Best Ribbed Poems
BUYING CONDOMS
I was desperate to buy me some condoms
On a Wednesday morning in June
My girlfriend had made me a promise
And we were meeting up that afternoon
For she'd noticed that in my frustration
My flat....which I kept fairly neat
Now had fingernail marks on the ceiling
And teethmarks on the toilet seat
So she promised an hour of pleasure
As pleasurable as it could be
She wanted fifty eight minutes
With the other two minutes for me
Now you folks are probably thinking
Splitting an hour like that was a crime
But in my mood of complete desperation
Two minutes seemed like a long time
So I stood in a queue in the chemist's
Hoping to be quite discrete
While the lady in front bought and paid for
Corn plasters to stick on her feet
And when my turn came I was gutted
I though 'this must be a joke'
For a gorgeous young girl came to serve me
I was wanting a grizzly old bloke
Embarrassed I picked up some aspirin
But her smile put me quickly at ease
She said as she took the box from me
'Would you like some condoms with these?'
'We have them in black, red or tartan
And ribbed ones to last a long time'
'Do you have a favourite flavour?
We have peppermint, strawberry or lime'
'Flavours?'........ I nervously stuttered
'Strawberry?.......'Is that what you said?'
'These things are to go on my winkie'
'Not between two slices of bread'
She chuckled away as she wrapped them
She'd decided on tartan and lime
And smiled as she gave me the packet
Then wished me a really good time
I dashed around home in a frenzy
The minutes were ticking away
My girlfriend was coming here shortly
For our sixty minutes of play
My clothes hit the floor in a heartbeat
I put on my condom with glee
And the first that she saw, as she opened the door
Was my tartan condom and me
She screamed as the door closed behind her
Her face like a deathly white mask
Then pointed and silently shuddered,
'What're you going to do with that flask?'
I chuckled 'It isn't a flask it's a condom'
Tartan and flavoured with lime'
With disgust she turned and departed
Walking out for the very last time
So my day of passion was stifled
I didn't make it as far as the bed
And as my condoms were lime flavour
I had them with corn flakes instead
You were always happy, always on the move
with a great zest for life and a heart full of love.
We loved you too and checked to see if you’d get mad
if we mimicked your habits, but you laughed instead.
When we were in school together, you often horsed around;
I ribbed you about eye trouble, eyes too close to the ground.
You lived life with gusto, knowing your time was short;
playing hard, working harder, often with a jolly retort.
Honest to a fault, you saw the positive side of things;
kept things in order, solid rock with no mood swings.
Cut off jeans, gray tee shirt, tinted glasses, baseball hat;
great big grin, teasing quip, a big hello, a friendly chat.
You were the best teacher any student ever had;
I could call on you to help as though you were my dad.
You drove my school bus on many a winter morn;
dressed in brown coveralls, bottom legs frayed and worn.
You were there in summer, helping coach baseball games;
at football with your camera or turning cartwheels in the gym.
You taught us how to care, how to study, how to play;
how to work on the computer and make the most of every day.
So determined to learn, spending hours at a throw;
self-teaching all the things a teacher needed to know.
You are the poem of my life, who you were tells the tale;
your poem will last forever, healing memories never pale.
You wrote the words of this poem, pages of my life tell the story;
you will read them back to me, when we meet again in glory.
Come dive the leaves in varnished shades
along a sway in rippling sets
from green and mauve to orange blades
come dive the leaves in varnished shades
in swirls of iridescent braids
while all soft twirls adorn wind’s nests
come dive the leaves in varnished shades
along a sway in rippling sets
As glassy sheen weaves through the trees
leaves bend in worship through hummed light
while turning cheeks flushed from the breeze
As glassy sheen weaves through the trees
and through ribbed stalks, stars dance in flight
that flicker through fine bower’s eaves
as glassy sheen weaves through the trees
they bend in worship to hummed light
©
ttriolet in iambic tetrameter
. …. ..
Each cycle brings its own spiritual energy
that makes my world dance with my own
sense of being...' to everything , there is
a season..'
Giorgio V.'s Beloved Poems Contest
by nette onclaud
Red ribbed tank top and panties.
Drawing and writing’s to earn commissary.
Rugged colored jumpsuits delivered daily through the bars.
A few women foaming at the mouth from drug withdrawals.
Smells of jailed prostitutes.
Some for murder or Robbing for loot.
Three toilet seats lined up, One shower curtain hung by one Rod.
Boxed alone ,dropped by family and friends,No squad
Kites passed by the male inmates through the line
Like clockwork,Under my tray Every-time
A few fights, Kept my body tight.
One eye stayed on guard all night.
Didn’t get any sleep absolutely no rest.
Until the night I earned each inmates respect
No outside letters.
No Love or a sight of light that life ahead is gonna get any better.
Held on to my dignity.
Versatility Adaptability.
Sworn to secrecy, she told me it had been a long time..
as we sat swinging in a hammock in the late day sun.
'What., are you sayin' you never did it?'
I thought what my mom would do if she caught me, and replied
'brought up different I guess'.
