Best Skill Poems
The mellow chords of a cello draw tears:
as its bow vibrates a combo of strings.
And when that sound found its way to my ears:
it tore my heart apart and clipped my wings.
The violin, akin to the fiddle,
expresses cheers and fears within its pitch.
And, I find my mind teased by a riddle
granted an hour of power to bewitch.
French horns, like brass thorns, both piercing and sharp,
float above each note, and I'm left reeling.
And the sweet bleat of a lingering harp
haunts and taunts with a heavenly feeling.
Music, on the whole, leaves my soul in awe;
every sound, bound to the conductor's will.
Perfect, and yet imperfect, like scrimshaw,
a way to convey both talent and skill.
Some people are bored.
I am not.
Some people live the same day every day.
I don’t.
Some people never change their opinions.
I do.
Some people have not picked up a book since high school or college.
I am not one of those.
Some people do not believe in life-long learning.
I do.
Some people like to clean.
I don’t.
Some people stay with one political party or one religion because it was their parents’.
Laugh.
Some people are garage-door opener sellers because their mom was a garage-door opener seller.
Really?
Some people never find out that they are a cartoonist, a poet, a painter, a gardener.
I did.
Some people live the same day every day.
Exactly as their parents did.
Other people live a fresh new day, every day.
The bound out of bed, delighted to be wearing mismatched socks, both fluffy of course.
They pop into their stretch pants, and their saggy, baggy, comfy, sixteen-year-old favorite Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and they head for their art studio.
Or they run to their office and plunk themselves down with a coffee or a tea and a piece of pie or something equally delectable, and they begin to write or draw or throw glitter in the air.
Guess which one I am?
forging
noble timeless art
brute strength and skill
reverence for the forces of fire
innate passion for working metal
precious knowledge passed down the ages
honoring with pride millennia of blacksmith ancestry
AP: Honorable Mention 2020
Posted on May 26, 2019
Writing is a skill with a will.
Writing is penning down your thoughts on a paper.
Writing is thought which completes your blank paper into amazing words.
Writing is expressing your feeling
Writing is a skill with a will.
Writing is words that form a sentence
Writing is sentence that forms a story
Writing is a story that expresses feelings
Writing is feeling that forms love
Writing is love that forms humanity
Writing is humanity that forms the world
Writing is world that wants peace to live.
Writing is skill with a will that wants to have a better place to live for you and for me and for entire world.
art
skill
mastery
technique
seeking clues
gathering hints
reading subtle signs
interpreting the stars
keenly observing
wily expertise
listening
wisdom
flair
art
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Math
Extensive & Complicated
Solving, substituting, subtracting!
It's a skill for life,
Arithmatic
Is skill and talent that sacred
As to earn me daily bread
Pleasurable and luxurious things
As a place before kings
And unending sentiment
Of transcending compliment
Is skill and talent so sacred
That its treachery I must dread
In tarnishing a name
Or plaguing a fame
Of an indelible ethic
In the day of a youth so epic
Is skill and talent this sacred
To require utmost discipline with which to tread
The extremities of chastisement and admiration
With composure and temperament in retention
In honor of God who endows
With these wonder that continues to raise brows
I spied a ship and descried the flag it flew.
It was nothing like the flags I had seen before.
It was red and blue, with white circles and yellow stars
The highlights of white and yellow stood out
like stars at night, and town lights bright.
The red like the color of the dawn and dusk.
The blue the color of the deep blue ocean.
It was clearly the flag of a sea faring nation.
As the ship got closer, you could clearly see its details.
It was a large primitive Polynesian outrigger voyager vessel,
a ghost ship as no one appeared to be aboard.
Where it had come from, the fate of its crew a mystery?
But the vessel sure knew how to sail
and knew where it was headed
as it sailed fast and free,
passed our sailing boat 'Snail'
on a true heading for a spot on the horizon.
For many years the Polynesian voyagers were decried as flotsam and jetsom.
How could these primitive people navigate through the vast open ocean
between tiny islands, pin-prick dotted in oceans of space?
It was assumed they migrated and populated the far flung oceans randomly and haphazardly
via their fishing trips and day trips being blown off course.
But research has descried their skill and fabulous knowledge of navigation.
Each island has a gild of navigators.
They use songs and stories to memorize navigation methods:
including the movement of the stars, wave patterns around island,
local currents, clouds, weather and bird behavior.
Polynesian navigators used the rise and setting of particular set stars on the horizon to set a heading.
They had wooden instruments, string and fiber maps of wave patterns and star movements to guide their way.
