Best Shrills Poems
as swallows land and swifts take flight
inside late noon’s last shards of light
the chill winds that descend on day
cause dense green swathes of reeds to sway
across the flooded vista’s ground
in harmony with nature’s sound
of shrills that echo through the air
from birds and insects everywhere
while stars with room to breathe and shine
light up a land divorced from time
to show the beauty and true worth
of life in balance here on earth.
I recognize a tune from album of your songs
And listen intently to impressionist sounds
As you hop scotch from branch to branch
Like a child all excited, frolicking in playground
Peeking from behind shamrock green leaves
Singing of love in blossoms of dogwood tree,
As you tease a female, flapping your round wings
Showing off white patches, revealing breasts
Pointing curved beak to articulate a message
In verses of romance, courting your soul mate
Inviting her to celebrate the visions of spring.
A prolific singer, you mimic songs of blue jays,
Woof-woof of dogs, and croaks of hiding frogs,
Wailing screams of sirens on ambulance moving fast
And hasty beeping shrills of my alarm clock;
Reserving your very best for ardent mating calls
Choreographing dance-moves fit for wedding halls
As you seduce a female on youthful virgin date,
Aspiring to one more voice, one more etiquette
Adding to repertoire another song of desires
Pursuing next newness, next chase to happiness.
June 30, 2019
Placed 4th:Pick a title, volume 6, personification contest by Edward Ibeh
Title chosen--The Mockingbird
HM: Strand choice 3 contest by Brian Strand
I'm but a frail bird tasked to bring hope and spread peace.
How shall I fly high in the sky with such a brittle burden!
My heart pounds in dilemma like a ping pong ball as I release
my wings in the air to take a flight at the height of a dark sky.
As dark as it can be, above me, the cauldron-black sky
with scary scars of blazing explosions emitting blinding light.
Beneath me, the brazier ground groaning with an outcry,
shedding tears of sparks that vaporize into nebulous smokes.
In between is the whizzing of weapons, excreting smokes
and urinating radiation that smothers the air with brutality.
Warhead rockets, firing aircraft, missiles, bombs...stoke
the fire of war for the sake of supremacy by killing morality.
Shrills of ruination buried under the roars of madness spree
while the two-legged demons having a bloodbath with big guns.
Colors of bliss faded away and helpless time trying to flee
as achromic misery taints moments with grim stains in gallons.
Ember red blood is the only bold color that flows in streams
dyeing the soil and water with a stench of rotting death.
Once cultivated verdant fields are now burned into coal seams.
Marred by violence, houses crumble like ashes in hearth.
Such horrific images I see all around me as the hearth
of fierce war burns with glaring flames and crackling noises.
I fly, hover and fly with my singed wings as there is a dearth
of safe shelter; my exhausted body trembles with fear.
Would I be able to stop the war? I questioned myself with fear.
Quite a hard-hitting answer I received in the form of a bullet
that pierced my heart and I fell on the ground with tears.
From my smeared blood, poppies bloom around me as I die.
Date: 11/12/2017
My insides are tight, they’re slimy and black
He’s back.
The anaconda.
He squeezes my insides and I can’t breathe,
He won’t leave.
I can’t sleep, or I’ll dream of his body
While he roams my gut, up to my lungs,
Grabbing my ribs and swinging from the rungs
And then squeezes around my throat
Takes time to gloat
Before he hisses words into my head…
Words that can render me dead.
He lingers, he slithers, he kills..
He’s back;
And no one’s there to hear my shrills.
