Best Pretext Poems
so look at us, the princess and her fool
this painted jester - just a silly clown
we frolic nonchalant and coolly cruel
the joker, begging for his lady's crown ...
a humble tear hides coy within your eye
and trickles with the batting of your lid
such damp and dour attempts to justify
the furtive pretext of the crimes you hid ...
devouring whole my feigned ascetic life
you press a pulse within me and without
compelled to grip your goodbye like a knife
to perforate my veins and bleed you out ...
so, should you need your martyr to deplore
he clots ... in shallow pools upon the floor.
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Your Best Sonnet This Year So Far" Poetry Contest, John Hamilton, Judge & Sponsor.
Categories:
pretext, analogy, heartbreak,
Form:
Sonnet
A funeral is not the place when you find you need to laugh
Here is my true story about my little gaffe
I hope this poem does not offend
It is written in memory of a very special friend
My father’s friend had passed away
And to the church we went that day
I was heavily pregnant and feeling glum
And awaiting the birth of my lovely son
The priest he came from a foreign land
His words we found hard to understand
When he said the words ‘let us pray’
I bowed my head and heard him say…….
‘Heavenly Farter’ (I cannot remember the rest)
For tears of laughter were falling onto my chest
The more I tried to stifle my laughter
The worse I became, it was a total disaster
I got a hanky to suppress the giggle
My shoulders up and down they did wriggle
Tears were flowing from my eyes
My husband looked at me with great surprise
He took me by the hand and we left the church
On the pretext I was so upset and needed a quiet place to perch
Outside the church my laughter freely flowed
My eyes were shiny and my cheeks they glowed
When my father finally came out
I told him of the priest’s error and at me he did not shout
He decided he better have a ‘quiet word’
Their conversation it was not overheard
On our next visit to the Catholic Church
Out of the building I hoped I would not have to lurch
I got ready to bow my head to pray
And then I heard the priest say ……
HEAVENLY FARZER! Oh thank the lord
My father’s words he had taken on board
Now when I hear the words ‘let us pray’
I cringe and remember that awful day
Jan Allison
7th February 2014
Contest The Poet III
sponsored by Gautami Phookan
~awarded 3rd place~
Categories:
pretext, funeral, humorous,
Form:
Rhyme
Sam,
A man,
A good man
Is now tainted
We judge by the shallow sketches painted;
In the crimson, pallid, and cobalt dream,
The devil scheme,
A mean plan.
God bless …
Sam
Male,
A sex,
A pretext.
Man is a lie.
Behind closed doors great heroes often cry.
Categories:
pretext, political
Form:
Tetractys
Are we sacred souls
who shed our flimsy flesh
like slimy serpents
shed their skin?
Be observant,
but show no chagrin,
for in learning life’s lessons
we lessen our scars in the next.
It’s the game master’s pretext,
yet a disaster for those
who guard their granite heart
as if, by giving love away,
they might have less.
Perhaps it is best,
to toss love about in tenfold,
for souls only glimmer,
when they reflect light.
But it is dark inside now.
So…alas …
Goodnight.
Categories:
pretext, dark, love, wisdom, write,
Form:
Free verse
When you sang, dreams croaked, then you ceased to be a volcano,
It was simpler to become a rock, not letting yourself be unraveled by the waves of myopia.
After seasons died in your arms, resigned to your cold might,
You questioned if perhaps all flowers tear their petals in vain for you.
You were left emptied of greenness, a vast void where echoes can't return,
You've lost the appetite for light and horizons, a crownless tree in the purple twilight.
Oh, how you wished to remain the same old fir, clutching a world of rays to your chest,
But you let the day slip into night, you departed to become the leaf you await to fall.
Nymphs in chorus called you to shout again, for the wind to blow in your blue day,
But you stayed silent, and in your silence the tear of the sea extinguished in a fist of foam,
You feared the equinox that doesn't come, the persistent remembrance of a song once drawn,
And you feigned your existence into a white beginning of hibernation, like a silence before a revelation.
Do you believe that once you bloomed, the storm can't break the branch that holds you?
You stopped being the barbarian that made the echo in the mountain laugh at itself,
And in exchange for smiles, a sad pass settled on your face, casting long shadows,
An unanswered question that floats above you, a flight that no longer knows how to reach its destination.
Ah, you’ve lost her, that fearless bird that used to scent the filters of your soul!
You've ceased your word, halted the depth from caressing the root of the sky.
