Best Slunk Poems
Little Red left karate class with a grin,
her black belt tied tight below her chin;
the trail smelled of pine,
the sunlight a shine~
when the wolf slunk out wearing a grin.
He circled with swagger and show,
his growl pitched theatrically low;
but Red only sighed,
her patience denied~
she’d seen fiercer foes long ago.
She tossed off her hood with a flare,
revealing bright colors that made everyone stare;
a super-girl suit,
cape fluttering cute~
the wolf froze mid-step in mid-air.
He lunged with a howl and a boast
but Red moved like wind through a ghost;
she flipped him around,
then pinned him to ground~
his ego deflated the most.
He tumbled through mushrooms and leaves,
his pride snagged on branches and eaves;
the squirrels looked down,
the jays laughed aloud~
his ego and dignity lost to the trees.
He whimpered and staggered away,
his bravado gone fully astray;
the birds in the trees
chuckled on the breeze~
his pride in complete disarray.
At Grandma’s, Red knocked on the door,
glowing from triumphant Karate encore;
no woodsman required,
no rescue desired~
Big bad wolf will bother us no more.
And the wolf, with his tail hanging low,
decided it best to never again show;
for legends now spread
how Big Red said~
“I’m a superhero hero, just so you know.”
There was an elusive little guy often espied during World War Two,
And who he was and whence he came no one ever really knew!
He was a bald headed little feller with a very prominent nose,
And he always left the message "Kilroy Was Here" in very stilted prose!
You seldom saw his eyes and his hands were clinging to a wall.
Many G.I.s saw him in latrine stalls and in their greasy dining hall!
His origin and parting message are debated to this very day,
And no one has ever nabbed the graffiti artists who always slunk away!
He was portrayed in cruisers, battleships and even on submarines!
Kilroy's portrait was tattooed on the chests of a few diehard Marines!
'Tis said Hitler saw "Kilroy Was Here" and wondered what it meant,
Thinking it a secret code when found on American accouterment!
Kilroy became as famous as the mysterious smile on the Mona Lisa.
(I even saw his mug when I climbed to the top of the Tower of Pisa!)
Rosie the Riveter may have been guilty, if the truth were told,
Of tracing Kilroy's image on bombers, including the bomb bay hold!
Well, 'tis for sure we couldn't have won the war without the little guy!
Kilroy's antics lifted morale at home and overseas, that you can't deny!
But you haven't seen the last of him, for he is forever etched in history,
On the World War Two Monument in DC - how he got there is a mystery!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
For those a tad younger who may have never heard of Kilroy, go to your search
and type in "Kilroy Was Here" and click the Wikipedia notation and you will learn
more than you ever wanted to know about him!
I wrote a great book, part memoir, part novel
Shopped it around, I ain’t too proud to grovel
Got kicked upstairs to a big publishing head
He invited me in, and here's what was said:
This screed you call Crack House of the 13 Gables
Is one long rant mixed with recycled fables
It wanders aimlessly, but never resolves
Characters pop out of nowhere, then simply dissolve
But the symbolism, sir, allow me to explain
The Victorian parlor represents pathos and pain
In the attic are mothballed broken dreams and betrayals
It's gonna shift your paradigm right off its rails
It’s a thousand-page odyssey into the surreal
The hedge maze is where all 14 sub-plots congeal
Enough! The only reason I called you in, punk
Is to meet the lunatic who scribbled this junk
So I slunk away, not a little dejected
Ain’t much fun being literarily rejected
Trudged back to my grueling, stale coffee grind
Working 15-hour days, going out of my mind
Then one day I met an old pal for some beers
Hadn't seen him in quite a few years
I told him about my rejection slip wrangle
He said buck up, you just need the right angle
I like reading novels, now don’t get me wrong
But writin' 'em, man, that just takes too damn long
And what a huge risk, 16 years you devoted
For no payday at all, just your ego imploded
There's no need to pen the next Moby Dick
Try something short, now that is the trick!
So, I thanked my friend for his most sage advice
And took it to heart without thinkin' thrice
And now I am back as a voice for the ages
Except I'm makin' my mark in far fewer pages
I write sound bites and maxims and pithy remarks
T-shirt slogans and jokes, I just do on a lark
I bang out poems and lyrics at the drop of a hat
Dash off 17 syllables in ten seconds flat
Haikus by the bunch
Cook up a batch before lunch
Put that in your pipe
____________________________
For Humor Contest
Sponsored by: Carol Eastman
Jungle by night
In the far jungle
The big bear of darkness lay
Crouched all night on leafy ground.
It glared through eyes of
Oil lamps of far away huts.
