Best Needled Poems
F l y i n g
a sailing tailwind
through cerulean streams
and creamsicle colored beams—
are wings reflective
of the turquoise truth
and white purity
of Autumn’s ether
he aviates
a clear troposphere
riding an unbridled
capricious and combative
boreas
on the cusp
of a new season
with a plumage infusion
of shifting Cape Cod skies
the blue jay mixes hues
with the Northern azure
that fades to shades
of turmoil
to the South and East—
becoming lost
in its milky breadth
its lilting light
its dimming depths
where the edge of rustic rural
meets the sandy ridge of conifers—crooked
twisted and back-bent
from gales
of salt-sprayed sorcery
Canadian bluster-gusts
leading the charge
of a cold sapphire crest
is bedeviled
offshore
by the raw
tongue-lashing spin
of a brooding onshore flow
twirling
a brewing brawl
whirling
in slate pearlescent space
s w i r l i n g
with the dusky feistiness
of stormy petrels…
mobs of darkening fog
growing fatter
on summer’s fainty surrender—
leftover tints of tender cornflower
and hints of dainty dove
there’s a sparkle
in the eye of the storm…
his mischievous black gaze
mirrors
the harsh harbinger
of commotion
clash and change—
his piercing “jay-jay” jabs
the maddening mayhem
of menacing air
with an emerald-needled sharpness
of wind-weary pitch pines
anchoring
the beige of coastal dunes
where his refractive blues
take cover
in colorful contrast
ahead
of the bruising
October nor’easter
When looking for a quack with spiked rates
Some try the Windowed Office of Bill Gates
Coz right on the spot
He’ll give you a shot
But be prepared to accept his dictates
His business, Microshot, you may know
Needled itself ahead of every foe
With billions of bucks
To create deluxe
Vaccine versions 2, 3, and 4.0
Yet there are many who’ve come to razz him
And treat him with deserved sarcasm
Like those who’ve found
Themselves wheelchair bound
Though Gates claims it’s just a back spasm
Now Gates wants to vaccinate the planet
With help in tow this is how they’ll plan it
By changing genes
With secret means
Which to me sounds more or less satanic
Yet there are those who want to be first in line
To get their shot with a chaser of wine
Well here’s to their health
Or rather Gates’s wealth
Which must be baked in his evil design
But when at Bill’s door you hear the death knell
That is your vaccination alarm bell
For more than malware
Coz once in his lair
You’ll know why they call his shop ‘Gates of Hell’
Through frayed seams a rosy dream bleeds
needled and re-stitched
with threads of time and love and hope..
and still — a rosy dream bleeds
the miscarriage of a promised rose garden
leaving me bereft but for entwined bands of gold –
contemplative thorns tempt my angst
moony moody barbs bristle twigs of tenderness
sigh— it’s not a laurel wreath worn atop my brow
as I sit alone with a squeamish friend
my blue-sky-to-storm-cloud introspection —
as your distant eyes deserted mine long ago
Winter's beast laid bare a cerebral graveyard
lost you wander amongst laid-to-rest neurons
worn headstones of thoughts and laughter and memories…
you wonder why they hide — why they died
the crackle of cognitive circuitry quiets
branched-lightning fades from unwitting clouds
and aged roots of reality perish
our red rose finished fallen to pieces
you-and-me-petals a messy heap like old potpourri —
yet in dark’s hush love’s scent lingers on our dream pillow
Oh nostalgic sepals embrace me!
my heart yearns to return to the bud
to the fullness of our June bloom —
instead, I bury desires beneath life’s litterfall;
amid pollenless stamens and leaves of one-sided reveries
and cage my fear my despair behind purple thistle facing the light
as I free a smile for you, my love —
you my sun that still parts the rain-bearing nimbus
not like a Christian, but like a victim.
I prayed like a woman afraid,
afraid I was the sacrifice to his vice.
I would lie awake then. I lie awake now
as my heartbeat hammers
my breastbone like a blacksmith,
I remember… I remember
in a pale cringe, I sniffled. My blood polka-dotted
a white floor that smeared an inkblot of me.
