Best Swatches Poems
July 29, 1890
Colored daubs and swatches
crave artist’s practiced hand.
Justice, nearly blind, yet watches—
unwrought art upon a stand.
Regard the brushes in a row—
the palettes and the sponges.
Genius maimed by status quo,
vain a hope that fate expunges.
Guttered myriad lifelong dreams—
in desperate ruination.
Fading now the piteous screams
of self-inflicted termination.
Time Passes
Abruptly then adoring praise—
contrived their sudden expertise.
Rude cabal who would appraise—
byzantine their guileful sleaze.
Each masterpiece a servant
of craven yearn and greed.
Bang the gavel, swift and fervent;
sate purveyors’ inveterate need.
Justice now is truly blind;
vanished those She would impute.
His final piece is left unsigned;
and undisclosed, for now She’s mute.
4th Place: I Love Rock and Roll
Inspired by Don McLean's song, Starry Starry Night
Categories:
swatches, betrayal, corruption, evil, vanity,
Form:
Quatrain
Scarlett thought she was promised permanent security.
Satchels of resilience bound her fragile wrists.
Woodland deities hailed her.
Underworld demons feared her.
The curious townsfolk simply stood in contemplation -
Inviting epee's gleamed in their eyes
as the garden shears, in their hands, smiled.
Scarlett oft pretended she was Joan of Arc.
Threads of meshed titanium webbed her sheltered heart.
Sour Grimm moppets heralded her.
Skeptical fairy godmothers chastised her.
The relentless wheel of innocence spun without interruption.
Persnickety rogues sashayed in dumbed silence -
permitting their sordid counterparts unwelcomed invitations
into a void where reverend satchels are tragically punctured.
Scarlett donned spiked eye patches in her latter years.
Protective velour swatches masking mass and the masses.
Myths and urban legends empathized with her.
Gods and martyrs appropriately buried her.
The dumbfounded spirits circle Scarlett's broken window with raised eyebrows.
Quizzically staring at rotting barrels littered with skeins if shredded satchels -
yards if tainted fibers being hopelessly spun into yet another
dark, forgotten midnight.
Categories:
swatches, irony, sad love,
Form:
Free verse
Serging through life, I whipstitch, weft, and welt,
But always, my thoughts are pick-threading.
As stippled patches of emotion rise and fall in me,
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me
Just too many scars.
The mindless mind stresses itself through mental snares,
I waste away beneath it all, piecing and pondering.
Where the struggling soul and pleating body meet,
I seek significance in life’s lucid-lined layers.
Confronting my inner fears as an owneress,
Time leaves its cursed mark in starched stitches that cut.
Each moment experienced is like a closing zipper,
My calm exterior ridges are often rough, ready, and ruffled.
A life full of scars.
While unique experiences blend like transient ombre shades
My essence feels like a needled complex knit.
Memories form patterns from life’s four-patches
Challenges scissors cut are like shredded sharp diamonds.
Yet more paths diverge along life’s shifting chevrons
I strive to fit somehow; this square is what I do.
Yet my world stands out like tri-recs blocks
Creating stars and pineapples to fight fifty-four forty.
Scars that are hidden and visible, surface and deep.
Like trapezoids, I sense those oblong obstacles loom
Worth or less by my own limited gauge, I measure.
I pray each day new chapters begin casting on
While others exhaust, reaching their bind-offs.
I do seek a pattern master, and I need to pray for one.
I contemplate constantly along selvages of thoughts.
They hang like dangling tails…
I start to visualize my purpose slowly seaming.
Look as I whipstitch, weft, and welt through life, serging.
As I graciously and sagaciously test life’s many swatches,
I devote my life to the Master Seamster the…
Healer of scars.
Categories:
swatches, emotions, faith, philosophy, psychological,
Form:
Free verse
I stared into the mirror today.
I saw you -
a needled zealot
hovering around my left shoulder;
Adolph Hitler dressed in
opium-perfumed swatches.
