Best Pockmarked Poems
Old Zack Adams sits a slouch’n so sloppy drunk on a bar-room stool,
Wear’n his cheap-threaded cowboy suit and a stained satin shirt.
All the while a peek’n and a leer’n at women like an old poor fool,
But think’n man tonight—Oh Boy, I’m really gonna hit the pay dirt!
Old Zack in this small Texas town is reputed to be quite a lecherous hoot,
As he raucously and recklessly rolls old worn quarters into the slot
Of the old bar-room Wurlitzer while snicker’n and smil’n to boot,
And plays his tearful and twangy jerk-water music while smil’n a lot!
Old Zack is this town’s “Jukebox Gigolo,” a real lover boy—Oh Boy!
He wears his patched cowboy hat and his scuffed silver-studded boots,
Meant to impress young girls and bar-fly floozies who have the Joy!
Of being with this bewildering, withered, weathered man and his boots.
Old Zack has a fad’n recollection of events and a silver mane of hair,
With a cigarette in his hand and cuss’n like a nasty little stable boy,
He downs whiskey shots and tequila seconds like no tomorrow on a dare,
While chas’n whiskey glass ice cubes and the tequila worm—being so coy.
Old Zack while a swigg’n down his whiskey mucho fast and direct,
He has now that blind courage to fight or to love—whichever is first,
While the old Wurlitzer resonates a rueful hick song for a teary effect,
But Old Zack can’t move now for this song has him sobb’n the very worst.
Old Zack with his nicotine-whiskey breath and his pockmarked face,
Personifies the image of an ideal loser of a man—with problems all,
While fight’n, scream’n, and punch’n others to gain some precious space,
He’s a showcas’n his reservoir of manly prowess—with problems all.
Old Zack was young once and not so wild, withered, weathered like now,
And he thought he was a really smart dude—all right moves and all,
But was really a man act’n far above his funny fake smart brow,
And now a cry’n on his bar-room stool and act’n like a fool before a fall.
Old Zack Adams—alcoholic as he truly is and sly and slick as a Texas fox,
Is not really so good with his women friends nowadays—for his real talent
Is in roll’n those old worn quarters pieces one-by-one into the old Jukebox,
Sing’n—“I’m the Jukebox Gigolo”—“a Drunk and a Delight,” that’s real talent!
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved (October 7, 2014)
(Rhymed Quatrain)
The horizon cuts straight, long, hard
silently declining less than a degree
like toys across a cartoon’s one frame stillness
a small yacht rocks like a child’s boat
a helicopter putters, a small jet silently
bellies over the sea thundering suddenly
against a graded blue sky
children flying a kite
a plummeting twisting tied bird in its death throes
falling from the warm seemingly red-speckled blue
broken only by a smudge of grey cloud
curling white-tipped waves swirl against rocks
a lonely Zen-meditative crab in their shade
the sand, ridged, striated, pockmarked
small holes left as bubbling miniature blowholes
fine lines webbed around
sand rippled like the sea, waved and cleansed
a poetic transgression? – Neptune’s impost?
the soap-sud foam his in-coming joyful jouissance
the thin receding water a pin-spot bridal veil
and a bridal train, its white scalloped lace edge
pleating, folding, hiding under the next wave
in rippling curving line-patterns
How to describe the color of love? Might you frown in surprise if I spoke of brown? Dull, pockmarked, ocherous brown.
A tarmac of grain, stained the color of earth, that never saw rain.
One humble old table, from an oak that would fall. Who could have known the
moments recalled?
Just a scarred weathered plank, with a warp in the middle. Blight she would hide with a bright checkered cloth. Those who would sit, night after night, greeting with eyes, meeting with ears,... filling the gaps with laughter and tears
Decades were spent, over string beans, and potatoes, bridging the gap of a mid-day mishap, a chat after school, or a new family rule.
Resurrecting a family, at the end of the day, while chomping away on unidentifiable casseroles, that filled the belly, as well as the soul.
Consuming wisdom and noodles, in the comfort of home.
Who would have noticed this shabby antique, wearing wax from Crayolas, white coffee cup rings. Ink spots, and dings. And three winking holes made by father's misdeed!
(His picture-frame project, misjudging the nails! Three slender digits pierced in without fail! Hammered tight, to the top. While mother's shot through the roof!
Who could have ever guessed that a well-worn, weathered old piece of grainy brown oak could be the glorious color of love?
____________________________________
Laying in my cozy bed
And drifting off to dreams,
A sudden panic fills my head:
What if this isn't as it seems?
What if while I'm tucked in,
Slipping into sleep,
Giant monsters and their kin
Through the darkness creep?
I draw my hand back to me,
deep into my sheet,
Scared that if I leave it free
Something monstrous it'll meet!
