Best Leathered Poems
Black Powder Dreams
Vast o’ the seas carry forth desperations
Lives cast aside in the faces of war
Rotted wood planks, salted skin aspirations
Wind tattered sails bound of endless explore
Black powder dreams aft the end quarter season
Cannons at wait, closer still to the bow
Manned by the weak, none in need of a reason
Chilled to the bone, never wondering how
Darkened the depths beckon angry waves crashing
Bound to the rail by a pitch and a shove
Visions of loves and the homeland a’ flashing
Prayers slowly drowned before floating above
Scar rippled flesh, leathered treachery flailing
Shrieks in the night causing laughter below
Tethered by fear o’er the desolate wailing
Shadows await harbors safe to bestow
Compass point dangers adrift in the distance
Forced to push on to the end of the fall
Death shrouds belief in a fractured resistance
Down on their knees longing nothing at all
Endless the journey for pittance bled wages
Deaf to the thoughts found alone in the screams
Forever lost in the unopened pages
At the expense of their black powder dreams
11/7/18
Written for the: Black Powder Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anthony Slausen
No Wait in Vain : Poets Meet
For decades I waited
and you did not come
to listen to my rude insertion
finger a sound at back of my throat
and the vibration of my name
For decades I wanted to meet
a small mountain as I read her
plain words in innocence
a bell in her Heart rang deep
with children running sweet
For decades I longed to touch
a struggling mottled moth
as he ached for new wings
smooth ebony cheeks
passionate with letters of adoration
For decades I watched for
a painter to mirror my songs
uncover a talkative witch who
still trampled from place to place
broken shoes echoing my silent breath
For decades I wanted a smooth ride
where conversation was free of tasks
words on both seats of equal length
with ripe apricots for the scoffing
almond chocolates wrapped in red
So I upped my thumb to a veteran one
who read from his leathered collection
notepads and pencils strewn about
space in warehouse oozed slivered glee
No wait in vain !
Scrambling tooth and nail for a patterned fate
I approached the lofty mansion of Learning's Gate.
All cued up for a slip of paper - the one they call Degree,
halfway convinced that I hallucinated humanity.
For who under their own free will would venture
into this spiraling sameness:
this illustriously-in-debt, this Regal Club
of the Nameless?
I bellowed my voice into the air
(This great atrocity!).
But not a single student seemed to care:
So well fashioned they were,
adorned in their prized medals of mediocrity.
Along with their unwillingness to ever stray,
all too content to be but rainbows dreaming of gray.
I hung my head in such morose emptiness.
As I fashioned myself: the uniquely ubiquitous.
And what a fool I was to join the crowd - and yet so halfheartedly.
Striving for the cirrus clouds, the silver moon, and then the galaxy.
For my actions didn't match my cerebral creativity
I was statue still cursed with a meandering mind
(and other such extremities).
Exploding with hopes large enough for two
I sat clearly convinced languid leaps would do.
But one cannot daintily decide to dream the Dream
for it is merely the seed, another earthly deed.
You're not allowed to walk away, gandering as it grows,
for we are likened as the summer sun - keeping the rivers a'flow.
"Picturing profits in your hands
do not till the all too ready land"
explained the elderly gent with leathered palms,
"Someday soon you will understand."
And though we aim to be ourselves
gravity inevitably
brings us to the grid.
Imagination like a heavy rain;
we the paper people
so helplessly hid.
But fear not ye denizens
of the cherished cubbyhole:
where you keep under lock and key
your dust-laden soul.
If one burgeoning blunder
tore it all asunder
surely one single spirited spark
could heal even the most
dormant of hearts.
So fare thee well oh Cookie Cutter Coop -
Another day on that wretched plain, and I'd surely die.
I'm glad just to sever sameness in one fell swoop
by hanging on a star in the midnight sky.
NOTE: I always enjoyed using alliteration when I could... and with this particular one I went a little bit nutty... but I think it turned out okay.
