Best Sloughs Poems
Tell me of your peace.
Let it tell your story now
Of trials and tribulations, a tale not of dreams
Weary from a journey of self-discovery
My child, know the comfort in your peace
You feel hope in this familiar place
As it gently sloughs the pain away
Tell me of your peace
In which we all are blessed and free
Search throughout your soul sweet child
Peer not within your cluttered mind
Look out to rest your tired eyes but do not let them see
Solace found strewn upon daily thoughts is fleeting at it's best
Lasting merely moments, in untouched souls a true peace
Oh yes! You'll know when you arrive but only you will know
The world will melt away as a candle left under the blazing sun
Away away, until you feel home again, an unguided familiar scene
An innocence once lost is restored, all sins suddenly forgiven
Soaking this in with relucant ease,
Breathe it deep with a slow release
Take it in, delight in details you discover
Be calm here child, please have no fear, I am here
You are safe in this place of yours, no hurt no tears
We share not the same peace, no no
Unique to each of us, yet stranger to none
Trust in more than what you see, know beauty is within reach
We share this unspoken bond of freedom from ourselves
Please young one, listen closer now
I say, leave it all behind you love, it will only weigh you down
Cleanse yourself of careless words and careful lies
I know you're weary, let go of all you carry
Don't be afraid, here you are burden free
Trust in you, blessed one, it's easier than you believe
Sweet child, tell me now if you see
Peace resting deep within
Waiting for you
For you to let it be
Dawn's
Stillness
Invites me
Vermillion hills
Clouds' engulfing tangerine stillness crests
Tension sloughs, blows away like old snakeskin
Desert rain scent
Cleansing me
Pedal
Flow
Smile
Conceals
Morning’s ride
Heart's treasure trove
Work’s gray walls can't touch my bright turquoise glow
7/18/16
© by Author
Contest: Triple Tetractys 2
Sponsor: Eve Roper
Syllable count confirmed at howmanysyllables.com
It was a long lonely night at the lumber mill
Just listening to a whippoorwill
In the dark beside a logging road.
I’ve got fifteen cars of timber on my load.
The yard stinks of bleeding sap and cut pine.
Roll on, roll on down the line.
I’ll be on my way before the dawn
Through the bottoms and the swamps.
Before first sun light on the timber lot,
Backwater sloughs and cypress knots.
On rusted rails I’ll be making time
When the horizon winks a thin gold line.
I’ll be rumbling down this long steel track,
Somewhere between porch light and pitch black
While coyotes call out for the night.
My engines will be roaring around the bend
As the night bird’s song comes to an end.
Roll on, morning train, roll on.
Then day break will lay on morning dew,
As the logging town fades out of view.
I’ll give my whistle a blow, blow
To make the farmer’s rooster crow.
By the time the sun has warmed me,
Old men will be drinking their coffee
As I roll through the station.
I ask you leave an open car
For misty eyed hobos and runaways.
Let them know the clotheslines, highways,
And countless telephone poles.
Sunshine and shadows clicking time
Beside the graveyards, grain silos,
And other lonely places.
They’ll be greeted by multitudes of sparrows,
Smiling house wives in their bathrobes,
Unwashed cars and graffiti
Behind the back yards of society.
They’ll find comfort in the rhythm of the day
Beside the dusty dirt roads and alleyways.
Roll on, big freight train, roll on.
It is not a fall,
A python sloughs its old skin and wears new look;
It is never a fall,
A snail finds splinter in its shell and changes its house;
Not a fall,
Wing-locust sheds its wing and becomes a queen;
A fall?
A child loses her cheese cutter for permanent ivory,
No, not a fall.
Great pheonix went to the nest to refeather,
They thought the immortal bird had fallen;
No,the golden bird lives,bristling up its new mane,
At the biggest internode of Araba tree;
The ageless bird crows, at the tallest branch of Iroko tree.
The lioness sleeps in the forest,
The flies of forest think the queen has fallen ,
And begin to mill around the sleeping giant buttock;
With what? With what shall the tamer of forest chase them away?
With tail! With tail the tamer of forest shall chase them away,
With tail.
The lioness sleeps in the forest
And the ants of the forest begin to mill around her ears;
With what? With what shall her majesty chase them away?
With wave! With wave shall her majesty chase them away,
With wave.
The lioness sleeps in forest
And the flies of forest begin to mill around her nose;
With what? With what shall her highness seize them?
With tongue! With tongue shall her highness seize them,
With tongue.
FOR LINDA AND SKAT
1ST DEC,2014
*Inspired by Cheryl Hoffman’s “The Skin We’re In” — Go read it!
On a turkey it's called a wattle
on a moose, "the bell," (not “the bottle”)
Those batlike things?
(too small - see wings)
dewlaps*, odd appendages we coddle
We're prisoners of the skin we’re in
some have it thick, some have it real thin
It may seem quite brittle,
when splatted with spittle,
it sloughs right off, again and again
So gobble some buffalo wings
fluffle up your wattle and sing,
“Don’t be obtuse.
I’m not a moose!
I’m a turkey, you big ding-a-ling!"
