Best Pamplona Poems
The running of the bulls in Pamplona
Is part of the San Fermin Festival
What excitement awaits the mayor’s call
To win accolades is “muy bona”
Escaping bull’s piercing horns is daring
Runners like the danger they are sharing
They seek prize, adulations “corona”.
What Might They Find There
If someone was to look there
deep into my soul
They would find a bucket list that looks like an ancient scroll
The list of things of my heart's desires
1. To see the amazing Effie tower
Number two would be so grand
2. Camp on Seven Mile Beach toes deep in the sand
Three would make me a little insane
3. Run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain
Four is a long life fantasy indeed
4. Take a selfie at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
Five is for certain
5. I'd love to Ride a camel in Petra, Jordan
Six would be some what of a hassle
6. Learn to fly fish at Inverlochy Castle
Seven should be on a high demand
7. Sip coffee at Nishinomaru Garden in Japan
Eight would light up my aura
8. Get a massage in Bora Bora
Nine Is a Beauty that not many know
9. To go deep in Naica mine in Mexico
Ten sends my soul a fantastic chill
10. To See Christ the Redeemer (statue) – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
9-16-2016
Second Home by Rob Barratt
An escape from the rat race.
Life lived at a slower pace
An idyllic setting they won’t be letting
The cottage slumbers ,
Like the electricity meter numbers
It’s early March.
The house is dark
They’re in Marylebone
Or in Rome
It’s a second home
It’s a mothballed shell, residential hell
It’s a funeral bell, a death knell
For the low-paid locals whose response was vocal
(In the White Rose, before it closed)
But unrecordable
It wasn’t affordable
It’s an empty place, a waste of space
It hasn’t got a ‘phone.
It’s a second home
People recall that within the walls
Of this second pad, lived a Mum and Dad
With their family, on the settee
They watched Morcambe and Wise, and ate pork pies
In the blue TV light on a Saturday night
Life was pleasant in Woodland Crescent
But the parents are gone and the kids have grown.
Mustn’t moan.
It’s a second home
In the shop, the assistant mops a spillage
Cycles to a less fashionable village
And she saved for….how long was it? To get a deposit
On a studio flat, where you can’t swing a cat
And she silently groans and takes out loans
Despite her persistence, she’s just living an existence
She says, “Why me?” and wishes she
Could spend the days where she was raised
She wishes she could own
That second home
If they want a holiday by the sea
Why don’t they try a B&B?
Life is tough. Isn’t one place enough?
And don’t try to build low cost housing
‘Cos you’ll be arousing
The anger of every second home owner
Who’ll fly in from Barcelona, or Gerona or bloody Pamplona
To claim they represent the residents
A majority of decadents.
Don’t want to set a precedent
They want a postcard picture,
A chocolate box fixture
In water-colour paint.
Want to keep it quaint
Maintain its reputation
Don’t worry about inflation
Or minimum wage degradation
Sod the working population
Mustn’t lower the tone ………..
It’s a second home
This piece could be, I suppose, a kind of "bucket list", but it's not about regretting all the things I wanted to do in my life and didn't, but, rather, it's about being okay with finally knowing that there just simply isn't/wasn't enough time to do it all. And also, I tend to get a little whimsical from time to time.
Well...
I never played tug-of-war with an elephant
Or kick boxed a kangaroo;
I never arm-wrestled a crocodile
Or won the lottery or built an igloo.
I never went searching for buried treasure
Or gold at the rainbow's end;
I never discovered the fountain of youth
Or had a circus clown for a friend.
I never ran with the bulls in Pamplona
Or croqueted on the lawn of the Taj Mahal;
I never drank wine from a young lady's slipper
Or made love 'neath a waterfall.
I've never zip-lined from the top of Mt. Everest
Or hitchhiked from Nome to Peru,
Or had a long erudite conversation
About how to decide when to use "whom" or "who".
I never played Hamlet, or danced in "Swan Lake",
Or sang opera with Callas or Sills;
I never wrote the great American novel,
And I think, alas, never will.
I never jousted a unicorn
Or read the dictionary from A to Z;
I've not romped in the rain on a plain down in Spain
Or grown a moustache, a beard, or goatee.
I never made money from stocks bought on Wall Street,
I just never could get the knack;
I never walked a tightrope across Royal Gorge
Or swam from Miami to Cuba and back.
I never fought dragons or tilted with giants
Or found a cure for the common cold,
And I've never been able to quite figure out
Just why it is we grow old.
