Best Sickles Poems
We loved the lollipops, cracker jacks, and Holloway candy sticks. We adored the chocolate-coated ice cream bars and the tootsie rolls.
We could not get enough of pop sickles, cool aids, and soda pops.
We sang a love song saying, “Ice cream, soda water, cream on top, tell me the name of your sweetheart”. We had the best-tasting cookies and cigarette candies that eyes had ever seen. We were just poor kids in America’s poorest state, but no kids were sweeter than us. Hot as fire, hassled and harassed by humidity and drops of sweat; but we were sweet, not from
our good-natured personalities but from the sweets that we ate.
Life was hard in my little Mississippi Delta town; But somewhere between hard work and chores; between feeding the chickens and the cows; between feeding the goats and the hogs; between watching TV and doing homework;
between the sun ups and the Sundowns; and between the dawn and the dust;
Yes, in between, we found time to play. Most times we were okay, didn’t go astray, and had lots of fun in the barns, playing in the hay.
We rolled rubber tires like we were driving fast cars; laughed out loud as we sucked whining balls. Money was always lacking, but we did our share of licking, chewing, and sucking the sweet stuff. We bought a lot for the few pennies, nickels, and dimes that we had. We could buy our treats cheaply back then. So, we did our best to stay sweet, chewing bubble gum filled with sugar. We didn’t have a care and learned how to share, and the sweet stuff was always there. 013008PSContest, Childlike Fun, Caren Krutsinger, 2P
Categories:
sickles, beauty, candy, child, kid,
Form:
Prose
Listen to the trees…
how dark their voices in the moonless night--
unnerving shades that only today were bright, green, sunny things;
and now their quivering leaves, remind me more
of scarecrow sleeves,
nearby not a bird would light
unless he were a terrible sight.
Listen to the wind…
storm voice near the distant eye--
Listen! Listen! Listen! Such a thunderous cry!
There!--the last ray of sunlight gone, in a fester of billowing clouds;
with the last quiet moment, in a splatter of furious sounds;
down the torrent upon us
the wind like sickles and mowing blades;
Listen! Listen! Listen!--to the trees now toppling shades.
Yet, in the midst of all madness--
the air, a hornet of frantic leaves;
wind tugging at our garments,
flapping and fluttering like scarecrow sleeves--
a quiet comes over us;
halfway through passes a silent eye;
blesses us with a peaceful moment;
reassuringly winks good-bye….
Categories:
sickles, adventure, allegory, allusion, fantasy,
Form:
Rhyme
May we be saluted as we stand brave and tall.
For we do not smile into the face of danger, though we brace ready for the brawl.
What is that, that that I see, it's the
Dark Angel glaring down upon me.
Hold still my courage tightly grasped.
Guard it against my building weakness.
Surely my hedge stone of strength falls fast.
For with gaping mouth, my soul's aghast.
O guardian angles where art thou?
Of your essence, I do not see!
Upon you, I trust all that make me
The vivacious heroine I currently-be.
Yet, now I am fallen on bend-of-knee
With mounting weariness, my nerves grow thin.
Windows wide opened reveals stark fear within.
Take charge "my" icy stare frozen sickles brightly glare.
Of this moment of graved aware
Affixed to root a solid mass vital seconds now to pass.
Still no twitch or flick of "foot", all thoughts to flee, all thoughts last.
With outstretched hands grant me my honor.
Of restoring please do not ignore.
Return to me my pride and glory.
On this notion, I do implore.
Do not snatch the life within me.
Release my breathing so it flows free.
Of my name, you do not see.
On the list given unto thee.
Go thy way yonder time to come.
Here now living I’m not done.