You see him at the store sometimes
He doesn’t walk too fast
His stride has slowed throughout the years
He slowly moves on past
The hair upon his head is white
If there’s any there at all
He may be stooped or bent a bit
A cane so he won’t fall
He smiles but you don’t know his name
He waves a weathered hand
You might smile back and say hello
There goes a nice old man
What you don’t see beyond his face
His life of ninety years
The wife he met the kids he’s raised
The joys and work and tears
The letters won for high schools sports
The girls he used to date
The time his father grounded him
For coming home too late
The war he fought for freedom’s sake
Tales too hard to speak
The friends he lost the wounds he bore
The tears upon his cheeks
The job he worked for forty years
That kept his family fed
The home he built with his two hands
The church group that he led
Time and youth have slipped away
His mind is not as clear
His friends have mostly left this earth
He’s lost his wife so dear.
When next you see an aged gent
Who passes through your day
There’s more to him than leathered skin
There’s much that he could say
He doesn’t want your sympathy
Nor pity could he stand
Don’t treat him like a feeble child
Approach him as a man.
He still remembers all he’s done
He hasn’t lost his pride
Respect his years for you’ll be there
And know his heart inside
In what haunt hath hope,
he who in solitude,
weeps into soiled palms;
calloused by that labor
desolate of redemption.
Leathered and wrinkled
by ever so recent a passage
of too many yesterdays.
In what haunt hath hope
those tears shed in anguish
amidst gales unrelenting
which snatch at birth
and toss into oblivion.
Unmarked is the course
across age weary cheeks
drooping under the weight
of too many yesterdays.
O miserly fates
how hollow thy prize
no less, at so great a cost.
Greatness is lonely,
my soul for a kingdom
bartered so unwisely
from dust to ash
and the shimmering
to rust by the reckoning
of too many yesterdays.
In what haunt hath hope
such beggarly ilk
adorned in finery
beyond dreamscape lux.
Hidden under lavish raiment,
decay of the forsaken
lost even to themselves
in a calmly rippled wake
of too many yesterdays.
07/03/15
I don't care anymore. You are the most wonderful thing I've ever seen in my life.
Everytime you look at me I want to explode. You're doing some sort of yoga move in front
of me which you claim not to be yoga with your 15-year-old autistic client, rubbing your feet
into his hand, bending over him between a giant cushy yellow soft-leathered cylinder, your
hair dangling over him, now up in a pony-tail as you resituate your thighs, steadied and
jeaned in that young and smart physique, a show of craving futures for my sitting nature,
not more than two feet away.
I will love you from afar with light beams if I must. We'll be left to devour each other with
our eyes. In hot-quick glances.
*Image of Hallmark Channel by Giphy.
Chimed Upper Room
Chimed new day shines...eagerly corrects an upper room looks,
An attic improving rapidly...promotes roams of diligence,
Lacks found bordered leathered album...trapped topped a cornered desk.
Cutting edge mounts an Everest...Grand Canyon grooves a pass,
Emptying a corridor...grants patience traces of sweat caught brow,
Weighty whatnots slothfully shift...relief of prized treasure.
Lives confined--stilled in a photograph...bound neath grained-hewn film,
Reviving breaths aids wiping palms...adjusting dust rules idle air,
Widen pupil's gaze...proffers freedom to locked memories.
A leisurely dance of fingers...entertaining a page,
Courses from staging consequences...flips driftingly e'er so oft,
Cherished persevered poignant times...plus occasional laughs.
Age feebly trades a gentle glance...to sights of swept-up youth,
Niagara Falls revisit eyes...interlude recalls Wordsworth,
Rousseau swells the lulls...till Longfellow's maiden turns a page.
A soothing thoroughness applied...o'er sovereignty once claimed,
Delighting a soul wanting remembrance...effervescence inched rise,
Bestilled processing images...icons pageants the heart.
Strokes into yesterdays...fulfill a distant emptiness,
Once existed in certainty...consequently in dreams of need,
Now physically held...persuades rising tips of a mouth.
2020 July 30
*2nd Place*
Dusty Old Memories
~~Constance La France: Judged 2020 August 06
I know that all good things must meet their fate,
but to die alone would bring such sorrows.