You smelled like her.
You acted like him.
You looked like me.
Swastika tall and evenly abhorrent.
Syringe-insured yet,
never sharp enough to
successfully stab
outside the 50-point cork.
You slithered like a quadroplegic,
into my stratum.
Pointing and probing
a crooked finger -
never healing
the martyr's wound.
A broken grimace leaves me
ugly flesh to ponder.
Your tentacles:
toothless cleavers eclipse
black-dilated pupils,
servicing our
boomeranged arms
with dingoed malice -
peppermint leaves and peroxide boil
as the living corpse cackles.
Mussolini removed
thirteen quieted quills
from his heart
shortly before the noose was tied.
Into square knots.
Into napkin pleats.
Into a poet's silence - where
our self-induced stupor
was dragged upon
spiked cobblestones -
and for that,
my dear Stalin beauty;
I sew my spit into
vile words -
dribbling purposely
upon this diseased
cotton-swabbed
canvas
for you
and I
to clean.
Categories:
swatches, on writing and words
Form:
Free verse
The long shadows
are growing cooler.
Soon there will be places
where the light will no longer reach
and the river will wear
its autumn coat of leaves.
My walks are getting shorter,
contracting within a circle,
tightening in an ever diminishing
circumference around
my home. I feel a hurry
in my mind, the need
to gather and stash
what I can before being
confined to a room.
I grab swatches of sky,
reflections, the shapes
of trees, anything and everything
to stock memory
with a store of stuff
a poem can nibble on
when locked away
in a dark that seems
to have a no beyond.
Categories:
swatches, autumn,
Form:
Free verse
Religious votives
light a somber lair.
A hole I fathered
with rhinestones of doubt
and swatches of fault.
Sentinels loom -
vapid gargoyles
crouch in ghostly
contemplation
ogling my
handiwork.
Poised to pounce
when the
flames die
out.
Categories:
swatches, introspection
Form:
Diminished Hexaverse
O what heavy price for independence
Valiant men dying in fierce triathlon
Battling to their last breath for its defense
As they protect the walls of Babylon
Laying down their lives with no shade of guilt
While powerless the great sun god watches
Its ravaged empire pillaged and rebuilt
Over layered bodies, bones and swatches
My tears taste bitter as you sail away
Cross daunting distant shores of Babylon
Wishing there were a way you could delay
And somehow all our troubles would be gone
My heavy heart on the wing of a swan
Amid hanging gardens of Babylon
AP: 1st place 2021
Submitted on June 18, 2018 for contest DISTANT SHORES sponsored by ROBERT HAIGH - RANKED 6TH
Categories:
swatches, anxiety, hope, love, passion,
Form:
Sonnet
It is ceaseless and silent and governs all—
Everything on earth and what is in space.
It orders the seasons and leaves that fall
And it etches furrows on the human face.
Of what occurs in its domain it is aloof,
Though masses in a disaster meet death.
It is ever with us, constant change is proof.
But we cannot alter it, even for one breath.
We have made ways to count its advance
Inventing clocks, and sundials, and watches.
They help us gauge the end of life’s dance
Marking mortality in time-driven swatches.
Categories:
swatches, life,
Form:
Rhyme
Winter has arrived for a treatment and later makes a grand entrance at the
hairdressers.
At home,forged metal, molten metal ,blacksmith hammering a horseshoe.
Quicksilver mercury smooth metal etched and inlayed with black enamel
Straw bale for pillows, candles for lighting illuminating dried sage fumes.
Family crest on metal armour , heavy metal armour etched with all over design.
Clip-clop , clip-clop your chariot has arrived with footman unrolling the steps.
We're off to lunch at the hog's breath cafe, the smell of burgers is over-
whelming!
Just a small bite, that will do , no need to wolf it , the puppy can have the rest.
Today is our hairdressing day and many small swatches are presented.
Fingers running warm water through reclining hair start a scalp massage.