~~~Preludes in the poem "Tones"
https://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/tones_1198731
Categories:
sickles, 2nd grade, angel, dark,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
The Tear Collector
Tears they fall, sometimes bless-ed
In their burning
Watered reminders of a hearts capacity
To connect emotions
Soft welling they sting
And find their language of wet lashes
Run their courses
As ancient rivers carve their way
Through stone barriers
Tears collected vanish in vanquished aches
Evaporate to silence
Leaving their mark, their fragrance
Breathed in the molecules dispersed
Cut to the edges of wishes
Images of longing
Hearts slowly breaking in two
Still holds you
Weep for you
I do
Behind the hard choke rasping and sobs
Moans sniffling for a beauty
Both found and lost
Delivered Jesus to red rimmed eyes
That see beyond and into the sanctity of pain
It cried; I; not for myself
But for you, for her, the rest of the world
Broken by innocence
And ignorance
The heaving heavy chest digs its well of sadness
In slow counted beats of blood
Grief for love
With these sickles gouged deeper to the flaws
And spread their knowing further
Into the fathoms of your soul
Tears; the reflections of venerated smiles
Become the augury of responses
Of sight pierces the darkest, fallen pool
Tears; the written messages of sorrow and laughter
Covert their collection of sacrifices
And fall bless-ed humane
The merciful and pitiable denizens
Of a stronger more courageous face than Gods
They beat with the bravery of flesh
More holy; than heavens sacred
Have these tears
For more sure they are in their tactile salt
Are these tears
Have lived
And in your tears a more profound betterment exists
More, much more of life
Stronger
Braver
And more courageous
To face their own existence
Than the pretence of their presence
In God
Categories:
sickles, life, love
Form:
Free verse
You walked those savage streets
Without a clue
Without a care
You could not see the dangers or sense that death was everywhere
Predators and prowlers...they all look for parts to play
They saw you as a playground
Your heart and soul would soon to pay
Big wide smiles they turned to frowns as they took you to their traps
Those jokers and those jackyls they laughed loud inside your brain
Friendly faces they grew fangs
Helping hands grew iron claws
Loving eyes that showed compassion soon turned evil,cold,and hard
Angry arrows they shot at you
Bloody sickles they all swung
You woke up quick to wickedness
Run rabbit run
Hiding in a hole in a fortress made of fire
You dug yourself in deeper in the depths of dark despair
No one comes and no one cares
That became your new belief
A solitary soul...long lost love is what you seek
Broke down you had to build up from the ground of broken dreams
Emotions...fear and hatred...race like bullets in your brain
Burn the book and turn the page...a new chapter now unfolds
Time it ticks and time it tocks...shooting holes in the savage sun
Never turning back
Run rabbit run
Destiny day it finally came
Those desperadoes would surely meet their doom
Those streets that once betrayed you now become your battlefield
Break the seal...you're now a soldier
And there is no turning back
Because a brave man dies but once while a coward dies a thousand deaths
Evil ones and enemies...they surround you like a shell
Wicked wolves they all were snarling...soon in shock and sad surprise
Now the rabbit roars with laughter as he watches demons die
His weakness turns to strength
His ignorance into intelligence
Beware the beast is coming and his appearance is deceiving
With an appetite and a smoking gun
Run rabbit run
Categories:
sickles, courage, violence,
Form:
Blank verse
THE SNOW FLAKE
What happens to angels tears, as they fall from the
Heaven above, into diamonds of ice so are they
Transformed, turning, spinning in the atmosphere.
Until unique unto themselves, white pieces of
Frozen lace, perfections icy miracle, descending
From the blue hewed skies of Nirvana.
Covering the last leaf of fall, one by one
The power flakes glisten beneath the October sunshine.
Crystal shells of ice, freeze into water cylinders,
Forming sickles of decorations, that hang from
Every house and tree.
It is truly a winder wonderland, so beautiful
That the angels themselves come to behold,
What their teardrops have made, as a single
Feather falls from wings of grace, it to turns
To ice, and is blanketed beneath the freshly fallen snow.
08-04-2014
Categories:
sickles, angel, art, beauty, blessing,
Form:
Free verse
A northeaster snow storm is rampaging air
A roughshod young warrior, launching ice as a spear
Without any warning, he comes from nowhere
bending trees into sickles, while he conquers with fear
Plowing up roads with a gust and a till
Burying leaves along the gutters and streets
Furrowing rows out of valleys and hills
Prodding the herds with a howl and a shriek
The sun takes retreat with solemn dismay
and holds fast his tongue with whimpering sounds
Rendering helpless, behind hail and flay
Biding his time, while the snow pelts the ground
From the sphere of the dawn, into cold afternoon
war is schooled by the whims of the moon
___________________________________________________
Contest: "Pick A Subject" ----Storm
Resubmitted for Brian Strand's Contest: 219
Categories:
sickles, nature, storm,
Form:
Sonnet
I have never thought of death.
Well, that's not true. Everyone
does at a time. A peopled perishing
if you will. We constitute it
with sickles or in a carriage
or call him soft names. Man
versus death; man conquers
this nothing by attaching arms,
ears, heart so it may feel its indifference
resonating like fingernails on fiberglass.
