Best Strewed Poems
I may not always write about you,
About the way your energy,
Caresses my spine,
And sends jolts of electrity,
Racing through my body,
Exploding each cell like fireworks.
I may not write about,
The way my dreams at night,
Fill with you and I dancing,
Heat bashing our skin,
Filling us with an unquencable need,
Touch beconing a new meaning.
I may not write about,
The way your eyes stare into mine,
Past the years I have seen,
And into the soul that I am,
Spirit colliding with spirt,
Melting together like Iron to form a sword.
I may not write about,
A love that we experience,
Through star strewed skies,
And blood soaked ground,
That causes even the fearful sight,
Of bombs exploding to look beautiful.
I may not write about you and I,
How I fill up your soul and your mind,
With thoughts and words and images,
That melt and form new words,
Your lovely muse who so beguiles you,
With a double bladed sword.
But Darling, don't let your heart,
Get away from itself,
Don't let your heart take the fall.
The wound I cause shall soon heal,
And you will read words,
Of another man, dancing with me,
Of another man, touching my soul,
His finger tips brushing the sides,
Of my breasts, his lips trailing down my neck,
Whispering with the heat of hells fires,
All that could be between, his and mine.
You will read lines that speak,
Of a sensual romance,
Pools and puddles of lust between thighs,
And an ancient sweetness,
That rivals Greek Ambrosia.
It is no fault of your own,
You have fallen and I have shown you,
The sharp dagger of my love.
Cold snow covered all tombs and lanes,
Still he strewed the coffin with sprays
of flowers, to lessen his pains.
He uttered a few words of praise.
But snow showers
Buried flowers.
He recited poetic strains
Could only look down in a daze.
Hot tears fell upon her remains
Yet snow veiled all in a cold haze,
Irked and harried,
All sprays buried.
Bells summoned as they tolled the sad departure
Of my poor mother’s sudden demise.
I led the short funeral procession
Towards her eternal resting sepulchre.
Before her black ebony casket was closed,
I looked intently down at her, still beautiful.
Her dress, her favourite, all lace in black.
That was her last and final wish.
They laid her in a damp black tomb
Surrounded by tall dark cypress trees,
A breeze sighed and soughed softly in sorrow
While I stood head bowed down in grief.
Lifeless leaves fell in yellow-red bunches
And covered up her ghostly grave
No tears streamed down my face, heartbroken,
Strewed instead black roses, fragrant and sweet.
Blank pages strewed high on my desk in pain,
For now, I heard the squelch of death again,
It had echoed from my emptied inkwells,
As dying words crept from a mind that quells,
Pilfered hands scrawl at piles for hopeful hints,
A gleam, as much as a sign to convince,
A broked stopped clock reminds that time does not,
And a muted bird still has what its got,
Rambled eyes of a place in disguises,
Shadows grow as my heart vaporizes,
My rhythmless moves just proved my resolve,
I heard the squelch of death again, evolve.
2019 September 14
Hurricane
By Edmund Siejka
There were warnings of a hurricane
People had been through this before
They knew what to do
Why some of the houses on the water were worth over a million dollars
They would ride it out.
The hurricane came ashore and slowly marched inland
South of Merrick Road
Cold grimy
Water was everywhere
Sewage and fuel coated lawns
Soldiers patrolled areas hardest hit
Boats were strewed in streets and yards
Neighborhoods sat empty for weeks
And politicians worried about their future.
Spray painted signs warned
“You loot
We shoot”
Heat and electricity were luxuries
Cash was a valuable commodity
Most people were patient
Some were not
But no one seemed to care.
Families returned to their neighborhoods
Tired, cold, and hungry
Water logged furniture lined the streets
Making two lane roads impossible
The only ones to show up
Were utility workers from out of State.
We don’t respect nature
We build where we shouldn’t
We pollute when we should know better
We use up resources like there’s no tomorrow
And then we’re surprised when nature hits back and reminds us that she is after all
…….Mother Nature.