You've forgotten the whirlwind that lifted you above the world, and now you search for meaning,
You are a snail without a shell, feather without flight, a ripple without an ocean, a sky without a constellation.
Is waking harder? Is oblivion gentler than the sweet pretext of remembrance?
You wonder why the stars do not answer your indescribably late call,
The road back seems too long now, legends speak of new beginnings, barren horizons.
Slowly but surely, you lost it... in a pass of slippery fog over your world,
Now you are the slave to your own echoes, seeking a mirror in me so you can breathe once more.
Categories:
pretext, song,
Form:
Free verse
Traveling through the jaded discourse
With bartered pen and little remorse
Brandishing sharpened scalpel; tour de force
Unabashedly seeking all texts from lexicon to divorce
Developing underlying themes to alter the broader context
Freely abridging each verse to establish the pretext
Isolating each stanza to create a subtext
Inferring connotations to establish a hypertext
Disassociating words to broker more inflection
Delinking phrases building new bridges for reflection
Deconstructing patterns to sculpt out a new direction
Decoding mores and values to foster introspection
Voiding punctuation; compressing verses to scuttle metric time
Extrapolating dominant motifs to devalue the inculcating paradigm
Decoupling dissonant accents to deflower the sublime
Erasing phonetic schemes; disbanding symetrical order; decelerating rhyme
Categories:
pretext, on writing and words
Form:
Rhyme
Perhaps Peter Piper did not pick a peck of pickled peppers,
Perchance Peter purloined them.
Peter's pretext for pickled peppers puts people at ease,
Pickpocket's ploy personified.
Personalizing praise for Peter's pesky presumption,
People put Peter's penchant for peppers praiseworthy.
Perhaps, Peter pretended to pick the peck of pickled peppers,
People should portend where Peter put the peck he picked.
Peter passed plenty of peppers to people,
Personifying Peter and his peck.
Prided peppers purloined or in a pepper peck,
Peter put in his pants pockets.
Categories:
pretext, age, funny, humorous, imagination,
Form:
Alliteration
Quote from Hugh Prather: "Most of the conversations I hear
are carried on as if there really were such a thing as an answer
and as if the people present were actually in possession of it."
Shouldn't we all adopt
some sort of "busy" pretext,
display fake fronts intended
to suggest determined aims
are being seriously pursued?
Wouldn't everyone believe
that we are "busy" people --
intent upon accomplishment
important to ourselves and others?
Isn't there some conflict between concepts
of "empowerment" and of "involvement" --
of "delegation" and of "taking ownership"
(directing, guiding -- dictating, really)?
Consider whether these are not
confusing opposites -- messages
easily regurgitated: mere facile
managerial sloganeering....
(Uncertainty, easily detected,
is usually condemned.)
Doesn't everyone read Dilbert?
And who remembers
"Ready....fire....aim!"
Categories:
pretext, business, career, confusion,
Form:
Free verse
From the Nostril Vortex
I breathe in your perfumed
Plasma leaves from the nostril vortex.
I thrive in the pleasant scenes and velvet touchings.
I wince like a skybird earthbound.
Dare to escape from me.
Dare to hide in the dark.
Shhhh! Don’t make a sound.
I am dancing without shoes in the moonlight.
I am waltzing with precise pre-planned movements in space.
I am spewing out movements that show you and me,
The two of us, walking the precise path to here and there,
And then finally to the place of all endings,
And like the cool morning mist, death enters unseen.
“It’s the tomb! I’m in the tomb!
Mother, Father come get me here in the dark!”
But first, slowly slowly slowly…
I lift up her leg there in the shadows,
And I caress, and smell and lick.
“I have found the best time!
This is the most excellent moment!”
I was there in the dusty places,
I was hanging nearby with all of you.
I was wet with unimagined enticings,
Weary, oh so world-weary to the nucleus of my bones!
Of tentatively living all the years of a dubious lifetime,
And of finally dying in the dry ditches of twenty thousand days.
“Come here honey, kiss me now, here in the distant cemetery.
We can hold on to each other
As the mad earth spins into oblivion.
“Sir, would you be so kind?
Some mindful enterprise and
The Pretext Syllogism combo.
And I will have a side of nomenclature
And for dessert two heapings of existential mind mysogenation,
Topped with granulated mesomorphic nom de plume!
Dancing, dancing, dancing and holding on.
She and me sweating in the black heat.
No other way to live.
No other way to breathe.
“I am just here.
