Best Slouches Poems
They stand, silently,
shoulder to shoulder, upright,
save one at the end, leather bound
who slouches, James Dean fashion.
Six with blue covers, gold blocked,
uniform, like Trumpton Firemen.
All wear their heart on their sleeve,
honest and trustworthy,
patiently waiting
to be picked by my mood.
A tome selected, opened,
the smell of old paper, as if
it had been holding its breath.
Whispered greetings as the leaves turn,
flickering candlelight warms the words,
and in my mind
they dance.
Hare trigger instincts
always served Roger well
He had an oh, no-no lettuce nose —
a hyper-keen sense when to leave
Roger was rabbit good
at knowing when
to skip out on his responsibilities
Before bedtime stories
would end afoul, he could always tell
the impending sour cabbage signs —
The ***** scent in the air pregnant with crisis ...
rabbit feet had better odds,
than a roll of the dices
Women said he was a tricky daddy dodger,
his friends said it was in his DNA
The court affidavits said his name was Roger,
the summons said he wouldn’t pay
Those hare trigger instincts
always served Roger well
Pearl hip handles, he loved to caress
Hop aboard a bullet train,
when the bad news got belly swell
Twitchy nose rabbit hole escape
was his poker face tell
But one determined Alice
didn’t give
the baby carrot carriage subject a rest
Roger got tortoise marriage cold feet,
half-hearted turnip turtle vows
was his delay strategy best guess
Women said he was a tricky parent draft dodger,
his friends said it was in his rabbit DNA
The court affidavits all said his name was Roger,
the arrest warrant said he wouldn’t pay
Roger has good long hare instincts,
he’s Copperfield cool ... a Houdini Blondie
Angel Eyes bad you better not blink,
every time your back is turned, he gon flee
So deadbeat ugly he’s just a Tuco-hearted rat,
a kid welsher ain’t no rabbit doubt about that
The rabbit in his blood,
is simply hop-along run away DNA
He love to cabbage patch play,
but he hate to bacon lettuce pay
Women said he was a tricky daddy dodger,
his friends said it was in his DNA
The court affidavits said his name was Roger,
the summons said he wouldn’t pay
Roger don’t like
looking at paternity suits,
it just give him the Dodger blues
Rabbits don’t care
to stay in one place too long ...
in a standstill
That just ain’t how their feet DNA think
And those angry Alices kangaroo purse pouches,
holding those court-ordered papers unfriendly ...
they be pushing the Dodger to the brink
Roger’s an absentee parent wearing slipper slouches —
Hopping-mad child support check is an empty
Cassidy signature signed in invisible ink
His granite form against blue skies
Rippling on the bulging eye, wild waves
Of muscles the netting cloud defies
Reason in concrete, his pride raves
In self glory of athleticism, what a gem
Hard and shadowed without a diadem.
I know that man, I lived inside him
Long ago, slurping applause like a child
Incomplete in potrait, morally dim
About the treasures I often defiled.
That man is just a screen of muscled skin
A pampered fear that won't give in.
He will not cry, because he was taught
It's wrong for boys to show emotions
His destiny by a web of lies once caught
Leaves him lonely, old aspirations
Become wrinkled raisins in the callous sun
Manhood and wood subterfuge the pun.
Tired of being told he cannot become
From school to dull signs of no vacancy
I hears the sirens penning his freedom
He looked for himself, found no legacy
In history or family achievement that will
Stand up to the praise of gatekeepers ill.
He feeds his hungry urges into children
Fatherless because his woman must think
She cannot balance her budget with heaven
And for welfare cheque he's o'er the brink
Thrown, used, demonized, discarded, weak
Now, no virile glory left in love to seek.
He turns to her helpless in his helplessness
Angry with the impotence of history
Mute before her need to have forgiveness
The saddled statue slouches into misery.
You know him too, the black man, proned
Against pale paperbag of evening, stoned.
In Africa he was redeemed by mother, queen
When things fall apart, in America his old
Structures uprooted, he cannot be weaned
Of the nurture that never existed. The mold
Upon his life is history, and only the lover
Carrying the cross can be another redeemer.
Look at him like a child asleep after his spawn
Of delapidated family and garrots of dream
Only ego keeps muscle bulging under the brawn
The heart is mute, and pride wil not scream
For pain though like a white cataract it drowns
Him. How still the victim 'fore the victor frowns!
Much - too
much fresh air -
too early - my mind
slouches toward sleep - tea time
Tex’s shadow defines him—cut-out
from the heat haze of Karnak’s quartz,
a scintillating contrast to Egypt’s questing sun.
He slouches among the other black castings of
denser composition mottled with grays,
and Prussian blues, incongruent in a cowboy
hat. This six-gun scenario’s frame
disrupts the crafted precision of
a chiseled arch.
****-kicker, lizard-skinned, boots point
toward the desert’s dunes—death hides.
Needing no words to enjoy a taste of antiquity,
Tex shuffles sighs and takes a draw on
an American cigarette. With a flick of his fingers,
he deposits the butt alongside the others
in the white sand. His contribution
to posterity.
