Best Sloshes Poems
Urges ushered Est’bel out of her abode –
a cottage cobbled together from cobwebs and clapboard –
and she scuttled forth,
her nesty hair tousled
by a leaf-laced breeze
In her bony hands she clutched
dregs of a nightmeg broth
in a porcelain jar stoppered
by a coffinwood shard
Her bare feet stepped on thorny twigs
but she felt them not,
for her soles had been hardened
by countless treks across hot coals
washed up from stygian shoals
Leftward she turned,
meandering down the narrowing, twisting path,
where uprooted mandrake tendrils
clutched at her anorexic ankles,
while ravens pecked at her frayed follicles,
until she snatched a leaf
from a passing philodendron,
folding it into a tri-cornered hat
and plunking it atop her pate,
rakishly askew
Dewey sap from twisty-trunked trees
dripped onto the nape of her gnarly neck
and a raven on a nearby branch
cawed his amusement,
earning him her owlish scowl
She spied a row of rotting poppies
and plucked a bunch,
sticking them into a crevice of her hat,
then stepped onto a walkway of cracked shale slabs,
which shunned her footprints,
replacing them with snail streaks
to mark her passing
She made her way to a listing tombstone
atop a gnarled knoll encased in gelid moonbeams
and fringed by shushing sawgrass
She took a small vial of indigo glass
from beneath her shabby shawl
and pulled out a stopper made
from a finger bone of an unfaithful lover
whose pickled tongue hung from a
silver chain around her neck
She poured the contents of the vile vial
into the porcelain jar and
listened to the fizz.
It subsided into sloshes,
reminding her of the sounds
issuing from demented shells
snatched from the forlorn shores
of stygian shoals
She gaped at the sky
as an owl flew past the moon,
stirring the dark craters,
which broke up into swirling spirals,
sucking lunar beasts beneath the surface,
where they dissolved in the ceaselessly sliding sands
And Est’bel raised the jar to her lips
and drank a toast to the moon,
and awaited the enshadowed shades
drifting down the snail-slimed pathway,
propelled by a leaf-laced breeze
Ah, Spring: each laden cloud more rain delivers,
that soaks our clothes and in our new shoes sloshes.
Our streets blockaded thanks to pregnant rivers,
with mud tracked in the house from kids' galoshes.
Ah, weeds: the bane of ev'ry gardener!
Unwanted life that fouls our garden's bliss.
Dear mother nature, we must pardon her
for her green demons turning Spring amiss.
Ah, noise: new Vernal life creates a riot
as crickets, birds, and frogs return to form.
It makes one long for Winter's tranquil quiet -
not all is calm when days grow long and warm.
Come March, not all is magically renewed -
with rain and weeds and noise, Spring's downright rude!
written 30 Jan 2023
The sea is a wild feast -
my heart in breast beating.
The sea, a hungry beast,
tug of war competing.
My feet dissolve in its wake.
I wade out to meet the waves.
Ebb and flow of friendship.
Salty air above my waist.
The wind sloshes my lips.
My cheeks, a blush sunbake.
I dive into the sublime sea.
Turquoise eyes of treachery
allow my vivacity and glee;
kindness swashed with brevity.
Breathless - make no mistake,
I listen to mermaids’ environs,
avoid pitfalls’ overconfidence,
cover ears, stave off sirens,
not greedy for DL opulence.*
Finless and feckless mistake,
if I find myself too far from shore,
arms and foam in dosido,
afraid and pleasured by the roar -
in fearful pretense, I’m paddling slow.
For the dorsal fin of ship, I ache.
Calypso music distracts on deck.
I leave my lover far below unchecked.
Climbing like a pirate to wreck
the captain’s safety, the sea at my neck.
Drowned in seaweed silk; bound and awake.
8/30/2021
*DL - Davy’s Locker
It’s the sole legacy from his dad.
A cup of ice cream tempts him
more than the alluring face of
a fair lady. Eating is his ecstasy
forgetting the existence.
It blooms in orange or red hue
in a test tube in the summer
of tension.
Urinary impulse usually slices
his sleep into three at night.
Nameless anxieties burn in his
mind. Fatigue remains in the ash.
Sugar syrup flows through his veins
and rusts his internal engines.
His doctor’s stethoscope listens
money-beats. Pharmacy sells him
new complications. Insulin leads
him to the blind alley.
He sloshes in the sludge of life,
reaching nowhere.
Sanoj’s a writer - his rating is high
in a glucose meter. Sooner or later
he will be awarded with
the silence of a coma.
Breath of Fresh Air
She is a breath of fresh air
The kind you don’t meet every day
Her long and graceful fingers are filled with (bling)
From the men who loved her before.
