Best Midden Poems
it follows that
sharp slivers of time
warp like wild geese reflected
across still water winging
faces sway'd as wheat seas
pitied not by thresher's flail
rictus hidden in a camera's eye
fetus, elders left to die
teach and learn as life grows short
moments gulped in forgotten days
sun rays down
casting men without shadows
tragedies in bildungsroman
of children innocent but heartless
folded parchment in dustbins hidden
blossoms thrive in ancient midden
justice, honor, paean to the gods
distill down to cold control
foreign tongues with open hands
empire's wall breached wide within
and so, with prosody quicksilver fled
small words swallowed by larger mien
I, deep sigh, with agon's leap
fall back defeated in dreamless sleep...
Tis sore int' thwait
wi mor'n a few folks a gippy
loose tha's snap as M'pessons well
n tek sum brass from t'watter
na its nowt but a mickle midden
but them folks as a good un, narry a one of 'em flit
tek thasen a gander
but the's nowt in Eyam save 'plague
Translation
It is bad in the village
with more than a few people sick
Leave your food at Mompessons Well
and take some money from the water
Now it's nothing but a big mess
But the villagers are good people, not any one of them has left
Take yourself a look
but there is nothing in Eyam except the Plague
History
The village of Eyam in Derbyshire was hit by the plague at the same time as London (1665),
the villagers self imposed a quarantine to prevent the disease spreading any further, the
surrounding villages left food at a well near Eyam, in exchange for money which had been
left in the vinegar filled well to clean it.
For "Sista's Bloody Sista's" contest run by Deborah Guzzi
Honorable Mention
Who is that ambling up the lane
With woolly wherewithal?
Few would bother to explain
An aimless animal.
But that's no common woolmonkey
Seeking out the truth
Deductions elementary:
It's Sherlock Sheep, the sleuth.
Sometimes you may not know he's there
Behind cunning disguise
A woolly mind is brought to bear
In cutting through the lies
The daft sheep form you see by day
Is just another ruse
Whilst eating through a flower display
He's searching after clues
A murder in the midden
Or a stabbing by the stye
A trespasser unbidden
Or crop circles in the rye
All puzzles for the intellect
But have no fear of doubt
The woolly noggin shall detect
The sheep will work it out
He may be here, he may be there
He may be with the flock
No tell tale trace betrays just where
The sheep who's named Sherlock
But when dire duty comes to call
You'll find him there in place
A comfort to be felt by all:
The sheep is on the case
Thank you, for excavating from dead tongue
Under midden of lies
The archive of our own history
The outlines of identity
So we under obscurity white sheet
Could find resurrection of self
In another voice oppressed
But unconceding of its comeliness.
Before I grew old I was only school
Afraid to be nobody unless I conformed
To class, and status and creed.
I could not see then how I consented
To condone the designation of a weed.
Before I was old
I did not even know weeds were revolutionaries
Resisting the pharmacopia of gods
And heal me in the old ways again.
Let this vernacular, this dialect
From in between the interspaces of existence
Reworking the problem of my preservation,
Let it flowers like weed
Gushing from unexpected places after rain.
Thanking you for understanding how to spade
With it the introspection of itself
Match with veins, leaves and flowers
The pattern of remain alive.
The tongue is archive of the soul, and language
The repository of all the culture holds.
Sure, folk songs are sweets, but our stories are more
Than words. Babel has no meaning
If it confused only words to flock in nearer trees.
Something deeper there was lost
Perhaps the lens by which we tell who we are
The frightening part of God,
The vision that must be consumed in hell
The staircase that if we trod
Would tear the scream of worlds from us
Making a new dilemma out of dust.
I sing not for Babel heights but the rights
To flock the founding tree of truth.
Thank you, for permitting me to speak again
To taste the lilt and roll of visceral sounds
Wearing glottis masks and labial screens
Spreading the germ of belief
And the sanctity of self in an ubiquitous air.
Folk people, balmyard man, healer
Kuminah giver, obeah veteran
Abeng blower, anancy teller, long spoon cook
Your anthropology will be the first page
Of my exumed biography, my life given back
Like raft to me. I am going to dig the moon.
The black dog comes without warning
it meanders inside my head
teasing me, testing me, pushing me to
the limit of human endurance.
