Best Sobriquet Poems
What do I call that young coquette?
My shadow self; my silhouette.
Those clothes, that hair, a cigarette.
The joie de vivre; the vain regret.
What sort of pithy epithet
will she recall, lest I forget?
Perhaps, instead a sobriquet
for who I was back in the day.
But what would she wish to portray?
Somewhat naive, a bit risqué?
A wounded child or power play?
“All that and more!” is what she’d say.
That girl who played a victim game
(though she would make the counter-claim).
A femme fatale; a wild flame.
A spirit not a soul could tame.
Both full of pride and full of shame,
all contradiction just the same.
It all feels now as but a dream,
that martyr of her own regime.
A fog of war; a distant scream.
An echo of one’s disesteem.
A soldier who would self-redeem
and break her shackles at the seam.
Now when she comes to mind I smile,
recalling each and every mile
we marched and fought in rank and file.
We failed, we wailed, we shed the guile
to wake and heal and reconcile
a misspent youth and life worthwhile.
*****************************
Written: May 2nd, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Seth Pina
Based on the Poem: The Artist
5th place contest winner
******************
It begins as a breath, barely born—
a lucent little longing that should have stayed liminal,
Yet it irrupts, unabated,
threading itself through the chiaroscuro of my thoughts.
I tell myself it is otiose,
a passing flicker, a quixotic quirk of the mind—
but it grows tensile, treacle-thick,
a rumbustious rhapsody refusing to evanesce.
Your name—your very sobriquet—
becomes a mellifluous mantra,
an epizeuxis echoing in the marrow,
a chant I never meant to memorize.
I wander through hours like a wayward opsimath,
learning too late how fixation forms its own theology—
how a single presence can become
a sacrosanct symbiosis of ache and awe.
Every thought is festooned with your outline,
every silence redolent with your imagined breath;
even the air feels janiform,
half mine, half yours,
as if the world itself has chosen sides.
I try to exculpate myself
from this inchoate imbroglio,
but obsession is a sagacious sherpa—
It knows the steepest path
and drags me up it anyway.
And still—
beneath the nadir of night,
in the hush where hubris dissolves—
I feel the truth unfurl:
That obsession is not hunger,
nor hubris,
nor hecatomb of reason—
but the amaranthine ache
of wanting to witness beauty
so completely
that it finally
witnesses you back.
Miss Sunshine was her sobriquet, and she the golden child
All through her happy infant days she wore that winning smile
She loved the colors nature gave, but sensitive and shy
She suffered from the thoughtlessness of some at junior high.
So music was her salvation, she practiced all the while
And breathed new life into sad songs with unique wondrous style
And harmony came naturally, in shades of dark and light
As with her paintings and her song she kept her spirit bright.
In the Valley of the Nightingales, by peaceful waters there
That sylvan voice of honeyed cream still dances in the air
Gifted by the shooting star with heart and mind so pure
The softly spoken blue chanteuse too fragile to endure.
Then morphine -laced to ease her pain and lifted to her chair
She sang out What A Wonderful World and left pure magic there
Adored by friends and family, her last performed goodbye
She graced the notes with perfect pitch and heard her angels cry.
She never got that little house, dreamed of, by ocean's roar
She never sang out to the seas from treasured golden shore
The brigade choir out of sight down some yellow brick road
Sings clear with Eva clothed in white, in Toto's fields of gold.
In the Valley of the Nightingales, by peaceful waters there
That sylvan voice of honeyed cream still dances in the air
Gifted by the shooting star with heart and mind so pure
The softly spoken blue chanteuse too fragile to endure.
INSPIRED BY FACTS FROM THE BOOK - EVA CASSIDY- SONGBIRD
HEAR ME SING THIS IN CONCERT.
ON YOUTUBE - VALLEY OF THE NIGHTINGALES, LOUIS SPENCE
THANK YOU.
Jefferson Randolph 'Soapy' Smith was the wiliest scoundrel in the west!
He was invited to leave numerous towns since he wasn't a welcome guest!
He swindled gullible dudes throughout the west endin' up in Colorado,
Where he earned the sobriquet 'Soapy' and where he found his El Dorado!
He'd set up a soap display on a Denver street and invite folks to gather 'round.
His spiel began: "Buy a bar for a dollar and inside money may be found!"
The rush was on and suckers fought to buy bars of soap, gamblin' on a win!
Cops were even called to the scene to maintain order and to quell the din!
Folks tore at wrappers and one feller hollered, "I got a hundred dollar bill!"
Little did the unsuspectin' boobs know that it was 'Soapy's' planted shill!
Dupes lost their dough and with a five-cent bar of soap they were stuck,
He pulled the scam time and again and that's how "Soapy's' name was struck!
