Best Lodging Poems
A summer afternoon, I stepped onto my study porch's to go to lunch. A Hispanic-looking man was standing there waiting for me. I said hello to him, and thinking he needed some assistance, I said, “Are you here for the food pantry?” He said that he wasn’t. I thought, perhaps, his family was in a car somewhere, so I said, “Do you need to get into our clothing closet?” He said, “No, thank you, I don’t need any clothes” Trying again, I said, “If you’re traveling through, I can arrange for you and your family to have a room for the night in our local motel.” He said, “No, I won’t be needing that.” “Well, if you’d like,” you can join me for lunch. I’m going down to the restaurant. Want to come along?” He said, “No, I’m not really hungry.” By this time, I was rather puzzled, so, I decided to introduce myself as the church’s pastor, and he said to me, “You would spell my name J-E-S-U-S.” I said, “Oh, I speak Spanish. I’m glad to meet you, Jesus (I pronounced it hay-sus).” He said, “No, not Haysus; I am Jesus.” I was somewhat taken aback. He said, “I’m going around to churches to see if they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. You have offered me food, clothing, and lodging. You are doing what my followers are supposed to be doing!”
when we least expect
Jesus may appear to us
unsurprisingly
Thinking I was, maybe, seeing things, I nonetheless bid him farewell and went on to the restaurant. No one in the restaurant had seem a man like the one I described. No one in town had seen him. The next day I dropped by the motel, but they had not seen any man like that either. From that day on, I told folks how, one day, I met Jesus at the back door of our church; but, no one believed me, of course! Be that as it may, that epiphany changed my way of thinking and my life.
we often discount
mystifying occasions
when Jesus drops by
FIRST PLACE TROPHY WINNER
Written August 9, 2022
Submitted to "An Epiphany That Changed Your Life" Contest
Sponsored by Chantelle Anne Cooke
Used on Poetry Soup 6/13/17
Summer’s Songs
The rumbling bass of thunder,
A beat of light, a roaring rain,
Zinnias are spreading and waving
Glory colors once again.
The low viola of cool breeze air;
Blue Jays’ tweeted tempos,
Searing sunrays rippling
Hot sand lodging in your toes
Suddenly a siren crescendos
As a passionate clarinet.
Playing children in summer shorts
Sound a cheery sweet quartet.
Water splashing and sparkling
Lends its notes to the homebound throng.
Turtle doves’ murmurs sighing
Softly the finale to summer’s songs.
A Palace of Aloneness.
This palace of aloneness is not my home.
It's bricks know only the time of run-off bygones.
Transition past it's thousand entrances
Impaired with creeping ivy
Into it's stately communion hall
For the dead and the living you'll end up.
Look out it's eyes towards blurred views
Draped in so longs never to be clearly revealed.
Gawk at it's floor to ceiling shelves infinitely crowded
With ô so decidedly swollen hearts
Captive inside tightly sealed jars.
To dust them is not my task.
Here, cabinets are filled with illogical medicines
For conditions without extensional cures.
A repository for good and bad intentions.
You'll know as soon as you feel it
That you are there.
I'll take no residence in this palace
On the dark side of it's interference.
Secure no long or short term stay in it.
This settlement has no neighbors
To cheerily comfort with a smile.
No happiness locker, no blowing kisses.
No escape if you accept lodging here.
Move on, let weighty doors close before you
That have no real escape.
About-face before it's dark shadow becomes you.
Recapture only evidence that matters.
There is no recouping backwards.
Offer up your redress to tomorrow today.
Flee past this palace of forlornness.
Avoid it's thorns upon your ankles.
Clutch your heart from head to toe.
Keep your future safe to ascent again.
Stay out and away look up to heavens above
Even now they are clouded with silver linings.
Gravel crusted potholes, all slathered up with mud,
And ruts that jar your bones served on the side.
No place to turn around: I know because I've tried;
The heavy rains bring washouts from flash floods.
A great big hill so steep it evokes fear and dread
(When sloshing in a truck with two-wheel drive).
A ravine filled with brush, and trees no more alive,
Old tires guide wayfarers where to tread.
Out near 231, the forest's sounds subside;
The asphalt groove song echoes in your head.
And there, just 'round the bend, that quiet sense of dread:
The trail down to the place the woman died.
The big wide world awaits: four-lane divided life
To work and church and friends and so much more.
A fleeting mirror's glance; the heart takes flight to soar
To land, to lodging, daughter's family, wife.
Gravel crusted potholes, all slathered up with mud,
Like servings of my favorite dessert.
The tires turn to joy as paved gives way to dirt;
This road's my home: there's Huskey in my blood.
