Best Puff Out Poems
Your strongest day is standing
just outside your door. Let it in.
Each day the sun comes home to you
it whispers with the wind
calling out your name.
This is no video game.
Life’s a bouquet banquet
made from your reflections.
You do not need directions.
Pick your moments carefully.
Stop and smell the roses,
leave your motor running
for the dangers trust exposes.
Listen to where life comes from
the beating sound of your own drum.
Make the most of music that it brings.
Unraveling all your tangled balls of strings.
With patience Iron out each peace,
holding tight to all you love
with nails and teeth.
Now put your stubby thumbs
through their tiny holster loops
and pull your britches up.
Hitch them high,
and puff out your chest !!
You’ve always been ready for this.
This is not a test.
This is your life.
Of all the songs
You seem to be
The tuneless one,
Less subtlety.
God's orchestra
Has dealt a hand—
More toneless rasp
Than golden strand.
I wonder if
You long to be
A star
In morning's reverie.
Do tears well up?
Perhaps that's why
You paddle more
Than flit and fly.
And yet…
I see you
Standing proud—
Such confidence
In every crowd.
You waddle round,
For pictures pose—
Such character
Without a nose.
You dress with style,
All brown and green.
There's pride in how
You peck and preen.
You're grounded,
Yet you float and glide.
No treetop nest—
You strut with pride.
So maybe I
Prejudged your tone—
Less violin,
More slide trombone.
In that, the panoply
Of life
Requires such confidence
Amid the strife.
To show us humans
Not to compare—
Just be yourselves,
Be fair and square.
And when life gives you
Orange sauce,
Puff out your chest…
Just stay on course.
but is a Shrike not
stuck to its thorns
just like everything else?
when I turn my
hands back into stones,
when I bare my teeth,
when I puff out my throat,
don't I always end
up the same way?
is guilt just the heart
trying to even the
score
Jellied eels and pie n mash.
East London Fair, and that’s a fact.
The Dockers hands, and the pearly kings.
Their romance gone, the truth it stings.
The Bow Bells ring, they sound out loud.
Cockney chests, they puff out proud.
Not much left of old world London town.
Inside office blocks our city drowns.
The rhyming slang, used to confound.
It hid the truth, of lies abound.
The gifted few, they understood.
They kept those coppers under hood.
Up the Apples and pears, mind your plates of meat.
Meant up the stairs and watch your feet.
The law never knew, they couldn’t make it out.
We watched their faces and saw their doubt.
The slang we used was not just for fun.
It kept us on our toes, not on the run.
Old London's gone it has changed its face.
For better or worse it's now a different place.
We've had the rough. We've had the smooth.
This place has changed, with times it's moved.
Like or not this is London Town.
The times have changed, but she'll not let you down.
She'll take you in, she'll hold you tight.
Embrace her heart, enjoy the light.
It’s a great day to shake and bake
Dance, sing, and eat all of your cake
It’s time to wear your dinner gown
Happy Birthday Dear Carol Brown
Upon reaching the Big Six O
Spread and stretch on your patio
Wear your fancy dress into town
Happy Birthday Dear Carol Brown
As you puff out the nice candles
Hold tight onto your chair handles
Smile today and let your hair down
Happy Birthday Dear Carol Brown
It’s a great day to shake and bake
Happy Birthday Dear Carol Brown
© Joseph, 4/9/08
© All Rights Reserved
Comments: Dedicated to my poet laureate friend Carol Brown. The Kyrielle
Sonnet has 14 lines (three rhyming quatrain stanzas and a non-rhyming
couplet). It has a repeating line or phrase as a refrain in the last line of each
stanza. Each line within the sonnet has eight syllables. The French use the first
and last line of the first quatrain as the ending couplet. This reinforces the refrain
within the poem. The rhyming scheme for a Kyrielle Sonnet normally is: AabB,
ccbB, ddbB, AB -or- AbaB, cbcB, dbdB, AB.