She is the kind that makes you blush with a glance.
Her beauty surpasses that of an intricate sunrise.
She speaks the truth and does not (blabber)
About unimportant and mundane things
She drinks of life and (slurps) as she swallows from its cup!
Unadulterated laughter fills the room when she muses.
A (drizzle) of joy fills all the dark places and dispels all fears
Like a gradual but steady waterfall,
It (sloshes) into the next week.
Once you have met her…
You will never be the same.
She is a woman who can make you feel
A million emotions by one encounter
She will steal your heart
And put it in her pocket
In case she may need it one day!
So, breathe her in and never forget her face.
Written November 9, 2021
For Onomatopoeia Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Emile Pinet
(ps. underlining and bold did not paste when formatting to poetry soup so words used are in brackets)
sincere apologies
My brain is a drain
For knowledge, like rain,
Which pours down the spout
And tumbles right out.
My mind is a sponge, encrusted with grunge.
The leftover scum of a brainwash.
When truth inundates, a bit penetrates
And the sponge get's a little bit larger.
As insight seeps in, I finally begin
To fill with the wisdom of faith.
My psyche is clear, no traces of fear,
All the filth and pollution are gone.
My soul is a bowl
For love and it's full.
It sloshes about
And splashes right out.
March winds direct the weather vane
April showers water wheat and grain
May flowers grow on the lane
The mud splashes the mud sloshes
Kids wear raincoats and galoshes
Down the hill water washes
A newborn calf will join the herd
A nest is built by mama bird
A toddler says her first word
Green are the leaves upon the tree
Yellow’s the color of a bee
Spring roses are just for me
Written for Contest: Attention to Detail
Sponsor:Rob Levasseur
01/16/2021
Communications among organic creations
of sacred EarthMother
are overwhelmingly rooted
in nonverbal
nonviolent communion
Complex evidence of things
within relationships of feeling
and touch,
creatures seen
and heard,
recreations smelled
and tasted,
cognitive awareness of purpose
and intuitive integrity for meaning
sacred smooth full-wombed
woked mindedness
We are, together,
at our best,
on and in and for and of
Earth's rest
in solidarity play day,
compassionate communion
of verbal humane purposes
and nonverbal divine meaning
unspoken yet repurposing
Compassion's enchanting communion
turns movement into dance,
reincarnates muses into instruments
of recreative music,
covers ecofeminist songs
of indigenous wisdom,
evokes birdsong joy
and pensive grey choired mourning,
shushes ebbing and
sloshes inhaling surf,
murmurs in babbling brooks,
capital infested crooks
speaking suffering sibilant servants.
Nonverbal communion
does not bring roaring evidence
for falsely claimed wealth risks
against universal democratic health.
Sacred integrity
proposes a good faith alternative
to zero-sum
win-lose competitive
compromised organic trust.
Earth's meaningful
richly resonant
robustly resilient Tribes
nonverbally know,
regeneratively believe,
feel with redundant cultural integrity
Our univocally global economic need
to advance ecologically healthy opportunity
While minimizing unwealthy
unwise partisan disempowering risks
to this profoundly communing
politically living
regenerative planet
for verbal and nonverbal persons,
quieter peaceful plants,
and all sentient incorporations
organically communicating,
communing beings
health becoming
True purposive effects
and Beautiful
meaning full yet soundlessly nonverbal
causes felt
as sacred needed
and positively wanted
co-passionate
co-operative
communicating
green EarthMother communion.
I'm de-boned, on my back, sun-dazed,
green water slipping under ribs.
I circle a mandala of light behind my eyes.
Pals slip through rings of sparkling sunshine.
Pale limbs dive through slowly spinning water
while time sloshes back and forth.
A skinny black girl, her torso submerged,
long neck holding her head up
like a swimming Anhinga.
A chubby white boy gulping the sky
as he doggy-paddles around me.
My body feels tugged by cosmic sluice gates.
I could tell the girl how wonderful she is
but my skull is an open hatch.
I could befriend the boy for life,
but we inhabit rival schools in a ferocious town,
and my skull is an open hatch,
For years they were reflections in my eye,
now my mind struggles to float there -
it sinks too deep in a far distant pond.