The bright Christmas lights on my city house are so colorful and traditional,
hopefully when I get my high utility bill I won't become too irrational,
and watching everyone open up their gifts makes me want to sigh,
also hoping that when I get the credit card bills I won't start to cry,
And the Christmas room has edible fumes of the eating variety kind,
with the holiday weight I gain ending up in my butt and thighs,
while getting a white Christmas is something I always wished for,
but not slipping on the slippery steps when walking out the front door,
A different group of Christmas carolers singing out front in my yard,
all of them sounding very off key like a cat getting strangled,
and not having money to give them gave them some pie I baked,
most of them getting sick from it Betty Crocker I aint,
Going Christmas shopping and getting stuck in the holiday traffic,
and trying to find a parking spot at the mall was really quite baffling,
having to sit there and wait till I saw a shopper getting ready to leave,
another car beat me to the spot while I sat there and sneezed,
So I decided to move far away from the hustle and the bustle,
wheres all I have to worry about is what is that woodland noisy rustle,
could be a black bear, coyote, wolf or a moose,
and when I get my mail every day have to run so they don't bite my big caboose,
But thats ok I'm starting to feel at home for the holidays in the hills,
getting used to the 8 foot snow drifts and the night time animal shrills,
while getting into my vehicle can be quite an ordeal,
running like a fugitive till I get inside of it in my camouflage gear,
But I have a plan B just in case living in the hills doesn't all work out,
I'll just move to Florida where the humidity and big bugs will bother me no doubt,
where I'll buy my own little house hopefully sinkhole free and keep it fumigated,
and pretend to have a white Christmas even though its 85 degrees out while getting chased by an alligator.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
12-24-16
I sat quietly staring out the porthole window
As we were passing over a village in the low hills
A cumulus cloud casting over its ominous shadow
Far below in the silence of the engine’s shrills,
I wondered where those tiny people were going
Beneath the wing nary a songbird nor butterfly
Alone streaking through the frigid air, the Boeing,
Not a face lifted from village below to the sky
Then it was gone, as quickly as I had imagined,
I rummaged through my satchel of ordinaries
Forgetting a whole community of unexamined
Miniatures, no concern for untended cemeteries,
I had long forgotten when the plane descended
My sweet reveries in solitude, my journey ended.
Written June 10, 2022
Submitted to "2022 Marathon Mile 1" Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Mark Toney
Suspended high up the tower,
I hang out of sight.
My shiny golden brass core is hollow,
but I have a big mouth with a bell as a tongue.
Sometimes pigeons visit, resting on my arch,
but fly away leaving their droppings behind.
Don't pity me for my loneliness and silence,
as this serenity never lasts.
When the cloaked man arrives and pulls at my rope
he breaks the peace with deafening sounds.
Each tug hammers against my cup shaped sides,
belching vibrating echoes across the lands.
In an enchanting melody that brings joy to most,
but distress to some -
who only hear me as shrills and shrieks.
I love my ding dongs,
be it to tell the time,
or for funerals, weddings or as a call to prayer -
I'm content in ringing all day long!
They dive and circle as if in hypnotic state,
Tiny wrens, and ravens, and coal black crows.
When trucks dumps their loads, the flurry of fowl contemplate
Savory morsels or just household throws.
The noise of large tractors, and of sharp shrills and caws,
Of wild wings flapping over a landfill,
The thrown scraps from a table bring the birds to a pause,
Then landing en mass for a full belly fill.
It's exciting to watch them, yet worries my mind.
Some of the garbage is not fit to eat.
To the forests and meadows, there are rich foods to find,
While hanging bird feeders are quite a treat.
I can see you through your hell.
Heaven doth mock you until you spill.
Just like old friends,
Hand in hand,
We bled.
Tame the shrew,
Untouched by filth
And rob her as she shrills.
All the while,
I’m spiraling
A disease that makes everything unwell,
Smiling through the kinks,
You undyingly dwell.
What’s an angel to do
When no one can love you?
Why does it have to be this way?
Clouds pass thee hence,
Dark neighboring expense;
Why are you this way?
Master you will...
Pay me through your blood lead dense.
Does it weigh you down today?
You’ll find a perfect place to go
Where you can die.
Ash torn ember will be your grave.
Judgment hath remembered how far you’ve gone,
A distance,
Unwarily unsought,
Somberly carried;
It’s with one last message I leave you….
Suffer and weary.
.
