Best Nostrum Poems
NELSON MANDELA
N-National
E-Endearing
L-Leader,
S-Society’s
O-Optimum
N-Nostrum
M-Mythical
A-Apostolic
N-Negotiator,
D-Divinity’s
E-Emissary,
L-Liberty’s
A-Apotheosis!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
07 DECEMBER 2013
GREAT MEN NEVER DIE!
Dem. Trifiatis
Categories:
nostrum, freedom, light, love, world,
Form:
Acrostic
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,
But Whiskey makes you frisky.
Clerihews and epigrams are fine but
Do not tell these to one lost in love
Except when you mean to cheer up one
Fevered with temporary amourous setbacks.
Gift them the gift prized by one and all
Humour - evoking laughter or perhaps a smile
Inviting a participation in the balm laced with
Jokes, both ribald and a bit of the plain
Killing the gloom of mindless regret and remorse.
Laughter is the best medicine, they say,
Mightily potent to dissipate every whiff of gloom
Nostrum for broken hearts and the flings and arrows of life.
Ophidian ilk are friends that are wry, shirking a shoulder
Pretending with masks to smile away misfortune yet
Questing to wring out sweet savor from other's calamity.
Roar unto the wind a bit louder than the storm
Spoiling what they seek with your tuppence attitude.
Take what is yours, let no one deny you your share
Under any circumstance do not relent for what is your due.
Verity is a virtue that'll stand in good stead,
Warmth towards your fellows won't ever waste.
X-factor's something natural not something you fake,
Yearning for glory like a harlot who'll sell.
Zing is the thing with this homily, my friend.
~27 May 2016~
Categories:
nostrum, character, friendship, inspiration,
Form:
Abecedarian
Dotard Trumpery used to disgust the "ery" excrescence ending his surname,
for apocope he approached Megan Trump and poached her maiden name,
to which Joshua Trump, her son naming after her, dare no longer lay claim,
because from then on he was reduced to campus bullies' fair game.
Pretending to be placatory, Dotard Trumpery had to invite
Joshua Trump to the Slayer-Of-The-Union site.
Trumpery, standing on his rock-and-roll rostrum, spieled song and dance,
Trump, seated off his opposite nostrum, cast ahead no glance;
Trumpery, haranguing high, may presume to be contagious,
Trump, lolling low, just continued to be contumacious;
Trumpery, in skittish stance, legs to prance,
Trump, in stolid trance, his head askance;
Trumpery, right hot, opened his mouth to smear shutters with sputter soars,
Trump, left cold, shut his eyes lest they be crisscrossed by sordid sores.
Impersonating Trump, Trumpery violated Trump's right of name;
Impugned due to Trumpery,Trumpp suffered long dark campus time.
trumpery blatherskite.
Categories:
nostrum, abuse, slam,
Form:
Prose Poetry
I.
The night hangs heavy in this room.
Only dead-folk live here now,
Except me: my eye-fires burn -
Angers, regrets, remorses turn
Lazy circles, dancing silent
In bodies of these dead-folk
They have stolen. What right have they?
I – I bid them go; they stay.
II.
There’s nothing for it, nothing for
This illness – no nostrum, potion, nor salve,
Magic nor science – all in vain.
Shall anything heal this heart-made blain?
Yet who is ill? Not I – it’s them!
These dancing bodies – no part of me.
Not even mine. “I divorce thee! -
Ah, ah, it’s no use – impotent fury.
Am I mad? A moonbeam splashes
Across the sill, vaguely lighting
My room, in which I am alone.
III.
‘Tis the curse of the godless age:
My Venus lies dead, impaled
On my floor, washed in moon-light.
The dead-folk speared her, then took flight.
We shared the moon-lit solitude,
My dead Venus and I, her wound
Yet fresh and bleeding. The silver spear
Pierced her heart. I draw her near.
Night-terrors must I face again.
Alone now.
Alas – how?
Categories:
nostrum, grief, heartbreak, lost love,
Form:
Romanticism
LAW IS A COMIC RELIEF
Law is a comic relief
Subtlety amidst ardent belief.
Draconian legislation
That still wriggles out an exception.
Pitiless killer
Yet cleverest healer.