None there to reminisce about the past,
or to ponder upon the tomorrows.
No one there to hold tightly my frail hand,
or to gently caress my leathered cheek.
With no last kiss to soothe my furrowed brow,
no loving words given for memories keep.
No one to whisper a final goodbye,
or to pray for just a little more time.
No one there to dry the tears from my face,
as I succumb to the clocks closing chime.
To pass unnoticed across the grey veil,
with unfettered tears and shuddering breath.
No one there to hear my last crying sigh,
as my eyes darken with shadows of death.
The rain falls faster, faster now,
Plummeting arid plains below,
Eroding bits of blackened soil,
Washing away decayed petals.
One by one, they slip out of existence,
Walking out rusted doors.
I stand under the cold, crisp water,
Letting it soak through layers of frayed fabric,
Seeping into skin that's leathered with age.
Scents of petrichor shift through brisk bursts of wind,
Trapped within the mess of my mind for far too long now.
The resounding smells flood my senses
With bygone memories,
Snapping between past misunderstandings
That turned into reverberations of us,
And fears of a future
That slipped through calloused fingers.
Looking down at what materialized in my wailing hands,
I dig the frigid steel deep into my chest,
Cutting beneath layers of flesh and sinew,
Past a cracking ribcage,
To expose a beating heart, screaming in agony.
I slice it from its hollow home,
Position it on a tarnished platter,
Place it as an offering at your sacred feet,
Interminably holding me in your gnarled heart forthwith.
Mornings fade into evenings, evenings slip into nights.
Day colors spill from their pails, then seep into
valleys, wind caves and shale.
The Painted Desert bleeds into a Stygian hue
as the heat reaches up to embrace the moon
and soon, nocturnal eyes will glow starry bright.
She is a stern and hardened matron, giving homes to
venomous lodgers, leathered skins and prickly spikes,
nurturing the Eagleclaws and Buckhorn Cholla,
seldom shedding tears, yet seducing hikers with
her raw beauty and enticing guile, beckoning
well-worn travelers, luring them in with her temptress smile,
wagging a crooked finger while breathing sweet, hot breath.
Her brilliance inspires painters, giving passion to photographers,
scribes, and past homes with heirlooms to Navajo tribes.
Though the sky grows dark with oranges and pinks slipping away,
they are resurrected at dawn, when cactus wrens scold
rattlers coiled by rocks, commanding them to dens.
The Painted Lady is harsh, watching with lavender eyes,
scarlet lips, and a throat of dust- thirsting for a drink.
She wears skin of leather, powdered with a coat the color or rust.
But she does no intimidate me with her sharp nails, hot breath,
and painted face- for she once was my neighbor.
And though years pass by, her radiant beauty never pales.
My great grandfather, "Sani" is buried somewhere deep
in her bosom. I placed a stone and etched his name above
the place where he now sleeps in this land.
The epitaph is covered by a tawny shroud
blown in from the Niyol- so I brush away the
offending residues with one swift, sweep of my hand.
The Ghost Train
North Wind, it was a howling, the sky was black as guilt
Malevolent the sheen, where upon her moonbeams spilt
Through the murky distance, her belly glowing bright
Roaring down the line, she was roaring down the line
Charging down the line, the Ghost Train rolls tonight
She glides along the platform, where haunted faces wait
With dreams of grand ambition, that only she can slate
The driver in his blood red suit, turns a skeletal grin
Toward the hungry hopefuls, then ushers each one in
From store to fire, his actions deft
The fireman twisting on his plate
Stokes the engine right to left
He fuels the fire of fate
He mutters and stutters, “We can’t be late”
For time is money and money won’t wait
With shovels full of human desire
He fuels the fire of hate
The whistle cord is pulled, the flag flutters all clear
The engine she is plied, starts the journey into fear
On it goes a rumbling,
On it’s round iron feet
Inside the folk are tumbling
From every leathered seat
Amid the laughter and the chants
What life, what love, what times
Everyone is held entranced
By ghostly railway lines
Tittle tattle chatter, ash from the chimney pours
Natter rattle clatter, onward the Ghost Train roars
Strange games are played
Some win some lose
Sincere thank you’s become mislaid
As each the other use
Beneath the load the earth she quakes
As all aboard debauch
Done deals and shady handshakes
On every carriage porch
Kerching-kerching-kerching, the till bell rings
More-more-more, the engine softly sings
From store to fire, his actions deft
The fireman twisting on his plate
Stokes the engine, right to left
He fuels the fire of fate
He mutters and stutters, “we can’t be late”
For power is waiting and power is great
With shovels full of human remains
He fuels the fire of hate
In never ending search, she roams across the land
Controlled by the evil, of the blood red suited hand
Through the murky distance, her belly glowing bright
Charging down the line, the Ghost train rolls tonight
If it pulls into your station
Will you jump upon its frame?