They skillfully know when they were near tiny islands
from the change in the wave patterns, currents
and their vast knowledge of birds and wildlife.
So don't be quick to decry Polynesian navigation.
Instead, descry its beauty, simplicity, nouse, proficiency and elegance.
So we matured, mama, but, it feels that we are still ever-lasting and it seems,
That time smoothes, levels out our movements but it sharpens our faces and our whims
We’re no longer gun powder and honey, but stone paving as in Europe we’ve seen
Beautiful children, mama so you know, already have new beautiful children.
We like taking pictures of them in favorable light under shady linden
Life’s smarter than the living, that’s clear after one third of the way to the pilgrim.
All that scared me in childhood is now like a fat guy with ukulele absurd,
Even indicators of future decay are clear and law-governed, not blurred
It’s scary not to die young, mama, but, you see, it tourns out I’m not that rare bird.
I am now everything in one – Jackie Chan and Santa Claus,
My occupation is nothing, mama, but structuring chaos.
All I’m developing, mama, is the skill of holding a pause.
I am no zero mark anymore, no young ovary, no cheeky nestling
It’s “young ovaries” now that stare at me with jealousy as if I am king.
In simple people I give rise to hatred, to complicated jealousy clings.
What about happiness, mama? It is all result of seductives or toxins.
For me it is this feeling I get at night in a taxi quite often, it seems,
When crossing forty second and tenth street, direction from Kabatas to Taksim.
It’s rare that mortality and replaceability is felt to this extreme.
Sometimes I feel as a commander in exile, as weed among grass family found.
In a world where face is all that matters, all that interestes me is the inside out.
Drummers of existence are playing with sticks, waiting for a sign – for someone to shout.
Nope, love could not have saved me from this state – in fact it didn’t, it stalled.
I won tons of beauty here hence it’s natural that I’m fused, come on!
But I’ll sit on your lap, empty to glorify it century long.
In the Arctic, the skilled technique and art of building an inukshuk is passed down through generations of Inuit tradition.
a proud lineage
a compass
~ in the setting sun
Published in my photo/haibun anthologies ~PRIMITIVE~ 2019 and ~ANCESTRAL VOICES~ 2019
AP: Honorable Mention 2023
Posted on July 30, 2019
The agile leopard
dives into the deep waters
to seek its dead prey
Entered in Raul Moreno's contest, " Primal Instinct "
Skill kills-
Same to letters,
Same in letters!
I was working for this South African company,
For its Lesotho registered segment.
I wasn't of the long serving ones
But a relative new comer.
Here we were in this industry:
Sales for an insurance company.
I had something of a different style
To how things were generally done.
Small premiums with government stop order
Were highly valued and rated.
They had fewer chances of lapsing.
But I came with a different hand.
If you're going to work normally,
Not limiting your market,
You couldn't just focus on the civil service.
The policy of the company agreed with me.
My business was viewed sceptically.
I thought I'd leave the company!
All the courses we ever attended
Confirmed that I was on the right track.
The business world could also invest!
Of course, the risk of lapses was there
But that was a natural thing,
And it depended on the quality.
A prospect, a lady, wanted to invest
A really big single premium.
Armed with on the job selling skills
And sincerity and integrity,
I showed the superiority of my plan,
Compared with those from competitors.
The biggest challenge came from across
The border in South Africa,
From the bank where the money lay.
I had to be the field Marshall
Leading into battle my boss.
Not my immediate boss but his boss!
Never underestimate experience.
I saw it sparkle at crucial times
From my senior manager!
We clinched the deal, the lady signed.
The single premium left for Lesotho!
It was thitherto unknown.
It was history indelible!
I didn't verbalize about it with my boss.
I let it speak to him from the page,
Saying: "One and six zeros!"
Today the trophy sits in my cupboard!
English acquisition
Creates a new position
English communication
Gets you good administration
English authorities
Generate more opportunities
English communities
Increase your capabilities
English is a skill
Makes your dreams fulfill
Where are our young people now
Why are they not storming the gates
Perhaps they are being taught that
Ukraine's fight is not linked to their fate
Where are the defenders of freedom
Why are they not storming the gates
Perhaps they think their blood is redder
that Ukrainians' lives don’t matter…
Tens of millions should be marching on Washington
demanding to arm Ukraine with more missiles and guns
Ukraine has the skill and the will to defeat Russia and Putin
~ Just give Zelenskyy* what he needs; his men will do all the shootin’
Stop Russia now; help keep Ukraine free
Don't let Putin, allied with Xi, start World War Three
_________________________________________________________
*Volodomyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, who has been lobbying for
more armaments from the US for over a month now.