When dawn came, it slunk away.
07/Dec/12
Form: Personification in Form ‘Sedoka’( Syllables: 5-7-7, 5-7-7 )
S.Jagathsimhan Nair
Motif: Nature
For Mary Oliver Rotman
If I drove to the mountain top,
could I talk to God?
If He spoke when I reached
would He say I treat the planet odd?
If I swam to the ocean floor,
could I talk to a squid?
If he spoke to me when we met
would he speak of the damage I did?
If I flew to the trees to visit the birds,
could I speak with an eagle?
If he spoke to me when we met
would smog render his voice less regal?
If I slunk down to the grasses
what would I say to the snake?
If I tried to speak to him when we met
could he talk back, or did our DDT remake?
If I were like a Doolittle I would talk to all,
to find how we have hurt the Earth.
I would take that knowledge and teach all people,
to preserve and share this world from birth.
Spiffed up in my tux and looking so cool
My, how the ladies do titter and drool
I strut about to entice
Fell on my bum on the ice
Picking myself up, slunk off like a fool
An idiot driver cut in front of me on the freeway
Just because they did not get the big picture
I have to slam on my brakes?
Could I let it slide?
Apparently not.
I threw my hands up like “what the heck?”
She gave me the bird.
I gave her one back.
She gave me two birds.
Who was driving there?
I chased her down the freeway,
We are both honking now, acting six-years-old.
She is driving so fast it is utterly ridiculous.
I can barely keep up with her.
Luckily I am driving my husband’s Mercury.
You can go one hundred in it, and it feels like fifty.
I was horrified when we both turned off at the same ramp.
Slunk back a bit when we again headed the same direction.
Was shocked when her turn signal showed me the parking lot I wanted.
We both ended up in front of the same restaurant, and it was not open yet.
“That was FUN!” she shrieked at me.
“Did you know it was ME?” she asked.
I gave her a big hug. My best friend, Susan, had apparently gotten a new car.
“Of course!” I lied.
The calico cat sat firmly
on my quill.
I commanded she get off,
it was my will!
She slanted her green eyes
and hissed.
Here, sat a fierce feline poet,
demanding her poem not be
dismissed.
So, I slunk quietly into my
kitchen.
What could a cat write, what
am I missing?
Ater a spot of aromatic tea,
I returned.
I saw a poem, indeed, I was
not spurned!
First line had 5 paw prints.
Second was 7 paw prints.
Last line was 5 prints!
My cat was learning from me.
This was her version of Catku.
Which she, indeed did pen,
most splendidly!
3/28/2021
~3~
The rec was where we dug sandy tunnel dens
in danger of collapse.There I fired my catapult
on a group of three children some distance away
as I hid behind a willow tree
not far from the passage leading in.
The straightness and speed of the stone
surprised me. It struck a young girl
on her spine, someone unknown,
and as she swung her left hand back
to clutch at her pain I ducked to hide
and slunk aside in the shadow of the trees.
They did not see me as they turned.
I think of it now with shame.
There was no reason.
Much older, as I walked alone across a parking lot
in upstate New York someone took a shot
at me from a window of nearby apartments.
The bullet pinged the lamp post near my head
and I turned to scan the windows from where it must have come, but saw no one.
There was no reason.
Jazz was born beneath a heap of rubble,
An abandoned stray, her life was a poem
The more she shivered, slunk and tried to hide
The more she appealed to my rescuing side.
It took lots of convincing to bring her home.
She was certainly worth all of the trouble.
I'm not afraid of dogs
Why, they're as harmless as frogs
First they growl and bark at me
Then they lift up their leg and pee
One hound tried to act real tough
By tugging hard at my pants cuff
I cleared my throat with a giant roar
Off the hound fled, on all fours
Another mutt jumped up on me
He thought himself quite scary
I quickly choked him half to death
He slunk away, out of breath
Yet there was one time, I admit
That a dog got to me a little bit
This gorgeous female French poodle
Perched on my lap and canoodled
It started with a drink I drank till drunk
when I started to wonder if I'd blink till blunk.
As I opened my eyes in a stink I stunk
and I started to think and thank till thunk.
Life beginning to sink, it sank till sunk.
I was feeling the fink; a fank with funk.
With my money going clink and clank till clunk,
I was poor to a plink of a plank gone plunk.
When I thought of a link I had linked till lunk,
come as fast as a mink of a mink gone munk.
And I started to write in an ink gone unk,
just to write down a story in the pink gone punk.
Then I started to slink and slank till slunk,
all from writing a story of kink and kunk.
Just afraid of an ending that I'd flink and flunk
as if out on the rink to rank my runk.
