Best Railed Poems
One tall and gaunt with hooded eyes
The other bearded, bent, time-worn and wise
They relished unfurling their intellectual sails
To seek secrets of wisdom on ancient gales
Two wizened old philosophers in a huddled conspiracy
They picked through the bones of archaic mythology
Pondered the tomes of scholars of yore
Then fleshed out the virtues of masters of lore
They sniffed out the dragons of hateful hypocrisy
Harangued and railed against heinous heresy
Decried the dogmatist's intolerant curse
Then like poets esteemed they trundled through verse
Their furrowed cheeks glowed as the whiskey flowed
Voices gravelled and slurred as their logic blurred
They fumbled and mumbled, weary and weaving
As the dying embers of day, dropped into evening
With their feverish fervour fully feted
They stumbled into the night, agreeably sated!
Elizabeth Marie Tall Chief
bigotry gave her grief
failing health, unsteady,
she railed, “Get my swan costume ready!”
Keeping Up?
I woke up in the front seat of my car.
In my garage. Thank God.
Well, I should wait.
There could be more.
What happened?
I don’t know.
I really don’t.
My wrist is itchy.
There is sand under my watch.
How did that get there?
Do I really want to know?
Yes.
Everything else is in tact.
Should I get out and go inside?
Will that be okay?
Will that ever be okay again?
He is not inside.
The house is empty.
The kids are gone.
They are with him.
Safe?
Not usually.
At the moment,
better than with me.
A thankful prayer again…
from regretful lips,
for sins known and unknown.
Good friends meant well.
They set the stage and arranged it all.
Get back into life... they railed.
Funny, it felt like instead of celebrating,
a train had hit me and dragged me for blocks?
I looked,
there was no damage on the car.
So, no train.
Just stupid me.
Note to self, “Party at church, pray all day!.”
I remember living in one room dingy and dire
with old lino on its rotting wooden floor.
I remember crystallised spit dangling from guard at the fire;
as mother cleaned, he'd only honk the more.
I recall how we went hungry, waiting for the paltry sum
he allowed us for board and keep, the cheap fink,
and how he served apprenticeship to becoming a true bum
by treating as priorities his fags and drink.
I remember all the rows he caused demanding back the cash
which was supposed to feed and clothe his we’ans
I remember every Christmas morn' the gifts received were trash
because he'd pissed the present-money down the drain.
I recall one awful night my mother hunting high and low
with a hungry bedraggled child on either hand,
she finally catching that boozy stinker sate in the Dungloe.
How he fumed, outraged that food she dared demand.
I remember his begrudgement of those sparse few days away–
one hour upon the beach or at the fair:
how just when we were relaxing would be dragged from play.
Homeward-bound: him the ‘bookies', us despair.
I remember trudging up to Creggan to the ‘Housing Place'
every week with mother and sister, come rain or hail,
and how that worthless, selfish, monster did not even have the grace
to commend her dedication, instead railed.
I can picture his expression when she got herself a job,
determined not to lose her new clean home.
I remember his wild tantrums when she'd saved up for a hob–
the delivery man was perplexed at oral foam.
I remember those miserable times as if they were today,
how he made odd help with homework living hell–
so that now a friend's assistance, however gracefully
put, grates my tortured psyche so much I cannot tell.
When we started working, my sister dear and I,
it seemed for him a licence to give less.
Many weeks he'd keep house-money and, as the months went by,
we discovered he'd drunk the rent; that was a mess.
So now sot has retired, and it seems his mind has gone–
for he's telling all how great he was those years:
he built house on the prairie. He was such a con:
the only thing he constructed was a legacy of fear.
Sending the tending to an unfriended ending,
yet somehow suspending from rending a newly offending recommending.
Logotype monotype linotype,
overripe stereotype,
teletyped an unripe heliotype.
Guttersnipe snipe,
stipe snipe ripe,
a wipe type a tripe,
unleash a withering hype.
Dip snip,
nip lip,
slip skip,
rip the apple pip
over a battleship Chip.
Clip,
airstrip,
blip,
scrip,
gyp,
flip,
dip.
Unsip, blue clip,
A warship, weathering stick.
To miche an itch,
to stitch a witch.
Rich a quitch,
Hitch a flitch.
Gabrilowitsch,
the grand son of a *****!
Pitched a ditch to flitch a niche.
Made a rich hitch lich.
The Thia tie thy tried to untie an unshy,
Spied a sny sty,
He ascribed a bribe tribe,
to dib drib, lib and sib.
A death pale,
dwaled and engrailed,
enjailed and bewailed.
The cocktale turned into a,
ginger ale stale.
A hobnail.
A pale kale.
The whale waled
a veil of wail.
