Best Quaver Poems
Oh lush flora, I watch its parade
Sashaying through woodland mead and glade;
How new blooms quaver…adorned with grace
That every trail rules this courtly place :
Lustrous the mural, the birdsongs swoon
A chant hailing rebirth of life's tune;
And peonies orange waft, awake
Their trimmings enthrall, how I would shake!
And never will this portrait be lost
When Maytime dreams are heavenly glossed!
----------
Written 05.22.2018
For Michelle Faulkner's Memories of May
with a crescent palm
held against his lips,
he sends a silver psalm
into the wind-
the timbre, so frail
sails through a crimson sky
then falls into the valley
a valley so low---
"hear the wind whisper,
hear the wind blow...
down through the valley,
where it must go"....
upward it goes
on a smooth silver thread
till the thin-quaver ends
where the red river flows
___________________________________
6/25/17 (Based on the song "Red River Valley")
Aristotle, who once said, “A flatterer is a friend,
Who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.”
Magician or not, the appraisal we try to defend,
Veneer covered ready, prepare for the overthrow.
And a splint named psychology supports nowt,
Tender are the suspicions, a tourniquet gripped,
That of emotion, a trend compared with doubt,
And complacency set amongst the less equipped.
Human form takes shape of Copernican theory,
Between each other, is the central perspective
Years ahead in terms of mind, yet still we query.
Remaining wary, they’ve listened so corrective.
A glimmer of paradise from that which destined
More positive than rightful, for instance, must,
Be seen as most probable, avoiding a rescind
Of harmonies that quaver a motion. Well, just!
And the motion we speak of, like a whisper,
Eases the tension between people who feather,
The hearing sensation shall understand crisper
Torn between plusses and negatives; whether!
The flatterer is found as the darkest seclusion,
Reflection of them is the question of mystery
A misty environment that forms that illusion
Chronically synchronized a challenge to history,
To beat out the drum of intention, as constant
A theory relating to trust involving apple trees
Has a Newtonian law which shall transplant,
Gravity, attached friends upon a breeze.
In feather-like spirit, the meadow may drift
An illusion that folds from the first dew morn,
With goose bumps that wrinkle a wary shift
Trusts! Where the sugar sweet mentions are born.
That’s what friends are Law, children at heart,
Make-believe portfolios of whimsical worth,
Fasten the button on jumpers, and bonnet apart
When blue summer dye creates umber for earth.
Perceived as a coward on grass that’s not green,
Glass, not a ruby, when trust solves the riddle,
To finish this mantra this causes serene,
Convinced like a Titan’s romance of the fiddle.
Oh! Zeus, need we flutter the discord to ride
The twirls of Hyperion, who teaches the master,
To dance like an ocean and swirl like the tide,
As trust gains momentums avoid the disaster.
She didn’t play poker so well.
Her bluff was as clear as a bell.
Her insides would quaver
So much that they gave her
A hell of a smell of a tell.
I flip the history of Bojangles
On a cool Sunday evening
Los Angeles coming down
A flow of oboes breathing
Through the lung of the street
The hobo not stopping for air
Fingers moving in a dance
Across the strings of consciousness
Milking the music of his brain
Onto a breast
Of dilated ears.
Mr. Lopez, unsettled from his comfortable chair
Searching for something to tell
Against the neon of despair
Heard the dulcimer quelling hell
And saw himself standing bare
To the sheetless eyes
Of a man serenading Beethoven
Deaf as a statue
In the city's superfluous air.
Here is where humanity
Sings hope amidst the garden
Of hopelessness
That make direlict dreams
Tugging our divinity
Down to rags of nothingness.
Mr. Ayers, a quaver away
Juliard school in love aspiring
Suddenly there fallen
Amidst the glitter and glamor
Of non-existence
Peace, a basoon
Seducing a Los Angeles moon
Coy as a lover
In the tangle of wine memory
He plays against
The unkown sorrow of the world.
And here dedication
Drives us to distraction
Soon or late
Decomposing our minds
Into shards of glistening memories.
Discovery, today beholding yesterday
A bride for the first time
Amidst the silence of flowers
Cradling weeds and seeds of tomorrow.
Love without purpose
Can change the course
Of splintering history.