Law is a comic relief
Deus ex machina to its own mischief.
Creator of extreme offences
That yet allows supreme defences.
Coercive jailer for life
That still gives freedom for a good strife.
If...
Insanity may be antidote for committing homicide
And intoxication could be a nostrum for patricide
And provocation may be a corrective for matricide
And necessity is a curative for avunculicide
And self-defence is a rectifier for uxoricide
And automatism is a shield for regicide
And necessity is a panacea for sororicide
And fair comment is a cure for famacide
Then Law is just nothing but a comic relief.
--Bolaji Ramos, Esq.
Copyright 2017
Categories:
nostrum, conflict, corruption, dedication, deep,
Form:
Light Verse
Written: March 18, 2025 for contest Sponsored by: Rick Parise
*****************
A tall tree stands quietly, imparting its tales,
dew drops fall like stars in the morning.
Flowers develop beautifully before tossing,
the sky gradually shifts color, to our avail.
Nature's ever-changing splendor is shown,
life's passing events are cleanly captured.
Solitude fosters heartfelt attraction backward,
stillness possesses what time implies on its own.
Watching seasons perform in their ballet,
dinge is a profuse nostrum nature may spray.
Every breath causes life to wither and sway,
leaves become gold and then float away.
Categories:
nostrum, analogy, fate,
Form:
Rhyme
CONCERTED STRUGGLE
Armed only with a thin baton to juggle
He faces an orchestrated struggle
Looks at the plan on the rostrum
Begins under breath with patrem-nostrum
Then a thousand tadpoles on telephone wires
Hundreds of blackbirds on barred barriers
Dozens of clothes-pegs on washing lines
He lunges into his defence designs
Fencing with the imaginary opponent mass
Stabbing viciously at the brass
Windshield wiper action for the string-strums
Thrust and parry over towards the kettle drums
Dizzy from the many-headed enemy
Hair is shaking, face is twitching - there’s too many
The noises continually blaring
Screeching, wailing, twanging, scaring
He finally concedes, stops the fight,
And they too give up the struggle for the night
After this cacophonous riot
There’s a little peace and quiet
Categories:
nostrum, music
Form:
Narrative
A summer flood upon the desert,
rolling the arroyos
like a nostrum for the seeds
that cling in desperation
to that long forgotten ghost life
that the animals once knew,
and know once more
until the filtering sand grows brutal
in its thirst, and once again
the brooding cloud
is mother only to the sea.
What then?
Always, the cycle born anew
amid lush visions of a paradise,
(Did not the laughter echo
in those jaded hearts?)
brown bottles carried home
to prize and treasure
as their secret miracles allay
our hopelessness.
What then?
All the packaged gods we bought,
those neat and tidy little wars
with child-proof caps preserve
our just complacency.
White marble crypts
and solemn rites make glorious
the sealed boxes covered
by the gonfalon.
The anthem swells a thousand chests
before the game,
a thousand chills beneath
the rostrum of the damned.
What then?
Nostrums all, to serve us well,
excusing time
for re-directed splendor. All
the gods enshrined
until the twilight creeps across,
revealing
only pride,
the fall,
the bottle empty...dry.
What then?
~
Categories:
nostrum, angst,
Form:
Free verse
So he loaded up the fossil fuel and they moved to Beverly
Hills that is, Hollywood, movie stars ? Afore their golden years...
Her Queen of Buckingham Palace sent for Shakespeare as to enquire
His nether worlds nouveau riche nostrum Prince, Nightingale Night Blindness
If their Fab Four would be accompanying King Abbooboo to the Jim Crow festival during
Astarte's, William the Conqueror's, Normandy of Christopher Columbus', avant-garde days ?
Signant his reply carried past the Black Hills of Dunderhead Falls; via Her Whites Templer Thee, Search'light.
Categories:
nostrum, adventure, love,
Form:
Mare Nostrum
On the coast of Augusta, in Cecilia this wonderful sea,
the bluest of turquoise, transparent and I saw fish play.
Blood and bloated corpses have made the sea less pretty
and fish nibbles on cadavers of those who tried to cross
the sea to escape the lunacy we created in Libya.
