weak-kneed full a
pain
One day old Bob collapsed couldn’t come back again
He lay on his back atop that whiskey dive
Nary a soul knew old Bob was alive
Ya’d think after years front a that super mart never glum
He’d a wandered round inside found him a chum
“If some help had come he’d have survived” Doc said
This a course too late when they found old Bob dead
Well these things happen in this runaway world
Everybody caught up in their own little whirl
Old Bob it seems uz jist one of the thousands come to a
sorry end
Done his best made mistakes society don’t bend
Old Bob died fer want of a friend
~ The night's alive and a-shiver ~
The moon's a sliver
a hammock without strings
a pale banana with wings
The night's alive and a-shiver
Just you and me on a musical spree
hitting the clubs, dancing up a storm
sleek in our costumes, displaying fine form
Doing the splits cross the floor, spread-kneed
The hour grows late, but what do we care
feeling boundless energy nearly exploding
at midnight we drink a toast to re-loading
Ahead of us lay new and brave dares
Tick-tock, one o'clock; it is already two
Our hearts are still young, but our feat feel weary
We retreat to a corner, vision somewhat bleary
So we sing Auld Lang Syne and down a few...
Brrrrrriiiing goes the alarm. 6 am. Can it be?
Time to shake a leg, get out ahead of the day
The music and dancing yet whirling in our heads
We turn off the blinking alarm, and go back to bed
~ 3-Syllable Footle ~
Eagles dared
Chiefs just stared
Mahomes stopped
By Hurts topped
Kelce contained
Few yards gained
Coach Reid kneed
~ Three-peat greed
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 –
Courting days are long over now
men, well, what does define a man?
Certainly, it is not merely physical?
yet one would expect manliness to
involve some sort of strength?
Does a man let a woman cry?
Does a man make a woman cry?
Honey DO this! Honey move-do that!
The theater is mostly empty now,
no sedans emptying bushel loads of kids,
no popcorn flying through Saturday afternoon’s air.
The kids are reigned in plopped in front of laptops,
too elastically rubber-kneed to walk more than
from the bed to the chair.
I mean the lounge chair, where
they slouch in perpetuity.
A decade or two of days to reframe
two generations of total couch potatoes.
They sit glued to their IPhone, IPods, Kindle’s
not writing, not composing but gaming.
It’s enough to make a mother cry, daily.
Fathers rush down packed highways,
single sardines in smaller and smaller cans,
toward their own desktop comps.
Carpal tunnel runs rampant over the populous.
Emptying box, after box of environmentally correct
reused paper tissues and green nappies into landfills,
online they bet on the daily double.
I used to wonder where love lives,
I found her by the waters,
In the white foam of the seashores,
On the sands of the sea-daughters
Shining brightly, stepping harsh
Slightly under the glow of the skies stars
I saw her, pondering on her own reflection
As it glistened in the waters.
They say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
So radiant her beauty blinded me in an instant,
The force that drew me, that stole my heart, her affliction;
The opposite of narcissus'.
She blew me her sweet kisses,
From the edge of the waters rocks,
As I stumbled tired from war,
Hard breathed knock kneed,
The little breath I had she stole away from me,
Pain wreathed through my lungs,
In place of air my remedy were her sweet locks
Intertwined they climbed, the marine fibers,
They formed the crown and sat above her smiling face
That framed the ocean sapphires,
Love charms hidden behind their liquid glaze.
Under their gaze, I was so far gone
Too weak to understand what was going wrong.
The heat of the flames of my captivity,
The water spirits and their bonds
From my heart to her own tightened
Entangled in the messy knot fools call love.
The rituals and songs of the water world trapped me.
And as bail I gave my heart and its prose
I held her in my ruff palms, through pains and chills
Closer and closer, The Little Mermaid, The Blue Rose
The water spirit though lucid, still
Her thorns cutting deeper, deeper till
My heart broke
Olive Frazier
1854 – 1895
To my many august friends,
Mere survivors under this hungry consuming California sky.
Before you can reach high to the stars, my friends,
Both feet must firmly be set upon the ground first.
This, in essence, is the lesson of a lifetime.
Here in Clark Cemetery, the soil is rich and fertile.
In my prime years I have walked here
Walked on many an afternoon and many an early evening.
Walked and slowly strolled and ambled
Like a solitary tumbleweed in a restless wind.
Like a knock-kneed crab in a dark watery place
Commiserating with the barnacles.