The great human figure, now
cyclical of its mortal fragility.
Were our endeavors false,
these simulacra, these apparitions
beset gaily on their creator?
Like a cement plant, are we
indebted to the dust made
by our hands, and fills our lungs?
All I know is
it's an inconceivable sadness to think
I have never thought of death.
Categories:
sickles, death, people,
Form:
Personification
In the dream my nightmare strikes,
With human faces like zombies,
Hairy and teeth like vampires,
Deep in the jungle beneath the caves.
I tried to run but my feet were stuck,
Something holding them down,
The scream wouldn’t come out,
And fear took the best of me.
In the midst of my fears came strength,
My mind told my heart to be strong,
It is then I had the strength,
To pull my feet off the sticky grounds.
They followed me deep into the dark,
With their eyes shining in glitter,
Like torches shinning bright,
Their thunderous roar filling the caves.
I felt a heavy pounding of big steps,
Like giants moving the earth.
My heart practically jumping out,
As the zombies zeal remained unmatched,
To feed on my blood and take my soul.
I fell down and rose up on my feet,
Wishing the earth sallow me,
Because I felt the end has come.
At the end of the cave I saw the light,
Run towards it with a failing smile,
The zombie pursued with a deep roar,
They quickened their pace in pursuit.
I got at the end of the tunnel to the light,
I tripped and fell down in pain.
I broke my tendon and tried to crawl.
And there they were holding sickles
They lifted their sickles holding up,
Ready to take my last breath away,
I held tight to a fallen tree branch.
I screamed and woke up in the scream,
There I was holding tight to my bed,
The dream was gone and I was safe
But I was terrified and breathing heavily.
So I kneeled down and said a prayer.
21/11/2012 -
BERNARD WACHIRA
Categories:
sickles, fear, heart, dream, dream,
Form:
Free verse
behold now everything on this earth;
the fields with abundance of grain,
palm-grove harvests rich and fruitful,
the forests that separate kingdoms and the fires that scorch them;
the brickwork of ancestries and the towers that reach our gods.
behold these crop-fields that we call life and death,
grown on the back of a sludge-like entity
sowed, and heaped, in granaries of self-doubt;
collected by children's dirty hands;
bronze-sickles, charcoal-eyes;
while the storms unwrap in the south...
gales have swept these homes and huts of clay,
the dog-faced pazuzu gnarls at the moon, as inimical as it is revered;
a mother's love for the murderous son is as complex
as the children's dependence on these fearsome steppes.
behold now everything on this earth;
the countenance of the origin-beast-mother carved in the mountains of the north
and the efflux of her genitals streaming to the south of the marshes,
into that great ocean whose shores we know only by myth
and whose waters is the abode of the primordial one,
whom hurls the long-spear of flood and storm
deep into the sides of these lands - for these lands are hers:
when all comes about, has not the lands risen strongly
from her bottomless and abysmal womb?
was not the pleasure that shook the members of the old, old gods
into ejaculation, indeed, the motion of her scaled loins?
is she not the temple to which all sacrifices are offered, all libations put forth:
is she not the shrine; the death-black ziqqurat; the lighthouse emitting darkness?
is she not the stele inscribed with all words of grace,
and the eloquence of our beautiful poets?
over the lapse of a thousand millenia,
she has been constricting the gods of the heavens
in a strong leather noose,
f o r i s n o t v o i d o r i g i n a l t o a l l ;
c h a o s , d i s c o r d , o r i g i n a l t o o r d e r ?
Categories:
sickles, mythology,
Form:
Two wheeled commuters with heads booted with helmets, dotted the highway;
The four wheeled rich hooted at pedestrians daring to cross their path,
While rental three wheelers heated them all, filling even places like foot path;
Traffic winked red, green, and yellow to jam, trim, and brim the highway.
Like water discharged from flooded reservoir, humanity flowed on the highway,
Down to their destined ends, discharging spray and smoke, littering its path
With fed up lives, held up to the grave; lawmakers floated on the crest of the path.
Only the hapless found themselves fighting for space in the helpless highway.