Elder jays roam the tainted winds in herds,
Alighting upstream like most holy birds
Into the threshold of an inky night,
And journey forth with brave rafters, onwards
For lofty a view, their sweet rest’s delight.
Although clouds withdraw from a hued backdrop
This avian route, dismal, nary a flop
Under bloodstained gust surviving a dodge;
Before piteous age taints life , non-stop
With hopes to reach their own destiny’s lodge.
Yet, the valiant flock abandons a cry
Invoking hymns droning a lullaby
Through morn hours, the conception of new birth
Sends angel wings on gates of heaven’s sky…
Enshrining old jays’ flight with endless mirth!
................................
Rhyme Time With 5 Contest: For Laura Loo
10/6/2017
Checked via howmanysyllables.com, rhymezone.com
i sit in front of window
i see magnificent scenery
brighter than the blue sky
clearer than the clearwater
i hear wind voice whispering to me
it hugs me firmly with its friendliness
passing by me spirit entirely
like spring breeze lodging in soul
so friendly that i feel inner peace
it stops time to cure my inner pain
it brings me to inhale a life
exhale all of scary tales
never have i felt such situation
might i always enjoy this wind
until the end of eternity
most lovely experience i ever have
I lie with shadows past the midnight hours
wondering . . . wondering. . . when will I ever sleep?
Something gnaws at me; at times it devours.
It devours the dreams I hope to dream.
Lyrics of some song or nothing-thoughts seem
insistent on lodging in my mind – where they creep.
My soul yearns to slumber, but inside I’m reeling.
The nothing-thoughts persist although they are not my plight!
What keeps me from my dreams is a feeling.
It’s kin to dread, and I lie in my bed like a leaf
swept by an inner wind-force; that feeling is a thief
robbing me of precious sleep in the umbra of night.
Jan. 1, 2018 for Lu Loo's Rhyme Time 7- Deep And Dark Poetry Contest
Theme #5: Umbra of Night using rhyme scheme: A-B-A-C-C-B D-E-D-F-F-E
Today I awoke, half-eaten by
a stubborn flame that cannot die
though long the coal departed;
I lay here broken-hearted,
like it was yesterday she said
she needs me not before she fled
as times before, though yearning
and every time returning.
I wonder as the months go by
her lodging, and the reason why
she bore it all, untethered
then left me just her feathers
and the most pretty memory
for my diurnal reveries
assuring, to be clear,
to me she’s dying to be near
and yet dreams of returning,
to quench me, ‘til then burning.
From deep melancholy
I can see things are still moving.
Droning buildings, persons and some
pales of persons (inside), animal airs,
and walking phantasms yearning
to be beautiful.
It all seems within my touch
but lodging too much
(I couldn't win the glass)
With this parallel palm's (pane).
A day never looks the same—
For my cutting hunger to tame.
Fingertips cold; old;
Pressing on heat— that an injury
meets.
Pining for my reflection
to be seen; by cities; by people;
(by me).
Born into a life of poverty crime and squalor
where hunger and cold winds bite
and disease is rife
and it was a daily battle to stay alive
and find some food to stay alive.
Uneducated illiterate caught in the poverty trap
drinking polluted water
from the same polluted cholera riddled tap.
An impoverished woman
sells her body for a cheap bottle of Gin
and a lodging for the night
while a pickpocket and mutcher
ever watchful
look for a pocket to alight.
The deafening clunk and clatter
of horses and carts on the cobbled ground
and shouts from the street market traders
echo all around.
Children play and run through the narrow
crowded streets
dressed in rags no shoes upon their feet
The putrid stench from the gutter
and thick choking bellowing
smoke from factories
make one heath and make it hard to breath.
Dilapidated hovels and buildings
covered in black soot
horse manure and raw sewage
under foot.
Beggars with large mournful eyes
reach out pleadingly to the passing gentry
to fill their empty bowls with plenty.
A peeler pins a notice of a forthcoming hanging
at the local Gaol for the few who can read
upon a rusty nail.
A Mother desperate to feed her hungry children
steals a loaf of bread from a market stall
but is soon captured in the sprawl.
The judge sentences her to 10 years
penal servitude far over sea in Botany bay
but she dyes aboard the ship of fever
upon the way.
Her 9 children are sent to the workhouse
for the poor to gain some education
and work hard behind it's hellish door
never to see their Mother or escape poverty
ever more.
Peter Dome.copyright.2012.
JAKE THE RAKE
Jake the rake was a stud among the local crowd
and very much enamored with what he was endowed.
He would strut he stuff around and play the macho role
boasting of the many pelts hung on his lodging pole.
All the lesser Romeo's could only shake their heads
and marvel as Jake whisked another woman off to bed.
Some would look at him with total envy in their eyes
as Jake walked out the door with his nightly prize.