'Soapy' pulled up stakes in Denver and migrated to other towns out west.
He was successful with the soap scam and was adept at hidin' aces in his vest!
He made his way to Creede where he established the Orleans Gamblers Saloon.
There, 'Soapy' was involved in nefarious affairs and left town none too soon!
The gold rush was on in the Yukon and he pined to go there ere it was too late.
He arrived in Skagway and later on in Juneau where he was to meet his fate.
'Soapy' met his end in a gunfight and his final words were, "My God, don't shoot!"
Thus ends the ballad of 'Soapy' Smith, that swindlin', cheatin', rotten galoot!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
Continued from Part 2
Beyond the suburbs, farmers’ fields (where donkeys often brayed)
inhale gray gusts of barren dust where living seed once laid
and in the haze a scarecrow sways, impaled upon a spade.
Green trees gone dark in palace parks (where kids once paused to play),
watch lifeless things on phantom swings (like statues made of clay)
guard marbled tombs in graveyards groomed for grievers bent to pray.
And castle clocks, unwound, defrock with speechless spinning spokes,
unfurling blight of reigning Night by sweeping off her cloaks,
and flaunting dun oblivion, her Baroness evokes.
The sun-bleached bones of those who'd flown lie scattered down the lanes
while other souls who’d hid in holes left bones with yellow stains
of plaintive tears (shed insincere, for no one felt the pains).
The wraiths that scream in sleepless dreams have ceased to terrify
though terrors wrought by conscience fraught now stalk and lurk nearby
within the shrouds of curtained clouds, frail fabrics on the sky.
And fog no longer seeps beyond the edge of doom’s café,
for when she trails her mourning veils, she fills the cabaret
with sallow smears of misty tears in sheets of shallow gray.
The City’s still, like hollowed quill with ravished feathered vane,
baptized in floods of spattered blood, once flowing through a vein.
The fruits of life, destroyed in strife... ’twas truly all in vain.
No umbras hum with jagged tongues nor sing a silent psalm
nor lade pale lips with languid quips to pierce the deathly calm –
they've seen, you see, life’s brevity, beneath a neutron bomb.
EPILOGUE
Beyond the Silent City’s walls, the victors laugh and play
while celebrating PEACE ON EARTH, the devil’s sobriquet
for neutron radiation death in places far away.
End
Sadness fills me
Heartache shrouds me
Anguish consumes me
Need overwhelms me
Endless tears unseen
DESPAIR (the utter loss of hope)
Plenty of room in « Le Foot »* for Soccer
For Doug Vinson at PoetrySoup.com
I
Not long ago King Pelé
Set “le foot” in America
Today his peoples’ muted “Olé”!
Rue the day at Maracana
Now from coast to conniving coast
Your Can-Can gals kick “le balon”*
No Wall in between the goal-posts
To win at summit many a “galon”*
Alright! Keep your cherished football
Iced-hoc-key bounced balls in basket
But let echo corked-leather on “saule”*
Crikey! "le cri-cri"* of “le cricket”
II
Tremble at the hakka-cry of the All Blacks
Cringe before Aussie toughs at Springbok élan
And let them romp with the Six-Nation packs
Over your greens with fifteen Argentinian
Call out to the run-machine Little Master*
And let his blade flash home-runs tout azimut
Over heads of fielders spectators and trainer
And let your millions throb and catapult
Your new knights sans armour in world arena
And gasp at fresh records topple centuries*
On pitch and turf in Tests across suburbia
And join the world in friendly rivalries.
*"Le Foot"or "Le Fut": French for football/soccer.
*"le balon": French for ball.
*"le(s) galon(s)": French for "stripes" as in "to win one's stripes in battle" (gagné ses galons au combat) .
*"le saule": French for the willow tree. "Willow" is metonymy for the cricket bat as the latter is made from the tree.
*"le cri-cri": familiar French for "le grillon", the insect cricket.
*"Little Master", sobriquet of Sachin Tendulkar, the retired legendary Indian test-cricketer, the counterpart of the Brazilian Pelé in soccer. See my poem: "The Little Master: Sachin Tendulkar", my most-read ever poem.
*"centuries": batting records in cricket run into a few centuries, mostly in five-day international test-matches.
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 2017
Long time ago, a pup was born
Red pup grew, eating lots of corn.
Pup grew big and hid
Bigger than Hagrid
His was fame; mine a flame that horn!
Nobler are our teachers,
Abler are our Counsellers,
Calibre is the trait of the taught,
Sober taughts-begotten is the sobriquet
Of our Almamater's lot!
Oh, happy are the people who
have loads of chums, both old and new,
who stop and pass the time of day,
or join them when they dine and play.
And yet the luckiest, by far,
are those who know this real star;
a noble friend, a real mate;
whom friends and neighbours highly rate.
