Best Permissible Poems
In the tavern
Of Poetry flows the wine of
Love, feelings, wisdom,
Vision, sense and sagacity
Drunkenness permissible
Categories:
permissible, on writing and words,
Form:
Tanka
MY GRANDMA DEEMMA
My Grandma, whom I called Deemma
bathed me in showers of limitless love and blessings.
Those feelings I am still carrying in my life.
Deemma! An ideal hostess not to even guess,
most competent in domestic chores and household management
Grandpa! An unsuccessful lawyer with irregular income low and slow.
Deemma met up his inefficiency, never blaming rather running ideal family.
Off and on, in vacations, I had spent days with her.
She narrated her life-long struggle and concluded‘While raising up kids,
whole day’s ceaseless work made me frantically fatigued.
At late night I had to seek for a small space to throw myself in bed.
Yet, as I took glance on sleeping faces of my kids,
I realized, I as the happiest woman in the world.’
She had only primary education permissible for women in those days.
But her craze reached her daughters and son to succeed as toppers
She was my idol holding extraordinary skill in sewing, knitting, embroidering.
All the dresses of her grand kids were stitched by her.
Lots of charming dolls excelling in handicrafts were gifted to me.
Once she voiced to me ‘You call me Deemma, a typical address to old lady.
Dear my child, I am aged, but mind is still young not coping up with body.’
Now being a Grandma I had to sense the same ruthless truth.
She had bestowed me compassion and care in opulence.
I got no scope to repay but only to offer my gratitude as tribute in silence.
Trying to honor with my tribute roaming through reminiscence.
03/08/ 19
Fifth Place
'What's In A Name' Contest by Kim Rodrigues.
'YOUR CHOICE TRIBUTE VERSE' Contest by Brian Strand
Categories:
permissible, 10th grade, appreciation, granddaughter,
Form:
Free verse
They wiped my thoughts
with antiseptic hands,
wrung my mind through linen logic
and hung me between breakfast
and scheduled silence.
Every hour—accounted for.
Every spark—neutralised.
Brainwashed.
Hope came in timed doses—
measured in milligrams
and dispensed with a paper cup
and plastic smile.
I swallowed the sun in tablet form
until it glowed from the inside
like a malfunctioning lamp.
Brainwashed.
I used to speak in fractured gold,
each sentence a riddle
spun from starlight and defiance.
They taught me to speak correctly—
which meant quietly,
which meant not at all.
Brainwashed.
They dressed me in fabric
the colour of pause,
stitched my name
into the hem of conformity,
taught me not to wander
outside the red line
of permissible imagination.
Brainwashed.
They made me fill in boxes:
Do you still hear them?
Do you still dream strange?
Do you still think
you are more than
this?
I circled no, and smiled.
Brainwashed.
My mirror stopped recognising me.
It showed a still ocean
where once there were storms.
I waved—but my reflection
had better things to do
than remember who I was
before routine became religion.
Brainwashed.
But some nights—
when the world forgets to monitor me,
and the ceiling isn’t watching—
I find poems hidden
under my tongue,
fierce and unprescribed.
I whisper them backwards
to keep them safe.
Still writing.
Or so they think.
Because inside the silence,
beneath the disinfected compliance,
something unwashed pulses—
raw, brilliant,
and unfinished.
I remember.
Categories:
permissible, mental illness,
Form:
Free verse
The world is spinning
and you refuse to fall off.
Yesterday,
you stabbed a crooked finger
into my hidden diary
criticized my Fascist inflections -
debated my scribblings
on Marxism,
noted the notations
indicating Munchausen by Proxy
and then
choked and lamented
upon vague references I made
concerning Virginia Woolf,
Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton,
Cruella De Vil
and Hitler.
You literally littered through
my private Pandora’s box
of personal prose and poetry -
with an unbridled
crazed compulsion
and without my
permissible permission.
Pointing to bold typed words,
such as “ebony”
and “vacuous”
and “sociopath”
and the one
you couldn’t evenly pronounce –
“phlegmatic.”