First Published in Spank the Carp Issue 21 2016
The grumpy principal athwart the class
is walloping the learner ad infinitum
with his computer cable,
and screeching his lungs out
his wrath and his tranquilities;
he says she’s late for school yet again.
Madly she pulls across the desks;
pleads for pity in pigsty floors,
whilst he despite his heavy paunch
chases and corners her.
He whips and whips the weeping non-plussed
girl till the cable slips in his hand. Her tears are
like explosion of waterfall in her cheeks and her pain
still so fresh:
He picks it up and pursues the poor girl
who endeavours to escape from him. She
jumps and climbs atop the desks on her way
to the classroom door but quickly plummets to
the floor to receiving another angry wallop.
As hard as he can he strikes the poor girl till his
hairless bald is dripping wet with sweat. The
learner’s heart is a watershed of fear words
can’t even describe. His visage is sadistic and
turns into something I never liked or loved…
Well, it is over now and the poor girl is
sobbing sadly in the library,
Yet the principal plunges and slouches
over his circling chair in his office. His lips mumbling,
pooped out –In slight remorse of the cruel hiding
he’d given the poor learner; and lugubriously he envisions
the twinge she’s had to bear, but it ain’t no use
for what’s done is done.
Images and haze spilling from nowhere,
Like a faint whisper mumbled then aligned
In hours distant as life’s crushed timepiece… *
She gazes at the mirror; how unfamiliar
Could this face look pieced into a broken puzzle…
Her vacant mind gone in wasteland of dead roses.
~
And a gentleman reaches out for one mild waltz;
His fragrance and the song bring tears of nostalgia
Yet memory grows blank while smog chokes her head
Into obscure nights of brittle rain ) …
That her arm slouches under a dim lamplight
Pleading on glimpses to take her… away, away.. ~
.....................
'Help Raise Alzheimer's Awareness'
Broken Wings' Contest: Two Stanzas - Two Only
7.24.2016
Into a garden sprayed by night's rain,
Jen slouches under a dim lamplight
as the wind gushes on her divan
sweeping pages of a long era,
jotted down through crystal-clear memoirs
from her flawless hand, still radiant...
while tendrils of a past causes
her eyes to melt in glass of evening.
She pauses between emblazoned lines,
a web of saga transports her musings
in a village where life detailed the pain
and glory of unwanted wartime;
the smoky air turning fruits into molds
as land raids wheezed without children’s sounds.
Quietly, Jen folds the sepia-book
to find beauty in her lit garden,
while cloudburst fades like distant remains...
then, washing the leaves of yesteryears,
she breathes in solace: a woman freed
by putting a name to her past angst,
ready for rain’s music of tamed sleep.
.............
Poem In Paradise Contest
Sponsor: Isaiah Zerbst
7/21/2014
Day Mind
Night Mind
A door is open.
Through the doorway,
I see a wall weakly
illumined.
A distorted shadow slouches,
menacingly along it.
I close my eyes,
my toes grip
the carpet.
I do not want to see,
what I despairimgly
believe will be,
the cause of
my demise.
Hot exhalation flows
over my face.
I fear it.
Surely it must
be the breath
of what I am certain
will do me harm.
Human nature activates.
My toes grip?
A surface hard.
I open my eyes.
I am on
the edge of
a canyon.
The heated air
is nature’s respiration.
I feel under me,
the ground backsliding.
I see the approaching
drop off.
I cannot resist the
movement.
I am suspended in space.
My toes grip?
Nothing.
I look skyward.
My body rotates,
and I am looking
at the Canyon wall.
I close my eyes.
My only defense,
not knowing,
when I will impact.
My toes grip?
Wet sand, the earth’s
breath is ocean fresh.
Roaring waves approach,
enveloping me.
Sea creatures surround me,
swimming intently, guided,
by internal apps,
downloaded at birth.
Finny predators nudge
my swirling torso.
I am rising.
Surfacing in a bath tub,
a rubber duck,
bobs in unison
with a toy boat.
I struggle out of
my fiberglass container.
The child I was
glares at me,
from a mirrored door.
Then steps into the room,
and shoves me.
Stumbling backwards,
I grab a rope,
and swing into,
an aluminum tree forest.
All the
owls, sound like
Santa Claus.
Multi-color pine cones,
hang glistening, with
fake frost.
My logic app,
responds to challenge,
my senses.
Impossible situation alerts,
detours further
dream distortions.
In my mind,
one more apparition.
A charcoal whale,
inhales the output
of my Night Mind.
My Day Mind
exudes endorphins.
Soothes me awake,
validating it was
all a purging,
of the tensions
of the past day.
Bizarre encounters,
Carrying away,
mental poisons.
I was gifted a little gem; her name is Polka Dots.
She's an English greyhound wench, stands as tall as a park-bench.
She's white, full of black spots, slender stem, and loves apricots.
