Best Propriety Poems
Just as days long ago, when decorum resolved,
before composure, and poise,.. were corsages, unknown
Where propriety mattered, and was favored as gold,
high society, has gathered to flavor their tea
There's a trellis, embraced by a rose climbing vine
Places are set, for dining in jade
beneath shadows that stretch under arthritic old trees
While slivers of sunshine, squeeze through the branches
of silver leafed limbs, in magnolia bloomed shade
Tea will be served, by large knuckled hands
at several round tables dressed with Swiss lace designs
Wearing lavender silk is our proper Grand Dame'
who fits her surroundings, as vintage as wine
Voices are lilting like the birds in the trees
Laughter and chatter, mingle with soft, summer breezes
A bouquet of old friends, around a few scattered tables.
Silver coifed hairdos, to make celebration
Crepe myrtle and wrinkles, beneath ashes and maples
Water cress munchies, and triangle creations
Sweet honey-suckle, tucked over the porches.…
Rose petal blossoms, are painted on china
Bridge cards, tumble by Blue Willow dishes
Biscuits from England, crumble sublimely
Large bosoms bouncing, and big floppy hats
Gossip dished up with lemon-sliced frowns
Up in the tree is the neighbor's calico cat
who catches a glance, and a chance to crawl down
Are they ladies of leisure, from a time that is lost?
Or a painting I've seen on the wall from the past?
______________________________
Inspired By the Garden Party Contest
Sponsored By Cyndi McMillan 6/6/14
Growing older is a garden of graces . . .
disgraces, wild goose chases, closed in places.
It is an imperceptible tottering of time on a
conveyer belt, where at the end time drops
into the slipstream and becomes the mobius .
Growing older is wanting to be older when
you are young and younger when you are old.
You wish away the days, never dreaming that
you would give a king’s ransom to have them
back once again, treasured, appreciated.
In our youth, we squander time, kick it to the curb.
In our older years, we try to tie it to ourselves.
Age sneaks around when we aren’t looking, spreads
its poison pollen and is gone without our seeing.
The business of living distracts us from noticing
until it is too late, when we look into a mirror,
only to behold the ruthless signs smothering us.
It is realizing men no longer turn and whistle.
You have become invisible, crayoned out until
some young man says, “Grandma, the time?”
Growing older is smelling of Icy Hot instead of
Beautiful by Estee Lauder, seeing people sniff.
It is keeping L`Oreal in business long past the time
you want to stop, but can’t bear those gray hairs
that are the mute testimony to the inexorable decay
Growing older is breaking the shackles of propriety
Wearing that purple, and at least four sweaters.
It is joyously realizing you don’t care a fig what
people think or say about you or anything else.
You can laugh at the absurdity of fashion, style.
It is the delicious capability to say anything
you want, vent your opinions, disagree.
You say the most outrageous things freely,
and are forgiven, because you are getting
more than a little fey and just a little dotty.
And, oh, growing old is the sweetest blessing,
for you no longer are frozen in fear at death
and it's coming soon, for your years have
worn you out and everything changes so much
there is scarcely anything left of your world
What does it matter what god you worshipped
This earth has been hell enough for an eternity
and if there be heaven, it is icing on the cake
Wordsmiths, take heed ...
Letters of the alphabet,
By themselves are but harmless shapes
Of ink or graphite or digital information,
(Placed in ordered variations of ones and zeros),
But when combined in specific patterns and placement and propriety,
Become the most powerful weapons and tools known to humanity.
How many countless lives have been changed, worsened, improved,
Manipulated, darkened, brightened, ended, or even BEGUN,
As a result of their use by an intelligent mind and deft writing implement?
How much love, hate, kindness, vitriol, care, apathy,
Truth, hypocrisy, forgiveness, jealousy, joy, or even horror,
Has been carried to its mark by the thoughtful control
Of their placement and structure and management?
Oh, what horrible irony there is in the assumption that "words can never hurt" ...
They are, without a doubt, the most hurtful things ever created by man,
And yet their keen and acute ambiguity make them their own saviors,
And by positive application and intent,
Can be the most magnificent and wonderfully
Exquisite creations that we are capable of.
Be ever vigilant when you consider their organization and use,
For by their very nature you may be sending forth
A thoughtful work of fascination and beauty,
Or unleashing a monster of incalculable horror and venom.
WE are the bows that send the arrows forth,
WE are the guns that let loose the bullets,
WE are the catapults that let fly the burning stones,
But we are also the hands that pick the flowers,
That gently part the hair, that hold and caress with tenderness,
That encourage and help and touch and feel and explain and honor ...
ALL by the ways we form and group those individual letters of the alphabet,
ALL in the mindful ways we arrange
Those seemingly harmless little squiggles and lines ...