(*A dewlap is a longitudinal flap of skin that hangs beneath the lower jaw or neck of many vertebrates. While the term is usually used in this specific context, it can also be used to include other structures occurring in the same body area with a similar aspect, such as those caused by a double chin or the submandibular vocal sac of a frog. Source: Wikipedia)
In the misty morning amid the elm and maple trees
The whiteness delicately floats above the ponds waterline
The night hunters abandon their night search for food
As the early morning rays peek through the woodland.
The morning brings the forest teeming to life
The occupants ready to attack their early morning feast
The vines and shrubs hiding them as they arch ready to attack
they scramble for their scrumpcious bite of food.
The geese, crows and magpies mingle around the water's edge
Looking for plants, seeds and aquatic animals to feed
Among the bull rushes and cattails on the sloughs edge
They mingle with the locals who come to drink.
Eating the wild berries for a tasty treat
Saskatoon, chokecherries, pin cherries ready to eat
Juicy and sweet, mild yet tart
Quite edible for a flock to feast.
This is a haven, a sanctuary for all
And as the balmy summer evening turns once again to dusk
The predators will come out with the evening shade
To stalk their prey among the woodland grove.
He was a common-place stranger,
Occupying the corner table every night,
And every day, alone but never lonely,
In a tropical beach bar, with thatched roof and no walls.
He sat facing the ocean, with a beer in his hand,
And glassy eyes that looked to a distant place,
Wearing tattered shorts, a straw hat and big white beard,
Looking more like Santa on vacation.
It was an ocean he gazed upon, but not what he saw,
As visions of large open fields of cattle took its place,
Wheat fields and mountain ranges, creeks and sloughs,
Forests, beaver ponds and deer.
His glass of beer was never empty and never full,
And his eyes never left the ocean,
The canvas that painted pictures of a life before now,
And the common-place stranger dreamed alone.
There were the tourists, the locals and the pretty island girls,
All spending their time and money,
With laughter and gaiety, teasing and flirting,
But the common-place stranger was unaware.
He looked like he was in his element,
In this tropical bar facing the ocean,
His skin, rough and tanned and weather-beaten,
And no one remembered when he first arrived.
He was just a common-place stranger,
Blending into the fabric and landscape of this island paradise,
But a paradise for whom? - not for him,
For his mind was in another place and his eyes searched the ocean.
One day he was gone,
And the corner table was conspicuous in its emptiness,
But no one ever sat there,
For it belonged to the common-place stranger.
by David Ronald Bruce Pekrul
The issue's not yet signed and sealed.
Three cogent answers hold the field,
and no-one knows which is the best.
I'll set them out before you, lest
the question go a-begging.
First
(and this one's frequently rehearsed,
but holds least clout - at least with me),
the Mason-Dixon Line must be
the great divide: South, slavery,
North, freedom. Dixon, Dixie - see?
The trouble is that way back when
those two unstinting Englishmen
surveyed the Line, none under heaven
(we're talking seventeen sixty-seven)
could care a cuss if blacks were pressed
to toil unpaid at whites' behest.
And Delaware, by no means least
of slaving states, lies north and east
of said divide.
Manhattan, now:
though it may try to disavow
a past that wasn't quite PC,
New York had sloughs of slavery.
A Mister Dixie held some lands
(right where the Guggenheim now stands):
the human property he owned
led folks to talk of "Dixie's Zone"
whenever slaves were being mentioned,
and gradually, by extension,
this came to mean the South. Could be.
Pursuing perspicuity
is noble in itself, and so
I offer as my final throw
the one which really should have won
(who measures merit, though, by fun?)
Louisiana, sovereign state,
sought (sensibly) to circulate
its very own banknotes. Problem was,
the Cajun cash collapsed, because
nobody trusted it. Each bill
was written in (for good or ill)
official French, so - quelle caprice! -
each sawbuck said, not ten, but "dix".
Thus, Dixie's fixed in every brain
as something quaint, quixotic, vain.
I met an old veteran the other day.
How old he was I really couldn't say,
But I could tell by his shuffling gait,
That, alas, he was nearing Saint Peter's gate.
In the park with him I wanted to walk.
"No, son," he said, "lets just sit and talk,
And if you are interested I'll tell you,
About my service in World War Two."
"You see, I was a mere private in the infantry,
And was with my buddies storming Normandy.
Then, I wasn't concerned about saving liberty;
The guy next to me was my only priority!"
"I guess a lot of people call us heroes.
We didn't think of that plodding thro' the sloughs.
We just wanted to get the job done,
And ensure that final victory was won!"
After a long pause he said, "Well, I'd better go."
He shuffled off as I mused, he's a super-hero!
My eyes misted over just a wee bit.
It wasn't from the dust, I'll readily admit.
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
Wind’s Life
Thundering wind is on its way,
The beat of sleet
Rhythmical, crackling on panes,
Wind is a being.
Touching spring with a kiss,
Then turning macho man
On a dime.
Mr. Blow sloughs on desert sands
Sand billowing from the unseen.
Rolling purple, golden sunsets
Change at his bidding, soundless.
