Best Lodges Poems
Summer, Montana - I was twenty-one
Cloaked in gray thoughts, far vision concealed
Until I walked beneath your healing sun
Your magical, lush mountains revealed
In trees, symphonies of birdsong merry
Your trails of daisies led me to streams
Sprinkled with sweet pops of huckleberry
Your lodges - open, soaring antique beams
There, he found me - in silence, music heard
Held me close in his arms in moonlit dance
I loved that he loved my wellspring of words
Then, September - and he- gone in a glance
It is his unicorn charm I still feel
Alluring, spellbinding - but it's not real.
5/8/18
Schneefall / Snowfall / La Nevada (Kintaishi or Kanshi)
Der Schnee fällt wieder
Wo die Natur friert
Dort kehrt Ruhe ein
Wildenten rufen
The snow falls again
Where the nature freeze
There lodges peace
The call of wild ducks
Otra vez cae nieve
Donde la naturaleza congela
Allí aloja la paz
Llamada de patos salvajes
Note: Kintaishi or Kanshi is a Chinese form of poetry an can be written in different not
rhyming lines and syllables e.g. 4 lines with 5,6 or 7 syllables in each line
8 lines with 5 0r 7 syllables in each line
12 lines with 5 or 7 syllables in each line
Historically accurate, narrative poem
27 November 1868, on the banks of the Washita River
Dawn’s peaceful first light streaks the eastern skies,
belying the horror of a marauding force of horses and men,
silently stealing over new fallen snow preparing
to deliver a fateful blow to the Cheyenne camp below.
The silence is broken when bugles sound the charge
over frozen ground, against a sleeping village that
having complied with every previous unjust demand
thought themselves safe from Custer’s command, deployed
in three columns according to plan, to charge from the west
and the village front, while Maj. Elliot’s column blocked
escape to the east. With the Washita river to their back,
there was no place for chief Black Kettle and his peaceful
band to escape the attack. Braves, women and children, it
made no difference, no preference was shown or quarter
given, most were slaughtered while their lodges burned,
though soon against other creatures the killing would be turned.
Black Kettle reached the river but lost his life while attempting
to cross over with his wife. The lucky few that did survive the
bloody strife and fled across the river to the ridge beyond,
below which their pony herd grazed, soon were filled with
dread and fully amazed when at Custer’s command the entire
herd was shot dead. But by now from other encampments
further east, many Cheyenne Arapaho, and Kiowa braves,
drawn to the sound of guns in the early dawn, were massing
on the hill beyond, milling and buzzing like angry bees, singing
and chanting prayer songs for their dead, filling the soldiers with
a fearful dread. So Custer broke off the engagement and began
to withdraw, but the stage had been set for another day-
June 25, 1876-
when at the Little Big Horne the debt owed for this atrocious
act, Custer and the 7th in full would pay. Meanwhile, as a
prelude it might seem, Maj. Elliot and his column, trapped without
a chance, were wiped out to a man by the Indian’s western advance.
those moments i hold
when love held me
jewels that adorn my memory
some are of you
others are lodges far deeper
a populated field of young
wannabe future all-stars
filling a sandlot full of future
where wild horses reign free
you lost in hugging the dog
the cat cuddles up next to you
even deeper those pigtails
the temptation before me
how else do you tell them
I have it bad for you
which I had perfected
the moment I saw you
that instant love brings you
into its' sweet embrace
and so I measure life
as such
these jewels within memory
and nothing in life may intrude
bitterness stands as an anathema
before Grace
I give no quarter to resentments
because I have no expectations
wherever life takes me
this is the only bag I carry
love's sweet embrace
life is a miracle
deserving a devotion of gratitude
Oregon 7/23
Written in High School
I wonder what is there
just beyond where my mind can see;
what am I searching for
that streams dreamy colors
through my thoughts
and in my most complacent moments
-play silly games...dodging,
flying through my eyes
while my brain breathes them
over my lips.
If only I could see their light
reflecting back upon me
as they escaped into the world
that lodges my unconscious dreams.
My true desire is to follow their flight
and shyly discover what I am made of...
