Best Laundered Poems
She's dressed in freshly laundered scrubs,
a floral top and pants pale blue.
There for a moment to hand me a gown,
and tell me what to do.
As I'm getting undressed, she checks on a man,
he's in the room right next to mine.
He's crying in pain and begging for help,
I hear her tell him that he'll be fine.
A few moments later, the crying has stopped,
as she leaves she turns out his light.
Whatever she did, it's done the trick,
he'll be able to sleep tonight.
She's back with me now and with her this time,
she has her tools in tow.
It's 3 in the morning and she must be tired,
but if she is it doesn't show.
Thermometer ready to check my 'temp,
lift my tongue and tuck it under.
As she wraps the black cuff around my arm,
I watch her and I wonder.
Working twelve hour shifts,
three days off then four days on.
Has she a husband or any children,
who miss her when she's gone?
Does she like cooking or singing?
Does she paint or like to read?
The needle, she pricks me, with such precision,
I hardly even bleed.
My IV's in place, my medicine given,
she says goodnight with eyes so kind.
Just as I'm drifting off into sleep,
a thought suddenly enters my mind.
To this woman I leave my health in her hands,
a serious matter, this isn't a game.
It strikes me as crazy just how much I trust her,
when all I know of her is simply her name.
By~Michelle Lacey
I do not love you like the crescent moon
majestically erupting into a star filled night
nor do I love you like the pearl painted swan
gliding effortlessly across a pristine pond
Fear not for I do most certainly love you -
But my love is more like a cool crisp apple
one succulent bite bringing sustenance to life
My love lives in our fresh laundered linens
dried in the comforting winds blowing off the sea
My love is here
My love is now
It is in everything I touch
It is in everything I Do
I may not love you like the luster melting hearts
glistening off a ten carat diamond ring
but you can be sure my love lives daily
in my every breath and my every dream
Who can resist the strangulating grip of time?
That which exists today may not be there tomorrow
Like shooting stars which vanish in the flicker of an eye
Life comes and goes quicker than a darting arrow
The only constant in life is its inconstancy
With time, even our existence turns a myth
As every sunrise follows a sundown,
Each birth leads to an eventual death
In the fluidity of time, we are in a state of flux
So don’t obdurately hold anything in your arms
Instead loosen your grip and let things go
With the ease of water through your open palms
Every lovely flower that blossoms once
Fades in time and eventually turns to brown
Even a leaf that clings tenaciously to the tree
When autumn blasts strike, falls down
Impermanence being in the grand design of things
To nothing in this world, one can permanently cling
So, willingly give way to herald in the new,
As autumn leaves cannot be laundered for the spring!
Feb.22.2023
~ Placed Second~
Inspired by Robert Frost’s ‘Nothing Gold can Stay’
Poetry Contest
Sponsor JCB. Brul
After a long and stressful day
Running the bath and adding scented oils
Watching the bubbles foaming and frothing
Climbing into the deep soapy suds
Sensational scent of lavender rises
Relaxing in the steamy atmosphere
Blissfully all my troubles melt away
Drying myself in a soft warm fluffy towel
Climbing into freshly laundered sheets
Sheer bliss!
21st January 2015
~awarded 1st Place~
Indulgence Contest - Shadow Hamilton
And I witness
Your deplorable “glory”
Hunching over my tattered spine,
So we can have something in common
You walk with glorified shell-shock,
Another sentient tongue,
Straddling on the Eros of vindication
Your sandpaper hands
Reach for an assaulted tenderness
Embracing lambasted lyric
Another tenor’s proclamation
That their oxidized octaves
Are legitimately sound
…
Nobody is listening.