On this highway, at the peak hour, popped up a human head as if cropped
From the ripe body as a yield to the reapers blooding the streets with sickles;
The highway halted; heads craned above wheeled carriers; questions hurried
Everywhere with worries and wonders; “Hyderabad has a head chopped;
Is it for ‘Biriyani’?” Some quickly tweeted like men of booze oozing for pickles;
Cops looking for the lost head, severed by train, at last sighed, with heads retrieved.
[Cops in Hyderabad, India retrieved a severed head from a railway track, put the torso and head in a sack and took it to hospital for postmortem. But on the way, the head slipped down from the sack and caused a commotion]
Categories:
sickles, anxiety, confusion, funny, how
Form:
Sonnet
More than a vacation, a vocation
In the field of tranquility you
Search the Caribbean blue
Sensation or mental refuge
White sandy beaches wet
Peaches in drinks collect
Making the experience perfectly
Sweet, worthy as a bodily
Treat. Club nights, escapes
In lantern light vases
Erases memories of work
And the Jerk in Apartment
24B. you are lovely, true
Disconnection from Kansas
Dorothy, pitchfork my ass!
And to heck with Toto too, I like cats,
Bat-monkey bellhops serving champagne
On balcony restaurants under starry
Safari-scene coca bean cabanas.
Your hammock sways, snapping
Shirt stays as rays of sunlight brook
Your book and cook toes
That glow from wearing
Black shoes. No swearing,
Sweating, connecting flights
To sit here and there, eating
On the go in slow traffic, lights
And horns blearing in through
Hotel windows. Without AC
You see a sea on your desk
In your messed up cluster
Schmuck of yucky tapestry
Adorning cubical rat
Mazes. In code and number
Each node and blunder, busses
Screeching breaks on lakes
Of concrete. meat sickles
Tickle the fancy of Metro
Nancy’s claiming amnesty
From male mannerisms
As aneurisms claim hardy
Workaholic espresso toting
Suits late for some meeting.
Welcome to Pleasure Island
Were your wildest dreams
Are you, making love to
Models, crack dealing to stay
Away from the hustle, bustle, bubble
Muscle-man tan left sleeve down world.
Colors brilliantly hue the rising
Set down let down, it all really is
A biz of romance looking askance
At boom box beats from street
Thugs in Timberland boots
That choose to use time
As a crime enterprise
Of lies. But you aren’t there
You’re there in bikini underwear
On the water in your Caribbean
You picture frame from a last
Trip that wasn’t drug induced :)
Categories:
sickles, confusion, funny, introspection, life,
Form:
frosty spears hang low
satin shield shrouds barren tree
enfilading beams
(ice sickles)
Categories:
sickles, nature
Form:
Haiku
This
This is
This is a
This is a call.
This is a call to
This is a call to prayer.
God
God is
God is one
God is one God.
And a song goes out
And a song goes out
And a song goes out in the morning.
And the crier’s cry
and the crier’s cry
and the crier’s cry’s from the towers.
At the lunch hour
you spill and throng and swarm.
Hot heads
touch
cold stones
in stoic reverence
where cobbled streets become mosques.
And you look, lady dressed in twenty-seven stars,
at burning cities governed by the dispossessed.
Your eyes are framed in sickles and potent crescents.
Your head is crowned with ice.
Your heart lies embedded in memories of strife.
Your feet blister, treading lands glowing angry like coals.
At once, one hand grasps unruly youths
The other blocks the east that reaches for the west.
Do not leave me mute, grasping angry stones.
Do not leave me mute, pelted with rubber vengeance.
Do not leave me mute
because
my silence
is not compliance
merely
incipient defiance.
Categories:
sickles, political, me, song, me,
Form:
Blank verse
He unwittingly hovers
...blankets of subjective weather
Plastering his artic tundra
Bandaging white clouds together
Blindly...
...withholding ill trepedation
Refocused on our tantalization
Frosting earth's core
.... with an icy show
Monstrously protecting grounds below~
Alerting those...
...napping numb spirits
With his icy mantra of sickles and cold
Old Man Winter's snowflakes unfold
Frost bitten chills triumphantly bold
A frothy iced message
...with wisdom to acquire
...conjuring those with a hidden desire
Here he laughs
...taunting from within
Old Man Winter is relieved again~
As our spent energies are woken
He does not speak...
...but has already spoken
His gift...a dormant spectacle found
As winter coats
....our frosted ground
More time now
.....with winter so cold
Kept indoors
....to ponder wonders untold~
Categories:
sickles, hope, imagination, inspirational, nature,
Form:
Rhyme