She leaned back into the netting, perhaps chewing on what I said..
half her face streaked in sunlight.
Suddenly aware of her leg touching mine. So warm...
My cotton red racing striped trunks from Sears, with a secret webbed key pocket..her faded OshKosh B'Gosh bibs she wore all summer except on Sundays.
(Sundays were saved for wearing that white & pink pleated Victorian get up she so detested; a gift from her Grandma bought from Macy's mail order catalog)
She ribbed me with her right elbow, as she jumped clear of our swing..
when her mom yelled 'time for supper Kat!' from the front porch.
But she turned back with that dangerous look I'd learned, leaned in close, and licked across all her teeth.
'Milk's colder and better ya know..
drunk straight from the carton.'
She ran inside letting the screen door go with a full slam..!
I thought about all the times we watched Jonny Quest at her house,
eatin' our Quisp or Kaboom with that milk..., and smiled.
I kept Kat's secret safe..,'til just now anyway.
dialogue
Velvet red roses stand
cheek to cheek
with daisy faces, ringed
in petal fringes,
sweetly scented
by creamy bubbles
of double jonquil popcorn blooms
beside a starburst
yellow chrysanthemum,
and long leaves
squeezed between.
Below, their stem-straws blur
in the ribbed glass jar,
looped with a satin orange bow
for your 97 years
we must farewell soon.
The loved ones are visiting,
bringing flowers, hugs, reminiscences
for you, last of your generation -
two brothers, two sisters.
I don't want to say, 'Goodbye'.
Let's have a few more days,
or weeks, or months,
just for keeping company,
like the flower bunch.
Our Lady of Paris
With your ribbed vaults
Flying buttress
And rose colored windows
The Huguenots
The Republicans
Couldn't destroy you
Victor and Quasimodo
Loved you
Napoleon restored you
Fire couldn't destroy you
Your spire fell
But your spirit
Your cross
Still shines
NOTRE DAME IN THE NEWS Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Kim Rodrigues
5/16/19
I heard the hollowness that this heart hithers ~
but to tame my tears, must I trust the twilight
that ripped me in tremors and toxic tales,
the titanium lightning that traded me thirsty,
like the thunder that cuts across the ribbed sky?
these tantalizing trembles of Thor have left me,
wilting in memories, where moon rests in malice
and the monsoon maiden murmurs in wrath,
unspoken within roars of wallflower leopards ~
who ink me, laced with tiger-lilies and lethal lies.
I ache for you, stretched across sun sighs,
a bereaved goddess of thunderstorms,
vows to sear within silver streaks of solace
stripped of silk and sacrifice,in rust-skin revolt,
seething a smile across slaughtered stars,
and be the Bronté light in brooding blindness,
that cunning cyans cease to code and conceal,
I am the feminine glitch of golden gloom ~
perfumed with mercuric petals that echo rain,
in the restless release of reverent renaissance...
They write in the language of perfume
flowery powdered words all layered
colours rising and lowering
in different light spectrums
as if the reader could discern
without wisened translator
their seductive dimensions
conveyed within
their small larger other worlds
notes upon notes, heady notes,
their subtle infractions
like music tinkling through
the brain bleeds, poets
and their otherworldly refrains,
naphthalene aired for old time’s sake
shaken out like clean crisp white sheets
billowing in the translucent lingerie breeze,
bedrocks shaken
the little flocks
small black murders flying
provocatively erratic stirred up
off the cobalt page
into an evocative
higher wider
elusive space
taken shockingly aback
where the heady blast
of Spirit of Hartshorn
shakes buried lover’s awake
to walk barefoot and naked
blindly in love
touching each other
through the long wet days
sugar-coated addictions
tall poppies crimson pimpernels
wading nubile through blades
of silver moon grass
licking their ankles and heels
raising their prim outskirts,
forbidden territories
within the rising mist,
the ever present,
like a breeze,
kisses their ripe
cherry orchards
unending hunger
satiated, all is manna
as they meander
through daze of
dusky dawn valleys
those garden of eden thighs,
the transparent,
slithering like hands
caressing treasure trunks
ivy leaves for plucking
further up above
the high waists
to touch what
wastes away, unheard,
what beats there,
where the crown sits
like some holy being
under its ribbed cage
red ripe like a seeded apple,
that place, just there, beating
singing some kind of hymn,
like a regulated anthem,
they're way up into their feels
like some devilish chase
like heaven's come
calling them away
They write in the language of perfume
flowery powdered words all layered
colours rising and lowering
in different light spectrums
as if the reader could discern
without wisened translator
their seductive dimensions
some things are better
left unsaid
like this Magdalene,
K.I.S.S.
Candide Diderot. ‘24
Arm to arm, sinews clutch
One another, makes friend and crutch;
One crimson call, which guidance brought
The feeble, stern: the working lot
To stand much greater, taller, strong
Filled with hope, in lines long,
That stretch from pain, from glum, from slum
To the halls of white where nations clump
In the deadest form of gathered hoards
Of finance and shares, secluded boards
Who array the work, who shackle in loans
Whose empty plots tempt the sleeping droves
In tent and rag, in cough and drag,
From hand to mouth, to work and back.