…
So, you try to rectify your ill-erect
Compass
Only heading south
Bound
By meandering prophecies,
Unwritten
Undeclared
Just another pre-historic fool
Believing the Jamaican grass is greener on
The other side
Puff your corrupted beliefs
Toward laundered Benjamins
While I soak in the bloodied joy,
That I remain priceless
…
Approach me
While you suffer tiny warden syndrome
In High Definition
Be the insignificant syllable that
Becomes, you, a fragmented figment
Of your re-imagination
Call in your slobbering pinchers and
Convince them why dethroning my smile
Will be that change you conspire,
Because I stood taller than the arrogant
Umbilical c(h)ord that breastfeeds your high horse
For I am you
I am you
Every kick, every punch, every verbal attack
Every overcompensating, born-again glare
You blasphemously portray
But, it is not me you scar.
IT IS NOT ME THAT YOU SCAR!
…
Your one-night stand with perception
Succumbs your third-eye
Keep drinking from your bloodied, rustic w(h)ine glass,
As you drown in your declarations of dependence
Screaming to be louder than love
Louder than your ordained intentions
To become a speck of importance
To be worth something,
Something more,
Than the lunging foot you believe
Will keep me down
©D.J.E.
It is a beautiful dawn
The early star has risen
on this chilly December morn
And its not about seeing
it's magical splendour
like wax-melt yellow
dripping from a honeycomb
upon first gentle snowfall
But its about smelling it
Inhaling its soft sweet fragrance
Like that of a lily`s delicate scent
lingering through
my freshly laundered
white shirt
hanging upon the bedroom chair
And its not about seeing
its magical splendour
Like that in a hundred blushes
of glistening hues
Its about touching it,feeling it
A cosy tender feeling
Like that of a Summer breeze
Like slight breathed whispers
upon these cold cheeks
Like warm little kisses
upon my Winter lips
and his playful strong arms
wrapped around
my slender curved hips.
Grandmother's linen
Brief look into bygone day
Antique memories
Soft monogrammed sheets with lace
Carefully laundered.
Kinky boots ...
kicking naked truth
Stripped bare
down to the nightshade roots
Temptress gaze ...
collecting laundered money
off the dirty parquet
Her pay-for-play
get the tilted short cups
ice cubes rattling
See the lecherous throats
swallow the fermented, lewd offering
Let ‘em feel the venom sting:
Allow the paid, slow death foreplay
to snake swamp drain into their pee brain
Seduction Fay Wray eyes
swinging ‘round a metal pole
Medusa headdress affixed at the top
Turning men’s lusty ape bones
into limp chimp stones
Got a Cleopatra guillotine bed,
ready to give
scissor heads a mean Herodian lop
Liquor urging lip gallows to put
a tip squeeze between the bust
And a little rump jiggle
have ‘em groveling in the dust
Baroness Von Knaughty,
she-devil
of such enormous bosom beauty
Daughter of Baal,
Arch duchess of hell
Quenching taboo thirst
with another flesh set of sleaze
Shakedown the pockets
of the bottom feeders
with flimsy lingerie leggy tease
Baroness Von Knaughty,
she of buxom royalty
Vixen kitty, who shows no pity
Feline daughter of the first unveiled dancer,
who STD burned
every lost soul guest
at Hades inaugural purge orgy
I am tied to royalty
the way oceans
are fastened to
moon fluctuations
the way our skin
absorbs sun's radiation
with mathematical
efficiency
producing Nubian
improvisations
from translucent tans
and honey hued browns
to shades of ink
that rivaled midnight
when we opened our eyes
the earth contained starlight
tied to royalty
we made ivory crowns
fashionable
and kings requisitioned
vines for chains
If the moon's pull
causes oceans to move
towards her
My desire must've danced
with my design
before our skin collected
freedom's anthem
Beauty made in abstentia
baptized by indigo
vision, piercing
One hundred years in
our language
started to fade
A cerebral infraction occurred
on the grandest scale
unimaginable
we suffered
word extinction
man muted, forced fed
profits, I wonder
if we'd ever know truth
that didn't involve
"In God We Trust?"
