Best Plays Poems
I was a youth who seldom thought about
the fact that in the midst of life I was,
with each breath, getting closer to its end.
I viewed life as a beautiful clear stream
that never would run dry, eternal spring,
and lively music written for the young.
**************************
That same stream flows, but not so deep as then.
I’m thirsty still, but sometimes just a sip
is all it takes to make me smile. My spring
is gone, my summer too; but autumn holds
unique appeal. I’m grateful for each breath.
Though sometimes thoughts of dying try to quell
my joy, the music in my soul still plays.
November 29, 2020
entered in Brian Strand's UN-RHY-ME Contest Placed 1st
Lightning
flashes brightly
outside our front window.
Rain's falling fast and furious.
Feeling IT in my fingers, vibration
jolts and loosens the window pane.
Delightful, but frightful,
quivers follow
lightning.
Tag game
mommy shudders;
I'm deaf, but I sense IT.
My sister covers up her ears
awaiting, anticipating something.
I wait for looks on their faces.
"You're IT!" you make me shake
like a sudden
tag game?
Piano gently plays
Eyelids like shades drawn
Ease back in La-Z-Boy chair
The present slips away
Eternity is present
Piano gently plays
Fingering time and space
Reaching for relationship
With the most, high God
Piano Gently plays
I never leave haphazardly
The patrician Rock keeps me
He blesses me with peace
I trace His words in my spirit
Piano gently plays
Rhythm of the drum
Swinging of the piano
And music plays on
a puppy dog plays
on a green grassy pond's shore
mother dog's near by
puppy sees flying
butterfly from plant to plant
chases to catch it
many times it failed
mother dog was watching this
asks to come back vaw
Movements between a left and a right swing
A pendulum plays a well-known rhythm
Moments between the ticking and tocking
A lonely figure bracing in the storm
An empty park-bench on a quiet lawn
A pendulum plays a well-known rhythm
Like a long lost memory towards dawn
The distant baying of a hunting dog
An empty park-bench on a quiet lawn
Hearing bright laughter thru the gloomy fog
Sometimes life is spent in little spaces
The distant baying of a hunting dog
Out at large, on and on the world races
Life, long or short, fines a nominal sum
Sometimes life is spent in little spaces
Knocking at a door for heaven to come
Movements between a left and a right swing
Life, long or short, fines a nominal sum
Moments between the ticking and tocking.
I’ve been needing your lies
I’ve been craving your poison
I’ve been missing your demons
I’ve been loving your hater
While I was playing with death
While it was ing me upside down
While I was freezing face to hell
I’ve been moaning your name
When my hands were trembling
When my soul was jumping
When my veins were twisting
I howled your April’s farewell
Once Azrael was invited
And the sky was open
Then my mind got naked
Your shadow was my only Savior
My voice was resonating
But from your ears was forbidden
My snow capped depth was on the summit of its alp
Pleading you to be its shield
That’s when you threw it into a dark swamp
Claiming that you were lost in a blinded place
Everything was mute and your bones were broke
But I saw you secretly radiating in a crystal ball
You thought I’m nowhere nearer
Was it amusing to fool a downcast lifer?
You were pushing my destiny to its sharp ending chapter
Below the belts freedom was dedicated to a shrewd sinner
Meanwhile I’ve been taken to where nothing left to catch
Failures over the time of my rotten life have built my forgotten grave
Gloomy butterflies surrounded my sick grove
No flowers to bloom no hope to suck
No words to draw no feelings to touch
No time to rush no remorse to scratch
The door of paradise was barely visible
But the clouds drove me to a fiery jungle
I begged life to be my sucker
One last elegiac parting with winter
But death was an invincible fighter
Loneliness was feeding my blur future
Chiselling out my anxiety within four blank walls
Then stirred up a wild storm of toxic fears
Moving on was the synonym of stuck in a rut
A sterile heart gave up on its darned patience
Charcoaled love erased its existence
Dry tears chained to these anorexic cheeks
You shutdown the light you once heated up
Now I’m sober yet drunk on my coma
Trying to perforate your karma
While cleaning up my ugly Fantasia.
Where I was your moon and you were my star
She plays for tips,
this lady with guitar
for the hour she plays
while patrons eat lunch.
This lady with guitar
she sings her compositions
while patrons eat lunch
on a busy day.
She sings her compositions
written by her hand
on a busy day
for those who come to hear her play.
Written by her hand
lyrics and melodies touch hearts
those who come to watch her play
she sings her compositions.
She plays for tips
this lady with guitar.
She sings her compositions
written by her hand.
Dried sand eclipsed over the Season’s fall,
sullen rhyme sings singer-birds over scale,
the storm-dance sprays dust against broken wall,
To the hat-worn folks, sorrowed, narrates tale;
Done seasonal harvest with plaint-dried tears,
With diseased cattle shrunken skin to ribs,
With cracked ground, hungry sad visage of fears,
With wasted limbs and pot-bellied in cribs.
keenly begs graceful charity for age,
Promising bags, from next seasons harvest,
To plough the ground below the lowered wage,
And to lock starving kids to empty breast.
Thus rewording he sows the seeds and play,
Hoping golden grain’s harvest from his clay.
©Anees Rahman
So,
how is
it that my
wife can be so
good at Tetris and
so useless at stacking
everything in the dishwasher?
I wish I had time for poetry and plays
My mind allowed
As I watched the same aged, bespectacled monk
For about the fifteenth time this month
Patter his bare feet
Upon the pavement
Of the dust filled lane.
Leaving me again
To contemplate
Broken shards of yesterday
In a faraway land that reminds me of
Secret Pacts made
To myself
In the time when
Getting too busy was never an option.
These the promises
Made in Nepalese skies
below the Lost Horizon
Of the Dalai Lama
Where,
I could not see
The coming years that would
Tumble earthwards
Like over ripe plums.
Nor the red Lama
Perched on an Annapurnan cliff
Chanting
Melodic verses
Centuries old
Tying a
Red ribbon round my
Wrist and soul.
There they lay.
Meditations that never were,
Given by Siddhartha, Confucius and, even a carpenter, from
Somewhere
Around
The Middle East.
Additionally,
They have even appeared
In soiled books,
Ashrams on the Ganges,
Scribbled on bar room napkins and
Occasionally
Confessed to
Unsuspecting passersby.
Where are these ruminations now
As the pages stick
Like books rarely read
In villages unseen
By streams only heard?
When all I want
Is a little respite from the traffic that
Hums next to the
Lane that is just beside my
Patio where that same monk will
Rise up
Early, don a saffron
Robe and greet dawn both eyes
Smiling.
Jeff Troyer
2006 (Chiang Mai, Thailand)
its world knows
everywhere there a field there
go train play in the rain
its a out let
that your can bet
also heals thinking pain
PLAY THE GOLF GAME
Clyde Rolf
Played golf
First nine
Went fine
Next nine
Not fine
He muffs
In roughs
Sand trap
Oh crap
Tough break
In lake
Bad hook
In brook
Blew putts
Some klutz
Hurled putter
In gutter
O'er par
By far
Disgust
He cussed
Clubhouse
To souse
Dolphins play
Blue horizon
Finding love
Within the sea
Singing songs
Forevermore
Love will take you anywhere
rain plays new steel drums
the inner rhythm steals me
peaceful sleep prevails