Best Serried Poems
A warring god of wind storms and lightening,
Rudra, rough looking, well built, braided hair
Golden in color, of firm limbs widening
With streaks of lightening and fearful blares
Making nervous with fear all the beings.
But caters medicines to the world with care
The wind God is the breath bringer to all
Perfumes, caresses and senses at his call.
Rudra sired his wife Deeti with a son
Deeti vowed to keep him in her womb for more years
Letting the child be more and more brawny one.
Indra, the chief deity of heaven, out of fear,
Entered her womb and chopped him with passion
But pieces so strong reformed into numbers.
They were named as Maruts, varied Gods of wind
Who lash the world from end to end with great dins.
They are progeny of Rudra, the bulls of heaven,
Radiant in serried rank free from spots and stains
Who drench the earth with heavy rains uneven.
No one know from where they take shape and rain
Spreading forth darkness during the day time even.
Bring health and wealth in noisy way, but veterans.
*"The winds of God’s grace are always blowing
It is left to us how to set the sails flowing."
+++
*Rudra, Maruts and Deeti are characters in Hindu Mythology*
* Inspired by a quote
December 21, 2014
Third Place win
Form: Ottava Rima - Rhyme Scheme abababcc, dededeff, ghghghii
Sources : Wikipedia - hinduwebsites
Categories:
serried, god, mythology, wind,
Form:
Ottava rima
Hey mommy I am here to play
Daddy and brother are on the way
To the underworld where I sent them
By gutting tummies and dissecting
Innards go to outwards on the floor
Faces you can’t recognize anymore
Low and behold they still breathe
So I drowned them in the kitchen sink
Mommy come here, don’t run mommy
Fine I will chase you if you wish
But now when I get you — Cheshire grin
I’m going to take your life to the grave
Your going to wish you had stayed
Sparks fly on concrete from my blade
Mommy — I call through the halls
Mommy — my newest leather doll
Mommy! I call through the halls
Mommy, my newest leather doll
Eyes once vibrant and full of life
Frozen in time within glass like ice
Taxidermist sand fills your rinds
Don’t struggle scream or fight
Or you will feel a slice from my knife
Mommy your lips quiver and shiver
Bound to the cold ossuary of mischief
Where I been killing kids that went ‘missing’
You raised the perfect little girl all along
Perfect at whistling a thanatopsis song
Memento Mori-bund and invictus
For I am the necromantic enchantment
Tragedy fused elegy viral malediction
Feel the sweet steel mommy, not fiction
First cut was to invoke submission
Writhe and twist against her sentence
Stand still mommy here comes number two
Mama's little chef, stirring a stew of soullessness
the final cut, a symphony of silences, as carmine trickles
a crimson recipe, where every piece is digested
and in the cannibalistic dance, I devour your essence
Glazed icons of madness, Mommy my macabre doll
stitched and serried in the butcher's gallery of my mind
where souls are naugahyde-wrapped, my taxidermied trophies
of terror, a cabinet of horrors, forever chilled in time
In mother's dark hymn, I'm the soprano of sin
warbling sweet nothings of blood and bone
as Daddy and brother join the hellish song
their voices silenced by my tender touch
mashed and drowned, the reapers brush
Categories:
serried, character, child, conflict, dark,
Form:
Free verse
Broken dreams, and smiles and flowers
Grow apace throughout our fervid hours
The times of wreaths and solemn nods
The dearth; some worth and serried sods.
The gathered few or many more
The muted laughs, cross creaking floors
The everyday, it pervades; this all
It’s a gamut run; Christmas to fall
We often can’t; yet sometimes will
Observe our promise to hold our wills!
Forgive our sins we fall so short
Send angels Lord for we are bought.
With blood and Love, not fully of this earth
The sun moon, stars do bow, their worth.
©Joe Maverick 13-11-2022
Categories:
serried, christian,
Form:
Rhyme
The Dream of a Rill
Up in the highlands a leafy green dell
where day dreamers dream in the quiet still
blissfully dreaming beneath nature’s spell.
