Best Singularly Poems
in the uncoloured tint of another everyday
amongst the spit polished waxed apples
tightly packed in burlap bags
they walked like minded
in their own burly wrap
oblivious to the irony
to their similarity
of the markets round red fruit
unaware of the tragedy
the horror of events yet to come
it will rain metal shrapnel
as human minds grasp
with the purpose of their existence
as in their ignorance
they understand their worth as human bombs
with a belief the heavens will open the gates
with a fanfare and a promised blessing
for their divine act of unquestioned belief
the clay shaped bricks
the black iron metal stairs
the drum sound of engines
then the lull
not after
but before
before
the pulse of the storm
the rain of death
yet this moment captured
this photograph
with man and child in hand
smells sweet
you wonder
bemused
why?
the world travels
aimlessly
singularly
no one
nothing in the universe
suggests
exposes
even a hint
even a glimpse
not a clue
that would lead
reveal
an answer.
life in its contradiction
like the proverbial apple
offers both
the miracle
the curse.
09/23/2014
awoken yet still dreamy
i float towards the window
by which i wait
by which i dream
peering through the fog of reality
i think of you
how I love you
face to face
peer through those incredible eyes
you expose only to me
completely transparent
deep as you are;
gifted,
singularly unique
the sound of your voice
more intriguing
wind - tiptoes the dense forest greens
the flutter of the one butterfly’s wings
caressing the jade blue of the morning sky
my name flying from you
like angels playing their golden harps
crave Destiny’s Child
“Say my name, say my name”
their music bouncing around in my head
as i wallow in the true of you
i love you face to face
your fresh
out of the shower
complexion
my eyes are yours
surely all of nature embodies you
and i must be made of steel
you the magnet draws the beat of my heart
breaking through my ribs
to sync with yours
face to face
enrobed in your thick locks
my fingers mapping every strand
bury myself in its scent
found in the meld of us
i love you face to face
Oh sapience of musings, oh savior of poetic art!
How longingly I seek you out to inspire my ballad
When lassitude of the night envelopes my mind
And grimace of dawn darkens shrouded in fog.
Oh lyrics of melodies, oh harmonies of music!
How eloquently you speak in articulate dreams
When wordless melancholy poignantly echoes
And voice of emptiness confiscates my themes.
Oh redeemer of words, oh language of feelings!
How musically you evoke rhythms of symphony
When broken phrases languish in depleted ink
And haze of confusion subjugates my euphony.
Oh oratory of wisdom, oh intellect of vocabulary!
How metaphorically you divulge motifs of imagery
When ineptitude of simile diminish comparability
And wordplay disappoints in misplaced analogies.
Oh allure of meaning, oh enticement of literacy!
How singularly you elevate cadence of my poetry
When decaying thoughts linger forever miserably
And creativity encounters nothingness of drudgery.
October 5, 2020
Placed 1st: When there is no inspiration poetry contest
Sponsor: Silent One
The glamour of their squalor is found
in specular highlights of crisp brown eyes
peering through mud-matted hair, crying.
Weeks of eating an abundance of whatever,
which consisted of scarcely more than bugs
fished from non-potable cesspools.
A decade seems a long time, until singularly
it accounts for one’s whole life…and yet
we won’t home them, because they are a plague.
Self-righteousness cannot bear the reminder
that “refugees” might be people…children even;
running from nightmares that persist in daylight.
Ignorance is bliss, after all…
and who chooses to come down from a high?
We have full tables, full inns, and empty hearts.
Opportunistic politicians see a platform,
borne on the backs of the starving and desperate,
they manifest feigned outrage and farcical hand-wringing.
Droves follow droves out from the gloomy dread
greeted by cool apathy or worse; outright derision…
what more is to be expected of humanity?
The squalor of our glamour is found
in hopeless disconnection to what matters, or
to the reality that we could have been them.
11/18/15
The world continues its rotation
with or without your attendance.
It has been so since the earth cooled
and mountains and seas became.
Give it up and
check out –
to the closet corner, if you please.
Dark and soundless
singularly personal.
Sit with shoes of worn tread left upon the
path of overuse,
the scent of lessons learned and
willfully ignored.
Feel silky seams sewn with promise
brush your cheek,
now frayed and undone.
Pull your knees to your chest
and rest your chin upon the death
of desire for it all.
Let your heart heal.
Then unlock the door
and savor the scars.
Requiem
The map to Requiem
Is often long, confused, and composed
By differing charters...Also
Too layered to sort. So many movements!
Even the very shortest of lives
Could story a magnum opus
When tracked to its core.
A Requiem for one elderly
Could fill an orchestra’s entire concert
Season of song!
The roads to a Requiem
Course singularly in God’s memory,
Fully in the graces of his harmony.