I hate my weakness. I abhor the crazy
mixed up tears that roll valiantly down
my pale grey cheeks, fatigue envelopes
me in an ice cold shower - I shiver.
There is no respite from pain, though I
beg these feelings to desist. In this dull
ruinous life love lays in the black midden
Where the faeces is rancid on a summers day.
Is it just the grave that awaits me? NOOOO
Perish the thought, I need to live before I die.
I sit upon my garden seat, I pretend not to see that
black rook, I know it is waiting to pick my bones.
I open my little black book, erase all the names of
my past lovers. I pray to the Lord to forgive my
past. Please Lord, let me live before I die...
Release the black dog that haunts me so.
Last month's hurricane ripped down dunes, re-
scalloped the shore, snatched away a car.
Now there's a smooth spread
of waves again where sandpipers scoot
across wet sand, their enigma of glyph tracks
washed away with the hush of each wave,
and what the ocean's taken away it now gives back:
excavations of a sneaker, two candles, a torn vest.
But of the relics of human lives, a blue car
in the sea gloom gathers to itself its own pale light
rocking with sea-time, medallioned with shells,
parked miles below on the ocean's floor,
and under the layered centuries, among the midden,
who will seek to know the story
--poetry's anthropology--
of the lost emerald ring under the front seat,
the ebony dope pipe, vial of cognac,
the half-rusted key to someone's door?
this twinning set,
of urchin's smile reflected,
by stale fathers turned to murk,
knapping flint saturated by eons,
gripped saltwise in bitter steel neglected,
high voices cry "banal!" and flow red tears,
weeping while maxims roar,
at last this abattoir's necessary cut,
eyes rimming rise,
along dross to swirling bones,
as banners once crowned a shining wall,
tattered now on midden in lonely heaps,
crumbled in sieves by millennial crones,
turnspit dogs with hanging tongues,
forward marching back again,
pounding the echoes,
now, polymeric brains,
studied to exalt virtual reasons,
longing to challenge abstract perfection,
as those doomed anguish in tidy archives,
wincing at rhythms of civilian seasons,
nock the future, quiver the past,
into a terrorist leaks a tale,
while a nation rots through a soldier.
Bitter spinsters in their nighties
Wedding rings of bright pyrites
Unrequited youthful crushes
Unwise lusts, unwanted blushes
Teddies trapped in pink balloons
And endless loops of sickly tunes
In the garden, badly hidden
Garage roses on the midden
© Gail Foster 14th February 2017
The eastern seaboard
Of the United States
As the sisters three
Evil dictates
Population massed
As the floods rise
Lands disappearing
Is the earth in demise
In typical fashion
We fight amongst ourselves
For higher ground
A higher shelf
Woman and children
Allegedly first
Money changes
It's the size of the purse
The frenzy quietens
As the sisters appear
Dressed in death
Many thousands in fear
Families scatter
Trampled under
Human stampede
Bodies asunder
As they slaughter in spree
The government acts
Maybe this time
They will believe the facts
The NORAD Complex
In the Cheyenne Mountain
A solution in discussion
This time, one we can count on
Hidden in it's hangers
Are weapons so great
For these sisters three
Will learn their fate
Around the table
The orders are given
To save our planet
From it's impending midden
Three Kestrel fighters
From a war torn past
Will have on board
A lifeline to cast
On this morning of thought
Our pilots of thee
From our silo's launched
To protect the world from the three
Their Ritual in the Forest followed by The Three Events >
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/fantasy4.php
When I was young, I'd a desire,
To fly beyond this earth, higher;
Where the sun never gets retire,
Blazing with his scorching fire;
It's paradise, indeed...!
It is where moon, at night, does shine,
Galaxy, to stars, chores assign;
Sky and clouds routine treaties sign,
Within their frontiers, to confine;
Each to other does heed...
For sometimes, I did keep hidden,
My desire, as though forbidden;
Mundane worries like waste-midden,
Covered me as though goal-ridden;
Stillness around does breed...
To my parents, friends, kith and kin,
As though, their objective, did win;
My vocation seemed to fill-in,
Professions, where I'd be kingpin;
My heart, in fear, did bleed...
I did oblige to their demands,
All, in elation, shook my hands;
Money though multiply like sands,
Could give happiness of all lands...?
I could never feel, freed...