The stale air,
railed the quailing sale.
Dipped the snip,
to pip the tip,
and baled the avail,
to the flailed snail.
Attract extract reenact,
saddle backed and subtracted,
the tact the pact
an unmistakable fact.
Swag the unsage,
the wage of the tutelage.
A coffee break
a bit of a cornflake
cupcaked the cake of the devil's flake.
Draked the fake fruitcake,
and hake the jake on the mellow lake.
Mistake the overtake.
A pancake sheik,
cried spake of a toothache.
Ack Ack!
Back, Bootblack Jack.
Pack the Pontiac rack,
sack the Hackensack,
hijack the leatherback.
Offtrack the outback,
rack the sack,
smack the stack,
stickleback the tictack track,
to the umiak Union Jack.
Twack the whack yak sack,
A mystical one eyed zodiac.
Bready a speedy,
deedy the weedy,
Reedy to leedy.
Unheedy indeedy.
Leda, Vida, Theda.
Sketched an etch,
itched a hatch.
So speechless,
breathless,
toothless.
The socialist,
the communist,
the theorist
the terrorist.
Bedded the bedding
in a dreadful beheading.
Weeded the weed,
leading the lead,
tended the teed.
The ready read,
the reedy reeded.
The seedy seeded.
The end is Ending.
In better times, Anders Throne once was
a good husband and loving father,
married to his sweetheart, Rosie Smith,
who’d grown on the Chesapeake waters.
He worked as a lawyer, was well renowned,
had a little boy by the name Chester,
if fate were just he would’ve lived out his days
and saw his happiness never perturbed.
But when the war with the north broke out
to his country he was compelled to stay true,
he said good-bye and stole away north,
marching to war with the boys in blue.
His father-in-law said "Good riddance!"
and moved his precious daughter away,
to a big mansion deep in Richmond,
where he felt she could safely stay.
The war dragged on, and in the end
Richmond found itself under siege,
all in the city knew things were rough,
that there was no real hope of relief.
Day after day the big guns did roar on,
a crashing hail of fire and shell,
until one April day when the Union struck
and the town of Petersburg fell.
Unable to hold Richmond any longer
General Lee led his army to the west,
but Anders, arched into the fallen town,
hoping somehow to find his dearest.
But cannons and not the most precise of things,
and when he reached her father’s home,
he saw cinders scattered, shards of broken glass,
from the hallway ceiling’s grand old dome.
He found an old slave who explain it all,
that whoever had been inside no was dead,
a cannon-ball had ignited a great blaze,
and they died of the smoke in their beds.
Anders collapsed when he heard the news,
and roared out his agony and pain.
He railed at God,”I fought to free people!
And as thanks you go take her away?!”
Bereft of his son and his dearest love,
he walked away right then and there,
deserted the army and wandered off,
if they hanged him he did not care.
He aimlessly started heading for the west,
and as he walked along he wound find
the ‘truth’ of it all, so clear and so crisp,
took over his grief-battered mind.
God cared not for the trials of men,
nor the world that he had once made.
The beasts had it right, take what you can!
Destroy any who gets in the way.
The only rules that mattered were anarchy,
laws of the jungle, ever cold and cruel.
He was done pretending that there was a point,
manners and honor were lies for the fools…
CONTINUES IN PART II
Like Moses fleeing Egypt
and finding refuge in Midian
I was a stranger in a strange land.
Having fled Chicago in ‘84
I journeyed east to the
unpromised land of Detroit.
8 Mile Road.
“I'm a man
I'm a make a new plan”
Eminem makes and takes the rap
while party stores and strip joints
pockmark the urban warscape.
“Super Lotto” “Beer and Wine”
“Liquor“ “Money Orders”
“We accept Food stamps”
“Girls, Girls, Girls”
9 Mile Road.
Driving north through Ferndale where
the Exiles of Gentrification live,
I was reminded of the sixties
and drag racing
stoplight to stoplight.
3-2-1-green
zero to sixty in three gallons
muscleheads in their muscle cars
dual quads, hemi-heads
bored and stroked, raked and shackled
four on the floor, two in the backseat
Jim Beam in the glove box
and fuzzy dice on the mirror.
Up ahead the Reuther crossed
where once a 10 Mile Road proudly served.
Named for a firebrand labor guy,
the freeway heads east out of Roseville,
veers south through Warren
then north and south again.
Torn up and re-built before it opened,
the 20 year in the making
gerry-meandering freeway
flows west around the Zoo
with a zig through Huntington Woods
and a zag through Lathrup Village.
11 Mile Road and electric
eclectic, engaging Royal Oak;
home of the Star Dream sculpture
Farmer’s Market and all things hip—
Just ask ‘em.