It's not like this is new to me
When I'm alone in my abode.
Frightsome beasts I fear I'll see-
Is there one in the commode?
Sure, to you it's just a toilet
Standing stock-still in the loo.
But of my mind, when I fear and fret,
You haven't got a clue.
Yes, I know it's just machinery,
But maybe when I flush
Horrors will purvey the scenery,
Responding in a rush.
Eek! Stop talking! Wait, wait, wait!
What's that above our heads?
A rusty, musty AC grate,
Is that what you just said?
I know it's dust, I know it's shadow
Behind the grate's steel bars,
But looking up from down below
I see a face pockmarked with scars.
As I brush my pearly whites at night
I risk a glance up high,
And then I nearly die of fright
And soon begin to cry.
I see the face, still staring down,
Watching me brush my teeth.
Daddy runs in and looks around,
So I heave a sigh of relief.
He gets his tools, tells me to look,
And gently unscrews the grate.
I watch, see neither beast, nor crook,
Nor any evil trait.
After all this time, I've come to see
That I don't need to fear.
Creatures lurk not in shadows near me,
Nor every creak I hear.
I've come a long way, and I'll never go back
To how I was before,
When from every crevice, every crack
I feared beasties would pour.
What's that? It's time to go to bed?
Ok, I guess you're right.
But, um, well, before you go...
Would you please leave on the light?
Chucko Is Dead
It was on Columbus Day, 1962
When Chucko the Birthday Clown
Sang in tones most glorious and free.
“I’m Chucko, I’m Chucko
I’m Chucko the Birthday Clown!”
I was comfortably ensconced on the couch.
A feigning 10 year old with a pseudo fever,
Sister Mary Daniel was probably making the sign of the cross,
Up the street at St. Mary’s,
When Chucko the Birthday Clown
Stared into the camera and saw me,
Insignificant me,
Just a freckled punk kid;
Hater of sadistic nuns and boring dry lessons
Of crowded sweaty stinky catholic classrooms
With crucifixes of a dead bloody Jesus.
And the sweet salvation of the universe was not yet apparent.
But Chucko knew all about that.
He knew the future and the past.
He knew about Kennedy and Kent State
He knew what was coming so imminently,
He looked into that camera at Channel 7
And saw the children of the 50’s
Coming home in body bags from
The jungles of hell,
From the other side of the world,
From the bloody backside
Where all things are vile and evil.
He saw fear, and an ocean of tears.
He saw ten thousand sunsets
And 50 thousand funerals of the crazy brave.
Even in 1962
When the country was still a damn good country,
He rode the highways and byways with a pockmarked grin.
But he knew he could never tell of what was coming,
Of the madness and corruption and the greed,
“I’m Chucko, I’m Chucko,
I’m Chucko the birthday clown!”
Mother! Please! Take my hand.
I’m afraid!
Chucko the Birthday Clown is dead.
“Cambodia is
Cambodia but not really
Cambodia.”
That’s what some say
As the years roll on
Forty years or so since Pol Pot and his pals posted
‘Year 0”,
Sent the whole thing to the wash,
And it came out
Red.
So now I recline on
Sun built beaches
Night into Day
Sandwiched between gaggles of
I-pod armed youth
Just escaped from a
Lifelong sentence,
At least for a summer,
Dazzling at spectacle like
Fire girls twirling Prometheus though
Black holes in moonlit nights
Starless
Sipping
50 cent beer
While the unmistakable drift of
Marijuana
And Xanadu
Sifts my senses into
Now.
While on the hill
There lies a Frenchman,
Freshly stabbed,
Epee-like
By a speed crazed barmaid
On a pockmarked lane where
Money meets desire
In the still born heat
Of an Asian night
Falling.
.
Which makes me reconnoiter
Deadwood and Dodge
Earp and James
When law went desperate
Beneath a hangman’s noose
And the certain pall
Of afternoon death lay
Reeling
In the century or so since
The requiem.
But can this be their
Cote d’Azur as
Newly dubbed Khmer warriors like
Sable Palms
Surge skywards beside the
Sensual rhythm of
Casuarina trees
Purging the past to conjure
Bygone glory a
Millennium or so ago
At a place just up the road named
Angkor Wat
Soon to be renamed
Disneyland Cambodia?
Jeff Troyer (2009)
Midway
Dauntless bomber
pockmarked sky ... fire rains up
craft spirals down. Mate trapped ... eject
alone
2/7/2016
Contest--The One Who Survived
Sara Kendrick
Defy the dreadnaught darkness
that repels Gods' given light.
Beware the banshee blackness
dour damnation shrieks delight.
Leather wings and padded paws
phantom forms of ferine fright,
searing eyes and hunters' maws
drive intrepid hearts to flight.