You stomped your hot heavy hooves -
screaming with the dire urgency
of a rape victim:
“What the hell are you talking about?”
It didn’t take very long before
I simply shrugged,
slugged the remaining remains
of my Rolling Rock,
took your index finger
guided it across
your ratted sweater
and placed it
upon your
hopeless,
hapless
heart.
Categories:
permissible, lost love, love
Form:
Free verse
thank God for all He has done and let there be no division to find
we are all part of one body and as Christians of one mind
the wisdom of God is all knowing and not to be questioned
don't be like the Pharisees looking for signs of imperfection
for God will use the weakest things to make fools of the wise and the strong
and He will choose lowly things to show the boastful where they belong
the message of wisdom is for the mature in faith and not based on one's age
and It will be revealed through the spirit in you by The Holy Sage
so regard yourself as a servant of God entrusted with sacred words
judge not others on the evidence of something someone else might have heard
for you are a receptacle that God Himself will use
just don't go beyond what is written and be careful of the words you choose
be most aware of the company you keep, be surrounded by others with the spirit
watch out for the pagans of this world, pray that someday they will get It
to practice sacrifices to false gods and participate in sexual immorality
will lead you down the road to hell and not up towards divinity
just run your race with a godly pace and eventually you'll come to realize
that others run for no reason at all never to receive God's eternal prize
everything isn't permissible and not everything is good
everything isn't acceptable and not everything seems as it should
seek the good news and not only just for yourself
include your fellow man and spread the wealth
the body of Christ is a unit made up of many parts
and we all have our own gifts to share and a place in God's heart
we all have words of praise even If It Is spoken in tongues
just let them be revealed to all through the Spirit of The Holy One
and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
we've all been given salvation from living sinful lives
so let's worship Him as one body in Christ all together with praise
let It be an orderly procession with our hands and voices to Him raised
Categories:
permissible, devotion, faith, hope, inspirational,
Form:
Didactic
True love for a nerd (specifically a logophile)
True love for a nerd, specifically a logophile... is him not interrupting you while you read, just watching your face, and you, who could read through 7th period in all its rowdy noisiness, who wouldn't look up from the page to see the world end... feel his gaze, and you look up. And smile. And then look down again because, come on, you have to make sure the main character lives.
It's being able to flirt in an extended metaphor in such a way that I'd like to think is at least as poetic as "Oh what light through yonder window breaks."
It's laughing at how disgustingly cliched it all is and not caring.
It's discussing grammar and definitions and both of you are interested in the conversation. Or he pretends, and that's just as good.
It's a bed full of scraps of poetry and suddenly sitting up at midnight because his smile is like daybreak, like summer, and lovely and oh my god someone needs to put it into a poem; sleep is a neccesary sacrifice!
It's letting the person you wrote a poem about actually read the poem you wrote about them.
It's being able to read poetry to someone that actually enjoys it for the beauty of words and not solely because it's horribly romantic... although it is.
It's playing word games, tossing rhymes back and forth until the volley is stopped short in the face of an argument over whether non-english words are permissible.
It's him suddenly saying... "We should read together."
It's him saying he wants me to correct his grammar. It's being accepted as a grammar nazi.
It's hearing intelligent thought come out of his mouth... I am an admitted sapiosexual, and damn, he makes intelligence sound hot.
It's like the unread book that you found on your shelf when you felt sure you'd read them all.
It's the story you'd thought you had predicted at the outset but that surprises you by being unconventional and utterly unexpected... it's almost frustrating... yet exciting.
It's the poem you didn't understand, and then you did.
Categories:
permissible, boyfriend, cute love, funny
Form:
List
Villanelle : When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide
When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide
Proclaim citizens who kill under the patrie’s pennant heros
Permissible by far all things done to boost national pride
Killing for your god even to ward off a remark thought snide
Fellow believers’ll enshrine your name in martyrs pantheons
When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide
Leaders lie cheat slander even – forbid – commit fratricide
Citizens shrug shoulders and pass it all off as political woes
Permissible by far all things done to boost national pride
Sick secret service scions see to it their victims all slide
Down the slippery slope of unaccountable anonymous blows
When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide
And yet leaders and preachers claim peace for all with pride
Their individual charters and scriptures back sinister goals
Permissible by far all things done to boost national pride
Why then history relegates the greatest actions taken at tide
To memory’s junk pile where fester countries and their heros
When countries slaughter maim who brands that homicide
Permissible by far all things done to boost national pride
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014
Categories:
permissible, history, memory, patriotic, peace,
Form:
Villanelle
Do you know that giant of Africa yesterday?