If we only treated words with the same care and respect and caution
That we allow weapons and miracles,
For they are easily as wonderful ...
And easily as dangerous.
POLITICS
Propriety demands - we do not speak
Of others, either strong – or weak
Lest in the foray of the quest
Insiders, fall from grace, of safety’s nest
Take residence alongside taloned beast
Intent on making you the winner’s feast
Cloned puppets denying there are strings
Surrendering their truth to cell phone rings.
John G. Lawless
8/26/2014
for Judy Konos
How’s Your Acrostic? contest
"Curls...
Of spring passion?
Lacerations of decadence?
coiled in ringlets at the nape of her neck-
light wrapped in strands iridescent and bent
toward her silhouette's kiss.
Shadows on a match box painting
absorbing the skin and silk shed cloth."
Frozen air movement shakes me awake
as another museum goer
brushes by my sleeve in an attempt to read
the description... (I am nose close...)
Tremendously, I pull myself away
to the Hallucinations of a Toreador
pulling the scope out on my looking glass,
for one is finely tuned, painted with the single hair of a wishing bow...
and one is the size of my heart, unraveled and sky scraped,
and yet remarkably blurred to initial understanding.
I toss aside propriety and sit down on the ground,
Indian style, in front of grandeur-
a mist of streaming people dissipating my vision
of the surreptitious melting clocks, oozing time
all over the floor, soaking my favorite shoes...
And so I pass the afternoon alive,
briefly breathing in the dusty air and DNA of genius.
can't even fart anymore
without kicking up a hurricane
halfway around the Earth
according to reports this has occurred
at a great loss of life and mind
within minutes of the methane
the dominoes began to rumble
and poor Flash who was
merely greeting the morning sun
became history's first flatomaniac
Flash was burly with hair
up and down his back like
a mink in a 5th Avenue perfumery
his girl Florence was in cartoons
playing the hope card
in a séance with the laboring masses
at the Union of Opposites hiring hall
I was giving the citizens
an anatomy lesson your Honor
I should be given a stipend
for public elucidation
Flo was the key if not only witness
thought she saw the god Apollo
leaping out of a moving taxi
the effect was so dramatic
that she had to leap too
and hasn't stopped since
her testimony was a monstrosity of detail
in conclusion my rebuttal established
several seemingly salient selections
I am a dissector by trade your Worship
and a taxpaying asset to any community
Flash was sentenced with stern admonishment
you will henceforth exercise your libido
within the confines of spherical propriety
to which Flash assented
without the slightest ********
er objection
and somehow strangely unafraid
the Flasher of Costa del Mar
disappeared one night
sucked into the belly of an alien craft
over the cattle lip badlands of Montana
they commenced their hideous experiments
as Flash mused without anesthesia
on the incalculable immensity
of the starry Universe
and watched a mobile home run amok
across 9 lanes of traffic
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
Artist Portfolio: http://walteralter.byethost32.com/
Colour of my heart
Seeds of animosity are planted
In virgin soil of the innocent mind
Seedlings should not be taken for granted
inseminating hate's a complex crime
Secrets and cruel intentions of the heart
lay dormant for years, rarely manifest
Conscience and propriety tear apart
uprooted by some calamitous test
Colour adorns beauty and elegance
Awakening an impartial spirit
Whispering words of change to indifference
Hoping hungry, humble hearts hear it
An indigent heart prefers monochrome
'Cause ignorance is all it's ever known!
John Derek Hamilton
November 28,2018
The True Alpha Male
The True Alpha Male is the man that is masculine, but not toxic.
The man whose behavior proceeds from a sense of propriety, confidence, and a high sense of self-worth;
who maintains a level head in times of emergency, and a measured response in conflict;
who does not intentionally seek to make the low value male conscious of his lower value tendencies, nor the beta male of their passivity;
who becomes humbled if he has to humble another;
who does not crumble when tasked to lead, or appear overly boastful of his possessions or achievements;
a man who speaks directly, but always from the heart;
whose word is his bond;
who recognizes where he lacks, and seeks knowledge to improve;
who faces his fears, and strives to be a better version of himself daily;
who lives life in steadfast pursuit of his goals, while compelling others to do the same; and who can find comfort in any social setting, a man with whom confidence is sacred and value high.
-Obsidian Blakk
All of us are born ignorant and some
Of us remain that way I'm sad to say.
The knowledgeable flourish and become
The shepherds, the dumb just piddle away
Their lives like sheep in a grassy pasture.
The ignorance in our society
Exists through our own design I am sure
To guarantee an apt propriety.
Without the sheep there can be no shepherds.
Therefore a symbiotic relation
Plays in the theater of the absurd.
There is no suitable explanation
Don't even attempt to state a notion.
Our roles are predetermined one by one.