He plays, harmony
In where the traffic blares
Yellow light onto his gray matter
Splitting airs with sharp sounds
They echo
Not the common pit, nor
To a single Maestro blending
The mind's kaleidoscope
Before the other's saner wit
Along highways and wind tunnels
He brings to a sombre note
To ode all joys
Strugling repressed under
Human ambition
Ayers is my minstrel
Jarred by a nerve
Not wired for sleep.
Fortune smiles
From the frontier of friendhsips
Fondled by the music
Of love unfranchised
Awakes the lyre
To sing in the resurrection of desire.
Friendship is a sheltering tree
From life's base tragedies.
My heart dances like a Peacock,
When I hear your voice!
It emerges from far,
Brings the tempestuous ocean to me,
Brings the soaring mountains to me,
Reminding me of the long arduous path
I have to walk,
To reach you!
Still it dances like a Peacock!
My heart starts waltzing
The moment I hear your voice!
My heart starts trembling with a mysterious exhilaration,
Quivering with an unfathomable elation,
And a peacock within me starts dancing
In the rain!
The rain shivers me, shudders me,
Almost whirls me away,
To a land,
Where I will walk on a path
strewn with golden and tangerine fall leaves,
admire a koel and sing her
mellifluous rhapsody with my voice uninhibited,
gambol and frolic to the sonata,
dream endless dreams with the cadence
of a humming stream, with uneven pebbles
but not quaver for a moment!
Where dreams are not splintered into fragments!
tall among rich loosen soil
scent slight quaver throughout spoiled
sunshine fields, warm smiles it yields
milk pearls trickle drip on silk
nature whispers season turn
tall among rich loosen soil
leaves lay face downward unturned
gnarl old tree kneels its amber
beetle strength squirms in its murk
darkness abandons the moon
curled up in heavens warm croon
tall among rich loosen soil
happiest hours unrevealed
7/23/2021
I miss the play of outside sunshine,
But the nose knows it’s safer to quaver,
From going outdoors, acting sanguine.
Raw throat, stalled breathing - I’m on the floor,
Caused by flying too close to the ceiling.
Snow was in store, but I dressed poor,
Saw the sights, had too good a time,
Impulses attended, weather ignored.
Now it’s chicken soup in place of wine.
Emotions - once pleasures, now bore;
Strength - once coiled rope, now balled twine.
Even the apple of my eye seems cored.
If mindful for a change - symptoms will decline,
As the coughing nasal squeak turns quietly into a roar.
Meanwhile, I’ll buy shares in the Kleenex line,
I have a hunch - my use of tissue cause prices to soar.
How can one survive this quagmire,
imprisoned by live naked wires?
Creating a chronic quaver
like a terribly unstable lover.
Fears should be quarantined
and from its hiding, mental strength mined.
The challenge ahead, not easy to quash
and the ability to, is stained with rash
Damn! What seems quasi-impossible
has been proven completely beatable.
Finally!
Such an opponent was easier to quern
than a reverse from a swimming sperm.
David versus Goliath
this situation is quintessence.
The wonderful boost from its victory
now becomes an essence to Life’s experience.
-AFFLICTION-
My poverty drove a Ferrari
My monkey rode a horse
Bad luck was hitch-hiking
Overtaken by a Porschè
Slamdunk my face with dishes in the sink
Screamed so loud at nothing pulling faces in the dark
Walking with a white cane
Talking with The White Man
Unseen, unheard, so I did not have to think
Obscene, blackbird ,singing like a lark
Broken semi quaver
Swimming in the river
Reasoning with know-alls
Confusion is an eight ball
What youre not going tell the man
Is the something you can not say
Plastic horses returning on a rotating carousel
My transgressions stay in rehab
My anger burns in hell
Bland stupidity clings to me
O hear that urgent summons!
Tolling in the valley
Such a sacrificial bell
I do not know
Whose excitement was the greater
My dad’s or mine
As we boarded the bus
To a long-lost dream
Of verdant fields
Rich with the fruit of native soil
Of crystal clear streams
Where laughing youth
Was spent in carefree
Abandonment.
My dad’s eyes gleamed
As they spoke of glowing hearths
Clustered around with pots and pans
With music of bubbling broth
And the sweet smell
Of meat
As the fat simmered and sizzled
Stirring the rumbles
Of those gathered around
Listening to great grandma tales.