A split lip, half-wit tamed by the maim of his fist.
His madman’s magma buried me,
a lingual lava flow that hardened as it cooled.
My sense of self turned to obsidian. I fractured.
Tears slashed like shards. I bled self-esteem.
He preyed on me
as I prayed to him like he was a god.
Please forgive me! It’s all my fault! On my knees
I was dead to myself.
He split my skin. Stripped me to my bones.
His vulture needs I remember.
My emotional remains he savored,
flavored with backhands and vodka bottle bottoms.
I seethed in sour juices of moonshine abuses.
I counted moons and contusions. I counted
each stitch needled through my skin.
My heart quilted with clichés;
I love you. I'm sorry. It'll never happen again.
I seized my breath so's not to moan or implode.
As I exhale I remember
I fantasized of blasting him to the belly of Hell
when I’d usher vengeance inside our back door.
Reaper’s reckoning when this battered forget-me-not
shattered his bones with buck-shot scatter. Damn!
I’d have paid the devil for a jail cell to be free.
A candlelight-night bruised by cruiser lights:
I remember I prayed like a victim to 911.
Oh God! Please God! Help me! He's gonna kill me!
I pressed bleeding heart flowers between diary pages,
diary pages without words cried to be heard.
Concussion dreams panic my pulse, dilate my eyes!
Oh, dreamless sleep, grant me deceased peace.
Until night hags of nightmares die
I will remember...
A magic place, lone tree at forest’s side
A huge wolf pine that stands alone like me
It marked a boundary once where sheep would hide
Beneath green needled branches of that tree
It’s where I always go when things go wrong
I pull the forest’s shadows over me
And watch those shadows dance with silent song
My back pressed up against that old pine tree
The cruel remarks, the shunning that was there
Without a why or reason I could see
While others simply watched without a care
And smiled to see the blush of pain in me
I tell myself I still have all my pride
My journey starts, its only just begun
The woods are mine, the forest deeps abide
I’m on my way, I walk into the sun
An old man now with memories at night
But comfort from the thoughts of that lone pine
The fragments of those times have lost their might
Just shadows now with passing of the time.
I am lost...
I am lost…
wandering aimlessly
among towering pines,
sweeping branches
of shaded bliss
leaving pine cone markers
along a soft needled path
The breeze is cool,
fragrant wisps through
clinging vines braided
in abstract patterns
as I try to gather
my bearings
I can see the sun
through the forest
falling lower in the sky
(west)
reflecting on the
calm flowing waters
of this small stream
I have been following
for what seems to be hours
Carp and minnows,
orange, black and gray
swim happily
with little care though
I am becoming worried now,
my body aches from walking
but it feels good,
the air is still and sweet
as I hear an owl
in the darkness
of the treed canopy
greeting me
I come to a clearing,
tall grasses sway
and I see the sunset
blooming like a prized rose,
petals awash in bright pastels
on the distant horizon,
my mind lingers
as euphoria caresses me
in a panoramic utopia
I sit for a spell
gazing upon the
wonders of nature,
thinking back on
what I have seen,
what I have experienced
and what I am
witnessing right now
and finally realize
I am not lost at all…
I am found
Serging through life, I whipstitch, weft, and welt,
But always, my thoughts are pick-threading.
As stippled patches of emotion rise and fall in me,
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me
Just too many scars.
The mindless mind stresses itself through mental snares,
I waste away beneath it all, piecing and pondering.
Where the struggling soul and pleating body meet,
I seek significance in life’s lucid-lined layers.
Confronting my inner fears as an owneress,
Time leaves its cursed mark in starched stitches that cut.
Each moment experienced is like a closing zipper,
My calm exterior ridges are often rough, ready, and ruffled.
A life full of scars.
While unique experiences blend like transient ombre shades
My essence feels like a needled complex knit.
Memories form patterns from life’s four-patches
Challenges scissors cut are like shredded sharp diamonds.