With head held high, a noble pose,
the keenest ear, the sharpest nose,
his curly hair, a lustrous brown,
snipped at the best salon in town.
Likewise, he’s known, both far and wide,
for all the love he can provide.
A ‘foodie’? Yes. But I prefer
the sobriquet, a connoisseur.
Sophisticated, debonair,
a certain style, with real flair,
a bon viveur, a social cog …..
But that’s enough about my dog!
And me? There’s not a lot to say,
I trundle on, the usual way,
from here to there, with grunt and groans,
supported by these creaking bones.
~
For Frank's 'Self Portrait' Competition.
There is a legend of a cowboy down in Texas
To whom they give the sobriquet of Pecos Bill.
It's said he rooted and he tooted
As across the plains he scooted,
Stetsoned, jeaned, bowlegged, and booted,
Pursuing cows and wooing gals
As was his skill.
The story goes one day while Bill was out romancing,
A cyclone came and rudely whisked the gal away.
He hopped atop the thing to ride it,
Quickly lassoed and hogtied it,
Then none the worse for wear and tear and rough foreplay,
Out stepped the gal,
And Pecos Bill had saved the day.
Now, legends often tend to get a bit inflated,
And this one here is no exception to the rule.
Some say it's too exaggerated,
I say it's well imaginated.
Like alimony oilmen often pay their exes,
Things are always so much bigger down in Texas.
Of course, it's hogwash, rubbish, bunk,
And yet how often have I thunk
That the tale of Pecos Bill is kinda cool.
Stacy Applebean, every teacher's pet
Without a doubt, straight A's she'd always get
Hated and unpopular
Her yearbook summarized her
'Rotten Apple,' her lasting sobriquet
Henry, you tried and tried and tried —
turkey legs and beer kegs of great import*
Did they get between you and the ladies,
many of those waiting...
You got your way,
but your seeds unharvested
after 1603.
How fair these children of a greedy king —
Edward, Mary and Elizabeth.
Edward VI, king at nine,
lives to be fifteen —
a child the whole time.
Lady Jane Grey, not one of Henry’s kids
would be royally screwed
after nine days,
Mary grabbed the crown, as was her due.
Queen Mary I, like her dad, caused a beheading,
Grey would wish she hadn’t stepped on her toes.
Sobriquet, quite sobering, of Bloody Mary,
vilified in Foxe’s Actes and Monuments.
Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, after her sister dies
in 1558. Video et taceo — she sees but says nothing.
Perhaps better to keep your trap shut in the family vault
or die trying to try and try and try to one’s detriment.
11/2/2020
*concern
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree…
—Joyce Kilmer
LOOSE LEAFS
In the dusting of the Springtime,
blush petals fall - sobriquet-youth.
Scented thoughts of yesterday, rhyme
elementary, with loose leafs.*
Poems Sweet Honesty, presume.
Honeysuckle lines with hair pulls.
The binder, neat, with florid bloom.
Exaltation of the classics.
It’s only in looking behind,
observation of curvy tree,
wholly beautifully designed -
the step by step instruction wings.
With irregular ruler edge,
falls sweetest words along the ledge.
A canticle I think I'll be,
A rimed thought, hoary and ancient,
Stinking as the dust heaped up empyreal on the hills of
The Judean sands;
And as dulled and dimmed as an archaic coin tarnish'd.
This is what I think I might be.
I'd as lief be this as any other you might care to name.
Valid is this, my remote and removed claim,
And it all began hereon.
O, that was an age ago, that remote and bygone time,
Rimed with hoar-frost and the whitishness of ancientness,
When as blood-soaked, cruciferous hills remote and circumvallatory or else
Perhaps circumferential to the great, walled city, itself circumvallatory;
When all this began.
When this particular beguine to which we've all been dancing lo this many score of years began.
It was as a woman bedecked in black on a Sunday morning newly kissed by the auriferous dawn,
(A goldener dawn than even that on which she met the man whose coffin she was now appointed to follow in a moribund processional, a macabre and solemn, ceremonial dance of death,)
Going down to the fixed graveyard.
That day was as the day on which I first deigned to join this,
And adopting unto myself the sobriquet, shibboleth "A canticle I think I be"
(For I was not permitted to use the full appellation I wished to apply to myself,
Owing to some stupid and recondite rule regarding and regulating the use and due conservation of characters: Yet not those as those of the mainstays of literature, no! I mean to say the characters that are synonymous with words and spaces and punctuation and the like,)
And here the tale ends, though 'twas not Moschean nor Noahide as
I perhaps meant it to be.
Oh, well: All's well that ends well.
(For was this not an idiotic tale, yet a harrowing one, whose lightest word would harrow up the young blood of any and all who saw it, read it, perused it?)