(for: them who are ever there!)
these branches and roots
that cord to the grave ancients
should be free from man’s swords!
both oracle and priest held for days …
I
Your voice speaks in the silence of the night
To the deep still shady earth
That once held a great zest for our childhood
Here in the once thick wooded land
Where progenitors strewed their rustic huts
Yes! where, sang tho’ unseen those sonorous kin-spirits.
2
Ah! Happy and keen folks were the ancients, then;
But their sons? what a sad lot, now! even
Demented hearts aching from those drinks of dizzy times
Raw anguish, sorrow, painful hemlocks of death-lines,
The slow songs that tune softly to the mirthful graves
That still hold the ancestors like prisoners in the wild caves.
3
O! for your unravished wave of primal welcome,
That bade the sonorous weaver come
To make loud greeting of blue azure with song-fleet
O! for such uudecoded song that for the sagging flesh bear ointment
Secret balm from the rhyming unsteady palm leaves of the winds
That flute clearly to ancestors those eternal silent songs.
4
Known are those festal spirits of your night
From whom many lives readily spring forth:
Mused thru’ the voices of strong mortal compeers –
Priests, priestesses, praise-singers, warriors, dancers!
That with gusto, flounder across the space of time;
O, for those festal moments of flush! o, for the celestial clime!
5
You are the unseen bridge of the world,
Like Nturukpa, that elder amongst our ferry trees;
Your bark exhumes the bright colours of the past;
And carried thru’ the festal wings of your night
We desire to be mused to the ethereal clime;
Of uncurbed equanimity and euphoria of the divine.
6
I now know the anguish of these festal spirits
Who take refuge on the water-void banks
Of the topmost branches and leaves;
I now know the noise of their feasts in sacrifices:
Doleful sacrifices in the gods’ swollen foot!
Then adieu! adieu! from the cloyed humans in advent!
7
O farewell! with all your festal spirits,
Who coaxed to the night of sacrifices, priests,
Priestesses, dancers, praise-singers, warriors of the land;
Adieu! with these cold celebrations and coax-throated songs heard,
Thru’ the voice and echoes of rain’s thunder,
In the day of the panther and his noble twin, the hunter.
Ama you are a father
Father my father
Whose basket of fishes
Sweetened my mother’s dishes
Whose naked feet danced
The jungle drum you drummed.
I remember
Father I still remember
Those joyous days
When like brooding hens
You employed your hands
To shield the offsprings
Those several bodies
O! the little bodies
That clung to your bare wide chest
Like the eaglets unto their nest!
I remember
The sun-burnt days of the hunted panther
When the full moon-light chimed
The rhythms of jungle drum drummed
Rhyming with the story told
By the white-haired.
Then your roaring march
Along the prime paths of the forest
Then your rustic touch
Touching the weapon-hilt
Making carcasses of beasts
Making fresh clan feasts.
I still remember
The raw feasts of the drummer
Which strewed this universe
Like young Mbari warriors
Taking the spear from several clans
Turning their crowns into tributes!
Ama, you are the drummer
Whose communal tongue echoed
From the hidden chambers of the Niger
The drum of your conquests echoed
Everywhere in the universe
Like the gusto of the Sheik
Confiscating my land from the Sahara
In her eternal desiccation.
You are the royal father
Whose royal eyes woo the moon
Whose black hairs detain the sun
Like Joshua at Gibeon
Even in the deep valleys of Ajalon
Bringing the heavens to abrupt halts
When their course possesses progress.
O, Ama! you are a noble father
And like the gold-laying eagle my Africa
Your natural pocket flowers gold
Which fills the coffers of the household.
O Ama! you are our race
The clan greets her farmer
The tiller of my earth
The earth of the ancients
The ancients of my blood
The blood of my race.
The clan is still drumming
On the drum that now is a mere echo
Of the eternal rhythm of your drum
Ama, you are still our clan’s song;
O, you are my song
The song my jungle
The jungle of my blood
The blood of my race:
A race
Waiting
Now and ever
In a forlorn clan
Awaiting
A return of the drum?