11 and a half Mile Road.
Art deco portico with garish neon,
never washed windows and
a pair of 69.9 a gallon pumps,
“No Gas” “No Gas”
Vinsetta Garage,
a Woodward fixture since prohibition,
is voted Motown’s best car repair
year after year after year.
12 Mile Road.
The National Shrine of the Little Flower,
de-flowered in the 1930’s
by radio Priest Charles Coughlin
whose coast to coast broadcasts
railed against bankers and Jews
and that communist FDR.
Like a journalist trying to find the
Who? What? Where? and why?
Like a little boy peering through a keyhole
I found myself in a Motor City funk
looking more than tasting.
Ode to Holden Caulfield
I'm not even going to mention that term you scattered so ubiquitously throughout your memoir
It's pretentious to bring it up, like I'm trying to prove something
I mean, why would anyone who claims to be a so-called devotee fall into the trap of perpetuating the hypocrisy you so profusely railed against
Your fierce, but misplaced and naive attempts at integrity fall short everywhere … but in that field … and on the edge of that cliff
f
f
That is where you find yourself and your genuine purpose
You save the innocent from corruption
That is a noble cause
That is where,
despite your upbringing and your awkward attempts at acculturation,
you find an escape
That is where,
despite your prodigious flaws and your insolence to all that is holy,
you find redemption
OK. I'll say it – Everyone is a phony. But the real phonies are the ones who don't even know it
Like Stradlater in the back of Ed Banky's car
Forty years is a pretty long time to be out on a camping trip,
And when you’re living on a mountainside you can start to lose your grip.
So God called his people together to tell them about his plan,
“Folks I just wanted to say, I’m sending you to the Promised Land.”
He talked to them of a land that was flowing with milk and honey,
And told them that to own it all wouldn’t cost them any money.
God divided them up into tribes and then into armies and finally squads,
They thought that their vision of milk and honey must be different than God’s.
When they marched into the land they found people who were very big,
They thought that this land of giants would snap them like a twig.
The walls of the cities in this land were tall and they towered to the sky,
They thought that God must be mad at them so they went to ask him why.
“Lord, it’s going to be tough to attack walls made strong with mortar and bricks,
When we are all only tiny little people running around with pointy sticks.”
God railed at them for having so little faith and told them to attack,
They sort of looked at each other and then told God that he could have it back.
But the Lord told them all to hunker down and do their very best to be brave,
After all the time that Moses had invested God was certainly going to save.
And so they were delivered and the land became their home to keep,
They just never would have guessed that the rent would be so steep.
On the day that Lord Jesus was crucified
so were two thieves on His left and His right!
One stayed unrepentant right to the very end,
the other did receive new insight!
Now Gestas,
the one placed to His left,
most defiantly railed out loud-
"If Thou Be Christ Save Thyself And Us!",
this he said before a deriding crowd!
All the while the soldiers were mocking Christ,
and vinegar they wanted Him to drink!
Dysmas was watching and taking all this in,
this view gave him much to rethink!
"Dost Thou Not Fear GOD"
he asked Gestas,
for he was having some deep second thoughts!
Obviously his life passed before his very eyes,
knowing his predicament he could change not!
All the while,
Jesus, between these two
was putting His own death on hold.
Here there was one more soul to save
and this moment would forever be told!
"Thou Art In The Same Condemnation",
Dysmas said-
his new insight had made him say so.
Jesus all the while,
I believe He did smile,
for the sound of repentance
He did know!
"For We Receive The Due Reward Of Our Deeds"-
an epiphany Dysmas did receive.
Here was a man also hanging on a cross
who realized he did now believe!
Now Jesus,
smiling, turned His head to the right
when the next thing He heard was this-
Dysmas said what was true from his changed heart,
"This Man Has Done Nothing Amiss!"
The smile in the eyes of Jesus said it all,
when the next words from the thief to His right,
were....
"Lord, Remember Me When Thou Comest Into Thy Kingdom"
and it was about the sixth hour of that night!
The love of this Man named Jesus
with no regard for His own plight did rise,
when He looked Dysmas right into his eyes
and said-
"Today Shalt Thou Be With Me In Paradise!"
Such were the last moments in time recorded
of Jesus and these two thieves!
Whatever one's done....
even if wrong in life,
"Paradise" will be attained
if one believes!
(WTA-IV)
Celeb
No sooner does a Celeb opens his closed lips
Than eager pens poise to ooze ink from tips!
Such is the woe and pain for my brother Caleb
Who’s a reviled, demeaned and stalked Celeb!!
Whatever he utters is perceived as controversy
While ruthless stalking gives Caleb no privacy?!
With garrulous chaps, when reviled or railed,
Noblese oblige is a cross on which he’s nailed.
