Best Provenance Poems
I am a pacifist I despise war.
It’s the only thing I actually hate.
I’m never able to brace myself for
Diplomacy that deteriorates:
Recriminating dialogue amuck
That results in irrationality.
Adults become intellectual schmucks
Whose mentality in reality
Is equivalent to a chimpanzee
In spite of our advances in science.
Our mentality still swings from the trees
Where once apish self’s had claimed provenance.
We haven’t evolved from our ancient source
Thus war is likely a matter of course.
Categories:
provenance, people, war
Form:
Sonnet
THE MAD SECRETARY
Hunched over the computer, I am mystical,
With mental white gloves and a karate belt -
A daylight cursor, but on my bicycle,
A word and energy transformer, a flickering Celt.
Such metaphysics I can make into sensation,
Turned into binary formulae by the boss,
My passion is for punctuation-
But the lingua franca doesn’t give a toss.
I see the point. I accommodate the pause.
I rinse the cups and make the coffee sweet,
I am saving myself for this man of laws,
Of Brehon provenance, who will entreat
Me to be his love, his partner and co-genitor,
Of a life graph, where he can trust the monitor.
(c) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
Categories:
provenance, angel, career, caregiving, class,
Form:
Sonnet
Our fig in January, entirely denuded now
like my heart in your absence, is but
more beautiful, if possible, in its seasonal
solemnity than in summer's exacting extravagance.
The trunk, grown massive in manhood, is a citadel
of strength supporting the curving bowl of its
branches as they bend back into themselves, becoming
the bare black sculpture of winter trees Hemingway
described in Paris in the Jardin of Luxembourg
where we used to walk, following in his footsteps.
These prayerful branches, grown as large as
the beanstalk giant of storybook lore, cup
the sky, making a sieve through which rain filters,
better for unobstructed passage to its
earthbound blessing, clearer for the distillation.
Above ground two massive roots, more visible
in winter definition--veins from the beating heart
of the tree--though siblings still, sprawl out
in different directions, then disappear wherever
they are traveling, who knows where? Not
climbing skyward like Jack on his leafy ladder,
but earthward out of sight toward a Southern
provenance, toward Provence, perhaps,
as if impassioned for home.
HAPPY NEW YEAR FELLOW SOUPERS!
Categories:
provenance, naturewinter, winter, new year,
Form:
Narrative
Everybody needed something,
and there was always something in the world that needed somebody,
debt is all about connections to affections,
sustenence to stimulus is only half of the formula,
igniting the impetus is provenance of the pursuit,
debt's birth is in the body of temptation,
in the language of lust,
we all find reasons for indebtedness as architects provide strengths for stones,
always a tune to toil for,innumerable impulses to imbibe in the heart's hollows,
needs & wants wants & needs,a crisscrossing of the conscious,
vacillation like breath on candle flame,
on which branch will your bird discover the berry,
what good is satisfying the basics if we are denied exploration of the scenics,
wonderment wrapped in wishes of mocking mortality,
robes of rose petals,
the less we create for ourselves the more we fawn for the fingers of others fantasies,
impatience an instrument for the Devil to revel and drum,strum and hum,
born into a carnival of the careless and criminal
the Devil has a dream and your his favorite dancer,
you hear in his voice a reflection of yourself and drown in delerium,
a community of stage hands supports your every scream
and silence your shouts for sovereignty,
buy the whole of the basement
but be prepared to be buried there,
a necropolis of creditors and debtors,
expired expressions on the faces of orphans kept alive by water colors
from the pallet of pleasure and perfumes of paradise,
as the spectacle ends the Prince of poverty greets us where dogs bark baldly
and the air is gray with cold,
he grips our hands with a lion's paw and cries coolly -
J.A.B. 2011
Categories:
provenance, business,
Form:
Didactic
I'm sitting here
Admiring the view
Thankful for it's beauty
It's comfort
It's familiarity.
I've been here before
So I can close my eyes
and picture it still
And I know it all.
Deep breath in
Contented smile
Snapshot made
The scene is owned
Then the eyes open
As realisation strikes
- I own nothing
- I know nothing
I don't know
how each hill was formed
the names of the farmers who built the stiles to every field
or the names of those who now own those blankets of land
I cannot begin
to count every blade of grass
to measure the mist
to know the age and history of every tree
The past of the very bench I'm sat on
is a mystery to me
The winding roads have their own heritage
And I can't say who first walked it's length
Or where that plodding bus was built
Or where it's been since it's birth
The cars stuck behind are heading on their own unique journeys
I can't vouch as to where to or where from
Far less state the words and thoughts of those cocooned inside
Or declare the depth of any of the puddles they pass
I can't tell you the wattage of the bulb
Shining through that distant window
Still less how warm the sun will feel in an hour
Or the direction the wind came from, even ten seconds ago
The provenance and future of those clouds
Cannot be told by them
Let alone by me.