Beauty
beauty, beauty, I don’t recognize 100%
I don’t see fair, I’m confident…
Like a manual German machine, I’m Neutral
Like a four-year old boy, I’m enquiring
But, through You beauty is distinct
Beauty is when I look at you and understand smile
It is not open-air where beauty lodges
But within, where smile arises
You’re a guide to beauty
You’re a habitat to beauty
Beauty trusts upon you
For You are beauty’s true definition
Beauty is when you take away your glasses but still shine
Beauty is when beauty can’t go round you
Beauty is when beauty can’t go overhead you
Beauty is when beauty can’t go without you
Beauty is when beauty can’t go beneath you
Beauty is when beauty goes through you
Beauty is when beauty can’t live without you
…You are beauty
Sages say it's wise to persist
In striving for respect over love.
Such counsel I readily dismiss
One is set here, the other above.
Respect requires a clinical bent
Empathy-empty in the joints.
But love lodges everywhere sent
Heals, blesses, and anoints.
Respect eschews a pardoned act
Fearing a weakness be exposed.
But loves sustains itself intact
Caring not for what is supposed.
Prioritize respect if still you will
Seal it fast in bones and soul.
Know though when life bodes ill
It's love that makes it whole.
I grump, I slump, I scowl, I'm in a mood
To judge, nitpick and be abruptly rude.
Skies heavy under clouds of concrete gray
Lost are the pinks and lavenders of May.
This winter has worn down my sunny cheer
A season's rain lasting throughout a year.
Manners abandoned as passive and prim
The strain on kinder spirits running grim.
I swallowed full this bitter appetite
Too eager for the apple's poisoned bite.
An ice stone lodges where my heart once bled
Frozen where human charity has fled.
Like princesses asleep in frosty tombs
I wait on kisses dropped from rosy blooms.
At last, a crack, a ringlet of green thaw
Renewal, like clover, fragile and raw.
A rise in warming skies by shifting blues
Outlines the sun's return in heathered hues.
The promise within rainbow spring relies
Upon the wings of snow white butterflies.
05/06/21
Rhyming Couplets contest
Sponsor: Janice Canerdy
The syllable count was verified on howmanysyllables.com
As we wait for Cruzzatte to anchor the boats
and bring along the men with pull sleds for the carcasses
a teenage Indian boy on a brown pony painted with winged eyes
prances in and out of our slain buffalos, quiver and bow upon his back
the settling haze of violence ebbing around his undisturbed gallop
as if to see and sanction what we've done, completely unfrightened by us
his eyes fixed on me with a grin that says he knows the pleasure of the kill,
he be so errie in his handsome joy of this death scene,
through native sign language the poetry of hands in dance reveals the heart of a tribe,
Drouillard and I determine that his name is Young Wise
and is a member of the Yankton Sioux
I agree to let Drouillard return with Young Wise to the Yankton site
of 60 lodges 15 miles away, he will be a potential hostage
but he has accepted the risk like a family man
and if they harm him we will burn them,
their leadership will recognize the importance of our favor
and arrive at the Corp's camp with chieftains, curiosity and Drouillard by dusk I'm sure,
our respective nations must learn the path to mutual prosperity,
J.A.B.
I know you see me from up there,
from halfway up the steep and twisting lane.
In early half-light as you take your walk
I no doubt seem to loom as you descend,
appear to grow, to rise from earth,
my boxlike rectilinearity,
severe and unadorned geometry,
a silhouette against the solitary sodium source.
I once hosted fiery-throated hymns
from dedicated souls in Sunday best:
“Marchog, Jesu, yn llwyddiannus”,
“O! Iesu mawr, rho d’anian bur” –
voices rich and raised and resonant,
so filled with faith, so gorged with God.
My pitch-pine pews were polished
by coat and skirt and trouser twill.
Abandoned now, unloved, slab-still,
void and stark and desolate,
with quarry-tiled floor that would resound
with joy were anyone to walk upon it,
I present gaping emptiness, a thing felt,
a cave whose darkness, palpable,
is peopled by retreating echoes of my past,
like timorous ghosts far too afraid to speak.
But there is One I must not name –
though He might be known by
the four letters of the tetragrammaton –
who lodges in my roomy quarters,
cowers within my tight square corners,
seeking shadows when the sun stares in.
I hear Him breathing as
He sweats in His remorse, a thing smelt.
He hides from the accusing eyes of every nation,
the eyes that witness daily His forlorn creation.