Following a note from my wife – something about me acting like the Lone Ranger, I
was compelled to respond in my usual manner. I told her this was a love poem to
her.
I am the Lone Ranger
I am the Lone Ranger I shout out with glee
You are but Tonto - subservient to me
I am the Lone Ranger I puff out with pride
You are but Tonto along for the ride
I am the Lone Ranger - out front in a fight
You are but Tonto along side to my right
I am the Lone Ranger with guns and a mask
You are but Tonto and do as you're asked
I am the Lone Ranger - the shows named after me
If it wasn't for Tonto - no Ranger I'd be
I am the Lone Ranger and when it all comes to pass
You are but Tonto but you save my ass
So I am the Lone Ranger but between me an you
It’s Tonto who always gets us both through!
What is it with this mask I wear?
It hides the fact that I do care.
The silver bullets? They're for show.
They're only silver plated though.
And the horse all pure and white?
To show I'm always in the right.
As for tonto at my side,
The symbol of my loving bride.
Without which I would be in danger.
With which, I'm the old Lone Ranger.
mdailey
Contest: the Mask
Would I change from a girl, and give up all my curls?
Would I quit wearing dresses, stop paying hairdressers?
Change places with him? Be a “he”, not a “she”?
Be a guy? Would I buy it?…For awhile I might try it!
I’d rise in the morning, shave off my stubble
Put on some clothes, no need for much trouble,
No lipsticks, or makeup, no blushes, nor creams.
What should I wear?….Just a shirt that is clean
I would wiggle my toes, discard panty hose!
Buy me some boots, holler and hoot
Own handyman tools, love my Lazyboy throne
Where I'll watch all the games, claim the remote
If I want to be cool, cigars too, I’ll smoke!
I could slurp eating soup,
then burp like a guy, and wear a toupee, unless I go gray!
If there’s gray at my temples, distinguished, ….how simple!!
Instead of Miss Clairol, I'll use a Gillette
Hold in my belly, and puff out my chest
Whistle, and flirt, at young girls in short skirts!
I would eat steak and fries and a big piece of pie!
Not stress over size, of my hips or my thighs!
I won’t drink tea so dainty, out of cups filled half empty
No tantrums or tears, just a beer with the guys!
Start a fight just to try it, get a punch in the eye!
If I pout, they won’t buy it, if the girl in me cries out!
Well, I gave it a whirl…I was a guy in my dreams
A dream that I had? Or a nightmare gone bad?
I’m glad I'm awake..and the switch I WON'T make!!
I woke up as a girl, it's not as bad as it seemed!
(Apologies to all the fine gentlemen out there!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The music coarses through my veins
As i run down the street
i don't need to look back
to hear the pounding of the feet
My mind races as i sprint
my lungs struggling to continue
but i hear death come closer
not knowing what to do
i see the glint of metal
as he races after me
not fighting for his honor
it is just blood he wants to see
is this how a hero dies, i ask myself boldly
is this what happens when you refuse to back down
my heart starts to fail, my feet start to slow
with barely enough energy, to turn myself around
All i ever did
was stand up to that school bully
and it may have been the last thing i do
i now understand quite fully
if only i had stepped down
let him spit and walk away
instead, i had to open my mouth
and so the consequences i must now pay
i muster up the courage
puff out my chest and turn
but instead of feeling steel
i feel a steady burn
for in my frantic flight
i must have stepped down wrong
for after everything I'd done
i knew that it was sprung
i fall down to the pavement
fearing the very end
that school bully who chose to chase me
would soon learn to comprehend
that i stood up for myself
and would not back down now
i fought back the tears
and stood without a sound
i waited and waited and waited
for the bully to fly around the block
i sat back down and teared up,
as i yanked away the sock
the pain that radiated shot
through my leg and through my bones
anyone one could tell
from the screeching of my tone
i hobbled to the bus stop
picking out the broken glass
the blood hit the ground
and the ground hit my ass
i sat there in my tears
pondering a lie to tell
one that told nothing of my flight
and one that i could sell
i came home late that night
with relief my mother slept
i hobbled to my bed
and passed out as i wept.
