Best Shill Poems
freedom lies with a shattered grace
stumbling toward atomic mythology
where answers have their sins washed
brilliantly bright as suns dyeing skin off-
colors of rumors circulating planets
of the universe pulled headlong into a night
-mare riding tattooed and complaining
about recollections of severed ghosts
(hiding in a ball of fear minds cry)
out of season the earth radiates melting
enraged stupidity the penultimate prize
(summer sunday christmas chimes)
on the edge of sleep falling awake...
ring the festival of blood into session
the birth-fangs grapple with truth no longer will
recessions bring harvests the moon is full
...and the eye is a clogged vessel full of truth
(in relative position the evening twists elaborate
dances like guitars bending the last strings...)
a painting of a brain chips and disintegrates
like words of a schizophrenic seeking the last
wisdom hidden in the bottom of a noise
only tasted...with the throat closing vision narrows...
the fading archetype is the last opiate of inspiration
the last leader is a shill of the lord of matter dissipating
(two raindrops collide) the core of her heart is hot
like earth it is revised toward oblivion...
...follow it it is
...night brighter than calm
...lipids sinking into servitude
...no one will digest this but all
choking dry paranoia on the fringe of town
(a different verb writes in the sky a new eternity)
...we witness the madness of a faceless doctor
scratching scripts illegible to the naked lie...
conscripted as a rat before a snake fighting its shadow
diving into the blind dream we call created angels
to save our skin from weeping generations of blood...
My personal physician
says I’m the picture of perfect health
Then he hands me the pharmaceutic scripts
Dr. Miyagi
makes me wonder sometimes,
if he’s a paid health insurance company shill
Seeing how there’s fifty bottles of medicine
on my monthly HMO bill
Metformin
Deseryl
Glyburide
Lisinopril
Every day the bottles say,
I gotta take fifty pills
But the side effects will give you deadly cold chills
Nausea,
diarrhea
Constipation,
insomnia
Me keeping well
is profitable to somebody I can tell
Just pop open the caps,
and watch your thoughts congeal
Bactrim
Gabapentin
Amneal
Indomethacin
Taking fifty pills is waking zombie time
My staying well feels like being sentenced
to a life imprisonment crime
Always feeling sick just to stay healthy,
going to sleep is the only time I feel good
So, I bequeath this advice in my will:
if you wanna die painfully slow, then take fifty pills
You're the fierce flame that burns in my heart,
to keep me going, know that I (was) am
the harmony that loved you from the start.
I weep and mourn for the warm human lamb;
tremble from the deep fearful hollow dam.
None listen to my mournful lullaby.
You laid a breath kiss, died a lover's sigh
under heaven's steps in the endless night.
Shill I taunt the gossamer wings and die?
For I yearn your nearness, your touch, the sky.
12/31/2019
A-B-A-B-B-C-C-D-C-D
A change is coming here!
It will be announced when.
As of this moment, dear!
It's a chance for you to stop
being frightened by all the
leftist pens!
So make space, come out of
your closets, I implore you.
Plenty of blood was lost for you,
years ago.
So you would be free to express
yourself.
By a Creator who created and
loves you.
There is space for all sides.
Who listen and who love.
But you do nothing by hiding
your truth.
Don't be part of a dark sky,
Where there is no sun!
Do not soupmail me with
answers that lively spark.
Please stop hiding here in
your closet, Conservative,
Let go your idealogical sparks!
True, most poets favor the
leftist ideal.
Nothing wrong with that, but
time to hear both sides, for once
and for real.
No Conservative should be
shaking in their boots.
Let it all hang out, have a real hoot!
Stop cowtowing to liberalism!
Your heart is not in it, makes for a
patriotic soul schism.
Stand up openly in Open post for the
babies that will be killed.
Otherwise, you are nothing but a
Conservative shill.
We can all be friends, whether Left
or Right.
It has always been so in America.
Time to take on deadly forces of
Big Tech and fight!
Both sides will lose, if all our freedom
is gone.
All you will hear is goose steps and
propaganda's malicious song.
Stop being a chicken, saying
you will write of nothing political.
We have the power of the pen....
Its very real and hardly mythical.
Perhaps it's because we never lived
in a big war on our land?
I know many who look down
on a war...
Don't you get it?
Hitler or his cruel henchman
would now rule many lands!
Hitler demanded obedience
from all.
Do not let it become today's
clarion call.
We need not all be thinking like
twins.
If you keep your pen quiet,
nobody wins!
Comments to a poem like this
may be absent or few.
But I care for liberty?
What about you?
3/20/2021
~2~
Jefferson Randolph 'Soapy' Smith was the wiliest scoundrel in the west!
He was invited to leave numerous towns since he wasn't a welcome guest!