—————————————————————
U
(c). Sally Young-Eslinger 9/1/2020
With help from Antonio Vivaldi
***Thank be to God!
THE DESPERATES
The hungry and the poor,
Will always try to find a door,
That will offer them a little more,
Than what they had before.
They cross the border through
The Kruger Park,
When it’s dark,
A singularly desperate act!
Between them all they,
Have made a pact,
To secure a life,
Where they can survive,
Or die trying in a
Desperate strife,
To keep alive!
Sadly, they often become,
Human bait,
To fearsome cats,
Who are surely looking for that
Foreign smell of meat,
And will prowl until they
Find them, then
One by one, to eat!
The few that do not
Meet their fate,
Kneel down and pray,
For yet another day!
These predators
Prefer the night,
When they have the
Best eyesight,
But also take chances when
It is light,
And give these desperate
Humans an unexpected fright,
Who leave behind,
A trail of scent.
The Animals spot their
Prey under the shade of a tree,
That offers afternoon cool.
They already begin to drool!
The only sign that humans were
There, are knitting needles,
And a ball of wool!
Still more human bait is left,
Although many are now bereft,
They run and hide,
Down mud, they slide,
For hope that
On the other side,
They will find,
Peace of mind!
Some make it to the other side,
But sadly still have to hide
From humankind,
Who seek, these
Desperate people out,
For cheap labour, they
Know their route!
All has been in vain,
As once again,
They are forced to be poor,
And used and abused.
All they wanted was a
Simple life, never had
Any illusions of grandeur,
And so the door
They sought,
Has only brought,
More sorrow,
On the morrow!
The Chocolate Hills of Bohol
Ancient as creation, true natural wonders,
the Chocolate Hills of Bohol
teem with singularly exotic flora and fauna,
fanciful ferns and big-eyed tarsiers, peculiar primates.
Abundant rain wonderfully adorns them
with a mantle of verdant fashion;
while drought unveils their beautiful brown cloaks,
resembling giant delicious chocolate kisses,
or sun-baked peanut butter cookies.
At dawn, they're subdued by shades of grey and blue;
but at dusk, they startle with red-orange hues.
The Chocolate Hills serenely slumber,
heavy eyelids closed in peaceful repose.
They’re fast asleep and deeply daydreaming,
perhaps, of becoming rugged rocky mountains.
Finger to lips – shhh – let sleeping hills lie!
Hands cover ears - these conical mounds
are so clever at keeping hidden secrets.
Silent observers, they echo no tales, but
hold on to footprints in the limestone soil,
discretely recording every visitor,
not forgetting anything - remembering all.
8-24-2014
Contest: Poems about Places
Sponsor: Charlotte Jade Puddifoot
Placement: 4th
Sweet September, see how splendidly she shines!
Subtlety submitting seasonal splendour, she
swamps summer’s splendiferous sights,
by stealthily shrouding splendid scenery,
with suffused sensuous, sybaritic, scenarios!
Sublimely serene, she spatters and splashes
slivers of saffron, sepia and sienna shades,
slapdash over the sedentary summer scene, sending
sightseers silly! Soon, spooky spectres sporting skittish
shadows, surprise and startle singularly sensitive givens,
seeking soothing solitude someplace. Suspicious solo
sentient stalkers, suspecting solo sailors sometimes, shiftily seen
spying on sequestered sibylline, spectator savants, stay silent.
Such suppressed servile sophisticates, spotting smart
Seedy Senators, sitting sloppily slumped - some silently
supine - send sensual suggestive signs to sexy secretaries, as
subdued sartorial suitors stand speechless. Some, sober and staid,
state spasmodic spates of salacious, and sometimes sanctimonious, statements.
Seemingly superfluous, scores of servicemen and seniors suggest
specific superficial senile support services, should shut shortly!
Studious spokesmen suggest scads of spurious suggestions in September,
send scrambled signals, since severely symbolic sentence structure,
should seek speedy severance from sedulous speculative stricture, and
stimulating scattered sophomore senses and sensibility is senseless!
Since scathingly scanning this alliteration, it seems successful!
Hopefully a fun filled frolicking folio with ‘fin-esse?’
Rhymer. September 6th, 2016.
There are those who heedlessly follow the crowd
There are also a few who singularly continually do not
Some of these do it to be different, while some just are
They dance to their own voice, hear a different drummer
It is not at all easy to be different, it has its price
Some think the journey worth it, others soon capitulate
Now when you are different, if you are a deep thinker
Then sometimes you may even question your own reasoning
For some through life, it is a continual questioning why
Why am I so different, why do I always have to do what I do
Others don’t not give a stuff, they simply do what they want
For some, life makes them different, without even asking
Some different in looks, in circumstance, mind or body
Others so unique, making discoveries conquering the unknown
Some even take their difference and turn them into sheer evil
They take our world and fill it with non- conforming haters
They are people who believe that all must sing to their tune
They want to sway the populace to their ways of non-conformity
And in their non -conformity to the norm, it turns into conformity
Sub-cultures are formed to get away from the traditional values
Goth, Metal head, pieced tongues, shaven heads, and dread hawks
All eventually without even realizing it living in total compliance
The non- conformist therefore has to be a loner not a group culture
To be different is to be true to oneself and stand there out on a limb
This is a hard road to travel, and certainly not one that is easy to tread.