From the boiling brimstone bile,
condemned corpses rise as one.
Pockmarked faces nod and smile
for the noxious night has won.
Defy the dreadnaught darkness
let the serpents' sons be bred.
Beware the banshee blackness
as the worms caress the dead.
Perverse pits where evil pours
scorched blood and liquid lead.
Demons crack forbidden doors
so our shivers might be fed.
Defy the dreadnaught darkness
where the rancid reptiles dwell.
Beware the banshee blackness
where one mis-step broaches Hell.
coping just for a purpose
rusting revealing the truth
a new coat of paint never helps
however i become emotionally addicted
i remember when smiles on four walls was the art we chose
when the foundation of the paint weakened with time, so did the symbolism of our love
we became antiheroes in the form of thematic failure
we allowed that to be our smiling front and our welcoming back
we never asked forgiveness for we knew not the particular definition
we were liars without admittance to admitting
as a result, we aged at a more rapid pace
genetics defied us, but we too were defiant by unified choice
God has a way of structuring by way of emphatic emphasis
nevertheless we let the devil break through....therefore becoming unfortunate pockmarked examples
..... .........
There he hanged in suspended agony with screams pelting
recluse eyes terrified in the glow of afternoon melting…
pockmarked face, ears filled with stain, bones clanking.
how can i soothe his pain borne from abandonment sighing
no name, birth date, parents---thrown in orphanage dying
Warm milk with nudging couldn’t slay nightmares moaning
games on the porch were not part of his toddler’s beginning
yet, tenderness and steeled patience came unknowing
kites after kites, my nephews claimed him as brethren belonging
slowly… he met my smile with his warm gaze lightly riding
Cheeks now more pink than clouds, he painted with hands winging
laughter in bubbly froth loosened grip of past remembering
how we cupped the moon at night, his ribs swelled with arms widening
i entered his healing waters, watched him steadily growing…
He was my hero; loving a stranger taught me to be life-giving.
--------------------------------------
*To E.J.… one who became my foster child for a year.
Janette Fisher's Hero Contest
by nette onclaud
The horizon bleeds blood-red,
within which a marigold moon blooms with regal splendor.
Her pockmarked face aglow,
She slowly rises, like a Chinese lantern.
Dusk descends like a ghostly specter
falling ever so softly, inking ebony silhouettes.
Shadows of the night merge into one:
a collage of darkening shades of black.
And the heavens sparkle, as trillions of distant stars
tethered to reality, morph into fantasy.
The universe is breathtakingly mind-blowing,
inspiring artists and poets alike.
Yet hidden behind blinding city lights,
night's obscured in its totality;
to the many living in cities who have never seen stars.
What a pity!
They were young then, now they would be old men looking across an empty beach, the sun at their back; for many this would be their last day to grow old; dead in the water; dying on the sand of Omaha Beach.
Memories.
Three long hours smashing through the pounding white capped waves; cold and hard as the water washed over the sides, mumbled prayers mouthed through cracked lips saturated with a salty brine taste.
Bodies were pressed together, brother to brother, clammy breath on your neck, an anvil hammering your chest and hoping the body against you would not taste your fear.
Scorching white flashes of light slashed across the plodding boats, tracers burst bright in the early morning light, twisting a body around, then another crumble, finally the Higgins boat stops......
And the gates of hell open wide to the heavens, making room for the newly departed as bodies stumble over the metal ramp, falling down in a slow-motion dance into the water and drift away, for eternity.
Terrible Memories.
A fifty-pound stone strapped on your back, when suddenly the guy standing next to you is not there, vaporized in a conflagration of redness and matter, an empty vessel flung to the heavens in pieces.
The screams of the wounded horrific, as bullets drive you across a sprawling field of fire. The sand was pockmarked by craters on what should be an early June summer day for frolicking at the beach.
The dead bob in the cherry colored water, and the torn apart want to be any place but here, at this hour, at this time, on this day, praying to heaven to make this hell of exploding shells a dream.
Haunted Memories.
Your name doesn’t matter when you are already dead. The dying dissolve in a burst of machine gun fire before kissing the coarse sand, washed away by the relentlessness of tide and the hour, MIA forever.
The unbroken rat-tat-tat sound as bullets slam into bodies and the boys of summer scream for their Mother and the God of morphine. Bursting landmines scatter a leg fifty yards away and the sand bleeds out red.
Memorials
The Ghosts behind the graves, brothers in arms, rest in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in the quiet French countryside, not far from a place with the All-American sounding name: Omaha Beach.