He swindled gullible dudes throughout the west endin' up in Colorado,
Where he earned the sobriquet 'Soapy' and where he found his El Dorado!
He'd set up a soap display on a Denver street and invite folks to gather 'round.
His spiel began: "Buy a bar for a dollar and inside money may be found!"
The rush was on and suckers fought to buy bars of soap, gamblin' on a win!
Cops were even called to the scene to maintain order and to quell the din!
Folks tore at wrappers and one feller hollered, "I got a hundred dollar bill!"
Little did the unsuspectin' boobs know that it was 'Soapy's' planted shill!
Dupes lost their dough and with a five-cent bar of soap they were stuck,
He pulled the scam time and again and that's how "Soapy's' name was struck!
'Soapy' pulled up stakes in Denver and migrated to other towns out west.
He was successful with the soap scam and was adept at hidin' aces in his vest!
He made his way to Creede where he established the Orleans Gamblers Saloon.
There, 'Soapy' was involved in nefarious affairs and left town none too soon!
The gold rush was on in the Yukon and he pined to go there ere it was too late.
He arrived in Skagway and later on in Juneau where he was to meet his fate.
'Soapy' met his end in a gunfight and his final words were, "My God, don't shoot!"
Thus ends the ballad of 'Soapy' Smith, that swindlin', cheatin', rotten galoot!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
My muse blew a fuse
Without excuse fealty did recuse
In jilting fashion without compassion
Tendered passion did stingily ration
Lofty discourse from pen did divorce
With no remorse absconded every resource
My inspiration turned to perspiration
Hopeless itinerant somewhat penitent
The bartered lexicon I did recon
A vagrant shill seeking to rill
The run-off spill pages to fill
A pilfered title would move engine from idle
An embezzled theme would ideas stream
A trite rhyme would be sublime
A pawned metaphor to open the door
A brokered simile; a borrowed metonymy
Would re-collect the literary dialect
Now shorn from mind so forlorn
He plied the Mississippi River on the paddle wheeler 'Dandy Dame'.
Gamblin' was his profession and three-card monte was his game.
He became very creative at palmin' that elusive ace of spades.
Such dexterity and sleight of hand he had practiced for decades!
He embarked in Saint Louis for a cruise to the town of New Orleans.
On his arm hung one of his gaudily dressed bordello 'queens'!
He wore diamond rings on each finger and impeccably tailored suits,
A homburg hat, pearl studs, gold-tipped cane and alligator boots!
He toted a concealed derringer just in the event there was trouble,
And he took a table near the door so he could lam on the double!
He ordered Jack Daniels bourbon for the dudes he was soon to con,
And sized up the naive and hapless victims who dared to take him on!
The gambler let others win a hand or so to make them feel at ease.
His shill closely watched as the gambler, his moment was to seize!
His winnin's piled up as bettors tried to locate the shiftin' ace.
Losers dropped out of the game and other suckers took their place!
One astute monte player saw the scam and called the gambler's hand.
He drew his forty-fours, chairs toppled and folks fled to beat the band!
The gambler drew his rod but he met his God, blood oozin' on the floor!
His sobbin' 'queen' clasped him to her breast to know his love no more!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
Placed No. 2 in Paula Swanson's "Pick A Card, Any Card" Contest - Jun 2011
Wur in RE an the nuns are gien
oot sweeties, fur getting the kweschins right.
Three oota three, then she’s askin mae who Jesus’ mither is.
‘Ah doan’t know sista,’ ah tell hur.
She isnae happy an tells mae tae hink aboot it. So ah dae
an ah wurk oot Jesus wis god. It wis a trick kweschin,
‘he didnae hiv ah mither.’ Ma
sweet stoats aff the side ae ma heid.
She’s spittin in ma coupon fur a name, an
diggin hur digits in ma neck.
‘Ah doan’t know who Jesus’ friggin mither wis!’
Miraculously ah float tae the front ae the cless. Ma haun’s oot,
bit ah doan’t hink shill hit mae wae that big stick. Thwack!
Ah look doon it the bloody gash through ma puddlin
eyes, ‘yoo’ve broke ma haun’ ah croak,
then turn roon an boak.
Families sacrifice savings, every petty frill
Praying a lucrative grade to mill
Seeking a bartered shill
Greedy coffers to fill
Hopes and dreams to rill
Nuggets of fine gold to spill
On Porcupine creek's nettled till
Hearty crew of six sated to drill
Though sorely lacking experience. skill
Shoddy equipment of patchwork steel
Surrendering to elements with whimper, squeal
Black sand, gritty rocks pass through grill
Garnering thin wispy flakes; will not pay the bill
Note: A diatribe on the Discovery TV show Gold Rush
Mere bits these bullets, so cold and gray
poison piercing's which the jaded heart conceals,
in the heady light of day good men reel
recalling these morbid missiles played.