Most of my list is pure fancy, of course,
If I don't do them, I won't feel frustrated.
I can honestly say I've enjoyed growing up,
But in my estimation, growing old's overrated.
Second Home by Rob Barratt
An escape from the rat race.
Life lived at a slower pace
An idyllic setting they won’t be letting
The cottage slumbers ,
Like the electricity meter numbers
It’s early March.
The house is dark
They’re in Marylebone
Or in Rome
It’s a second home
It’s a mothballed shell, residential hell
It’s a funeral bell, a death knell
For the low-paid locals whose response was vocal
(In the White Rose, before it closed)
But unrecordable
It wasn’t affordable
It’s an empty place, a waste of space
It hasn’t got a ‘phone.
It’s a second home
People recall that within the walls
Of this second pad, lived a Mum and Dad
With their family, on the settee
They watched Morcambe and Wise, and ate pork pies
In the blue TV light on a Saturday night
Life was pleasant in Woodland Crescent
Opening presents, chasing pheasants ……
But the parents are gone and the kids have grown.
Mustn’t moan.
It’s a second home
In the shop, the assistant mops a spillage
Cycles to a less fashionable village
And she saved for….how long was it?
To get a deposit on a flat like a closet
And she silently groans and takes out loans
Despite her persistence, she’s just living an existence
She says, “Why me?”
And wishes she
Could spend the days
In the house where she was raised
Life is tough. Isn’t one place enough?
She wishes she could own
That second home
If they want a holiday by the sea
Why don’t they try a B&B?
And don’t try to build low cost housing
‘Cos you’ll be arousing
The anger of each second home owner
Who’ll fly in from Barcelona, or Girona or bloody Pamplona
To claim they represent the residents
A majority of decadents.
Don’t want to set a precedent
They want a postcard picture,
A chocolate box fixture
In water-colour paint.
Want to keep it quaint
Maintain its reputation
Don’t worry about inflation
Or minimum wage degradation
Sod the working population
Mustn’t lower the tone ………..
It’s a second home
BLOOD OF PAMPLONA
We dined where Papa shined his cutlery
to rid the spots before a lunchtime fare
she dressed in red, her cloak no bull could see
and bound so tight so men could see her there.
Her mounds of flesh and cleavage turned each head
they didn't know to dine her she was theirs
and easy came her love--she made her bed
with matadors who had the proper stares.
And then she raced the bulls in drunken dance
down cobblestones and dared each one of them
til she was gored and blood was circumstance
and trampled in the dung and dusty grim.
She realized her dream to her last breath
and praised the bull who brought her to her death.
© ron wilson aka Vee Bdosa the Doylestown Poet
In Pamplona at the Running of the Bulls folks will cheer,
stampeding through the Spanish city as fast as they go.
The great kick some people get running with bulls in the rear
may be a matador’s dream, but it’s one I’ll forego.
In nightmares I’m racing, feeling the pinch of their horns,
I break into night sweats because I fear being trampled
and then I awake feeling like my butt’s stung by thorns.
(It’s not an experience you’d choose to repeat once sampled.)
Few of us have mastered the skills a matador has honed;
many injuries and even deaths have been reported,
so my trip to Spain once planned has now been postponed.
Instead to a Caribbean villa I’ll be transported.
As I lie on a beach holding a pina colada,
I’m sure I’ll catch 40 winks and the dream will repeat.
And I’ll ponder how Spain invaded with their armada
when this centuries old race left some trampled on the street.
*Written February 8, 2012 for Paula’s “Trample” contest
Be,
it's the eyes that draw me in
subtlety seductive
with a hint of fear
but freshly lit and duty free
there's no denying
a night time dream of deference
where drips of desire
tumble down
her dainty cheek
no torture, no suppression,
no midnight depression
as those nails start digging in
we cross
then re-cross
in a nearly perfect ring
toro
Pamplona fills the bill
she winks,
it's adoration
a soul she's climbing in
no spilling of tight held secrets
tonight no bull is going to win
Its 3 o’clock.