Where clusters of daisies cover the hill
and soft sighing zephyrs sway the blue bell
slow dancing in time by a bubbling rill
The rill herself is a wandering stream
And she, like the dreamers, has her own dream
She’ll leave the green dell, and finally flow
beneath the old bridge where children do wade
bypass the tall pines in long serried row
all standing up straight, like scouts on parade
Then winding through banks where the bulrushes grow
mid marsh marigolds that bloom in the shade
She’ll meet with her fate, a strong river free
And join its bold rush to greet the wide sea.
Categories:
serried, nature,
Form:
Ottava rima
...is what we see
Emotions are the weather of the mind
We live between peaks and troughs
The former breeds hubris with downfall built in
The latter deals with death,darkness and despair
Our mood colours our world,clouding our judgment
Darkening our souls and blocking the road to reason
We can be in the sunny uplands where lush grass
Fattens the cattle,only to be plunged into a terrible terrain
Hinting at the hinterland of the horrors of hell
Dark brooding pools,indicative of a netherworld
Uninviting yet strangely alluring
An indistinct Ogham script scrawled
In rough grey granite,etched by infernal demons
Struggling to make their meaning clear
An incomplete jigsaw puzzle of disconnected tarns
Where gaps show,pieces having gone astray
Hills merge in sympathy,
Nestling together out of fear
Dormant dinosaurs of mountains threaten
To throw off their chains of stone
A patchwork quilt of moss and heather
Creates a crude uniform to clothe the martial rocks
Trees,standing tall and tight, serried ranks of sentries
To keep the secrets of their territory hidden
The gloom of lowering clouds bleeds the countryside of its freshness and vibrancy
While gushing torrents rip down gashes gouged
Out of the wounds of the mountains
Echoing streams of pain.
And then the light returns,the nightmare ends
Though the soul will shiver long after the memory fades
The awful experience embedded, deep and haunting within.
Categories:
serried, dark, fear, gothic, horror,
Form:
Free verse
A restless night, another hum-drum day,
Resolve to take a pleasurable walk;
I make my way towards St Mary’s church.
Across the street, a sixteenth century home –
Maltravers Manor, testament to time.
I’m heading for the ancient Hollow Way
Where towering beeches shade the wagon route.
“The Hatchet” standing at the crossroads, empty !
Bereft ! No pints are pulled here any more.
Along the High Street, past the Corner Cottage
Perambulating slowly now I pass
Refurbished “Childrey Stores” and Chapel House,
The Primitive Methodists’ former home.
And next, the Childrey pond comes into view --
It’s guarded by a dozen angry geese
And to the right the Old Post Office stands –
No stamps or letters, now a family home.
Beside the bus-stop here’s the “village” hall
In red brick builded by Victorian hands :
The Working Mens Club And Reading Room
Where farming labourers were wont to meet.
Next a modern non-conformist chapel
On the site of earlier Methodist Hall.
Then looking West a high brick wall contains
A cedar, vintage, sixteen forty six,
As high above a noisy rookery sways.
We now fork right by Rampanes Manor House.
Set in the wall, a dedication plaque
Records the founding of the Old Schoolroom,
Of seventeen thirty two, for local boys,
Established by the knight George Fettiplace.
Along Church Row we pass Cantorist House,
Originally the Chantry House for priest,
Three almsmen, to assist in singing mass
For the soul of Sir Edmund of Childrey.
Enter St Mary’s by the southern door,
Then down the aisle, I’m heading for the chancel
Where ancient brass recalls five hundred years
Of folk who lived and died in Cilla’s Rill.
I’ll leave as campanologists arrive
To ring the changes loud across the land.
Through the serried ranks of slate and marble,
I weave a path towards a wooden bench,
And here I’ll rest, below the old Scots pine,
To watch the setting sun across the fields.