Eyes close once more
I know nothing but
the fact that this view
In this moment
Does belong to me
And that maybe, somehow
I'm all the wiser for knowing less
Categories:
provenance, beauty, mystery, nature,
Form:
Prose Poetry
1.
Kathleen
Firehaired love of my life;
She's almost all Cab, with a dash of Shiraz spice.
A deep and complicated, earthy wife
A ruby sparkle in the looking glass
Long upon my vision, soft and nice
The All-of-Her bouquet, I cannot pass.
2.
Susan
She may prefer to drink her Cabs,
But the red-maned lioness is pure Bourdeaux.
Her brightness fills a room, and quickly nabs
Away all weak indifference.
The complexity of her shines and glows;
The product of some special provenance.
These ladies make my life divine,
An enviable medly of song and wine.
They may well land on the "NO FLY" List,
For being such charming Terroirists.
Categories:
provenance, funny, happiness, life, may,
Form:
Rhyme
There are three of them, Cinderella siblings:
shapely, deciduous, their leafy green
darkness undulating in the specter wind,
its silent snare drum emulating heartbeats
in syncopated symmetry. "Take us, Take us,
Don't stop!" say the sisters, moving as deliriously
as a woman beneath her lover, while their stripped-
down stepsister, one on one, spells out stillness
in inelastic nudity. Wind shears through her,
unconstricted by skeletal shapeliness.
Nothing to arrange here by the coiffeur wind
in the pared-down beauty of brittle lace-
work, if lacework be brittle.
One nest rests halfway up on a slender limb,
a single stem supports its phantom occupants,
imagined, their ravenous snapper beaks --
landlocked shark-lings, all minuscule jaws,
learning to prey under their mother's bellies --
inhabiting a denuded nest, awaiting a spring
of speckled eggs, cracking the silent thunder
of shells, to free those of gaping mouths, who
know nothing of being born, just that they
hunger and someone comes they do not name
as mother: She of the dependable providence.
For now, there are no newborns, only
a feather; feather, feather, whether or not,
provenance unknown, caught in a branch
far from origin like us, trapped in our casings
of skin: softness pinioned in lacework of limb;
ragged, if lacework be ragged. Here,
where the sisters have been to the Salon,
come back as frowsy as ever, but groomed
somewhat, from a blow dry and a cut.
Categories:
provenance, seasons,
Form:
Ballad
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME –
and there is no dame like a building society or a bank!
There may be nothing like me, but I assure you
the world would have gone to hell but for organised sex -
if boys and girls were left to nature’s provenance,
a person like me would be nowhere at all.
Oh, I know how to milk attraction
and stabilise what is essentially of short duration:
if boys and girls were left to innocence
there’d be no delighting old men.
If that sounds unfair, I didn’t make the rules -
all this spontaneity leaves everyone very poor,
the Church, the magistrates and the building societies
are all depending on the regulation of love.
It’s the people who won’t smile who bother me,
hard fitted, easy suited, do they think it’s all for free?
(C) Rosemarie Rowley
From IN MEMORY OF HER (2008)
Categories:
provenance, business,
Form:
Sonnet
Freelance wanderer carefully navigating the vast expanse
Shadow warrior doth stealthily advance without
remonstrance
With bartered lance, pawned knife; abridged parlance
Shuffling in tantric harmony o'er unforgiving terrain;
nuanced eccentric
Camel cavalcade, entrancing spectacle across glistening
sands prancing
Shrouded by the frantic wind; each, cloaked itinerant a
tenured mantic
Trading the rationed provenance of open spaces for
gratuitous providence of flowering oases
Prudently forming each tribal alliance; deviously skirting
terms of compliance
Hearth covering from servile herd exacted; animistic
seams redacted
Burdened traveler in psychosomatic trance; by warming
flame, pyromantic
Each tenement provisioned by industrious wives; lofty
presentiment
Hospitality granted to imploring drifters; enmity shown
to extorting grifters
Categories:
provenance, people
Form:
Enclosed Rhyme
To run honorably, or not to run honorably--those are my options:
Whether ‘tis wiser in the main to malign
The lives and motives of my foes
Or to defend myself against their charges,
And by defending . . . buoy them? To taint--to smear?
Perhaps. And by these means to goad the field
To err with thoughtless, scurrilous gibes
That mark them petty--a scenario
Most certainly to my gain. To taint--to smear.
To smear, perchance to rouse? O, there’s the risk!
For if I soil their names, what harm may come
Should they then probe my dark impulses
Prompts me to hold. Thus the upshot
Is that defamation circles back.
Why would he brook my lies on fraud and bribes,
That one his bullying ways and past as shameless rake,
This one’s bent for backroom deals, that wife’s excess,
His countenance of graft, this other’s fancy homes
And malnourished dogs near death in household pens,
And not at once retort about my specious provenance,
Which would cut badly? I might slanders sling
And smirch and slime without a conscience tug,
But that the fear of fire coming back,
An incendiary charge from whose blast
No candidate survives, stays my hand
And has me at a loss for what to sow
Than turn to libels that may come back in tens.
