Best Pontificating Poems
Wide the mirrored water stretched,
licking green upon the pointed pines, limbs sweeping low and cool.
The creek meandered, soft giggles escaping mossy rocks
where polliwogs swam, nearly, but not quite frogs, still sporting pubescent tails;
the adults pontificating against the shallow bank,
throats swollen with amphibious wisdom.
Soft brown mud squished, a buttered cream,
between summer toasted toes wading into wonder.
Fragrant evening campfires heightened hungers,
supper roasting over charred coals flavored
the stirrings of a tempting crush on a boy much older;
this girl just barely navigating puberty's powerful push,
his smile extracting heightened pulse, blush brushed.
Life's long summer slipped slowly away
and autumn found his wife and child laying him down,
the plot unknown, unmarked by me;
yet, painful, still, the memory of broken trust,
of love-crust pitched to a not quite woman
deep in the rusting woods of Timberland.
Copyright, February 14, 2016
Categories:
pontificating, betrayal, crush, first love,
Form:
Free verse
It took me awhile to comprehend
the true significance of "be patient."
We've heard it all before,
but it's funny how we often fail
to cogitate over this phrase
and feel it's ponderous weight.
One who says it to you means well,
not playing the pontificating fool,
but hanging a priceless jewel
over your head so you wear
the advice like a necklace.
So please listen to whomever
advises you to "be patient."
It's arguably the two most
important words you could ever hear.
It'd take me a mighty long day
to list all that I've learned
from this simple phrase.
It's common sense, stripped naked,
made to dance in a cold rain.
Yes, my friend, be patient,
when wading back into
the murky creek of love and romance.
Be patient as you chase
your rainbow. Don't move too fast!
You'll get to that pot of gold.
Do not be discouraged.
Be patient when on life's highway
lest you crash! Good things
come to those who wait.
Date written: 01/17/2021
Categories:
pontificating, inspirational, perspective, uplifting, wisdom,
Form:
Didactic
My Favorite Things comes to mind...
a random assortment, a jumble of words
a quotient of portions, quotidian served
quixotic strivings of the great deca-dense
obscured in meaning, eschewing all sense
visions and nightmares and hallucinations
erudite arguments, odd fascinations
old geezers fondling memories of things
most folk would not to mixed company bring
inchoate ramblings of damaged young minds
bubbled through water and cardboard box wine
audible groans from the web server host
these are the ones make me giggle the most
shouting in vacuums, a riotous void
pontificating, or mildly annoyed
grieving, believing, or weaving a string
virtuous outburst that don’t do a thing
rants about orange man and all his mean tweets
and, yes, “Let’s go, Brandon” to make things complete
guns, poo, abortion, yes, all are discussed
sometimes the thin-skinned bail out in disgust
side by side, posting, the sage and the fool
the wise in their youth and those starting to drool
bleeping our excrement down on the page
somehow it all seems to soften the rage
when the bard shouts
when the muse screams
‘bout covid or Vlad
we’re at a computer
with just poo to fling
and that makes me laugh a tad
Categories:
pontificating, humorous, parody,
Form:
Rhyme
Truth bubbling forth as from a mountain spring.
A gem set in gold resting on purple velvet,
“Better a smooth step than a smooth tongue.”
He rotates his posterior to the world,
While his eyes are transfixed upon its reflection,
Body impacts a light pole without anticipation.
Mouth pontificating.
Heart petrifying.
Soul putrefying.
Categories:
pontificating, pride, religious,
Form:
Free verse
Six slovenly inebriated men engage in their regular crepuscular activity
nursing their beers with desultory chit-chat in the penumbra of a local restaurant.
One man, whose jealousy of those with opulent lives makes him the most cynical,
is pontificating about the idle rich who live off the backs of the poor when he eyes
an exuberant woman with obvious halcyon life-style, who enters the establishment,
diamonds on one hand and looking strangely out of place, a young child on the other!
With an immediate visceral reaction, the man swears venomously at the woman.
She, with a sonorous voice, puts a finger up to her ruby lips, turns to him and replies,
“We can’t always control our thoughts; nor what we may be forced to see and hear.
However, we can control our words. Sir, restrain yourself, and speak no evil.”
Written Jan. 31, 2016
For the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" ten word challenge Poetry Contest
Words used: crepuscular, desultory, exuberant, halcyon, cynical, visceral, sonorous, penumbra, opulent, jealousy
Categories:
pontificating, anger,
Form:
Prose
Why is it you never show me your face?