(The chapel speaking here is in a small place in West Wales, UK)
(Translations: “Marchog, Jesu, yn llwyddiannus” = "Ride on Jesu, all victorious"; “O! Iesu mawr, rho d’anian bur” = "O Jesu, let Thy spirit bless")
I WISH I WEREN’T A BUNNY
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS
I never wanted to be a bunny, I’m not playing this game
I’d reconsider a puma: a lion with a frightening mane
But that’s not my fate, I’m a bunny, a defenseless toy
Other creatures have fangs, claws; they can deploy
I have no defensive arms for use in personal defense
Why nature created a sitting duck, just makes no sense
My choice would be the fiercest critter ever seen
Yep, you got the picture, the ferocious wolverine
Indian lore says, one could cause a village to vacate
Moving in on his territory was a fatal mistake
He’d come after you, if on horse back or if on foot
He’d destroy your tepees and lodges all gone, kaput
But alas, that’s not me: in spite of what I’d like to be
I’m a bunny with soft fur, that’s something we all can see
I have soft long ears, and a wiggly waggely tail
A cute sniffing nose, my gifted maneuvers never fail
Maybe for you, but doesn’t satisfy my lifelong dream
I’m a ferocious beast inside willing to dominate the scene
Mother nature could have given me more traits to bear
Like those big hind legs and speed she gave to the hare
Or a cotton tail that can avoid danger by simply leaping
I spend the day, daydreaming or silently sleeping
But all in all; the object of my wishes and self esteem
Is to wake up tomorrow in the body of a wolverine
Each day when I open my eyes, it’s the same old story
My status hasn’t changed, I’m the example of lonely
When I first arrived every body came over to see me
I was the new thing on the block a real live novelty
But as time progressed visitors were fewer in number
Reducing my activities to intermittent slumber
Bunny (2)
I can’t complain I have fresh vegetables every day
And usually some company, if the kids decide to play
But I’m a one man show unable to live up to my reputation
As a prolific contributor in expanding the population
Each night I pray when I wake a willing doe will appear
I know she is somewhere but unfortunately, not here
In a dream the other night, I was lightening quick
Instead of hippity n hopping, I was lickety split
Those wishes that constantly flood my senses
Doused by the existence of surrounding fences
I’ll just have to accept my lot, be docile, not mean
But between you and I, I’d rather be a wolverine
IF YOU PULL A LONG FACE : Part XXIV
IF you pull that long martyred face
While brake-disks hiss howl metal-doors click-clutch-cluck on railway
No Tokyo masks nor hand darts to protect the homefront populace
Breeding grounds Underground cooking love-cold soup bacteriae
If you pull that damnit I've-caught-it again long distressed face
Between fleeing Metro stations unable to turn your face away
Holding breath in terror fumigating in deadly solipsistic silence
Which year's vaccination failed to mutate and antidotes convey
If you pull that long contorted villified face
Sandwiched between leaking semen sweat coughing sonorous spray
Bacteria exploding tout azimut in jolting standing wool-crammed space
Smiles stuck in smart-phones fingers deftly messaging con-art display
If you then pull that fully-drenched long face
Face to face with guys who repress no more pent-up phlegm volley
Adding to that splash short staccato sharp poop-stench promise
Who nurses not nor lodges the germinating common denominator heir
Yet if you must pull that long innoculated face
Remember the doctor the nurse the pharmacist all give willing way
To the vast multi-national over/under the counter panacea commerce
To keep the influenza germ indoors at soaring fever pitch - Hurray !
© T. Wignesan - Paris, January 25, 2019
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Forgive us please our enormous bilious hubris
The quasar-lit heavens smile only down upon us
For Our Master he presideth over the Universe
Our Architect-Father he beds down in the blackest holes
Our temple bells and lodges’ knell toll only for Thee
While Thou slips from one parallel universe to another
Yeah, notre terre qui est à Votre taille
The muezzin’s cry reaches far into the darkest cloud
From turret to galactic turret resounds the prophetic call
Colliding antennae make a murky Baghdad morass
The fallout heralds the bigcrunchy messianic massage
Our Master who art the shine on the Brahmin’s head
Which knows no limbs feet chest nor shivering loins
Forgive us our cowering at the spewing Purusha mouth
For Thine is the thunder exploding forever and ever
Did not a bodhi prince once keep a damning silence
He saw no need to undo Thy mighty male tie
Lest he’s forced to traverse this soil again in rags
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
As for the other fully bearded nodding mates
They are those who first invoked Thy game
They’ve now bought the world over in Thy name
But prefer to run the banks ‘ere Thou cutteth the rates
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Is the epicentre of the roiling boiling might
Where domes echo for the right to languish at Thy side
And watch the Goya geek chew the heathen to shreds
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
All the stars you see out there in the ever-ever
Are but the conjurer’s balls dancing up in the air
The illusory waking dream of the never-never
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Give us every day the fireworks in the sky
For Thine is the show and ours the joy
For ever and ever spinning a lie !