Melancholia
Sometimes my soul aches, in the morning light
Dappled as it arrives through the curtains
My dad says it’s a beautiful day and, indeed,
I perceive it as beautiful..trees, people
But something cold runs through my blue veins
As I inspect my wrists to make sure they’re mine
I find my eyes unsure of where to settle
Glazed over like a foggy mirror
Seeing but not seeing
I ask them not to take my picture,
For behind my eyes water sloshes around
As if in a glass, threatening to pour over
Choking out words for people, all alive in conversation
I feel I am peeking in at their world, mute
As it rolls by in laughter and togetherness
As the sun comes up and falls away again
I walk down the road that has become a desert
And I keep walking, watching, waiting
For the next mirage that I can try to hold onto
~For Craig Cornish’s Contest “Anatomy of Melancholy”
A sparkler with long little lashes,
this soaring star
...this twinkle twinkle little star.*
She ladles gravy
at the mini soup kitchen,
her teeny tiny wings clapping.
This fairy, a card shark,
deals out ham, turkey and tofu,
and sloshes cranberry out of a tin can.
At twilight she sings and fairy dust flies.
The cornucopia of November sneezes goodbye.
10/21/2019
November Twinkle Fairy Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Caren Krutsinger
*Twinkle Twinkle Little Star originally a poem written by Jane Taylor
fear seems to be the cause du jour
fear if it all just ended
shapes us like quivering jello molds
fear of the landline
tapping into our heads
fear of the landmine
careless gifts from the feds
electric shivers
primal and oozing
forgetting ripe young days
played out in faded kodachrome
ripp'd into summer's apple
flushed future shiny bright
dimmed by memory's bitter yen
the terrible beauty of what could be
now just sloshes out like regrets and bad wine
make like the sparrow that hides in the bower
for who is the shadow on the doorstep at noon?
make for the mage in the tumbledown tower
bring him warm bloodwine, he'll grant you a boon
grasp for the jib line
gasp for the moon 'cause
all the fair haired heroes have jaundice
leatherskinned and alone above corner liquor stores
old capes used as blankets, stained with nostalgia
huddled around scrapbooks filled with clippings
when a world made some sense
bubbling under a mantle of order
of when the world wanted cops 'n robbers
drunk indians lassoed and penitent
mysterious strangers with masks and grooming
problem solved
freedom used to be free
(but not for a gov'ment career)
move along, nothing to see
question nothing you've ever heard here
but do any words now
whether spoken or ink
have some monitored text?
will the next bard or wry wordsmith
have to sneak stealthily in
through the trapdoor of the poet house
or perHaps clevErLy sPin US!!!
through coded thought crime?
is the opposite of fear
really love?
(or is it even worse)
are we damned in quiet whispers
if the opposite of love
is apathy
meh.
Our brains are fragile things, seventy percent which is water,
and It sloshes around in our skull. Sixty percent of the brain is made of fat.
There are one hundred thousand miles of blood vessels in our brain.
The brain consists of about one hundred billion neurons.
There are anywhere from one thousand to ten thousand synapses for each neuron.
The brain weighs three pounds. From all of this emanates our mind/sentience/us. No one knows how or why this happens. The brain takes photons, packets of energy and converts them into the universe. The brain fills in the blanks for missing information to give the mind an organized view. No one knows how this is done.
The brain can create all types of minds some genius some insane and everything in between. Our minds are fragile things. A crossed wire here a short circuit there in the brain can mess up our minds.
The brain is like a projector projecting the mind/sentience/us back into the space it observes. When the brain
evaporates so does the projection? No one knows, truly, what do we really know at all?
The clock is turning forward next week,
as if a man-made rule inaugurates Spring,
or a change in behavior influences nature,
like a bird feeder that makes a warbler sing.
“Spring is in the air,” says my friend
as she sloshes through wet slush and snow
on a gray and windy March morning.
I’m not convinced and want to know
how she can engage and repeat
those thoughts with such determination.
“Perhaps you expect too much of Spring,”
she responds with no hesitation.
“Let Winter be Winter and Spring, Spring,
with mixture of seasons at both ends,
reminding us how nature works,
how each and every season blends.”
Please leave a comment if you like this.
Spring buds
Bursting
Like popcorn stuck on sticks
Raising my perspective to
Gallivant
In knee-high tickle grass
Nested
In the strew of stony rocks
Festooned
With sphagnum and lichen
Frothed with droplets
Of glistening crystal lather
Moored in glade and rill
Plundered in claggy stodge
Boggy green and juicy with rain
The jaunt sloshes with plunger feet
Air raids above
Signal
Whirring wispy winged ghosts
Bombers
Buzzzzzzzzzing
Skitting overhead
Barely black shadow fellows
Intent in reaching their target
Synced and signaled
Like flittering naked poltergeists
Aiming for a sticky sweet meal
Arms, legs ankles and necks
Covered or not
Stabbed with little mercy
In the trove of
Spring Buds
So Alive!
May 16, 2020