One time Jake was at a party, with Cat his steady squeeze
and left with another bird who fired up his bees.
When Cat returned the favor it took him down so hard
he turned into a sobbing wretch with his emotions charred.
In the nature of these two was the cruel intent
to utilize sex as a means of punishment.
Pleasure's a sensation that can cause a lot of pain
if it's wantonly abused and not morally restrained.
In time the two got married and that made sense to me
they took each other prisoner to vows of endless misery.
The crowd finally broke up, we went our separate ways
but I chanced to wind in the old stomping grounds one day.
I walked into a party and both of them were there
she had him on a leash and was scowling in a chair.
He was laying at her feet with a frightened stare
rolled over on his back with his leg up in the air
Colored yellow beneath the sunlight
Eidoloned by azure breeze of the sky
Covered green like trees of delight
Scented by wind and bubbles of lye
Corded in lamp that cools the night
Your heart throbs in counts of chite
Chortled in incense of kookabura
Quilted and freed from petals of Datura
Heart dipped in cherry blossom
Shaped in cleavage of ample bosom
Deathless soul pulsating forever
Your heart lodging idyllic and so tender
dodoitsu series (rhymed)
Winter is taking the reins
speeding past days of autumn -
Jack Frost smears the windowpanes
forefingers and thumb.
You who have no house to own,
too proud to seek charity,
you choose your path all alone
that’s a guarantee.
Your attic room, where risks run
rowdy as the eastern winds,
barren refuge while you shun
warmer help from friends.
Churches serve a daily meal
without impugning censure,
Would a shelter prove to shield
Christian adventure?
God casts no smears. You must know
you are short more than your needs.
God produces once you show
you will plant His seeds.
Twixt four fingers and your thumb
winnow pangs of laziness.
Earn warm lodging ere autumn’s
freeze spawns haziness.
for Elly Wouterse's contest 3 Proverbs and a Quote
For my series of didactic "germane" dodoitsu, I chose three German proverbs, being influenced much in my life by my German grandmother.
-A poor person isn't he who has little, but he who needs a lot.
--Charity sees the need not the cause.
---God gives, but man must open his hand.
My quote from an international celebrity is from German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke -
“Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone,” is from his poem, “Autumn Day”, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
https://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/category/poet/rainer-maria-rilke/
For word play:
“the four fingers and your thumb”, and “winnow pangs” of verse 5(6) play off of
“Jack Frost’s forefingers and thumb” and "window panes" of verse 1.
Word with two meanings:
Verse 1 – smear – v. to wipe or daub
Verse 4 (5) – smear – n. a slur or insult
double meaning proverb
A poor person isn't he who has little, but he who needs a lot.
poor person can mean poverty-stricken or a
poor person can be incompetent, inept
I used the normal 7, 7, 7, 5 syllable pattern of a dodoitsu but rhymed it ABAB. I really needed 24 lines to complete my thoughts, but I dutifully cut it back to 20 lines, adding it back in italics after contest was judged. Expanding on Rilke’s “Autumn Day” title, I took a different turn from his prayerful, more positive piece.
Monkeys were never us;
our entrance is more than theory.
I came standing erect and complete.
The dust was to indulge (except of the tree)
in the place provided, where the voice walked
in the cool of the day.
Leopards and lambs,
like Puppy Yellow
and the calico moving balls of yarn;
the fallen, like a snake,
wooed the woman that queried
and she went away towing her husband.
I am out of character, image,
likeness of the Divine
whose flood sculpted mountains and isles,
there, dividing men
and painted them
in new colors with freezing fingers.
Sasquatch, your blurred trace,
speaks loud of the instrument now used.
Of me Ibrahim was assured.
The pyramids are mathematics the God teaches;
their wisdom raised the boulders
(the two Gods that share the Spirit).
I mosey through a sea to be here;
this point where they are history?
Monkeys were never us. If so,
who limits the fruition? I still see them
tree-hopping.
I am Enoch walking with him,
lodging far afield the daughters of men.
I occur with an enormous bang
far superior to a hypothesis.
ODE TO HILDA
( Hilda - Women Hostel at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka)
-Mathi - Warden-
By the river of Mahaweli,
Along the Galaha Road,
Stood the Women's hostel,
With the name Hilda Obeysekera.
Eight winged Massive Hilda,
Steered by Aggressive Mathi,
Harboured the damsels of the nation,
Striving to achieve their goals.
From various walks of life they came,
Lodging together under the same roof,
Forgetting their backgrounds & differences,
Accepting Mathi as their mother of Mothers.
High table dinners, parties, and girlish follies,
Are few experiences Hilda offered,
Social life was just an alien myth,
But Hilda made these teens to learn and live.
Sent from my iPad