A president short of stature but with inflated ego plus
philosopher idiot, two men were responsible this disaster
of a war just to get rid of a dictator one of them had lent
money of the other who should not be left out of his confine
of academia, he should have in hidden in a university writing
books only historians take a passing interest in.
As it is the impossible vain man get feted, all because he is
an intellectual and wears a velvet jacket and clean collars.
My old Mafia friend Thomas the knife, has invited me to
Augusta, I will go there but not swim the hazy sea, but we
will eat langouste, drink child wine and talk about the days
when philosophers and presidents left us alone to kill only
when needed and never the innocent.
Categories:
nostrum, angst, bullying, business, butterfly,
Form:
Blank verse
Snug in the corner I saw the lad lie,
Fire in his belly, a cork in his eye;
And wordlessly sleeping, a-snooze in his bed,
His words, when awakened, go straight to your head.
Alluring to look at, golden is he,
There when you need him as sure as can be;
And anxious to aid you, he doesn't think twice,
The cost of his concert, your soul is the price.
Then, tell him to go now, bid him goodbye;
Leave him to slumber, let sleeping dogs lie!
Tell him his concord you are shooing away,
The lad with the nostrum may no longer stay.
Well! time he was leaving so, show him the door!
A flagon of whiskey a-smash on the floor.
Categories:
nostrum, addiction, drink,
Form:
Rhyme
Mare Nostrum
On the coast of Augusta, in Cecilia this wonderful sea,
the bluest of turquoise, transparent and I saw fish play.
Blood and bloated corpses have made the sea less pretty
and fish nibbles on cadavers of those who tried to cross
the sea to escape the lunacy we created in Libya.
A president short of stature but with inflated ego plus
philosopher idiot, two men were responsible this disaster
of a war just to get rid of a dictator one of them had lent
money of the other who should not be left out of his confine
of academia, he should have in hidden in a university writing
books only historians take a passing interest in.
As it is the impossible vain man get feted, all because he is
an intellectual and wears a velvet jacket and clean collars.
My old Mafia friend Thomas the knife, has invited me to
Augusta, I will go there but not swim the hazy sea, but we
will eat langouste, drink child wine and talk about the days
when philosophers and presidents left us alone to kill only
when needed and never the innocent.
Categories:
nostrum, columbus day, conflict, courage,
Form:
Blank verse
Rose gold love cups in a versatile nostrum
Cosmic waves pearl wind vault is strange,
Ephemeral vapors are rising by the podium
Cinnabar meteors devolved from damage.
Cosmic waves pearl wind vault is strange
Delirium tremens yield self-raggedness,
Cinnabar meteors devolved from damage
Smack dab in mid of commodious cosmos.
Delirium tremens yield self-raggedness
A moon-themed warmth glimmering quartz
Smack dab in mid of commodious cosmos,
Her own heart bestows her weather reports.
A moon-themed warmth glimmering quartz
Orphic blue sky echoes in the rose quartz lake,
Her own heart bestows her weather reports
Venus' loving glow shinily in the aeonian sake.
Orphic blue sky echoes in the rose quartz lake
Ephemeral vapors are rising by the podium
Venus' loving glow shinily in the aeonian sake,
Rose gold love cups in a versatile nostrum.
Written: May 07, 2022
Categories:
nostrum, analogy, appreciation, beautiful, space,
Form:
Pantoum
Sickness spreads into my head
My Bones are thus infected
Nostrum is the only thread
Which keeps my life connected
Though I’ve wandered, I am not lost
Perhaps I’m just misplaced
My Ills begotten, merely forgotten
And yet I’m not erased
Categories:
nostrum, health, sad, sick,
Form:
Quatrain
Independence panacea dashingly suggests
We purchase our palace hexagonal
Reoriented Nerida handed padlock, blessed
Fathoms red cross heiress of hospital
Imposter student enrols wild idea envisaged
Wider scope than she ever deserved
Ostentatious vistas brew broadwater blizzard
Novice nurse serves a nostrum absurd
Ultraviolet facet inferno disco jive diamond
Wears title queen of high hive divine
Fanciful feminine accepts novel assignment
Redhead remedy writes Chapter 119
Third of February
Thank you, dear old Doris
Categories:
nostrum, age, blessing, celebration, dream,
Form:
Rhyme