With just a few short strokes, and the ink of a magical pen.
You can clear the air of pollution, or simply be young again.
Memories once made, can be brought back and given life.
Like grandpa whittling wood, with his favorite pocketknife.
A pen can alter time, and let you travel to and fro.
It can tell you fact or fiction, that the reader may never know.
Happiness can be shared, or you can experience someone’s pain.
It can sometimes cause insomnia and even clog a drain.
Your pen can offer solace to a world that’s stricken with grief.
It can lend a unique perspective on a certain personal belief.
It can be the gateway to one’s soul and a release for your imagination.
Maybe it will bring forth nature’s beauty, or just political frustration.
With a pen you can honor family, or that very special friend.
It can provide a little respite, from a pain that has no end.
Each of us can find a reason, for pairing paper and pen.
You can bring Puff out of his cave and make him soar again.
Whatever your heart can envision with the magic you choose to bring.
May your pen stay full of ink and bring more songs that we can sing.
Consider the (Dreaming) Birds
By Mark D. Stucky
Jesus told us to consider the birds of the air.
I have pondered parakeets (budgies) in a cage
routinely performing what seems impossible.
No, not flying. (They fly rather poorly.)
It’s the posture they keep as they sleep.
Usually before closing their eyes,
they puff out their colorful feathers,
precariously balance on just one slender leg,
twist their heads halfway around,
and nestle their beaks under the backs of their wings.
How can they do that? Why would they want to?
No human could hold such an improbable pose,
not even in yoga, let alone while dreaming.
I’ve puzzled over those tiny amazing acts
that birds do daily with little thought
and no explanation of their motives to me.
Although I can’t replicate their strange stance,
to those tiny birds, I am godlike.
They periodically chirp loud petitionary prayers
for me to give them this day their daily birdseed.
But omnipotent and omniscient I’m clearly not.
Those winged unlikely wonders mystify me.
Perhaps if I could enter their caged existence
and take on the feathered form of a fellow bird,
they would softly warble their secrets to me,
and I to them.
I treasure miniature miracles in implausible places.
And if a fluff of feathers can perform such wonders,
surely the God of the universe
can go bigger and better,
can fling a star-like light across Bethlehem’s sky,
can create conception in a virgin by divine in vitro,
can take on flesh in our own featherless form,
and can croon to us heavenly dreams.
(First published in Small Town Anthology VI: Entries from the Sixth Annual Tournament of Writers, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2020, pp. 38-39. See also my poems “Quantum Theology” and “Journey of a Contemporary Joseph.”)
(Photo by garten-gg on Pixabay.)
Gods of glowing neon and gaudy screens
smile upon charming, charming patterns of heads.
All colors of hair, lit red, then green, then blue,
guided along invisible paths, crown heads
perspiring, chanting and glancing down
on marching, mechanical arms, then worrying
as they scurry along infinite, crisscrossing paths -
at once so ordered and so unfathomably chaotic.
Drums are rolled by hurrying feet
dictating the race of mankind.
A metropolis looms, adorned by a billion shimmering jewels -
electric jewels - and an apparition sways over the
bustle, silently watching, silently floating.
Giant chutes proudly puff out plumes of nightly black
and devils forged in impure fire do rise
to the heavens above, graced by the blessings of
the industrial revolution, in turn blessing humanity with progress,
imperceptible except as phlegmatic gasps
and the whiff of crisp green paper, distinguished by
wizened faces and packed in neat bundles.
Bulbous, aged fingers do trace from within
the sanctum sanctorum of a temple aged a thousand years,
charming, charming patterns of jewels
in intricate, frozen dance, carving out hexagons of perfect symmetry
from wearily cut marble windowsills.
The work of a thousand splendid hands
preserved by the unseen, dusty hands of time
did render the mosque palatial, its beauty heavenly.
The admiring eyes sing hymns praising the architecture, alas
they are blind, for the marble, white as angelic wings, is grey now.