It was on such a stroll
That I encountered the handsome Mr. Frazier.
Milton by name, bricklayer by trade.
We watched the sunset that evening.
Two hawks in flight high in the blue
Swaying effortlessly in the high breeze.
We found love in the dust
And we found heartbreak in the endless shadowed distances
Of Clark Cemetery.
I left this earth giving birth to my baby.
And now together we peacefully reside in this deep hole.
Together with Milton, my love.
Together now and forever in the dirt and the dust.
Milton, I am sorry I left you alone when I died.
So sorry you had to go on without us.
Often when the clouds above give drink to this dead land,
I think of us
Wondrously and miraculously alive,
Strolling to the east under the canopy of the walnut trees.
Your hand in mine
Your heart and mine intermingling magically.
Thank you my husband.
I was indeed privileged to be your wife.
Sea the wight-capped waives rolling inn the see;
here the howling wynds, wile I’m standing hear,
whale and forme hi waives. Theirs eh jumping wail-
tale upp inn the ayre! This should make gneiss tail
two tel wen eye get holm. Butt now theirs too
blew wales inn wiaves- there water spouts just blue!
Whether getting worse, kneed two sea weather
it's my thyme too lieve since wynd now blows it’s
grate, whiled sounds awl across the see, witch great
allowed and shriek. Could bee, I’m knot aloud
write hear two stay- dew knot want gnus too right,
“Sum man fell inn the see and payed the some
witch cost his life from storms angry whiled which.”
Week legs mite make mi sync and fall; eh weak
wood pass before they fined mi with eh would
bored inn my grippe from roe boat beet and board
bye waives and whild wynds that kame and flue buy.
Eye no, its thyme too lieve, cum back wen aye
cee com, and eye can stay eh wile two sea
wails jump inn waives without the wynd’s whiled whales.
April 7, 2015
~2nd Place~
Contest: Only Homo’s Allowed
Sponsor: Jerry T. Curtis
Judged: 04/30/2015
(Homophones)
***Based upon an actual incident a friend had that had a "just" outcome!***
"The Lady Tiger And The Mouse"
She was returning home late one evening
in her pretty new black and red dress!
(He was hiding and waiting in the shadows....
an attacker's nature he did possess!)
She had a wonderful time that night
she was the belle of the ball!
(He somehow got into her building....
and he was hiding in the hall!)
She made her way
to her apartment door
and she was entering her key!
(He silently snuck up behind her
and he atttacked her viciously!)
*****(Poetic Misfortune)*****
((It was then at this point
that everything.....
everything for him
did change!
He made the biggest
mistake of his life
Believe......
He was really out of his range!!!))
************************
She did not panic
and she remembered
all she had learned
in her class!
She kneed him right
in his manhood-
and she then started kicking his....
"BUTT!" :-)
The "Tigress" in her...
it did surface!
She said....
"This will not be done!"
(He never knew what hit him-
all he wanted to do was run!)
Her elbow to his jaw
knocked him quickly
to the floor!
(He actually tried to crawl away-
he did not want this anymore!)
Her neighbors
heard the commotion
and they quickly dialed 911!
(This man became a cowardly lump-
for him in no way was this fun!)
When the police arrived,
Oh, they found him,
he hadn't "crawled" very far!
They handcuffed him
and took him away........
This is why his evening
turned "bizarre!"
Little did he know
in his wildest dreams
that the "Woman"
he chose to attack.....
had trained and earned
a "black belt"....
and "special" skills
she did not lack!
Now....
she was a classmate!
We were relieved
for the way things
turned out!
She did what
she had to do
that night
and she left no room
for doubt!
So in the end
it turned out right!
See.......
her attacker
happened to be her
"ex-spouse"....
but his cowardice
has allowed me
to write and call this......
"The Lady Tiger And The Mouse!"
(WTA-IV)
3/5/2016
Naked Reflections
No racked babe, but I've had no cut and paste!
Like young casabas up front and still 'kewl'!
F i n e 'Brick House' (...'more than a mouthful's a waste')!
**** compared to a 'forty-dollar mule'
With a swing exemplifying my rule!
Each lavender curve, smooth as South Sea Pearls
Enveloped by trellising golden curls.
Body and English, my lingoes in Lit.
And tough guys still stammer, week-kneed like girls!
Mirror's the same ... reflection's changed a bit.
~by deborah burch©
5/03/2012