Outside of the city where the pomegranates grow,
With large citrus orchards perfuming the air,
I met my true love on a blossom strewed pathway.
My heart gave a leap when I saw him draw near.
He held me so tight underneath blooming tree
As he planted his kisses all over my face.
We met in the city where the pomegranate grows
And we'll wed in the valley where the scented wind blows.
This August has gone away
like our childhood –
calmly and almost by chance.
The sky had too many stars
and strewed the earth with them.
I stretched my hands to them,
I tried to catch them.
But they were burning
without any smoke or sound.
And August went away.
she is so far
speaking without hearing
and he passes between the days
of life
in the tremolos semi shadows
dreams her
but she is leafing through
another book
strewed with hieroglyphs
she wants to find out
and divines
on the entrails of sacrificial animals
the ancient priestess
but there is no future and time
he remains
like an insane stone
thrown at random
and the wind forwards him
in a dream of an edelweiss
A Wandering Boy with a Song in His Pocket
Arabic Poem by: Salman Dawood Mohammed
Translated into English by:
Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
===========================
(5)
Just like the wind
I drive out loneliness of an empty bench for two...
And, like a curfew, I mourn pedestrians’ noise;
And as a shirt hanging on a laundry line,
I drip down, with all my moisture, on the surface of your days
And curse the cloud standing in the queue of ablution.
Then, I hate
Music,
The guards,
The law,
College students’ uniforms,
And astronauts;
And I dislike my life!
That all developed in the centennial commemoration of my wilting,
Amidst an assembly of militias and tambourines
Endorsing the funeral procession of my lamps
In the alleys
Of your absence.
***
(6) deleted
****
(7)
Housewives,
Hawkers,
The Ministry of love,
Tramps,
College youngsters,
Thieves,
Guests of No-Stars hotels,
Songs,
Traffic controllers,
Victims of the national anthem,
Train drivers,
Bin Laden,
Weather report announcers,
Gilgamesh,
Jurists,
Speech writers for the President,
Drunks,
And my mother,
All,
All shouted to my face:
“Don’t do it, O crazy! Or else you will die!”
But
O Glory!
I did it
And...
I fell in love with you!
***
(8)
Rest assured
After you, I wouldn’t be alone
A labyrinth is a home
And footsteps a family.
***
(9)
Your desertion, the deep rooted in wilting,
Is like a nail untouched by hammers;
Here it is, with its only sharp tooth,
Signing the deeds of tears
On the body of waiting.
Your painful desertion
Has pulverized me
Sincerely...
Hence, I saluted the remaining ashes of my burning with you,
Then
I lay on my blood
On
The heart of sunset
And
I ..... Died!
***
(10)
I loved you and went on
Just like a cloud skipping school.
I strewed my shirt buttons on your fields
And let down science class;
So my rain couldn’t be in a bottle anymore
And the road leading to you
Is no more a battle field
Or a bird market;
But
My soul is pouring down on you
And my hand
Stands
..
..
An umbrella.
***
(11)
The teacher said: “Draw a human heart.”
I laid a kiss on your palm,
And locked it in with the softness of your fingers.
The teacher is now in the recovery room
And I am
Accused
Of forgery.
****
Translated by: Em. Prof. Inaam Al-Hashimi (Gold_N_Silk)
* Salman Dawood Mohammed. A poet from Iraq
The Magic Almond Tree
And now it is time
For the ugly almond tree to blossom
And be a bride of spring
And how beautiful she is
Amongst dowdy olive trees that may
Have cornered the culinary market
The beauty belongs to my almond tree.
How did this come about?
A Nordic princess married an Arabic prince
In Lusitania but she missed the snow
And was unhappy.
The prince prayed to his God and next year
The almond tree bloomed and strewed pink and
White flowers on her path
And today I saw the magic of her smile.
This poem was inspired by the interviews by Earl K. Pollon and S. S. Matheson conducted with native Sekanni peoples who were negatively effected by the flooding of their communal homelands by the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. “This Was Our Valley” tells that story of injustice. 640 square miles of riverfront and hunting territory would be flooded to form Williston Lake. The Sekanni peoples were driven from their ancestral homeland in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and dispersed.