T.Wignesan, November 3, 1997, Fresnes-Paris (Rev. 2012, Paris)
From: T. Wignesan
Copyright ©: T. Wignesan, rev. November 3, 1997 (from the collection: longhand notes (a binding of poems), 1999.
Depression is intrinsic gall to mother Earth
A heart malady that suppress I want to be, I what
To do, want to do, and how to get with it on a
struggling manner
A mountain upon a small creature,
A man that hide behind a small obstacle and upon
entering the heart, he lodges like a heavy stone.
Million of thoughts will now be rushing into the mind
like a whirling wind
What makes you think you can't overcome this
moron vulture?
Depression: a strong man, but brittle in nature
Determination and focus reduced him to languor
Once he comes waving in your therein,
an angry ocean, don't give in
because seeing you
crying inward
Or thinking negatively would
only make him eat deep
your heart.
Rather, infuse your self with
Hope and be prayerful. Only then you are the
strongest.
7/6/15
www.poetrysoup.com/poem/depression_697873
Form:
WHAT MORE SHOULD THE GURU NARRATE? LOVE IS A VERB, IT CONFIDENTLY OPENS UP ITS RED SWEET LIPS, AND SCREAM FOR ITS SELF. LOVE AT ITS ONSET, SO PURE, PLEASANT, A COMPLETE SPLENDOR – IF YOU ARE AN ATHEIST YOU’VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE. WE NEVER REALIZE WHEN WE FALL IN LOVE, AND IT CAME TO ME THE ONLY REASON IT IS EXPRESSED AS “TO FALL IN LOVE” IS BECAUSE WE NEVER INTEND TO. I AM NO A MAGICIAN NOR A SUPERNATURAL BUT LOVE IS A MIRACLE EACH OF US CAN PERFORM AT A DEGREE, YET WE UNABLE TO EXPLAIN IT TO ANYONE. LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL, ETHEREAL “PERFECT BOND OF UNION”. DO YOU REMEMBER HOW IT FIRST BEGUN, SMILES OF ADMIRATION AND ROMANTIC CHARMS LIKE COUNTRY ROSES AND SAFFRONS THAT OPENS UP IN SPRING. I HAD A DREAM ABOUT HOW LOVE TURNS IN TO A STRONG CHEMICAL WITH MULTIPLE BONDS IN THE BLOOD THAN ANY COMPOUND EVER EXISTED, WHEN YOU SEE THEIR FACE, HEAR THEIR VOICE, SMELL THEIR PERFUME – LOVE IN OUR BLOOD IS SENSITIVE TO THIS THINGS. THE HEART IS A HOUSE LOVE LODGES IN, THE RUSHING WIND OF THE LOVED ONE’S MEMORY COMES KNOCKING ON THE DOOR OF THE HEART, ITS DOOR LEFT RUMBLING AND BEATING WITH ENOUGH PRESSURE TO PUSH LOVE OUT OF THE HEART DEFTLY RUSHING THROUGH THE VEINS - THAT IS THE REASON YOU GET A BRISTLE AND GOOSEBUMPS.
"LOVE IS PATIENT AND KIND, IT BEARS ALL THINGS, BELIEVES ALL THINGS, HOPES ALL THINGS, ENDURES ALL THINGS- LOVE NEVER FAILS”. WE ALL WANT SOMEONE WE JUST CAN NOT IGNORE, BUT LOVE IS TRUE AT ITS MANIFESTATION WHETHER ITS REAL OR NOT WILL BE PROVEN BY ITS ENDURANCE. A WRITING ABOUT LOVE IS NEVER COMPLETE, BUT THE HEART WHICH IS READING AND KNOWS THIS AMAZING FEELING COMPLETES IT, ALWAYS WITH A SMILE.