Categories:
serried, history, journey, travel,
Form:
Iambic Pentameter
Fields of France are filled with blood-red poppies
Where also bloom the lily-white crosses:
Each buried youth a seed, now bursting forth
Into a stark white cruciform flower:
Row upon row, rank after serried rank,
A spiky grid overlying acre
After acre in silent panoply,
Swan-mute as stillborns, yet shrieking their pain.
A century has failed to lay their griefs.
But such gardens aren’t anywise unique.
On every continent, in every age,
The fields are sown: and so among the trees
And forests, steppes and prairies, cities
And wastelands, the precious seed is planted,
The harvest bitter in its barrenness.
Instead of poppies, palms or rank lianes,
Brush or tundra, timber, sedge or seaweed
Grow where crosses never got to flower:
Even those gaunt reminders are missing
To give their witness to the seed thus sown,
The sacrifice and sacred blood there spent.
And so it goes: so it’s been since people
First appeared. And will go on: tomorrow
And the day after, still the sowing will
Continue. Perhaps someday our wisdom
And compassion may grow enough to wean
Us of this savage, mindless husbandry:
Today, it seems a thousand years away.
Categories:
serried, grave, loss, memorial day,
Form:
Elegy
Beads of cold sweat surfaced on my skin
Here and there coalescing in tiny streams
Throes of passions; the source of human sin
Regrets the envy of my thought, but not it seems.
Now comes the low murmur of the lazy surf
Along the marrow the passage, the acquainted place
This illegitimate struggle, this timeless sleepy curse
Disguises the throes of this serried power, I pant in disgrace
Surrendering to this pulsing watchful eye
As the lean, dark-eyed man wipes his fingers wet
I am the black bird, infatuated,as the clouds go by
In the taunting-pate coughs, I’m beset.
Constrained by this liquid fire, my body set aflame
Enchanting are my withdrawing moans, in vain
While yet I play this torrid mocking game
Believing the black bird will relieve my pain.
Categories:
serried, abuse, addiction, cancer, conflict,
Form:
Rhyme
In brooding dusk they gather from the East
Arrive in twos and threes upon the trees.
Autumn beeches, now devoid of leaves,
Begin to darken as the branches heave
And teem with animated rooks.
And jackdaws too, all jockeying for space,
Amid this vibrant, raucous, corvid mass,
Jostling, shifting, squabbling for pride of place,
To raise their voices, demand attention
Speaking freely in this parliament.
When sunset beckons they slip the air
In charcoal squadrons to the field below
Where, in serried ranks along each furrow,
They bow and scrape in search of meagre fare
For supper and the long dark night.
The leader signals, adjourns the meeting –
Vast clouds arise, a thousand wings beating,
Driven as a single being, Westward
To their high swaying roost – murmur greeting,
Huddle together against the cold.
Categories:
serried, bird, nature, night,
Form:
Verse
I fly wide-eyed into the glinting night,
Along valleys with man-made stars aglow.
Thrills and sorrows on both sides line my flight,
Neon rivers flow restless down below.
Grandiose dreams from serried rooftops crow,
Million-watt schemes fuel every lofty light.
'Neath a sky scraped by monoliths of gold,
I fly wide-eyed into the glinting night.
Avenues wind like serpents of delight,
Sate designed desires that with lucre grow.
Fresh-minted wonders glut to gild each sight,
Along valleys with man-made stars aglow.
Manic hustle hijacks the threadbare soul,
Calls the mind daily to the ring to fight,
Ten baubles purchased for each scruple sold,
Thrills and sorrows on both sides line my flight.
Gray ghettos sprawl to host the loser’s plight,
In potholed lives the city takes a toll,
Broken windows exhale long peals of fright,
Neon rivers flow restless down below.
Yet the sidewalks gleam for all to behold,
The fittest triumph above wrong or right.
Where virtues are haloed, vices extolled,
And breathless energy scales a new height,
I fly wide-eyed.