The scientist appears, eyes hidden by thick glassy cubicles
yet shining through, lit by the endless pursuit of knowledge
and equally burdened by numbers, figures, notes
and the maddening myopia of man.
On the screen appears, against fresh white
charming, charming patterns of red, green and blue
sinking downward, worryingly as it would seem,
his uninflected pleas let in through one ear, instantly
shunted out through the next by the populace, to whom
the music of modernity rings sweeter.
First Place, Charming Patterns Poetry Contest
Date: 16th October 2021
There are so many
beautiful teenagers
that laugh
and joke
and make you feel bad about yourself.
And we know, okay,
we’re sorry.
We’re just so confused
about why it’s so easy to push
someone down when we’re already on the ground.
Please empathize with us
when we are home alone
and admit to ourselves:
Every exhale feels like
a scream for help.
But we puff out air instead of sound
because words feel too heavy
and we know our mouths
are meant for loving,
not for screaming.
I mean, how do you tell someone
that your heart feels like it’s bleeding.
And so do your eyes.
And your ears.
How do you say “ I don’t want to breathe anymore”?
Portrait: It Is She Who Triumphed
Arabic Poem By: Saad Al-Hajji*
Translated into English By:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
===================
At first, she was hiding
And holding her breath,
In the calm of a night just bathed
In the rain showers;
Suddenly, she started to breathe,
And slowly rise, red as a blaze,
In the heart of a dense jungle
swarming with black phantoms,
Phantoms that didn’t care, even for a moment,
To hide away from the eyes of beholders;
They, deliberately, invaded the vast horizon
Looming in the distance to the beholder
With their wickedly muffled laughter,
And their cunning and mocking gaze,
Together saying;
“How dare you look at us, and who could you be?
It’s us who bring black nightmares
to carefree slumbers,
And us who puff out the chills into shoulders
Kept warm by hearth embers,
We send monitors amid the stars;
Old witches riding brooms'
With fears and misgivings, roam the space;
Hey you! Don’t you listen?
Ah ... Aren’t you the one
Alleging to be Demozi the victimized?
And awaiting Astarte in a Babylonian moonlit night
To come to his underworld,
And take him up to the fertile spring?!
O You! O deluded dreamer..
We are princesses of the seven heavens
And the night chased on one hemisphere
by the other hemisphere...
There is no Astarte; she exists only in your imagination."
(To be continued in Part II)
-----------------
Translated by:
Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
July 31, 2012-08-02
* Saad Al-Hajji is a poet from Iraq
Moon-she, I long to behold you again,
That mouth watering lady I grew around;
I long to see your embeamed and painted face again.
To see those women squat publicly to urinate,
To see those teenagers puff out smoke happily,
To touch the honey skirt ladies that
Entangle a lust lost eyes into ruin while still living.
O moon-she, my love! You are not a moon-chain,
Mushin is never good for your kind but moon-she
As mother throw praises to your honeyed body.
I have your skyscraping bungalow in my eyes,
I have the hustling and hush movement clothed my legs.
I have known the fragrance of your body,
That old dame body odour that makes me joyful.
Your shoes have I worn about Lagos streets and
I felt accepted among the titans around town.
Oh moon-she,you are not a mushin but moon-she.
I still remember the taste of your breast milk;
That milk that is not channeled in one direction.
I know mother Eko, I know you moon-she.
(C) John Chizoba Vincent
Voice Of Vincent 2016
Slurpee down the street
past the gutter where pop-sickle sticks can not be boat-glued
are faded now too. . . port-bowed along no more imaginary sail boats now
paste a blue balloon to that
paper machee sky
stick his fat
blowing cheeks to the way we first came to. . . know
wind
then again
start over like that
then again
i do believe
even you’d come to believe, that
you could puff out your cheeks. . . that fat
and purse your lips for
a good gather-force
of wind. . . without a whistle. . . just to. . . inhale through a straw. . . a slurpee
blow