The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Twenty-Eight
Other media meanwhile busy with who’s sleeping with whom
Relying on New-Sweep and Thyme to make loud front-page zoom
Mainly of those who leapfrog into top power palaces
On whether de Beauvoirs or transvestites be given more room
Dohr took dire toll on the High Prelate’s laboured vocal chords
And just as the Chief pow-wowed with advisors and legal boards
So did His Holiness with a delegation come from afar
The results as well as can be expected turned out: Discord!
The wily Franquist woman counselor slammed the Chief’s car door
And bee-lined the barred gates of the trysting hotel’s portico
The Chief sent Commandant in hot pursuit of bent-backed woman
Scarf drawn over pockmarked scalp limpet-mouthed suction sore
As the dohr throngful of the Faithful streamed out queues formed for asr
The Commandant waylaid the Imam come out for some air:
“…ad subjiciendum… Omar…Tent Maker’s prodigal heir…”
“Means thou Umar ibn Al-KHattap…Exalted Caliph Sire?”
Non-plussed the Commandant looked hard at Writ in his thick hands:
“Your Holiness! Be it thy pleasure to peruse these commands!”
One yea-sayer read aloud: “Oooo..maaaar ibn al-Khaaayyaaaamm…”
“Who? Must be that drunken half-Turk by rich widows favour finds!”
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014
WD-40 resistant, cranky
mental gears no longer appraised,
honored, nor prized
as a precision crafted tool
never adequately utilized,
when eyes stared blankly
taking up space and
time (sigh hence) during
during twelve years
of public school
passively mute as a general rule
ambivalent, whether I sank or swam
during physical education
time in the pool
evincing being in
somnambulant state giving
top notch 40 ache curs and a mule
a run for his/her money,
plus also outwitting
any motley fool
nonetheless garnering huzzahs
if challenged to silent duel
despite implacable blackened
barbs didst unspool
assaulting me though
vicious and cruel
fast forward to
Matthew Scott Harris
at this present age
once feigned numbskull,
now deeply rutted,
pockmarked, cratered, asper
useful as fist size asteroid,
which post mortem will
not surprisingly, definitively,
and conclusively gauge
imagine dissecting my
fifty plus shades
of gray matter
revealing analogously glommed
together one severely
gunked up bacteriophage,
where once upon a time,
when a newborn babe
feeling warmth mother's chest,
she long since
passed away forced guest
to attend masquerade
hosted by grim reaper,
a most nefarious,
obnoxious, and pernicious pest
intricately, handsomely, genetically
her cremated remains
freed to the four corners
of the globe quest
inert particles integrated
within biosphere, she remains
perpetually in motion,
and never at rest
within infinite void
nonetheless...the spirit
of (the late) Harriet Harris
passed the electric
acid kool aid test,
and thus continues
to sprinkle the world
wide web with zest.
Eldest daughter – I Praise
Twenty two years ago
December twenty second,
two thousand eighteen
"star student" born
this papa (and most
likely thee birth mother)
initially felt ecstatic,
dramatic (yes frenetic),
and careworn
as freshly minted parents,
but gifted with a daughter,
whose existence far
more precious
than any Earthborn
rare widgets, gewgaws,
gems, et cetera, despite
evoking unsolicited,
unpleasant, and
unmanageable forlorn
communication "dirt poor"
living (at least ten years
of wretchedness at 1148
Greentree Lane) unable
to toot your horn,
cuz unbearable, undesirable,
unforgettable, et cetera,
and manifold challenged ,
when beloved Shana
Punim evinced inborn
developmental delay,
(which severe electric
koolaid acid test
patience of this father),
much more difficult
than playing krummhorn,
now after tendering the trials
and tribulations, an
amalgamation of
poignant affects,
whereat your
permanent presence...
(must never NOT precede mine),
cuz..., I would definitely mourn,
your absence, thus felt the timely
opportunity to dash off
a birthday poem to you
in tandem with sharing,
(while comfortably numb
and figuratively licking war
torn psychological wombs) - torn
and ripped, queued,
peppered natty psyche
pockmarked with scorn
from self, (and those lives,
this dada immediately
impacted) particularly
your person roar'n
with cumulative anger toward
this insightful fellow,
(who claims to know
what thee feel toward me),
especially when ****
hours of valuable
time, now caught
(say, eh...approximately, fraught
upon the half life of rare Earth
element Eden), not
just strictly naught
heard thru the grapevine,
but forcing Math (hew)
analysis, via meditation, poetry
writing therapy, et cetera.
Hence...I apologize,
asper unasked for pain wrought
thee, sans being unemployed,
demeaning "mother Abby,"
bumbling, horrid house
keeper (Hagrid himself,
would turn down invitation),
plus Facebook fiasco,
imbroglio, and locomotive -
complicit in behavior
comparable to pedophile,
yet please let me conclude
by admitting total lack
of wherewithal.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR DAUGHTER!