Sweet were his words
As scenes of pastoral joy
Rolled off his tongue
With vividness imbued
With longing
For years gone past
These two score and ten.
Come, lad, he said
With wistful smile
And a soft ache in his heart
You’ll meet ole Gran
And Uncles and Aunts
And Cousins in droves.
The bus droned through the night
And at crack of dawn
We alighted
At a ramshackle stand
With nary a soul
But a lone
Wizened man
Who had seen better times.
With a quaver of despair
My dad fearfully asked
Of such-and-such
Great clans once there
Of streets and of temples
Of markets and yards
Of fields and their tillers
Only to be met with
Stony silent stare.
There was a rise in the wind
As dust-devils danced
The torpor was mounting
Till the man finally spake
The families you seek
Have moved on
To the beyond
Ten years or so
There was a quake and a storm
Now there only be ghosts.
Now we awaited
The bus
To take us back home
Saddened son
And a ghost of a dad.
~19 Jul 2016~
Semi-fictional
Contest: Long lost family
We are ladies-in-waiting and martyrs,
as tears are hardened like trails
of muddy barracks…
yet in the aggressive power- courts;
each detonating bullet hemorrhages
all veins of war- torn flesh ,
our stained faces pretending to play
and underplay the hurt of wounds within.
How long are those late twilights
as we anticipate a riddled uncertainty
within our homes' rotten gates and dim lamps
for the screeching angst to halt. cease:
The radio blasts hideous self-pity
into the stings, the bladder of evenings
when a combat fires deathly pellets
through broken hearts of our sons, husbands :
Will daytime become Aurora’s reward?
Maidens of hope, we wail and quaver
for men in camouflage… dear life, speak!
Are they lost. dead. or agile?…
pained, we remain mute ladies-in-waiting.
~*~
Contest of Broken Wings: Broken-Hearted Poems
Written 10/14/2017
The King Of Beasts
By Roy Merritt
I don’t do very much,
I don’t attend to labors
I lay around most of the time
And sometimes eat my neighbors
I don’t do any of the hunting either
I leave that to my wives
Anything that requires some effort
I pretty much despise
And yet I’m king of the beasts
A regal being I do be
The proudest of the lions
On the wide Serenghetti
My diet seldom varies
I eat a lot of gazelle
And sometimes smaller prey
And buffaloes as well
And sometimes when I’m frisky
And needing some extra love
I’ll kill the little ones
Others fellow’s cubs
But don’t you think it was easy
To become master of this troupe
If I’d tried to early
I’d been thrown for a loop
For it’s a tough job
Being master of this realm
Such a job to young
Will surely overwhelm
You have to be ready
To take this job one that you can savor
One you can enjoy
And sometimes eat your neighbor
I don’t have many friends either
The hyenas I abhor
And when I hear them laugh
It burns me to the core
These creeps and the jackals
And vultures slow and fleet
Are always sneaking in
Trying to steal my meat
And that’s one of the troubles
The things that’ll make you quaver
When you’re about your duties
And sometimes eat your neighbor
But don’t you worry yourself
With things of those faraway
But perhaps we’ll get a chance
To meet on some future day
Perhaps you’ll come here
And perhaps me you’ll favor
And I’ll eat you when you’re here
In the time you are my neighbor
For you see I’m a lion fool
A lion apt to roar
And you should have thought of that
Before you dared to move next door
My poems have blissfully escorted me
through the gamut of seasons,
having afforded me not the sensations
of their individual touch.
I stand worlds away from the blustering
wind that shudders the meekest of boughs.
My hopes quaver along with their stammering vows
falling from my lips like fronds from a tree.
And such are the leaves that greet decay.
And such are the promises to myself
that become aberrant from their purpose
along destiny's ever altering way.
May the season of love sensate my heart
and breathe into my repine a breath
of everlingering sustenance and depth.
The wintry wind blows wretched and bold
with no whisper of love to be for now
in the background of the strident sound
it creates sweeping through this snow-laden town.
Oh lush flora, I watch its parade
Sashaying through woodland mead and glade;
How new blooms quaver…adorned with grace
That every trail rules this courtly place.
`~
Gregory R Barden's Rithimus Divisa Contest
Excerpt from Flora, 5/22/2018
Posted 9/28/2020