good morning
good night
i walked the shadows of hidden meadows until there was a sign to the right,
you were bathing in the light, then it all fell flat
good morning
good night
ride along and sing a song with vague attempts of interpretation,
a transatlantic whirlpool of twisting and turning emotion,
good morning
good night
i'm sorry that karma took a small hit,
but it wasn't my intention
good morning
good night
perhaps this connection is a singularly demented projection upon failing stars
whose shine still glitter but with shadows of fear
good morning
good night
smiling involuntarily is a beautiful thing I'm sure,
especially at matters of such insignificance,
good morning
good night
one strides a rhythmic cadence as the little one jaunts with such carefree joy
and big picture indifference
good morning
good night
it's memory prevention week so I'm setting traps to bring the backhanded troll
to justice, it's a pretty penny to forgive and forget, my inheritance a bitter
serenity absorbing youthful anxiety
good morning
good night
stars cluster unaware of our constant stare, some have the look of shame,
masking hatred, they're twinkling smiling faces protecting the ones to blame
good morning
good night
nothing takes aim at the gaps and empty spaces that go on and on, and then
even after that they go beyond, not so much as a truth or dare of importance,
more or less an allowance, an embrace
good morning
good night
of course there's courage but it's arrogance that gets the job done, with a split
personality the lion awaits a cautious blend
good morning
goodnight
the truth of the matter preys pretend and colors splatter in a failed attempt to
matter, one way is the same all day, baring stops an road blocks along the way
good morning
good night
the hours played sleepless depravation, no breeze, no oscillation, a simple man I
am not, from where I've come a curious lot
good morning
good night
after all has been said and nothing has been done, there is the missing, and the
knowledge and the truth, but in the end we'll start over again
good morning
good night
Wobbly, these feet… sagging on miles
of dangled reeds: a hike takes me
to an attic of moonlight, bestowing bows
of serenity prayers for wayfarers
unyielding to a precise compass
of direction, reckless as it were,
losing the self to gypsy stones
and nomadic thistles bearing my trails...
for a moment, I release this soul buried
in the belly to a chorale of air's hymns
taking flight unto a trail of obedience
moved by pure lightness: no longer a weight
or content divided, but equaled by
forms of singularly whole reminisces...
)*
*.))
Poetry Unhinged for john lawless
8/29/2016
It clouds the vision of its proponents
Causing them to see things that are not.
It mixes their minds into components
To which rational people give no thought.
It dismisses those whose eyes are angled
Or whose skin is anything but white.
It is quick to see the homeless as mangled
And to surmise they cannot be half-right.
It believes its views are singularly correct
And all other positions implacably wrong.
It lumps non-conformists into a sect
And treats them as a misguided throng.
It forecloses on every outreached move
Designed to help it achieve perspective.
It knows what it knows—nothing to prove,
Unaware its thinking is grossly defective.
It owns uniquely the truth of every issue,
Taking care to avoid having facts intervene.
Its arguments are made of gossamer tissue,
And in time they are sluiced from the scene.
Beneath the layers of everyday living the
Reality and grandeur of life is present in
Even the smallest of things that often go unnoticed.
At the flowering of green in a sidewalk crack,
To the determination of the smallest ant,
Here is the wonder of the world around us.
Taken singularly, we often miss their significance,
Altogether, it can be breathtaking.
Kids are often more aware of little things,
It may be because it is all new, a daily discovery.
New eyes to see the bud, the caterpillar, the clouds.
Gladden your hearts with some of the little things...
3/10/16
Once a nation
Supremely white as driven snow,
Singularly Christian, white and male,
Purely untarnished, and aglow,
Grandeur unparalleled in fairytale.
Hence a grievance
Punitively bold as bloody hellfire,
Potently prosecuted in seats of power,
Oppressively waged against objects of ire,
Prisms of nonwhites seeking justice in the hour.
Now a leader
Colossally void as sterilized weaponry,
Glibly sanctions white phobia and rage,
Lethally enflames this proto-fascist fancy,
As corporations provide aid to the rampage.
Thus a faction
Devoutly for leader, they stand down,
Steadfastly ready for the order to kill,
All woke-ish elitists, and enemies black and brown,
That white men reclaim their rightful place at the till.
Violence of mind
Shocks no one in America,
Where thugs are part of romantic lore.
With our ascendant authoritarian replica,
Are we ready for what washes ashore?
Published in Dissident Voice: 01/09/22