Where does he come from,
Where does he go?
He roars and rides the waves,
Whistles through your hair,
While bits of paper,
Leaves, sidewalk dust shuffle.
Then shush, shush, shush
A whisper lullaby he blows
Why are the sea gulls shopping here, if not
for "White Stag, "No Boundaries." or "Faded Glory?"
Is there some other story? Coffee, Tea or You,
or just practicing beach and gray-sky calls
over concrete, carts, and Handicapped Blue?
This turf is for blackbirds of the piercing cry, haughty
strut and beady stare. It's not for you to straddle
halogen in your evening wear of dove-gray, black
tie in this car-lot of no swells, no breakers.
What lures you displaced gracefuls-- calls you
from rides on a rogue wind, pushing lace-topped
tides to stock minnow meals in pellucid sloughs?
You've paid your dues, and dour land birds
are the parking lot denizens. Surely you harbor
a peculiar appetite for hors d'oeuvres that do not
swim or paddle, though you buzz pedestrians
on stony reaches as when dive-bombing
the deep, or cruising the beaches.
For whatever draws you to the superstore,
super birds, I pray you reap Neptune's
pardon as you vie for the rail over the holy grail
of the Wal-Mart sign, where no whitefish,
black fish, shrimp or snail, no fiddler crab
scuttles for safety. And may our God absolve
us our sins of the past-- our ever advancing
invasion of concrete, steel, and glass.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
~William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act V, Scene I
I weep by a stardust shore where the seraphs sing
Tangerine tears rain despair 'neath a velveteen veil
My melancholic muse, muslin-wrapped in ice-cold caskets
Slain by ruinous romance swirled in absinthe abstractions
Despondent sloughs bespoke the depths of my soul
Saffron scars scream sonnets through metaphorical mists
Oh, how morose melodies paint scabs over pastiche strophe
Pregnant pause, so precious, submerged in lurid lament
But then it whispered, a voice unvarnished by purple plumes
A verse, it bloomed, untainted by thesaurus bleeds
Sculpting off silken scaffolds pasted upon profligate poetry
Leaving a profounder palate for plainer prosody
Fools thought wisdom speak in sequin-laced soliloquy
But wise men abrades from calligraphic charade
Should I, mere a rabbit of sand, shiny hair,
sport a shock of fur mired in clay,
they from gofer mounds, propped on to peer, would sound warning
through the sun glades and sleep grotto shades.
“A pall fellow lights whereupon we here graze.
See ye lithely to him yield path.
He in bone pastel smocks with such likeness to bare
plodeth sloughs dank, decay’s fell morass.”
“This chap’s marks are slurred, kindred ‘s smudged,” they’ll say,
“in a mud that is not of our warren.
He looks sullied by drear earthen labyrinths far ‘way,
perhaps fox hole, cat hovel, or den of wolves’ coven.”
For when foul skies do strike, marring trees with their curses,
rains fall to douse scintillate branches.
A pungency hovers where a torrid sludge cools.
Its paste casts forbidden clan hues.
Now the wolf craves not easily his like or lean.
He is wary of ghouls in his ranks.
“Gaunt swagger, I see,” he’ll think,
“This one leave be, who with me, shares the gore and the grisly.”
For in drab sheens to drape, shall the countenance daunt.
Browns besmirched will, in ashes, urge, “Yay,
it is he colored wolf.” In airs Lupus, I’ll steep,
strutting meekness purged, brave in cloak gray.
No No No it says
a little momento of a soul
with which I imagine I identify
I can see her there
crouched in the stall
armed with her key
scratching deep without restraint
blowing away the cloud
of the chalky wall
which sloughs off like snow
I can see her there
trying to rein in her eyes
the recent memory of numbers
and words
falling away like the skin
of the wall, in the stall
on the eighth floor of the study hall
I can see her there
clawing with fervor
hoping to share the damage
the frustration that singes
her chest, the regret
that shreds with the papers
in her fist, her best try
No, No, No
I imagine her slipping
away from a foothold
watching the flood waters rush in
and consuming the wall
her tower, reduced to sand
A witness to the aftermath
I know her-
this resounding no
is a way of life
and I, a college student
am not prepared
for my exam tomorrow
Oh no...no...no
to dream, to lie, in sweet repose
and drink the thoughts of those who rose
from dark eternal slumber bleak,
to steal the voice of those who speak
see as i lie awake at night,
my effervescent dreams alight
upon a mirror in the dark,
to see embittered souls embark
towards the center of the mind,
a shadow-shrouded serpentine.
and i have rarely dreamed of sleep,
in places memory scarce can keep.
but bitter memories find us here,
in brightest nooks of memories clear.
to sleep, to fade, before we wake,
with nary even souls to take
and should we find wide azure skies,
we soar throughout our half-dazed lies.
and so i wake (or do i sleep?)
to find a shepherd and his sheep.
but why does the shepherd cower so?
i take a closer look, and lo!
the sheepskin sloughs away in droves,
the flock becomes a pack of wolves.
but i can barely dream of sleep,
inside my memories barren keep
and so we count the wolves instead
with thoughts of madness in my head.