Blood which hotly runs leads weaklings astray
bringing uncalled for blackness to congeal
oft in coddled, crimson, rivers most surreal
on pathways and walls, red ricochets.
Call back those loosed demons, wants, desires ...
become a brighter bit of coal transformed
a flaming diamond full of holy light,
'fore the bullets tear and youth expires,
praise not the bigot, brash and uninformed.
Be the truth which knows no ending, defy ...
for foul anger, hatred, violence, all underlie,
the crumpled wall, the tattered form, the child's sigh,
all poison piercing's guns and bullets buy.
Play not the shill for evil men who lie.
Let youth and fire... form facets.. for the right
and strengthen all that's growing in the light.
Caudate Sonnet
abba abba cdecde efffgg
volta line 9
*Inspired by "Scared Bullet" by The Scribe (Marlon Linton)
A crimson dragon-
fly, Why! never seen one of
those before, here; - my
Beach, these febriled oh-
pressive days, re-bleaching to
a 14Mil-Shill
only "Ernst & Friends"
only know; so I meande
this other, other
tres Yoga place, Ma-
ma & young Swan - Proustian? -
decide to shore, so
smooth, they, as if guide,
tethered below, two Windfanned-
down SnowFeathers, as
from a chapeau, no!
degage` "Dolly Varden"
offered-over for
simple frags of the
bread at hand, some too in a
tossing-up for the
diminutive red-
bill Moorehen in the pecking
water, as hungry
mosqa do their thing
euchre - chancing - flitting a
pluck voracity
against their Lives, this
yet another sad tingle...
and in a new bluff
I fauxstrut from the
Love we breathed... this, another
SatHerday-Sunday.
I wanted the moon to fill up the night
like a presence we couldn’t ignore,
to shine bright as day in the dark quiet air
like’s been told in stories of yore.
I wanted the harvest moon rising
poetically over a hill.
But, I got a sliver of somebody’s nail
in a vast night-darkened shill.
Alas, tis the day and the tale needs a tell
there’s something to say & I should
though the moonlight last night was not a bit right,
but, I can’t speak a lie if I would.
So, I’ll tell of the dark and the failing moon too;
I’ll focus on darkness instead of the blue,
and woodland spirits will dance a sweet jig
on the single white shaft of dew.
by Annette Gagliardi
Jilting muse with availing inspiration did wend
Barren reservoir doth futility portend
A bristling quill with no well to descend
No gratuitous frills on vapid contours suspend
Seeking with brokered shill to amend
Imploring vagabond seeking itinerant dividend
Wading through flooded channels, silty grains to append
From literary vault embezzled title apprehend
In voluminous discourse a simple aphorism distend
In ancient annals a trite fable from corroded parchments
rend
From Medieval chronicles a homily with which to contend
Out of Victorian poet's graded folio a euphemism vend
From contemporary laureates' silken threads, new yarn
spin
distend- to stretch out, to inflate
Pile drivers have replaced gandy dancers
And Mayflower trucks the circus, open-cage parades
Horse drawn down Main Street U.S.A.,
But overnight canvas bosses still command
Roust abouts to raise big top sails,
Over decks of prairie dogs and tumbleweeds.
There are gaudily painted juggernaut ride machines.
Smells of grease, heated white from oozing knuckle joints,
Calliopian music and rounds of happy screams.
A carney operator offers two a Scrambler car,
Teases riders with the tip of his bitten off cigar
A flick on your nose and ash that crashes to the circus grounds.
Jukebox music by Wurlitzer gets tinny with distance
On both sides of musty tented, kid show exhibitions
Mushrooming quiet translucent, sideshow shadow lands.
One sign says:
A WOMAN’S LIVING HEAD!
And inside there is a severed head up on a tabletop.
She answers questions easily, smiles and winks.
A kid shill says she’s doubled up
Inside a box affixed with mirrors.
Our cheeks redden more for her
Than the fact that we are led astray ourselves.
We leave to let more unenlightened in.
That day, I left forever past free throws
To win erstwhile girlfriends
By shooting hoops too narrow to be made. (4/4/21)
The old codger hobbling upon his cane Rich in years, a quick impression, on the accessory The shell game played, by the young shill, Asking for the time, sticking to the plan Distracting the feeble old man, this the trick While the confident grifter swoops in, Barely noticed coming to steal, all that he has The black throne’s hurrah the stick is a blur The shill shuffles with gladness, thinking The old man had missed his mark The loaded stick hits the con-artist, where it hurts The rich man quickly switches hands, As the shill receives the wrong end of the stick Sending two on a humbling convalescent With a drop of the water of life from an olden tin The old codger walks confidently on Lilting upon his shillelagh