My feelings are hurt, so you I’ll replace!
Find another on which to pounce
Each time your team takes a bad bounce
The damage you’ve done cannot be erased
Even my fine leather is marred with grooves
From all your fanatic football fan moves
Get off your duff, I must rebuff
You’ve made my lining far too rough
Each time you move, I hope the team will lose
I have already called a moving van
To transport me to a gentler land
Where people of grace sip green tea
Pontificating times that be
By dawn in my place you’ll find the trash can
Categories:
pontificating, funny, sportsme, time,
Form:
Limerick
Toothless Dragons
And so the toothless dragons roar
tepid flames of apathy staining the air
regurgitated realities revisited
picked at in search of sustenance.
Circling, they do the hating dance
feet spurred to movement by heat
applied by flaming puppeteers
protecting the strength of their strings.
Moving - the flaccid jaws of acquiescence
beholden to the controller of the strings
paralyzed by the power of weakness
voice-less orators forever pontificating.
Dragons – seeking victory’s defeat
pure fire stolen and defiled
truth’s roar relinquished to their “keeper”
free flight denied to vision’s quest.
There is no power in the grip of power
no freedom in the clutch of lies
no wisdom in the sight of “blinders”
no teeth required of the pabulum fed.
John G. Lawless
10/3/2015
Categories:
pontificating, political, power,
Form:
Free verse
You think you’ve got rhyme but you’re blind
I’d go up against you any time
These here rhymes are so smooth
people think I’m a mime
Vanilla cool collected
I’m the definition of “sublime”
My words are complicated simple
yet they easily intertwine
Try looking at the sun
to escape my super shine
I burn metal to dust
with each and every line
You want a part of this?
Step up so you can see
what it means to be fine!
You think with me
these are blows we’re trading
I’m worried less I confess
as I watch you fading
Forget your pontificating
feel my words erasing
Verbs nouns making sounds
adjectives educating
The logic of me
goes beyond debating
Drink me down like vermouth
my words are satiating.
Things I’ve seen are mean
but still I keep my words clean
I’m not interested in creating a scene
Yet not one to bow down
to any King or Queen
Stronger than the tower of Pisa
see how far I can lean
Breaking the silence barrier
and everything in between
Watch how our worthy words careen
I’m old fast n furious but no has-been
Inside my mind I feel like a teen
Rhyme once or twice
or four times three
Whatever you’ve got
it’s no worry to me
You’re swinging on a rope of hope
tied to the wrong tree
If that’s all you’ve got
you might as well let it be
Even though you’re next to me
Who do you think they’ll see?
You think you sting like a Bee
But I pack a punch like Mohamed Ali
If you step back in the ring
we can make History
I couldn’t resist, I wrote this piece after reading Nick Trim’s “Hyper Active Rhymes II”. No disrespect intended, this is all in good fun.
Categories:
pontificating, rap,
Form:
Rhyme
All Dreams Matter
In a dream I envisioned all of the “protestors” dropping their banners, joining hands, making an agreement to meet every evening for as long as necessary to bring about the changes that would ensure the meaning of the lives that matter.
Imagine what could happen if those thousands of people gathered in a neighborhood, walked through the streets and playgrounds picking up the drug paraphernalia that endangers their children; sat on the park benches as children played of a summer evening; stood as one in the face of the drug dealers.
Imagine what could happen if the preachers stopped preaching and started acting; politicians stopped pontificating, showed up when the camera crews left.
Imagine what could happen if the protestors stopped shouting and started talking to each other, listening to each other, sat down with each other to share a cup of coffee, a sunset, an evening without fear.
All lives matter…..to someone….Every death is a scar upon humanity. Every tear an acid pain etched into a heart, every night an endless darkness, every sunrise an emptiness.
I dream dreams too long dreamt, too long unfulfilled.
I close my eyes in silent protest of shattered dreams hoping that somehow we can piece the dreams together because all dreams matter.
John G. Lawless
7/14/2015
Categories:
pontificating, dream, future, humanity, drug,
Form:
Prose
Practice pontificating indemnity,
moralistic servitude toward the,
practice exemplary impersonal activity.
Categories:
pontificating, business, celebration, community, confidence,
Form:
Imagism
Principle's of space,
prosperity in grace,
property for punctually pontificating the pronunciation of the alien race-
A laughter so adorned it's grate!