And the walls are telling me to sleep
But no luck
As my brain throbs like the bulls of Pamplona
Giving way to
Pretty, vacant wanderings through empty fields
To clear my head
Then the caffeine buzz at half six
And the bittersweet sting
Of revealing rays on my face
As the gloominess evaporates
And in the window my eyes shine blood red
Pamplona - full fight - 'El Toro Bravo'
Who's got more balls the matador or the bull
Nature or nurture the survival is skewed
The stage is set culture maintained and the
Fiesta bound to unravel in wild screams and suspense
Paloma however sports a pacifist's creed
Prefers a siesta with Paco's gentle sword
Sheathed in passion smooth motions of Peace
Bow to freedom and compassionate love
Pony and stallion dance al fresco in white sheets
When the night settles and they glow in the dusk
The arena nearby is empty bar blood in the sand
But Paloma and Paco rest unblemished after the
wondrous rapture and a clear conscience in kind
GIRL OF PAMPLONA
We dined where Papa shined his cutlery
to rid the spots before a lunchtime fare
she dressed in red, her cloak no bull could see
and bound so tight so men could see her there.
Her mounds of flesh and cleavage turned each head
they didn't know to dine her she was theirs
and easy came her love--she made her bed
with matadors who had the proper stares.
And then she raced the bulls in drunken dance
down cobblestones and dared each one of them
til she was gored and blood was circumstance
and trampled in the dung and dusty grim.
She realized her dream to her last breath
and praised the bull who brought her to her death.
© Ron Wilson aka vee bdosa the doylestown poet
I looked for comfort in nostalgia
Like water in a wishing well
Looked for solace in the moment
Like a new friend in a prison cell
I looked for things I didn’t know
And things I guess I do
O, Baby
I looked for you
I looked for absinthe in a dark room
Like Van Gogh in his cafe
I looked for romance in Pamplona
Like a suicidal Hemingway
I looked in my imagination
But that was all used up and through
O, sweet Baby
I looked for you
I looked for prostitutes in Bedlam
And those Babylonian whores
For their magnanimous redemption
As they flogged me down onto all fours
I looked for women that I didn’t know
The forlorn and the few
O, Baby
Then I looked for you
I looked for you
I traced the clues
Misled once in awhile
Tricked by the occasional ruse
I looked for beatific evidence
In the collected works of Christ
From the Ark of the Repentant
To the great sanctimonious device
I looked for a face on the woven shroud
Played the Immaculate Peek-a-boo
O Jesus, I looked for you.
2010
Ah, to write something exciting:
full of suspense and nail-biting,
narrow escapes while bullfighting…
The reader and I are gonna
run with the bulls in Pamplona,
sip on an ice-cold Corona;
the allure is so inviting.
Travel across the Atlantic -
it certainly sounds romantic,
but the first draft sounds pedantic:
a lie to say I’m delighting…
Then, with a thought not yet complete,
overwhelmed by utter defeat,
I hop a ride on the delete:
bull, yes, but mostly rewriting…
----------
A Zehel: aaa bbba ccca ddda with 8 syllable lines
Papa ...
Why build your walls so thick?
Did you fear the world would tumble in on you -
Find you as vulnerable and discomposed as the rest of us?
I think your TRUE battles - your wars - took place within
An Id so ambiguous and at odds with itself
That you drowned it in substance and sin and mortality
The edge of a knife too jagged for shrewd application
Visceral impulse, your fine compass
Those paths and bearings felt the prow of your words
Perchance the movable feast was NOT Paris
But rather the light in you - Paris as you lived it, in the rain
You and she, shining, in tremulous unison
Tapping keys with the lethality of your favorite rifle
The point of your pen invasive as any needle, poisoned
Ravaged and gored by the demons of night
Yet passed untouched by the bulls of Pamplona
Your world was raw on the half-shell
You, with Tabasco and a paring knife
Beauty found in muddy fields and mustard gas
As deep and compelling as a Caribbean sunrise
More taken by the grainy texture of a pear on your palate
Than by all the gods of humankind
And THAT, that easy allure -
That sublime simplicity ...
Is why ... I love you.
Written and submitted on November 24, 2019
For the "Your Favorite Artist" Poetry Contest
Chantelle Anne Cooke, Sponsor.
Key,
Black to White, Black to White
back to front, front to back
dancing naked
a pale moonlight
passions rising
over a burning sea
you can see
madam
you can see
in the twin mirror of me
won now
now won
one two
one two
nailed
the predictive text
of life
unpredictability mailed
sent off only to be returned
sites left to be seen
running the streets
Pamplona by the sea
sipping prosecco
warm words in a breeze
minds tickling time
stopping for a world to see
I in front of you
You in front of me
unlocking secrets
that were meant to be