My tongue wants to
form words, my mind
cannot name
Royalty, money laundered loyalty
Wordsmith
outside, it was raining
as it was inside
drinks spilling onto the floor
from incessantly topped-up glasses held by
forgetting, gesticulating hands
spittle flying from mouths attached to people
in love with their own voices
their little huddled audiences salivating
over every word or the prospect
of taking their turn as court-holder
the room drooling with
go-to anecdotes and jokes
rehearsed at a hundred parties like this one
disgorged from speech bubbles like fat storm clouds
filling dead air with stories on life support
sudden thunderclaps of laughter
precipitating further precipitation
the floor must have been wet but thankfully
not gleaming like the pavement twelve floors down
the rain let up outside
I slipped out onto the balcony
and between sips of my stale beer
gulped the laundered air
And Mama pins laundered sheets on the clothesline
Raising her creamy arms with a hum,
Gentle against tainted bricks of our wall
Right in front of this grassy yard…
My velvet dress all spruced up
Fragrant, pressed by morn’s daylight
On luster of mid-autumn:
I observed and scanned her thinning curves
While I paused to grasp that final snapshot;
Enough for me to watch her caring touch
The way she would affably blot out my girlish tears
Crawling down her hands:
The backdoor now swings loudly, then quietly
Exposing run-down, decaying frames
Which rarely irks a mood so airy as that last smile
In twilight’s passing: Robed in clean lacy gown,
Dreary heaves falter to speak …if she only knew
I tucked my velvet dress for my child, O Mama’s legacy.
*
8/26/2019
If Only You Knew: Silent One’s Contest
*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This poem was written in response to an assignment in my online poetry class: “Why does an ordinary life feel like a failure in today's world?”
Because Instagram is a museum,
and we are the unpaid janitors
of our own lives~
mopping up the spillage
of seemingly
unremarkable mornings.
Because someone’s balcony
is always brighter,
their coffee more artful,
their sadness more cinematic.
Our sadness arrives
in discount sweatpants,
unphotogenic.
Because the algorithm whispers:
You could be the main character,
but the plot demands
a montage, a twist,
a soundtrack swelling
as you jog toward redemption.
You are still tying your shoes.
Because the word ordinary
has been hijacked and laundered
into something suspicious~
like a plain envelope
in an age of glitter bombs.
Because we forget
how the spine of a day
is built from quiet commas,
not exclamation marks.
How the heart keeps
its most sacred receipts
in the pocket of an old coat~
a ticket stub,
a note that says come home soon,
the way the light looked
when it was enough.
Surreal as can be
Laundered now looking bluer
Than the darkest sky
Silence is Deadly
Stand up
if the masses did
Trump would be a gravestone
Notes:
Some will tell you never to be silenced, yet will not mention what exactly is the issue. This is typical of people purporting propaganda, hoping to win people to their side without really saying what they believe. Let me tell you very clearly. We should never be silenced by those propagating fear and division and stating literally false facts. Hitler did this successfully. Please don't fall for this again. All those close to Trump not involved with him, have clearly stated his lack of knowledge on issues, never mind his prejudicial views and that's being kind. If one or two agencies or departments was critical well ok, almost every agency, The CIA, the FBI, The Federal Reserve, local politicians all along the border, and the list goes into the hundreds, have stated he is wrong. Listen to experts not a con artist.
Longer before becoming President he has money laundered for Russia, all verifiable facts.
By the way, the wall is not 5.7 billion, that's an installment, the actual cost depending on who you listen too is between 30 to 60 billion dollars, and that's not were most of the migrants are even entering the USA.
Do not let McCarthy exist twice!
; ; ; ; . . . . . . . ; ; ; ;
tears spill crumpled memories
are they laundered dry?
or rehashed?
* quinzaine is a 3-line poem consisting of 15 syllables: 7/5/3.
the first line makes a statement,
the next two ask a question concerning that statement
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Contest: Brian Strand”s “ Whatever"