It's, then I thought to dream again,
The dream of childhood, to regain;
Wild feeling of being in lane,
Of airy hosts, freed of all pain;
This should be my new creed...
I turn an astronaut, daring,
Loving the art of space-faring;
Daring to bear all ill-flaring,
Remain serene and forbearing;
Lo, herewith, I succeed...
22 April 2022
Tall Tales 2 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Jeff Kyser
*****
restless sleep... the nightmares..
i shut my eyes some-wheres.
to find myself upstairs...
gasping... gagging...
in a darkroom hidden...
i felt as if chidden...
was I in a midden...
my guilt... bragging...
thinking I was dying...
face wet... i'd been crying...
my eye's felt blank...prying...
voices slagging...
she won't catch us again...
she's no room to complain...
how many cried in-vain...
and her blagging...
kept for to long starving...
bad thoughts they were starting...
but glad to be parting...
picture tagging...
******
3/22/18
Picture This - Poetry Contest, sponsored by Joseph May
Under Mt. Alamos
Its monstrous, featureless head looking down
through scarves of swirling mist,
massive vault where what´s packed deep within
are scapulae, claw, fur and femur,
a midden warehouse of the fired clay
of shards, broken pipe and flute,
stratas of ashes, fire-blackened rocks.
Evening and its shadow inch by inch
crosses the bedroom floor
--second shadow over night´s--
and he who lays down his head
begins to take up what´s just
outside the bedroom window:
the mountain´s cache of dream scraps,
stuttering shapes, a host of strangers,
their strangely familiar stories seen.
Alamos, Mexico
DEATH OF THE SNOW HEAPS
Like full-bodied youngsters they ruled the street
For a while - rude, unchallenged strength sweet;
Their short life - immaculate seeming.
Hard heartless shells - cold, gleaming.
Now skin shrinks to a nothing-life-span,
Revealing cigarette ends, rusty beer can,
Chewing gum, mud-and-dirt: a midden -
Lifetime-accumulated and temporarily hidden.
Now, shrunk and cracked like old men’s skin
As they lie and die dissolute and thin,
They will soon be forgotten by all talk
As they bleed water across the sidewalk.
Their pile of dirty secrets will soon be
Exposed in the sun for all to see.
The spotless snow was a perfect concealer.
Death the leveller is also death the revealer.
……………………………………
NOTE
City snow heaps in the streets, lasting from November to March, become
filled with hidden trash, which is only exposed when the heaps melt in spring.
Over the mantle,
a hand, a candle,
breaking bread—ample.
A white head bowed down,
old and worn with frown,
pensive and in prayers.
A bowl sits with pears,
two other side-chairs.
Partially hidden
by Lady Midden—
Bible, guilt-ridden.
Centre and forefront,
black cover and blunt,
is a treasure hunt.
She slips off the band,
Reads and understands.
A scream awoke those in the churchyard,
a mad scream from the maiden lain there
From death she awoke in the dark crypt
From cold death and so full of despair.
Shrouded she’d lain ‘pon altar of bone,
So deep in her dream darkened repose,
She was startled awake by a Godly light,
Sure ‘n startled by His light she so rose.
All alone,
All alone, all alone……
Tear drenched, she ran from sanctuary,
through the church up the stairs so steep.
Stout souls who had stirred from their slumbering
Rose up and listened, as on did the fair maid weep.
She bemoaned her roaming most unbidden,
toward the curs’d cross guild of the Moon;
through ash darkened paths ‘cross the midden,
she stumbled blind ‘neath a maudlin red moon.
In awe she entered the maze full of wanderlust,
She’d trespassed though to her ‘twas unknown
“Trespasser!” screeched the mad man so feverous.
As he wildly lifted his bolt to his longbow.
“You must go, NOW!
Go now, JUST GO!”
“But where?” said the wane wandering maid.
“Where shall go, I’m so lost and so alone?”
“Just GO!” said he, raising long bow high,
“Just GO! Just GO! Just GO!”
So, she was struck down in full moons light.
like a doe had she tarried to long their;
As the fletched bolt took flight and ended her life,
in a wild torrent of her auburn brown hair.
All alone, all alone all alone……
So, forewarned be thee in the full moons light
All forewarned so thee be though alone
N’er walk thee alone in the mad Moon’s maze
Or thee’ll be raised on an alter of bone.