Thus caution keeps me playing not to lose;
And thus my sordid plan to lie and bait
Is sidelined now for fear of what I’d reap.
And chicanery of such guile and lure,
A tack denied, puts victory at risk,
And boosts the case for cheating.
Shush now, fool; the cleric starts his homily.
Categories:
provenance, parody,
Form:
Iambic Pentameter
There once was a man from DeBose
who had a gigantic nose
his nostrils squawked
whenever he walked.
When at rest it sat on his toes
The man got a job at a farm
his task was to sound the alarm
when the sly fox
tried the coop locks
intending to do chickens harm
One night his nose fell asleep
lulled by the bleat of the sheep
fox took a chance
interrupted romance
of two lovebirds, now the one weeps!
The man with the nose then got fired
The farmer now wished he had hired
a man without clothes
not a nullified nose
so prone to be slumber inspired
As the nose and his man went away
Nose saw the sly fox in the hay
with much boogie-woogie
nose hocked a great loogie
and splattered the fox where he lay
The farmer was pleased to be rid of the pest
though the hay loft was terminally messed
Everyone cheered
nose grew a beard
and moved to an ashram out west
You may wonder, is this tale is true?
I assure you it is, yes I do.
to doubt the nose
would presuppose
this story is nothing but poo
The legend of the hero nose grows
if questions of provenance pose
look on the shadiest side
of that big chunk of hide
for only the shadow knows
Categories:
provenance, nonsense,
Form:
Limerick
Your fig tree in January, denuded now
is more stately, if possible, in its stark seasonal
solemnity than in summer's exacting extravagance.
Its trunk, massive in manhood, is a citadel, supporting
the curving bowl of branches as they bend back
into themselves, becoming the bare, black sculpture
Hemingway described in Paris in the 'Jardin
de Luxembourg,' where following in his footsteps,
we once strolled among old men playing
chess, lovers entwined on park benches,
fat city pigeons seeking sustenance.
These prayerful branches, grown as large as
the beanstalk giant of storybook lore, cup the sky--
and two gigantic roots, visible above ground
in winter definition, should they be feet, would
rock our foundations. Sprawling out in different
directions, siblings still, they disappear below earth
to wherever they travel--who knows where?
Unlike Jack on his leafy ladder, climbing sky-
ward, they turned toward some
southern provenance: Provence, perhaps,
as if impassioned for home.
Categories:
provenance, philosophy,
Form:
Free verse
Walking unto the pier's edge gazing silently at Salvia's sea...
Stirring waters, churning deep within my Spirit; crashing waves
Transcending this flesh the world her sky these coiled clouds as time.
Categories:
provenance, angel, beauty, caregiving,
Form:
Free verse
a perfect world, those words get so swirled
is it all perspective, or just selective rivers
do i dare deliver such a crazy prayer
as the mayor steeps, the angles creep
conscious yet asleep, fishing in our ocean
wishing for our promotion for a new way to recieve speech
some say naive yet our provenance from stars is belief
sometimes it can be hard to say, what feels my way
maybe i lack the confidence, to portray today
but if our rhymes could touch the soul
we'ed all be singing on grassy knolls
until then this tinker must remain a free thinker
enjoying every grain, unraveling every chain
Categories:
provenance, adventure, blessing, change, conflict,
Form:
Free verse
Conceived In Sin -
Cincinnati, Ohio
(most Up To Date Virgin)
Any attempt for fecund woman
to successfully counteract biologic
reproductive force to whit
deserves grudging testes
meant to garner at least tidbit
sans, ejaculated kudos (by Dickens),
where aborted squirt,
viz skin flute, gets writ
off as sad sack pit
tiff full seaman unwittingly spit
outside sought after vasocongestion
swollen phallic doth intuit
thwarted down thrust trend,
where offspring of genetic
inheritance since Eve soffit
a dam nibble prickly outcome
braking abrupt copulation,
where half cocked drill bit
attempts to hit
bulls eye included with animalistic kit
and caboodle born toward illicit
propagation of species,
this indomitable overbearing gen nit
till foreplay to liberate dill lib writ
lee, pointedly and instinctually
continue human race,
where a bajillion threads did knit
world wide web steeped with lit
richer replete with orgiastic nit
tee gritty prurient details
recounting bacchanalian debauchery
nun such breakable classless habit
ah what a dog send to gift
and empower women to inhibit
unwanted pregnancy (of childbearing age)
equipped with superhuman heft quit,
while erect phallus unable to lyft
uber penetration, no doubt miffed,
especially in throbbing throes far drift
from coital provenance, one agitated fitbit
feeling royally screwed
particularly virility predicated
on loose sing penile glue stick
within secrete slit.
Categories:
provenance, animal, desire, first love,
Form:
Bio