Yet in contempt that line is struck,
Still the routine is mute, no more this work
That builds the villa, never the mason’s,
Unthanked which blooms the fields all season,
The folks split off by plastic partition
Giving wealth immense, yet maimed cognition
Had kept whom bound to desk and ground
Their eyes have met and their fists now pound
Against steel ribbed doors, but why such fear
Thee lords of land in prim kept highest tiers?
Arisen so, on the claim of wealth,
At the cost of Earth, of hearth and health;
How much more flight, behind guarded holds,
Behind sentries and dictates so cold
Even in scorch of war, where poor kills poor;
So the wealth of nations in tons can pour
Onto odd few hands, to hold all us chained
To the will of profit, for profit’s sake.
But in queues, we’ve come, tools shucked
Your batons brooked, your shots shrugged
By the calloused bossom, by tried spine,
That props all of it up, runs it all in time.
And without us many, your wealth is rust,
Without our trust it’s all a fleeting gust
Of paper slips and accords of force
And we see dawn, from these dues divorced.
And the sun to snatch, the sickle drives,
And the barricades the hammer tries,
While the quill writes, not fearing death,
A push for renewal, for a gasp of breath.
It was like a fallen phoenix
Fired with rust and memories,
The body was open to the rooks,
Its ribbed, bare chassis, opened arms,
Unsure whether to defend or
Or make love to the falling sky
The radiator, home to busy insects,
Tiny carnivores, stood in sentinel,
A figurehead before the rotten mast;
For where had once been pedals
Now gaped rusty sink holes,
Observers to the oily brew below
Sans wheels to show; wheels once
Rolled, on busy metalled roads,
Where policemen, eagle-eyed
Checked for wily gangsters, riding
On the leather seats inside: now
Rat food gone to ratty- hell, amid
The scrub and surrounds, tilted
Viking coffin, waiting for heat and
Cleansing, cracking-fire, opening
Doors to buckled, automotive rest
Broken glass world
pitted with black flags
madmen and misfits.
Where is our god in all this fantastic muck?
Atop an out of touch mountain top...
Salving wounds of savant sons?
Far below all the rest, flayed and salted.
mostly forgotten
Our collective-depressive monkey minds fleeing to
origami boats.
Drifting upon shark-finned ponds.
Flaming arrows line the shores.
Ribbed strays and one-legged orphans
turning tricks for milk and crumbs
and the rustic prosthetic called
love.
We dragged the slopes to our feet.
On the summit, we burnt our clothes
for wood and there shuffled our feet
in the hush of the falling snow.
We had come out of the scuffed grass.
With one look back in unbelief
exhuming the long trek
the silent keen
puffing through blubbery fingers.
We pulled the hoofed trail through
the trapdoor of our unchained links
foisting for new heights.
Beyond the Appalachian Mountains
the hanging fern on pine dripped snow
on moles burrowing in gashed hollows.
We paused. In that doubtful moment
we rued the climb, succumbing to the assault
upon this stilled millennia’s eerie silence.
All that time the swivelling blizzards raged
shifting soil, eroding avalanches.
Below, burgeoning customs
unmaned the silent dignity of bisons.
All bore testimony to a familiar preparation.
And then, suddenly before our eyes
the solemn ground rose with the breeze
the spangled map changing to the quick:
Chicago Pittsburgh Kansas City
wild barnyards dry-coughing, pop-corning garages
horrent timber ribbed the coasting steamboats
the linoleum walls
the mild Indian piqued he was
by the mahogany cubism of our speech.
We wondered if coming so far
only mattered, we would be content
to build a fire, here and now
and unpack our horses.
We saw little need to go on.
One night the summit might open
up and swallow us all or old age
would come upon us like a lonely neighbour
on a pretext to the door.
© T.Wignesan 1964
London, U.K.
[from the collection: tell them i’m gone, 1983; published in Fire Readings (A Collection of Contemporary Writing from the Shakespeare & Company Fire Benefit Readings). Paris-Boston: Frank Books, 1991, pp. 36-37.]
Ribbed strands of wheat across the plain
bend at the knees, to drink the rain
in windfalls
Brown from harvest, drought and blight,
are cornstalks spinning through the night
like windmills
The dry stalks slant and dangle leaves
and rattle music through the trees
in windstorms
__________________________________________
Written for Nette's Contest: Fire, Earth, Wind
By Carrie Richards 11/20/14
Know that you can't bend
the date palm down on knees
and crouching meekness like
supliant pines bent low by
brazen hands and bronze
wires wound on
kiln-glazed
vase.
Know it will
with straight trunk,
task your patience, will
and power, ere it lays
down on the sun-scorched
sands its straight-ribbed,
lethal-bladed leaves.
Know for sure,
there's grace and beauty
in a bonsai-ed tree
to quench your thirsting
heart. Alas! for dates,
for always, you will scale
the heights to harvest
sweetness hungered for,
or be just there content
with dust-caked windfall
strewn on desert dunes.