See? Know what I mean?
I was born into this like all of you!
I had nothing to say about it.
What do ya say, honey? What do ya say?”
Categories:
pretext, metaphor,
Form:
Blank verse
Start
The other day I heard my friend was sad.
I met him to ask him about the reason
but, he was upset and his mood was very bad.
So I had to confine my conversation to the season
and the possibility of the advent of early spring.
I had to leave him in the existing state of his mind.
Why are we concerned about the state of somebody’s mind?
I wondered. Perhaps, we do not wish to see him appear sad.
Inherently, we want him to appear like the flowers that blossom in spring
to attract the bees and honey birds. This is the reason
why we relate all happiness to this auspicious season.
In our happiness we remember what is good and forget everything bad.
The mind, in its own way, reacts to the events, good and bad.
The behavioral pattern is a reflection of the state of the mind,
which is influenced, amongst other things, by the season.
During dull, rainy season, the mind tends to be sad
and one becomes irritated at the least pretext. The reason
why we feel happy again is the enchanting environment in spring.
Poets have written adorable verses eulogizing spring
There is happiness all around and nothing can be bad.
But, are we that blessed that there can be no reason
for any news or events to upset the state of the mind?
In a short span of time a happy person can become sad
irrespective of whatever might be the season.
If it is an icy cold, stormy night in the winter season
in stark contrast to the warm and colorful spring
and I’m holed alone in my log hut, I cannot help but feel sad.
I ruminate on my fate and wonder why my luck is so bad
I think of happy times and drive evil thoughts out of my mind,
only to increase my resistance to cold and not for any other reason.
If one is determined not to be happy, there are many reasons
to find fault with everyone and also the seasons
He sees only the negative side of things and trains the mind
to color the world in black and dampen the spirit of spring.
He fails to smell the fragrance, but smells only the odors that are bad
Thus giving him enough cause to feel very sad.
In the crevices of the mind there is some reason
For sadness to relate to the aura of the season
The spirit of spring brings happiness, while cold winter is bad.
End
Categories:
pretext, sad,
Form:
Sestina
Some watching my ease
Of execution of the self
The latent anxiety unteased
Writes me off in simplicity.
Some denuding me of honor's wealth
Wait in turmoil
For a scab to fall and unveil its pus
And if I do not flinch for pain
Writes coward beside my name
Some deck out in borrowed jewels
Could not stop me looking at the stars
They heard only my polite conversation
Saw my faith
And did not understand the transformation of desire
The restructured purpose of the heart
The difference in whose I am
They frightened ran
Frantic to recompose themselves in fear
They judged me like the world again
But O how deep the flow
Of divine grace
That such may come and find nothing in me.
I am a man of firm convictions
I know the way all things should go
Before they go
I watch the frightened blunder
Inventing old salvation in new fora
I do not yield to that
Peace is a vision of the broken self
The spontaneous abolition of lies
Do not give the heart too much grandeur
It blinds the vision to the soul
Reeks havoc of self interpretation
For before the strong delusion
Comes the lie
Do you not remember how impolite you were
How disrespectful
How nasty the tone of argument and action
And how he opened not his mouth
Waiting for you to come to confession
That gives a man a sense of justice
To execute judgment without compassion
And yet, great Christ, you wait for repentance.
You have your Barabbas
And yet you have no peace
How can right disturb the heart at rest
We weave a tangled mess
In a world of pride, but patience is a a door
I left it open
Without pain
For what you have become, what you manifest
I would not cry, could not cry for cess
Barabbas means himself well
But his history is a figment, his tale a lie
And then again
What power could sin have over sin
Poor, weak, wretched, vain
How your pretext falls like dusk
How bewildering the edge of night
If you see me again
Please note that I am the same
And through my door
Comes those who have forgotten pain
For I built it so
To admit the naked form alone
Be mortified at my door
You cannot come until you are purged
It is your life
I have neither haste nor urge
Only you can make right
I can only hold the light
For under my cosy exterior of ease
You will find again
Just what you see outside.
Categories:
pretext, faith, introspection, me, world,
Form:
Free verse
We dragged the slopes to our feet.
On the summit, we burnt our clothes
for wood and there shuffled our feet
in the hush of the falling snow.
We had come out of the scuffed grass.
With one look back in unbelief
exhuming the long trek
the silent keen
puffing through blubbery fingers.
We pulled the hoofed trail through
the trapdoor of our unchained links
foisting for new heights.