Some things are just symptoms,
Take a look and don't invent some,
Poor excuse for the lack of truth,
When you let it gain momentum...
Don't blame it on society,
As the cause of your anxiety,
It's the lack of thought in what you were taught,
That will keep you from propriety...
If you look into the mirror,
And the images get clearer,
What looks back at you is in focus too,
And it draws you to come nearer...
But if there's no reflection,
Then its hiding from detection,
That's where it will stay until it finds a way,
To re-appear for your inspection...
I am 'SHE'.
The form of Goddess 'Durga' & 'Laxmi',
I used to be.
But where the hell I'm today?
Where in the search of
my own identity,
I have to pay.
In this patriarchy,
my soul has been killed
& body has been groped.
Each & every step outside
has become exploit for me.
Eyes scanning my body,
& indecent remarks for me
everywhere,I use to hear and see.
I am languishing here,
living with low spirits
& fed up of my bug-bear.
Of being raped & abducted,
I always have the fear.
I'm anguished in this milieu,
sighing and sheding tears
in the corner of my room.
My regular nightmarish experiences
made me to cry over my doom.
More than chilly & pepper sprays,
propriety in society will help me.
And I'm waiting for
that pleasant day when
safety will go hand in hand with 'SHE'..
A spring frog came to my bath one day
Unknowingly to me when I began.
I undressed quietly and stepped into the tub.
I hopped out when he jumped in!
Forgetting my clothes and propriety,
I left the room in a huff.
I will bathe when I can be by myself,
No frog will see me in the buff!
Frog though he is…
He could be a handsome prince in disguise!
A xerox copy of a species has become more
prevalent in two-thousand seventeen-
There are different processes used to
produce a genetically identical biological entity.
Cloning sheep is the most common form of
duplicating genes, cells and tissues-
but there is so much more to this procedure,
so much unknown science and unethical issues.
Natural and artificial cloning are both types
of doubling organisms, mammals and plants,
and so many people are against these procedures,
they riot and protest; they rave and they rant.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A book was written in between the rough
times of World War one and World War two-
“A Brave New World” was a controversial
glimpse in to the future, but tell me, was it
really true?
There was an institution playing an essential
role in the artificial reproduction,
and social conditioning of the world's population
based on sex and soma consumption.
Out of control with unprotected sex and
brainwashing situations,
they tampered with the natural way of life,
tested the actual meaning of creation.
Humans were being created and conditioned
according to the system of this society,
and a man named John known as
“The Savage” believed in morals with propriety.
He was against the orders of this new
way of life that was dramatically created,
and made it well known that this
human cloning was abhorred and hated.
After a riot, John resorted to
fighting against them with violence,
then was tormented and brainwashed
and lived moments of defiance.
He took soma and ended up having
wild sex as he was always against,
and to him this way of life was
despicable and didn’t make sense.
In the end, he took his life
repulsed by what he had done,
he had turned into a monster,
one he promised he wouldn’t become.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Human cloning is tampering with
the true meaning of natural creation,
and I hope in the future it never
becomes a common situation.
April 24, 2017
The shrill blare of my alarm clock
Ripped me from my pleasant slumber.
I reluctantly rolled from the
Warm comfort of my bed and
Began my morning routine.
I cautiously traced my eyes with
Elegance,
Because he likes girls that dance.
I glued to my eyelids
Propriety,
Because he likes decent girls.
I shaded my eyelids with
Mystery,
Because he likes the unexpected.
I brushed my cheeks with
Innocence,
Because he likes younger girls.
I pierced in my earlobes
Jealousy,
Because he likes it when girls are possessive.
I painted my sharp nails with
Criminality,
Because he likes girls that get into trouble.
I sketched my eyebrows into a scowl with
Hate,
Because he likes mean girls.
I drank in one last glance
At my illustration in the mirror,
And, with my backpack
And a smile of authenticity,
Continued out the door.
Chickasaw warrior…Apache brave
Chimed echo from recent pasts
Rawhide clad of bow and stave
Our iconic figure now cast
Roaming prairies open plains
Selfless equal within nature
A simple life of a people proud
Societies of ancient stature
Cherokee warrior…Arapaho brave
Awakened into midnight battle
Blue eyes aim down the thunder sticks
Reaping from cavalry saddles
Shunned showpieces of society
Called examples of a savage pride
Crushed of tyrannical booted propriety
In the federal wastes to reside
Tillamook warrior…Shoshone brave
Hunted through the very last stand
Forced to the brink of identity lost
Imprisoned in fenced desert sands
Allow the great spirits to soar the skies
A birthright given back anew
This aspiration for the tribes we hold
Sadly realized by consciences few
Indian warriors…fighters brave
Truest peace I offer my hand
Headdress upon the shadowy brow
Those great tribes once roaming the lands.