The Shopping Cart Injustice
People, place and spirit
All were our relations
Biopeds, quadrupeds, winged or finned -
River language told us so.
Fishing rocks spoke the run
Where the riffles and the rapids talked.
Ancestors, dead and alive, told living stories where
Running the river banks, the children played.
The land was a book written in forms.
We made our mark with love, community
Fishing weirs, aspen dugout canoes,
Hunting trails, camps and sacred sites.
Always traders, we traded furs with
White settlers when they arrived
On the rivers Parsnip, Finlay and Peace at
Finlay Forks, Fort Grahame, Fort McLeod.
We added pack trains, teams of pack horses
River freighters, flat bottom ‘longboats’
For supplies and for mail delivery.
It seemed that we could live together.
Then one day a government agent said
That shopping carts were coming
They would flood our world
Water rising everywhere
Shopping carts with electric can openers
Full, fast to check out,
Shopping carts with electric hair blowers,
Full, faster to check out,
Shopping carts with electric air conditioners,
Full, fastest to check out
Shopping carts with electric stoves.
Check out, check out, check out.
They would make our rivers into a lake
We would move or drown.
Our elders did not believe it.
That was the only consultations!
Soon Saskatoon berries all under water
Next, the banks sloughed back to graveyards
Next, cliffs crumbled, and banks fell into rising lake
Houses of the villages slipped and floated
Coffins, bones and bodies strewed the shore
Where tangled trees, debris and more
Eddied with flotsam in the wind.
We wept for our ancestors!
We weep for our children.
We had to flee the destruction
Caused by tree grinders, D-9 bull dozers
The dam construction.
Now they want to take more
Another dam for more shopping carts.
Please stop Site ‘C’.
Homeward, on an hungry belly
En-route a quick long trek, perhaps
It’s the hard day-after-day norm
And the poor little boy is mind-full
He deserves some respite–
and even more
If only to furnish a compleat cycle
But, couching in an utopian suite,
was miles from the priority–
‘twas scarce and sparse;
like rainfall in the Sahara
Maybe it had to be invented-
a make-shift
Not a very likely pick really:
Plastered with harmattan dust
Everywhere strewed with literature
and scrap
and other features
of sanguine entropy
But no more of pleasurable comfort
Howbeit, with serenity and quietude,
it was his choice
Preferred above the Burj
Such was the incubator his mind reveled in -
Sandwiched like a worm in a book
in the tranquility of darkness
And when the dawn enters
It does with refreshing enthusiasm,
For there was enriching activity
in father’s room
VIDEO/AUDIO on YouTube above. NOTE: On the video; double-click to enlarge, and/or, right-click for the drop-down menu and click on 'Loop' for auto-repeat.
Autumn's Wink at Winter
Stares at the glit of a harvested moon,
felicitous sways northernly o'er ripen earth,
divorcing neath horizon's haulage.
Rises the yam sun that courses a forenoon cast,
towering mist espoused crusted loam and verdurous life,
progresses towards insignificance.
Abandon lofty leafy legions,
descension in crumpled layers,
... of impaled saffron petals,
... of lain chartreuse fronds.
Strewn against a capricious path,
the weight of feet crinkles crispy snaps to arouse the quietude,
echoes summons a dusty field in white,
ebbing the tides of a wintry breath.
Afar strewed a few sunflowers to escort its mentored sun,
ere setting to their eastward repose position.
Brisk breeze encounters a trial,
a crafted shawl snuggly wraps,
homeward bound via hot cider,
a lit fireplace as a book is read.
A forested cabin well-engaged boast outwardly entertained,
prominence forestalls in burgundy, copper, and blonde,
snowflakes tenderly smooch the befallen perianths,
forgivingly melts to the usual taste of Autumn.
*1st Place*
ALL YOURS (Apr 15)
~~Brian Strand
*1st Place*
Still-Life Autumn
~~Eve Roper
*My submitted Free Verse has been a prior winner that I had written on 2020 October 22