Will you lose all inhibition?
On your way to wealth and fame
For when the ride is done
There’s no-one else to blame
If you find you become
Another furnace flame.
Hey barber, give me a shoe and a shine
As he's lathered he feels just fine
Then he views the shoe shiner
Wow, what breasts, nothing finer
My hands on them I wish they were mine
Young lady, let's spend time in a motel room
Get to know each other, vroom vroom
I'm married, och, you'll be fine
I'll pay, say your working overtime
You tell him, the barbers my groom
.
Challenged to write this based on a joke!
You can't see my soul,
But I think that you know,
It ain't what it is
But it is becoming what it will be,
Tapestries of the past and the jagged corners of the now and blended hope into the future,
Merge all three I's into one you'll see as me,
Past lessons good and bad were the threshold of today,
And as they melt into tomorrow
Ancient pains won't stand in my way,
Cuts and bruises scraped knees of life,
Will not hold me at bay,
As I learn and then grow stronger facing east each dawning day,
Face is worn and leathered life attempts to make me hard and steely grey,
Yet with every blow I weather I grow softer in the grace,
The old man inside me now sees what young arrogance of yesterday could not embrace,
Life tattoos you call em scars
But it's just how the one becoming me has come to be,
And the pains that cost the most
Are the wounds that you can't see,
The ink of life imprinted on my soul
Will become God's masterpiece
The task commissioned,
the black sand tested,
deemed worthy
of hard use.
A sword-smith's prayer
lifts aloft to the Shinto shrine
requesting his soul be captured
in the mirrored grain
of this, his finest blade.
An earthen furnace raging,
flames licking the entrance.
To smelt, to cleanse,
charcoal carbon to mix,
breathing strength
into raw tamahagane.
Shingane, kawagane,
one brick of each.
feeding the mouth
of a greedy forge.
Regurgitating and melting,
making pliable these.
Leathered craftsman hands
drive out flaws and sparks,
hammering, bending,
meticulously folding
thirty-thousand times.
Tired and spent,
black eyes linger
over the polished steel,
to inspect and examine,
acknowledging a masterpiece.
Now, commission completed,
his motive revealed.
with an unthinkable descent;
momentum for a sickening plunge,
as his own life force
runs red the reflective hada.
great aunt, kissed me yesterday
after bidding fond adieu's
to fleeting flashbacks of youth
streaks of invincibility
stiffened her spine when a gentleman came calling
courting her future
a legitimate suitor
awkward member in good standing of the
Chicago Fire Department
A man unaware of the elements due to generations of Irish breeding
mule, mick, jackass, workhorse, turf-cutter,
he responds to all equally
stones of rough leathered hands... make him free
to cast a roving eye, flash a quick smile
share a wink with a girl hanging laundry out back to dry
aunt kissed me today, longer
holding on to that sweet floating feeling
that anything might happen
and would
when the Holy Trinity cuts her a break
if Paddy can turn the other cheek
oblivious to water that Mary's mother threw off the back porch
onto his only brown suit
onto his pride
onto Halsted Street
bright Sunday morning in June
The triplets had ruse in motion
ascetic, etched from strict culture
preordained her new life of solitude
Paddy, fresh off the boat
wet behind the ears
soaked in shame
never came back
auntie grieved
unwed
will always kiss