Yet more paths diverge along life’s shifting chevrons
I strive to fit somehow; this square is what I do.
Yet my world stands out like tri-recs blocks
Creating stars and pineapples to fight fifty-four forty.
Scars that are hidden and visible, surface and deep.
Like trapezoids, I sense those oblong obstacles loom
Worth or less by my own limited gauge, I measure.
I pray each day new chapters begin casting on
While others exhaust, reaching their bind-offs.
I do seek a pattern master, and I need to pray for one.
I contemplate constantly along selvages of thoughts.
They hang like dangling tails…
I start to visualize my purpose slowly seaming.
Look as I whipstitch, weft, and welt through life, serging.
As I graciously and sagaciously test life’s many swatches,
I devote my life to the Master Seamster the…
Healer of scars.
The wind is an easel of darkened hue
Under hanging clouds, my breath meets the sea
Where tears on night’s air linger to review
This pain once needled by love’s trickery.
Like a wing that rises on one blessed flight
Across the shores of hope trilling a dream,
Its fragrant air hums gently to rewrite
The end of sorrow wiped by a moonbeam.
And zephyr flings its stars , its promised grace
In hymnal joy for my essence, now whole;
Like a child of strength this gift I embrace
As tears become holy drops that console.
When life is pierced by rainstorms that invade
I think of wind chimes as my serenade.
-------------
Janice Thompson's Pen A Sonnet On It
Submitted 5/27/2016
Wings flutter
off in the distance
as I shuffle through these stones,
tasting the energy trapped in each,
scouring my lands
for my lost crystal,
that which can mend
what I’ve torn asunder.
In frustration
I abandon my quest,
deciding to find
my feathery deity,
the wind carries her scent to me
and I head Northeast,
diving through brush
and dodging trees
like only a Lycan may.
She must have picked up on my intentions
for I sense her
heading towards me
so I veer more northward,
there’s a place I know.
As I draw near
you can hear water
cascading off rocks,
when I arrive the moon is up,
clouds curled beneath it
as if it were a white pearl
resting on gray cushions,
to the right
the beginnings of a river
being fed by the waterfall,
about 80’ tall
careening off the three
stone outcroppings
and filling the air in the clearing
with a fine mist,
the left is ringed
by long needled pines
which have supplied the ground
with a soft cushion.
My winged beauty
lands on the third outcropping
whipping her hair back
under the waterfall’s edge.
I sprint to the water’s shore
and leap to the first,
as my claws connect
bound to the second,
paws touching
then legs thrust me
to the third
where I bring myself erect,
better to ensnare my love
within my arms.
As I bring her close to me
she raises her left hand up
and caresses my muzzle and cheek
with her claws,
I bend downward
and gently
sink my teeth
into the side of her neck,
she springs off the precipice ,
me entwined,
and glides down to the pine needle bed.
As we land
she pushes herself up,
drags her right claw
down my chest
and leans in to drink.
I drag one nail along
each shoulder blade
and let her blood
drip down on me
while I lick my claws clean.
After hours
she crashes down
into my chest,
exhaustion settling in.
I cup my hand around the back of her head,
hair entwined
in my fingers
and as she uses her wings
to blanket us
we drift off
into a pleasant slumber
while the stars blink at us
and the night creatures
serenade us with their calls.
I skip one stone across the pond,
an oblate onyx dotting i's
in footles of a vagabond
who tiptoes after tiger eyes.
Perhaps the ripples left behind
are teary runes of gray moonstone
by starry sapphires once declined
for poesies of chalcedone.
In unison do pines recite
around the swaying cellophane
with spruce in verses malachite
on tawny-needled counterpane.
Soon aloe waters recompose
an epilogue of silent prose.
11/5/17
Image #1
My beginnings were ever so humble
To this day I wear others' rags
I'm bungled, fumbled and tumbled
My owner usually brags
Diamonds all shapes and sizes
Multicolored rainbows and rings
Always loved and needled
And thrown on kings and queens
You can buy me at a boutique
If I'm given I'm normally at my peak
In the summer I go on the lam
Please tell me what I am.
challenge from Linda (Poet Destroyer)
anyone can answer please,feel free
I stared into the mirror today.
