Best Sunned Poems

One leaf fell from a tall, tall tree
and subtly kissed gnarled roots beneath;
a lover’s kiss below sunned-sheath 
of greenest leaves, a jubilee.  

One spiraling leaf brought playful mirth
to sullen earth of trodden dirt.
A flight of hopeful shades of spring,
for hard, hard ground, an offering

One...

Continue reading...

It must be hard
To carry it around
That load of hate
Weighing on your heart
A powder keg
Waiting to explode

You pretend it isn’t there
But now and again it shows
In what you say
In what you write
The sarcasm hidden under the sweet
The hate clothed in happy
And yet….
It’s there
For the discerning...

Continue reading...

© Charles H Keys, 2011.  All Rights Reserved

Talking anxiously to myself,
Thoughts fresh of the new,
Some deliberate, others not,
Thoughts old and forgotten,
Mostly familiar or so it appears.

Still wondering why 
Am I here? Or maybe not.
Is not the grass still green? 
And the snow ... white...

Continue reading...

THE BLACKER THE BERRY..

Misconception dims the path that leads her brown Clay
To shallow waters where she can never float like a butterfly but always stings like a bee
She is only good at germinating in dim waters like
Deep intellectual conversations
Always warrant entry into shallow society
Dictating that...

Continue reading...

The day was long and she was spent
off to the pool our hot mom went
asked for some lotion
and dreamlike potion
drifting away she was content

Before to long she had awoke
sounds of pleasure the pool boy spoke
she fell for his charms
and into his arms
he was large now...

Continue reading...

Oh, how did I forget flecked fields of white
where fairest petals synchronized their dance,
and beauty’s cadence sung to ears romance,
as Monet’s clouds rose lilting notes to heights?
Oh, how did I forget fanned butterflies 
adrift on breezes sunned in Mexico?
Their bright-hued wings flirting with blooms below...

Continue reading...

Some kids went on wild safari 
others sunned in Côte d'Azur 
but we stayed home to ‘summer’ on
our driftwood beach with rope and hammers
nails and cheez whiz bread 

while morning mist from bull kelp beds
took flight and seagulls thread
thin strings of wind above the boulder...

Continue reading...

While sailing out on morning’s tide
A mermaid on a rock I spied
She was a lovely half-fish girl
With a necklace made of whitest pearl

She smiled and blew a kiss to me
Then disappeared into the sea
She surfaced back behind the boat
And lazily began to float

I grabbed my...

Continue reading...

Grows like a weed
Strangles my mind
Takes over me
This evil vine
Planted in madness
Sadness it's seeds
Watered with fear
Sunned in mediocrity 
It's ravaging, savage
It twists things, it lies
Pain's it's photosynthesis 
That's how it survives
I have to break free of it
Hack off it's leaves
Pull it out from it's roots
Before...

Continue reading...

T      h      I      n


Thin girl
What are they selling you
In those multi-flavored packets
Boxes
Of completely free fat
Cereals

The ideal
Skinny girl

Pre-fashioned femininity
Of skin and bone
Their last resort of your motherhoods
Guilt of your womb
Un-sunned 
Suntan...

Continue reading...

(Apropos of Hughes’s Proverbial Question)

What happens when rotten strange fruit…
Hanging from trees of auction block wood
Become stinking pieces of black flesh…dried blood
Putrefying in murderous streets…?

When crystallized tears of remorse…Laden and loaded
With explosive grief…flow down weary faces
Wrinkled by time’s trials, tribulations…treacherousness—
And neglect of freedom, justice and...

Continue reading...

each thing living on
Murdth ‘sorbs water chiefly wet
backards of arid-
zona an’ the holmby hills’ 
chlorine romp ponds drawing the

scant as blue blood for
the thirsty altar as a
mercedes to the
mccam bridge carwash on
la cienega for the 

hundreds…each living
thing like coke water classic
from botswaniam 
pools It’s the...

Continue reading...

Dire prognostications 
(terrestrial inhabitants blithely heeded)
with contemporary age
fortune tellers foretell day of (w)reckoning,
sans total mortal kombat annihilation

when human (and many) other innocent species
(stalwart cockroach adept to survive)
pitch headlong toward critical limit stage.
That eleventh hour fast upon mankind,
(as Earthlings speed headlong)
on a bee line irrevocable debacle
portending...

Continue reading...

Florida Everglades Wind by Mark Mazzarella



Trolling over the deep backwaters of the Everglades, 
turtles snapped and alligators sunned on banks, still as statues. 
The lush landscape was quiet except for the occasional 
splash of a wading bird searching for its breakfast. 
As morning sun ascended,...

Continue reading...

For an instant we are sunned and golden, lounging by the pool,
An arch suspended like a bridge, or cathedral, above our satisfaction,
And while eyes behind sunglasses narrow to slumber
Our dreams play a degraded video:

First, the devastation that rains upon us all—a stealthy palsy,  a...

Continue reading...