Categories:
serried, city, culture, desire, dream,
Form:
Rondeau Redouble
I loved that day which blest its night
With antediluvian might,
Of ours flourishing souls in joy
That some divine being must deploy.
It was a lithe nocturnal wood,
‘Midst whose darkening core there stood
A tiny cottage, ancient as the Moon.
Whence we then heard the leaves to croon.
Lagoon! a lustrous lagoon saw we!
Beside the trees, serried in glee,
And our small home– its lovely limit
Never saw this oneness split.
‘Twas morning then, but now the murk
Embraced two lovely hearts, and hark !
The crickets, ever hidden did hurl
Their doleful screech from many a knurl.
Above a couple at peace in a nest
Did murmur private words , as if lest
None could overhear their sound,
None could intrude their world from ‘round.
Then thou closer, closer wert,
I dwelt, exulted, on thy sinless heart.
And our gay mutters were no louder
Than theirs who loved the voice of amour.
A luscious smile as thou didst pour
On night’s abundant beauty store,
Perhaps He lavished for lovers’ sake
Another world that we could make.
Fake! ‘Twas fake for it wouldn’t last,
As that unseen joy glided fast
Towards a sunny dullness again;
No mystic love there did we regain !
Categories:
serried, beauty,
Form:
Verse
Before us, the harbor unfurls its tapestry of lights,
Serried jewels winking on numberless nights.
Onshore, they’re jostled in a million-starred galaxy,
Into the harbor they spill in a gleaming frenzy.
Neon tassels they are, shimmying on dark water,
Startled by passing ships, they break and scatter.
High above, the sky glitters with a crowded glory,
Affords the earthbound lights no lofty sanctuary.
Of finding welcome the itinerant lights despair,
In vain they have searched for a peaceful lair.
Then, out of the night, a twinkle starts to beckon
With infinite gladness, like a love-filled beacon.
Lured are the lights to where this promise lies,
Hurrying in flight, till they reach your blessed eyes.
In those limpid pools they arrive and congregate,
Join the resident sparkle, a new luster they radiate.
I know well their rapture, a joy so mighty,
For in your eyes, I too have found luminous beauty.
Categories:
serried, beauty, for her, imagination,
Form:
Couplet
i'm sadly sick of the sweet refrain
Which reminds me of my comrades slain.
Each night in my sleep I dream the dream
The Last Post 's doleful requiem. .
We all stand in serried rank and file,
Soldiers in uniform without smile.
The bedecked carriage lowers slowly,
Rifles raised , a resounding volley.
Bugles raised to lips to the fallen toast,
Buglers draw out their tune - The Last Post.
I wonder when I give up my ghost
will I be blest to hear - The Last Post ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Pz5KsyfN0
~15 Jun 2016~
Categories:
serried, death, war,
Form:
Couplet
Days of sun and azure skies
Blissful hours out on the fell.
Boundless joy, heading high
As nature casts her magic spell.
Oh such beauty there I saw,
Mighty fells, serried peaks.
How I want for nothing more,
My soul, it heard the mountains speak.
Atop the fell, free as a bird
The world now far below my feet.
Filled with awe, my spirit stirred
Was ever there a land so sweet.
Categories:
serried, mountains, nature,
Form:
Rhyme
Before the drought
I loved this land
From North to South
And every sand
The mountains high
The serried trees
The azure sky
And fragrant breeze
Poincianna flame
Lime Kiln burning
The children's game
Maypole turning
And morning sport
Sweet pots boiling
Ships in the port
Fish net drawing
I love canoes beached
On littered sand
The sermons preached
By mother's hand
The flowers do fade
And grass dries now
So there's no shade
From guango bough
But the rains again
Will swell the breast
And milk staunch pain
And hope finds rest
I wait for the kiss
Of morning come
Sweet tongue of mist
Love is our sum.
Categories:
serried, seasons, uplifting, morning,
Form:
Verse