indistinct chatter
sweeps through my mind
like wind through trees
in winter's high pitched shrills
as memories twirl
in a spiral of thoughts
my heart pauses
beneath fragments
of shrouded warmth
once found in love
and this diminishing sun
i am hesitant to stand aground
where rains have come
between winded breaths
like these trees
naked on dampened hills
i too shiver in the depths
of coldness, alone
bending, almost dropping
to the accepting ground
bitter trails
of the unworthy
drop at my feet
like leaves of autumn
only to crumble
within the moments
of allotted time
i gasp
in what takes my breath away
momentarily
before i hear the depths
of my mind speak
as if warning my heart
to wake from endless dreams
halt to all possibilities
of treading on thin ice
beneath winter's frigidness
and bury my heart
behind the walls
that protect
so i do not fall
and drown
in the depths
of tears again
And all these voices
They sing along in my head
I hear their shrills
And I hear their screams
They cry out for help
They ask like beggars
But they've come to the wrong place
For there is no triumph to be found in here
There is only a pile of cries
And a pile of lies
And a pile of hopeless loves
Waiting to be spared
One cold night, deep in thought, and curled in fright,
From folklore tales aimed to scare;
My rigid poise froze to a screeching noise
Outside, a voice not like I've heard before, to leave I would not dare
“It’s probably just an owl or creature of the night out there"
I muttered to myself, then pretended not to care
Oh, I recall quite vividly this icy Winter’s night
With grainy sight, the sandman came to lead me to his land
The weariness I fought but eventually he caught
Pulling me quite taut to somewhere far less bland
Where I became the leader of a marvellous brass band
And down that path sandman tightly gripped me by my hand
Trumpeters and trombone players played musically in layers
Exciting each and everyone, spreading joy to all around
But my dreams were playing tricks, my mind was in a mix
The bass tuba sounded sick, not playing tuneful sounds
Instead a grating shrill, then the whining of a hound
The lightning and the rain came too, my dream then ran aground
Alone I grew more frightened and the intensity just heightened
The shrieks and shrills grew louder with an occasional thunder clap
Taking sanctuary under bed sheets, preying for melodic sound beats
Suffering this painful feat, my soul took a massive slap
Oh how I longed for it to stop and to return me to my nap
The bleakness of that night, my mind caught in a trap
Morning later broke, the ground outside was soaked
The noise had faded but there was still a haunting in my ears
A crunch, a grind, a squeak a whine
The cause I vowed to find, and to take away my fears
From the upstairs window I saw a farmer crouched in tears
And a windmill's broken sails; the mystery closure neared
Across the muddy field, I approached the man kneeled
Sobbing over what appeared to be a dead Alsatian
He'd found it just lying there, the hound, his best friend
Downed by a falling windmill piece, killing gods creation
"A slow death" the farmer said "he must have cried out for attention"
"And my mill cranks broken causing noises of a nauseating sensation"
He flies unhurried, gliding on gigantic wings that glisten with gold,
Proud and bold, courageous and beautiful and powerful;
Above in an azure sky, fluffy white clouds are drifting by,
His lustrous feathers are sacred and spiritual to Canada.
He carries his kill snatched from a frozen tree with his great talons,
Bringing his gift to his home on a cliff above a raging river;
The massive nest, an assemblage of branches and grasses,
And from this mountain perch he can see everything.
The fledglings were born a few days ago, white and helpless,
His mate is tending to their needs with motherly care;
Although he is usually silent, he is calling to her with high shrills
They have been mated to each other for twenty-three years,
And he comes graceful, swooping on the nest of branches,
In this remote, undisturbed and protected sanctuary in Hudson Bay;
Where they glide and breed and dance in the sky without fear,
The Golden Eagle is a beloved treasure to all Canadians.
____________________________________
October 3, 2015
Verse
For the contest Golden Eagle, sponsor, Shadow Hamilton
Fourth Place
T U R P I T U D E
On and on, slash! My sweetest agony thrilled to tease, SLASH!
Puff, PUFF! Cooking my skin into tender purple dots, fast
as pies of flesh fever, shrills and tearing in spiral rush. . .
Weary sounds ebb-- we dip deep resting hush o'er chained lusts.
______________________________________________________________________
++Sponsor Name: Broken Wings++
++Contest Name: Four Lines++
~~9th Place~~
~Olive Eloisa Guillermo~
11:32 am, September 21, 2015
Punxsutawney Phil Speaks
A life of Riley, I wallow,
While at the fairground my fans are all gung-ho
Why should I bother to come out of my hollow?
They’re all out there waiting and watching for the verdict
I have the right to object, but they might evict
I am so excited they all wait for me to show now
My gorgeous bod and to take a bow,
For my stunning warm furry rodent performance
And all my noisy whistles, shrills, and sometimes my happy grunts
Should I keep wallowing in my hollow?
Or let them suffer by seeing my strikingly attractive shadow
And let them think they have six more weeks of winter or bring
Them at ease and be kind and do my duty and let them have spring
Or be the star of the day and be honored
To parade me around raise over their shoulders while cheered and be bantered
My fans dance, rise, analyze, and criticize
With the blinding display of light exploding in from of my eyes
I come out to make my debut, but a shadow I saw and with shrieks
Ran back in my hollow to wallow another six weeks
1/16/2015
Sponsor: John Lawless
Contest: Punxsutawney Phil Speaks