Beyond the Appalachian Mountains
the hanging fern on pine dripped snow
on moles burrowing in gashed hollows.
We paused. In that doubtful moment
we rued the climb, succumbing to the assault
upon this stilled millennia’s eerie silence.
All that time the swivelling blizzards raged
shifting soil, eroding avalanches.
Below, burgeoning customs
unmaned the silent dignity of bisons.
All bore testimony to a familiar preparation.
And then, suddenly before our eyes
the solemn ground rose with the breeze
the spangled map changing to the quick:
Chicago Pittsburgh Kansas City
wild barnyards dry-coughing, pop-corning garages
horrent timber ribbed the coasting steamboats
the linoleum walls
the mild Indian piqued he was
by the mahogany cubism of our speech.
We wondered if coming so far
only mattered, we would be content
to build a fire, here and now
and unpack our horses.
We saw little need to go on.
One night the summit might open
up and swallow us all or old age
would come upon us like a lonely neighbour
on a pretext to the door.
© T.Wignesan 1964
London, U.K.
[from the collection: tell them i’m gone, 1983; published in Fire Readings (A Collection of Contemporary Writing from the Shakespeare & Company Fire Benefit Readings). Paris-Boston: Frank Books, 1991, pp. 36-37.]
Categories:
pretext, inspirational, fire, fire,
Form:
Lay
I was ten when Hurricane Hazel passed over our farm in the Piedmont of North Carolina with gusts exceeding 100mph. I really wanted to see that eye. On the pretext of needing to check my weather station, I waited for the wind to stop howling and rushed out the back door.
In the stillness my eyes were drawn upward.
so still
the weeping willow
straightens
First published in Contemporary Haibun Online.
Categories:
pretext, feelings, september, storm,
Form:
Haibun
It was apostolic tradition that the Church discerned writings
To be included in the list of Sacred Books
This complete list is called the canon Scripture
It includes 46 books for the Old Testament
45 if we account Jeremiah and Lamentations as one
The Old Testament is dispensable part of Sacred Scripture
Its books are divinely inspired and
Retain a permanent value
For the Old Covenant has never been revoked
Indeed
The economy of the Old Testament was deliberately so oriented
That it should prepare for and declare in prophecy in the coming of Father Christ
Redeemer of all men
Even though they contain matters imperfect and provisional
The books of the Old Testament
Bear witness to the divine pedagogy of Eternal God’s saving love
These writings are a storehouse of sublime teaching of Eternal God and
Of sound wisdom on human life
As well as a wonderful treasury of prayers
In them
Too
The mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way
Christians venerate the Old Testament as true Word of Eternal God
The Church has always vigorously opposed
The idea of rejecting the Old Testament
Under the pretext that the New
Has rendered it void (Marcionism.
Categories:
pretext, bible, christian, devotion, faith,
Form:
Prose Poetry
A swarm of mosquitoes there was
Of different ethnic origin, language and culture.
Aedes, anopheles, culex and others
Some fragile, some agile and some avaricious,
The anopheles was the most fragile but avaricious.
This human, they set eyes on,
She was in possession of everything they needed
And in want of nothing.
So because of her possessions, they attacked her
And she being weak, could do nothing to defend herself.
And so with their proboscis, they sucked her blood,
For many a year, she was continuously being sucked.
As she was being sucked, so was she being bitten,
Some bites were gentle, others, excruciating.
But with God on her side, she stood on her feet.
The wind of change gently blew some mosquitoes away
Others clung tight, for they were desperate
But the human started agitating for her freedom
So the remaining mosquitoes reluctantly left.
But alas!!!! She has been sucked semi dry
She started labouring to regain herself back
Just as the lazy anopheles mosquitoe came back
As the other mosquitoes went and continued their lives,
The anopheles discovered it couldn’t survive alone
So it came back through lies and deceit to suck more blood
And from that same human, it continued sucking blood,
It will come as if to make peace
Between the body parts; but that’s a pretext.
It truly came for blood and more blood
The anopheles mosquitoe knows it can’t live without the blood
But it can never accept that fact
Because of its dirty pride.
It is the laziest of all the mosquitoes
Because it depends solely on the human
If the human doesn’t open her eyes
And with zeal, fight back,
The anopheles will suck her with no mercy.
NO HUMAN, NO ANOPHELES MOSQUITOE
NO AFRICA, NO FRANCE
Categories:
pretext, africa, satire,
Form:
Blank verse