Her previous owner use to race her, my gut would wrench.
She's an English greyhound wench, stands as tall as a park-bench,
eyes that melt your heart, lies around on my round leather couch.
Her previous owner use to race her, my gut would wrench.
We're both old slouches and once in a while, she becomes a grouch.
Eyes that melt your heart, lies around on my round leather couch;
she's white, full of black spots, slender stem, and loves apricots.
Her previous owner use to race her, my gut would wrench.
I was gifted a little gem her name is Polka Dots.
1/9/2019
Poetry Contest: Polka Dots
Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
Know the Beauty of tomorrow began in the past--
And it must last through today,
Suffering the indignities at hand.
And then you can see out of Spiritus Mundi
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
looking out with gaze blank and pitiless--
The Nightmare that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born...
And Terra says he is coming
A Sign of the Second Coming-- Yeats
6/9/'14
Yeats's poem the "Second Coming" was about WWI and how it was the war to end all wars, only now we know better. Really WWI signaled an end of fighting of one era to the beginning of another, and this horrified Yeats as the latter was so very bloody. Frightened him in a way that he wondered if man had not lost sense of himself, and I try to extend Yeat's vision of a spiritual nightmare into an environmental expression-- especially in the last line.
Little man little problem
Confined in the box
Pleasure at his leisure
Quelling insatiable hunger
Gust of distrust
Intrusion of endless chatter
Never a dull moment
Yet the land is bad
The land is bad indeed
Day and night on wobbling legs
The hands stocked in pants
Lazily he slouches to bed
The day like a continuous train
Raining misery in cool temper
A trainer he stands to be
Prophesying the doom to come
What a mystery
Of what use was the boom
To his father without a certificate
The oil money is here
My children’s children would laugh
In absence of toil
In absence of work
Even Freetown would never
Give anything for free
There’s a price to pay
A challenge to conquer
Walking through the vile down the aisle
The sandpaper leaves you smooth and polished
Back to your dream
Absolute freedom polished
Unlike the little man’s.
Through the mist in a slimy moat
A fierce creation arises
It is encased in thick scales
Jewels and gold are his prizes
With eyes of dead darkness
He breaths, huffs and crouches
His next move is a secret
Silence is broken as he slithers and slouches
A maiden cautiously passes
His musty, gloomy cave
She does not see his presence
But hot fear rises in her like a wave
Lanterns sparkle deep in the night
She runs as she seeks cover
The village must now prepare
As the creature of fire will take flight and hover
The morning sun’s oppressive; a nasty b*tch in heat on Rizal Avenue,
Where vendors hawk their cigarettes, baloot, and dog meat barbecue.
The jeepneys buzz the intersection like a hornet’s nest,
But it’s quiet down the mountain once the stone has come to rest.
Olongapo is waking. Magsaysay Drive gives up its dreams.
It’s six AM in Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines.
A sailor slouches back to base, hung over and depressed,
But it’s quiet down the mountain once the stone has come to rest.
His head is stuffed with sawdust. His mouth’s as dry as peanut shells.
Last night he guzzled mojo on top of all those San Miguels.
At midnight he responded to the curfew’s harsh request,
But it’s quiet down the mountain once the stone has come to rest.
Been a year since he’s been stateside, a year since he’s been home.
Just another duty station, and another port to roam.
When he hears a stand-up comic, he reacts indifferently;
He lost his sense of humor on the South China Sea.
He’d picked a girl named Cora, and booked an air-conditioned room.
He’d paid her fifty pesos to revel in her raw perfume.
He spoke a few Tagalog words, but she was not impressed,
And it’s quiet down the mountain once the stone has come to rest.
He held her like he knew her; embraced her warm skin tenderly.
His dreams were of Missouri; his nightmares, of the open sea.
He’d found a lonely refuge with his hand upon her breast,
And it’s quiet down the mountain once the stone has come to rest.
A new day brings its promise of beauty and of poverty;
Of cockfights in the province, and monkeys in the mango tree,
But Subic is a working port, and work must be addressed.
Still, it’s quiet down the mountain once the stone has come to rest.
Been a year since she divorced him; a year since she’s been gone,
Just another disappointment, and another West Pac dawn.
If he laughs, it’s nothing funny; it’s the sound of irony.
He lost his sense of humor on the South China Sea.
And that chip upon his shoulder’s like that ancient, fabled boulder;
He’s a victim of his own mythology.
Her sword glides,
Slicing through scorned hearts.
Change is seen only in my eyes.
Gold fills the hilt
Seething the rage of past abusers
Her song sighs,
Placing spells upon an old fool
She's hiding lies
Stars of which man's imagination built
Lying in the eyes of her beholders
Her tattoos,
Mezmerize her prey
All she loves hides
The grass in which flows claims her,
Pulling her,
Tying her to her damnation,
Placed in the hands of men
Her sword,
Broken
Her song,
Cracked
Her tattoos,
Powerless
Now she is nothing,
Now, she slouches
Now, she cries
And now, she slices