That great and well-fed West African Elephant?
Whose offspring’s are pot-belly, lament-less and relieved?
Have you seen that giant of Africa today?
Whose leaky walls are infiltrated with turmoil and malevolence?
Yet couldn’t hear; couldn’t see and couldn’t say?
Have you seen a thespian Nigeria?
With over-blown inflationary rate
Uncontrolled exchange rate
And a despicable insecurity peril?
Wherefore is everything that was there before?
The favourable exchange rate
Manageable security and controlled price
And where is everyone?
The Obasanjo’s, the Jonathan’s and the Yar’adua’s of blessed memory
Whose hands of revulsion are we in?
Where nothing is something
Only hunger, malady, dearth and communal cleansing
With yesteryear better than the crinkled arms of tomorrow
See the boulevard, the drifters and the indigents
Permissible and impermissible whores
Imperceptible horror and terror
With rage in everyone’s smiling faces
When will CHANGE be ‘CHANGED?’
That which we bargained with our lives
Traded in sorrow and grief
And forsaken afterwards
Does CHANGE mean hunger, marginalization and communal cleansing?
Does it mean power outage and general price hike?
Who can CHANGE the CHANGE and
Not pick the pieces of discord.
Categories:
permissible, political,
Form:
Political Verse
Mentally dissect
My lyrical dialect
Cause my psychological
Philosophical context
Is an channel you have to check
Digest the concept
I profess
See how the geometrical lines connect
We not parallel
They same great minds think alike like we share the same cells
My brain waves is a storm of tornadoes
Whirling together to create the embryo
Biblical credentials say the body is a temple
An the mind is sound
The fundamentals or essential
Purpose of my well being is to be presentful
An image rememorable because my existence is once to be found
GOD holds my crown
But the devil is permissible to be around
My lyrical material I write down
Comes from the instrumental grounds of the sounds my mind listens to
I'm a instrument
Categories:
permissible, art, fire, poetry, visionary,
Form:
Free verse
A big Hollywood star decided to go
to play some blackjack at a Las Vegas casino.
The management did not like what was going on.
Suspected of card counting, the actor was gone.
This episode appeared in need of a reality check.
How does one keep track of aces and tens in each deck?
The scene presented itself to be unclear and quite mucky.
Is it not permissible for patrons to get lucky?
From a news story found on aol.com
Categories:
permissible, games,
Form:
Rhyme
Newsflash
New the Jewish New Year
Ike Davis hits 2 home runs
Newsflash
Israel's Baseball tean beat
South Africa near the Jewish New Year
Newsflash
My late father used to speak about Sid Luckman,
world famous football player
Around the time of the Jewish New Year
Newsflash - Sandy Koufax(the left arm of G-d) is
still alive
He took off on the Jewish New year
Newsflash - Samuel Reshevsky
was U.S. Chess Champion
and turned to Orthodoxy
ethnic pride is certainly permissible
And we have some great members of the tribe!
(despite having a few bad apples - like every other ethnic group)
Categories:
permissible, dedication, religion, sports,
Form:
Blank verse
Yesterday I received Auntie Mabel’s annual spring note
She wants to know how, in 2024, I will cast my vote
She's concerned that the U.S. will elect another old goat.
She has finally had her troublesome tooth pulled, I note,
Her latest ailment seems to be she has developed a bloat.
No news about her nephew who was in jail last she wrote
Her gay nephew, on her husband’s side, continues to gloat,
I have told her many times about him, do not rock his boat
Well, uh, …she must do what she can to keep him afloat.