All to make me a trink of a trank to trunk.
I was rich in a prink of a prank gone prunk.
In a land of endless saltbush stretching miles across the plains
Of western New South Wales where it rarely ever rains,
And the temperature is searing on a soil that's living hell,
Where bleaching bones remind you of the killer droughts as well.
In a land where boredom strikes you as you seek a 'cockies' shed,
Where you put up with the haze that always shimmers up ahead,
You have drove a hundred miles and there's a hundred more to go,
So you're looking for some difference to relieve the 'status quo'.
Now you see I am a shearer who has worked upon these plains,
And from one shed to another I've put up with travel pains,
So I'll tell you now a story that has always stuck with me,
About a time when in the vastness stood one single Wilga tree.
Now this Wilga is a haven from the sun and stifling heat,
And offers shade for resting sheep that found this quiet retreat,
But danger lurked in sandy forms with eyes as cold as steel,
As 'round and 'round with heads bent low, the fear of death is real.
It was common in the outback when one heard the dingo howl,
To find the carcass of a slaughtered sheep where the dingo's prowl,
So every man who worked this land would take with them a gun,
To shoot the scourge of killer dogs until there is not one.
Still 'round and 'round those dingo's slunk to get the sheep to run,
I think the time is nearly here for me to sight the gun,
For the sheep were getting restless and were tending now to bleat,
But only moved around in circles keeping shaded from the heat.
Yet 'round and 'round the dingo's slunk and still their numbers grew,
With the pack much closer now, and the sheep had noticed too,
Then in a charge of hoof and dust, where blended fur and wool,
I had my finger on the trigger but I wasn't game to pull.
For I noticed there was separation from the hunter and the prey,
Every sheep from near the tree had made a perfect get-away,
It was the dingoes that had panicked, and it was fairly plain to see,
That their interest was not killing, they were busting for a pee.
©Lindsay Laurie 2002
Something sits slunk in the corner
Am I the only mourner?
This stranger rocks weeping
it has been sleeping
It has awoke to find
its nightmare was not in its mind
It realizes that this is real
sadness it begins to feel
I step closer to this unknown
For in this dungeon no light is shown
Darkness envelops this victim
My cigarette the only light on him
As I step closer "help me" he whimpers
"save me from these night tremors"
This is no dream my friend
Your sorrow will not end
"I am dying" he tells me
How can I save thee?
"Carry on my word
So little am I heard"
As I step closer to the helpless soul
Gasoline penetrates my nostrils whole
Who are you good sir
"I am Mankind's Conscious mister
I have lived in the shadows as mankind
cuts each others throats without mind
of the consequences of heartless acts
So will you help me in the face of these facts?"
I contemplate his pleading
A conscious this world is needing
But what is that to me
No benefit for me do I see
With the smell of gasoline still in my nose
I flick my cigarette at his body and ragged clothes
As I turn and leave I hear his moans
As I turn and leave I trip over Chivalry and Honesty's bones
I was born a child of The Lord of The Jungle
I was loved, the apple of His eye, His joy in a bundle
He had a great plan for me as His child in His circle of life
But, there a lesser power lurked, one of evil and strife
One day he came and took the life of my dad the King
Then turned on me, his plan from the beginning
The kingship, he wanted, so he began to deceive me
He said I was responsible, no good and I was guilty
Feeling more like a rat than one destined and called
I slunk away, head low and on my belly I crawled
Then I ran so far away, that I couldn’t look back
On my calling or son ship, seeing only my lack
I took the identity of my new friends in Accunamatada
I soon forgot where I came from and who was my Father
I forgot who I was, my calling and my true destination
I forgot my enemy and my responsibility to my nation
But my Dad was always with me, without and within
Sent His Helper to me, His comforter and friend
To remind me of who I really was from the beginning
To leave Accunamatada, go home and stop sinning
I’m too far from that life now, that’s too far in the past
I desire no worries now and my new friends are a blast
So He picked up a board and hit my head with a whack!
Said, “No worries my boy, now that whacks in the past!”
See, Scar is a hard taskmaster to your true people today
And the top of the food chain are cowering and afraid
While he has you happy here in Accunamatada Land
Your people are enslaved there by your enemies hand
Turn from your feasting, playing and procrastination
Remember your calling and your true destination
Stop living in complacency here without an scars
While your family is hungry and weary at war
Get up from that couch now and turn off that TV
Your Father is waiting, get down on your knees
Intercede and cry out and show that you care
For your brothers and sisters who suffer out there
Then I remembered, I was the son of the King
And my brothers and sisters were suffering
I turned around and ran back as fast as i could
I had family to save and save them I would