Slaughter of the new age-
...and your daughter-
40 years from reaching the 4th grade,
what a wild cahoot all because of the heart of spades-
...because this is just my face,
this is astonishment and be-gorgeous courageousness!
This is fauna and flakes and forgiveness,
one done for another two trips to the store for your mother,
why ride when you can collide with anybody who's under?
Are we, really from the Sea?
Because we are adapted to this lanky sort of breed-
the land and the forest and the deserts unite inside,
like reckless looting,
drowning down like a likeness that can flurry with thunder-
as the news breaks the stalling core,
the new found movement can now count, and recount a time that I didn't groove?
Categories:
pontificating, appreciation, bereavement, confusion, cool,
Form:
Cowboy Poetry
Forever the square peg
seeking entry into the round hole,
the smart kid pushing
when the sign says “Pull”.
wandering in the midst
of the hurried,
a dreamer adrift among
those who think themselves awake.
Viewing through the unfiltering eye
of betrayal, the betrayers,
spiritual “Madoffs”
pontificating Ponzi schemes,
promising fulfillment -
for themselves.
Square pegs do not “roll”
through life, varying
speed to meet conditions
they are more suited
to building, stability,
strength, stoicism.
They often appear lost,
disconnected from, apart
and yet “a part of”,
yet somehow lost
in the “wall-less” box
of the seeking mime,
captured in the swirling
eddy of the twisting flow,
contentedly discontent
purveyors of optional
disillusionments. Lost
in the mediocrity of
the moment, lingering
in the rippling foam
of a receding tide.
Wandering Frost’s
“road less traveled”
rejoicing in the touch
of a snowflake, the joy
of a sunflower, the edginess
of a square peg
forever lost.
John G. Lawless
2/5/2016
Categories:
pontificating, identity,
Form:
Free verse
Unload your appraised earnings
in the collection baskets,
small price to pay
for holy water's kickback,
God thundered an indignant snort
'pon gold filled prospered coffers
within corporate excesses
of enriched gaudy churches,
wondering when HIS word
had begotten misconstrued
in clergy's interpretations
of powers' self-aggrandizement
and pontificating gratification;
whilst the huddled masses
were starving midst the pews
Categories:
pontificating, allegory, corruption, faith,
Form:
Burlesque
We cannot listen
or learn easily
when we do not feel safe,
said the environmental science students
to their corporate sponsored teachers.
Our lungs cannot breathe easily
or our hearts beat steadily
when we are not sure we can trust
the anthrosupremacist resource
currently lecturing
preaching
pontificating
If not explicitly,
then in some implied
win/win, too optimistic sin,
win/lose, realistically right
more than left sacred,
lose/lose, nihilistic blaming Earth
for our economies of immoral
EarthTribe scarcity,
scary complicity
Toxic inside learning anxieties
anticipating outside cooperative
therapeutic
organic incorporations
like cooperatively owned forests and meadows,
mountains and river valleys,
Contextually embraced
by RightOne practical survivalists
and Left ZeroZone
outside classroom thrivalists
learning inside civil manners
from MotherTrees
and their sacred mountained forests
and lakes,
green and blue
and cloud covered too
Studying vast lands
of win/lose uncertainty
taught verbally
for capital-embedded ears to hear,
repeat,
memorize
And patriarchally reteach
reparent
ignoring our indigenous ecofeminist
deep green sacred
customary way of learning co-passionately felt
dialogical bioformation systems
Inviting conversations
between thoughts and feelings
as they inevitably
dipolar co-arise
When we are listening
deeply learning
easily curiously active
when we feel safe
and healthy
and sure we can trust
our cooperatively owned
sacred outdoor classroom gifts.
Categories:
pontificating, earth day, education, environment,
Form:
Political Verse
Nothing lasts forever,
not even November rain.
Not even the tired old bodies
we are given to hold.
I remember how we spoke
to one another,
way back, a long time ago.
Pontificating like priests
delivering our sermons.
We were boys, though
we thought ourselves men.
Ready to challenge and embrace
everything we had been taught.
How could we ever imagine
that real would be so difficult?
Aging. Living. Dying.
Sometimes,
when it is very dark outside,
I am with you again.
Innocent in our importance.
Immortal without a thought.
It is different now.
Understandable.
We have aged.
This is as it must be.
You'll be one of my pallbearers.
Isn't that a boggling thought?
Categories:
pontificating, appreciation, best friend,
Form:
Free verse