They pounce for taking breather showing face
Moving off, Camera Men begin a Chevy Chase-
Has he any peace? Will he not in public do sex-
Denied liberty by every keen eye’s sharp reflex?
His dress they scrutinise, and call it funky style
His taste they sample and give it a cold smile:
Vile ink daubs all publications with acerbic scorn;
Either: “archaic dress” or “contagious ****!”
Dress! The worst that meets a Celeb with vile
Wretch in rugs joins despicable rank and file
At pelting and at condemnation of our Lady Gaga
Who with either style of dress is labelled gaga!!
So they give a relentless chase of the racy tail
Dailies and some other loud and sneaky Mail
While Fashion flows as tresses of an eager Clown
Dancing a scary plague out of a diseased town!!
All that they do or what they take into account
Is always a deplorable and a deficient account:
A Celeb is a sweet Orange treated like a lemon
Or, Saint condemned like a wandering demon!
JM
05th December 2013
Gb2 's a radio show, it airs in Sydney...But there's more to know.'
Ben Fordam has been speaking out, on the covid dictates
Roundabout on where the science meets the facts
Whether it's all altruistic.? Or do some just act?
Also acts that block, that rile and shock; that lay down demands
That cost a lot..' Much production is de-railed; Aussie
Dreams now are ships with tattered sails, I hear that Ben is
Triple vaxed.. ) an early advocate, was his shout not so lax.'
Yet now he'll listen to anti-views ' To me that rings like
Dinkum news.' He' on facebook; and also twitter He's
A sounding board; and I'd reckon, a real heavy hitter.'
I haven't met the man as yet.' But I like the idea that
He's listening, and talking.' that's the part I really get.!
Go for it Ben,.' I will also here give mention to another
Australian heveyweight journalist Andrew Bolt a legend
In his time and this field, who has been questioning things
And even resigned, from the official endorsed media he
Was involved in, If I get time I will do him in a piece also '
Between grains of ancient fine sand
desert roses hidden from sight—
Colourful, exquisitely fanned.
They formed in darkness; pressure shaped.
Each perfect corolla agape
in floral whorl of sharp crescents;
fluorescent and phosphorescent.
Against injustices they railed—
within shed tears, I saw their plight.
In our moral duty we’ve failed.
Their troubled spirits to immerse
in laughter which abounds in verse.
Pococurante obedience.
Parting: an Aubade in a sense.
POET'S NOTE
Updated 25th Aug with the mosaic rhyme in the final two lines:
obedience & Aubade in a sense.
Recommended reading: Desert rose selenite/gypsum.
POETIC FORM: Saraband sonnet (I used the BASIC French rhyme scheme, extended).
The Saraband(e) derives its name from a fast erotic dance of the 1500s of Mexico and Spain which originated in the East. It is a stanzaic form imitating the dance steps and written in any number of septets. The various forms consist of tercets (axa—‘x’ being unrhymed) or triplets (aaa); the chief difference being in the rhyme schemes of the quatrains: English (axa bcbc), Spanish (aaa bcbc), Italian (axa bccb OR aaa bccb), and French (only axa bbcc). Each subsequent stanza repeats the rhyme scheme set in the first stanza, but in the longer Saraband poems it is not unusual to mix Spanish, Italian and/or French septets. Any metrical foot; any metrical line—some authorities insist on octal syllabic lines rendering it minor art (= 8 syllables per line) but this is not cut and dry.
Saraband Sonnet: It comprises 2 septets. Rhyme scheme: It depends on the form chosen. In the sonnet form, the rhyme schemes have been extended for the French variant (aZa in the tercets where 'z' rhymes), and Italian variant (aba cddc—thus, an addition ‘b’ in the tercets). Some examples can be found where the rhyme scheme for the second septet is progressive. It may be octasyllabic, iambic or trochaic tetrameter, or an extra foot (iambic pentameter) may be added to conform to the basic sonnet. The volta is at L8. I have experimented with the rhyme scheme: aza bbcc, dzd eeff.
Wrapped in mist,
A swirling fog of despair.
Railed hopelessness
Blankets me ,so familiar.
Tunneled days, dimmering
Down to night.
Why seek tomorrow, why not give up the fight?
This abyss , deepening each day,drawing me, claiming me,paving my way.
Oh for a sip of hope to quench my despairing soul ,a grip of truth, I can hold as so.
An invading light, dispelling my plight. For I am helpless to transform the night.
Does my creator know me as I am?
Has He made a way with a plan?
Or is that a fable spun by man?
How can I know?
How can I really know?
(Ask)
Caught in a cross of decision,
The paths they merge and veer,
In time stepping precision
The ways railed and clear.