She asked if I wore the sweater; mentioned do I need a coat
You’ll recall Auntie Mabel lives in England, somewhat remote.
In a week or so, I’ll respond to Auntie Mabel’s annual missal
It is important that I let her know I have received her epistle.
Failure to respond in a timely manner causes her to bristle--
Just a short note with a tad bit of gossip will be permissible.
As you surely know, I would do nothing to earn her dismissal!
I need to share I sliced open my finger on a prickly thistle
And, I've bought myself a brand-new sweeper -- a Bissell.
Written April 10, 2022
[fourth Auntie Mabel poem. Check out
previous letters for references.]
Categories:
permissible, family, fantasy, humorous, relationship,
Form:
Monorhyme
I'm a speech punk; kind of a menace
Not sure if the word is permissible in these parts
But that's the word I need, life's a furnace
So flush that. Gosh, you leave me no choice
I'm trying to speak, hear my voice in the whisper
Through the walls of disparaging noise
This is the true genesis of your lyrical nemesis
Within the lofty walls of these subliminal premises
So join me in these choruses
If you are tired of all those empty promises
I know some will hold on to being cynical
And insist that so and so is not tyrannical
On the offensive, trying to sound authentic
I’m getting tired of these old nonverbal diatribes
Untried ideological theories from war times
Self-proclaimed superheroes asking for more time
Descending heavily on dissenters
I find it interesting. You insist on destruction
But cry foul over the consequential sanctions
Questions leading to more questions
Your overarching approach is nonsensical
You're overreaching, overreacting
Flashing knives and talking peace treaties
I choose reason, so I'll be philosophical
Through and through until people know the truth
I'll show you who is master in this class
Through the looking glass, looking straight ahead
Hard forehead set against their hardcore hearts
Delicate apples of eyes rolling upon these surfaces
Don't forget light shines in the darkness
These are obviously obnoxious princes of madness
Gospel hardened bumpkins, hard of hearing
Pluck off their ear muffs and remove the earplugs
I don't know, it's the starkness
Of their skewed vision and aversion to reality
Posing, for whatever reason, as minimalists
And all of us losers attempting to look strong
Strolling roughshod on dog dump filled terrain
They say without travail there are no babies
So, I'm caught barefoot in this hell of a place
No name, upstart among folks with no faces
Clasping hands holding back nervous chuckles
Upon the sight of my adversaries' bleeding knuckles
Section such and such paragraph this and that
Yeah, voiceless man quoting verses
Telling the man with the pitchfork to get lost
Categories:
permissible, hip hop, rap,
Form:
Free verse
AGE OF LOVE
To love and to be loved,
as socially observed
is the prime passion,
need not to mention.
Teen-ager or youngster
It does not matter.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Senior Citizen!
All welcome in field of love.
Same age? Not to reserve.
Most humans develop attraction
in contemporary generation.
Yet, neither rare nor impossible,
Rather always permissible
Affairs between Ladies and Gents
as going on from ancient to recent.
Age of loved one may be much more or less,
not hampering mutual happiness.
Amour is a flow in bubbling blood,
washing two hearts in passion-flood
Younger or Older? No questions.
Two souls unite, and emotion moistens.
12/15/17
Third Place
'STRAND SPECIAL U' Contest by Brian Strand
Categories:
permissible, love, passion,
Form:
Couplet
Creative writing is for those
who like to make us ponder,
their meanings can be hidden,
cause our feeble minds to wonder,
esoteric pieces puzzle,
leave us with uneasy feelings,
better that we entertain
and trash the doubts and double dealings.
Humor is the best medicine,
limericks are sure to please,
especially when we're mired and stuck,
and need to set our minds at ease.
I have written words... O jeez!
just cast your eyes on my 'Ennui,'
a twentieth century group of deadbeats,
not soulful creatures just like you and me!
So I will try from hereon out
to enrich this happy place,
indulge my failing sense of humor
fill you up with style and grace.
Are belly laughs permissible?
you bet, the more the merrier,
I will test your funny bone,
so you'd better WATCH THIS SPACE!
Categories:
permissible, humor,
Form:
Verse