I saw you -
a needled zealot
hovering around my left shoulder;
Adolph Hitler dressed in
opium-perfumed swatches.
You smelled like her.
You acted like him.
You looked like me.
Swastika tall and evenly abhorrent.
Syringe-insured yet,
never sharp enough to
successfully stab
outside the 50-point cork.
You slithered like a quadroplegic,
into my stratum.
Pointing and probing
a crooked finger -
never healing
the martyr's wound.
A broken grimace leaves me
ugly flesh to ponder.
Your tentacles:
toothless cleavers eclipse
black-dilated pupils,
servicing our
boomeranged arms
with dingoed malice -
peppermint leaves and peroxide boil
as the living corpse cackles.
Mussolini removed
thirteen quieted quills
from his heart
shortly before the noose was tied.
Into square knots.
Into napkin pleats.
Into a poet's silence - where
our self-induced stupor
was dragged upon
spiked cobblestones -
and for that,
my dear Stalin beauty;
I sew my spit into
vile words -
dribbling purposely
upon this diseased
cotton-swabbed
canvas
for you
and I
to clean.
Mottled bodies inside and out
Needled veins black and about
Eyes dark through unsleepened nights
Lying in door ways that's about right.
Bottles and tins surround my life
Once i was married, no longer have wife
Kids disown me as i lie there spent
Confused they are where the family has went.
The above is not me, if you don't mind me saying
Its a vision of life, for the ones who start playing
Who take that fork they meet on the road
Again the doorways no family abode.
Many a home in this modern world
Hit by life's Tornado's in never ending twirls
Some see the light at the end of the tunnel
Some down the drain, in a spiralling funnel.
Society seems to breed the above
Are they really the clever, who absorb that first shove
To be an Addict as you walk down that road
Be ever so brave, ignore that goad.
Live strong, live free
An Addicts life is what you don't want to be
Sometimes, don't think of you, think of others
Or they remember you under an earthly cover.
Deceit of sun when rays are still but porous;
unwelcome thief, afford my dream more seconds.
Some dappled shadows flit through mystic keyhole;
alight upon pellucid remnant image.
I stifle yawn as thoughts embrace the vision.
My ever-restless spirit merits story
which doesn’t evanesce at first obstacle
encountered when issues foisted upon me.
Embarked on travels, trinkets of high finesse
that crossed the boundaries of reality.
The past firmly imbedded in the future,
illuminating a path predictable and
imbued with fantasy and peccant grandeur.
Adroitly I manoeuvred through initial
self-doubt that plagued a multitude of people.
Circumlocutory whim of eidolon
expertly gathered evidence to support
demand that’s straddling realms, but I will resist.
I read the missive through and then carefully
enfold my dreams in cocoon, preserving them.
Unpleasant facts I spat out like an obol
that’s placed under tongue of recently deceased.
The critics can wait with Charon for day of
reckoning – future set aside for visions.
My dreams swim at the edge of river’s conscience.
Expectations made dreams luminesce brightly,
but withered in morning sun’s naïve splendour.
Like sands in the hourglass, the grains of wisdom
filtered through consciousness and needled thinking.
I set aside the search for epiphany.
My head has known a thousand rests;
it has floated on feathered softness,
and silk curlicued with a silken tress;
been prickled by the grass of a meadow,
under a hung menagerie of clouds.
Into rumpled sheets of sand it has pressed,
and the sleepy valleys of maidens’ breasts.
On cold concrete pavement it has lain,
my senses by a drunken torpor slain.
It has been stood up by sleep,
on origami pillows made with coats,
the rugged terrains of sofa arms,
on bony cushions fashioned with my palms,
and gold threads needled into coats of arms.
My head has known a thousand rests,
but never the rapture of a dreamless nap,
till I laid it in the sweetness of your lap.