Swishing fabrics, clicking heels, strong musk perfume , Madame has Arrived!
This year Winter wants to make a strong impression...Platinum Blonde!
Thin as a whistle, pale make-up, fluffy white sheepskin collar and cuffs.
With just a small dash of colour ..A chunky red jewel sparkling in silver.
Categories:
swatches, adventure, history, nostalgia, people,
Form:
Blank verse
Long lilac dress pearl-grey tie
Casual elegant beautiful woman
Smell fresh ground coffee beans
Newly refurbished town houses
Colour swatches drawing room
House in the family for centuries
Man in tuxedo jovial atmosphere
Clock tower flowery gardens zoo
Categories:
swatches, food, love, parody, social,
Form:
Verse
It was a strange light,
perhaps not light at all;
eerily gray tinged hues,
somewhere between black and white,
pale wisps of deep dark etchy purples
and charcoal swatches display
tips in silver and platinum.
A rich nickel plated flow of clouds
painting the sky in a primer
of puce and clear white quartz
floating and filling the sky.
Smoky white linens dressing
what once was the blinding bright white ball of sun
long disappeared into the misty haze of fog
like old lace creamed in eggshell gravies.
Vanilla seared trees stood skeletons along the horizon
sweet and savory in the mix of clear cold rain
blended into flakes of snow de-boned by wind
and chilled with champagne memories.
As they day progressed, all faded
discolored leaves and browning grass
slept quiet and undisturbed
in the winter interlude of black and white time.
Categories:
swatches, color, january, winter,
Form:
Free verse
Morning's Glory
Out from
the bowels of night.
Mornings, glory child
begins to
crown.
Riding
on wings of honeysuckle
Dawn radiates her warmth.
Breaking the silence of slumber
forcing the night to
step down.
Ivory
Swatches are whipped
into a cloudy vanilla fluff.
Then draped across an
Aqua sky, streaked with a
strawberry hue.
Friction
Electrifies the atmosphere and
Paints the sky in fine pastels.
A brocade brush details the sky
in a raised design of
blue.
Air
is moist like a succulent peach
Buckwheat covers her hilltops
waving as golden locks of
hair
Fresh
Greening grass kissed
by a dewy mist,
As a myriad of tulips, waken
against soft pink sands to
declare.
A
Jubilee of excitement stirs
when monarchs take to the air.
Songs of sweet refrains pour
down from the rubbing of their
wings
A
Solace saturates the earth
Church bells chime as one.
Ushering in Dawns newborn,
Morning’s glory,
Spring.
Carole Cookie Arnold
2010
Categories:
swatches, uplifting, sky,
Form:
Free verse
The tide and heavy seas
had washed up a wealth
of treasures to lay at my feet
spread out in a long line
just like the way wares
are displayed on the street
of an outdoor market.
Shells, some polished
to a sheen others just broken
shards of a puzzle never
to be put back together again.
Tresses of weed, float bladders,
a cuttlefish bone and globs
of jellyfish shaped like petrified
tears as if once welled
out of the eyes of a whale.
Then there was a hoard
of man made stuff, plastic cups
and brightly coloured beads
of who knows what, spoons
and bottle tops, matted balls
of red and green twine
and fishing line knitted into
swatches of transparent twill,
a smorgasbord of human
endeavor all laid out in wonder
and ready to kill.
Categories:
swatches, pollution, sea,
Form:
Free verse
What does your fairy dragon do? I asked my grandma Murr.
“I cannot share this until after I am gone, Little Dizzy.
This made no sense to me, but it surely did to her.
She wanted to teach quilting to me, but I was busy.
After her death the only one who could see the fairy dragon was me.
He came into Gram’s sewing room, holding fat quarters of cloth.
I have chosen the swatches that she wanted you to see,
He was a great teacher. He has been diligent, certainly no sloth.
He taught me to quilt and gave me enthusiastic praise daily
Grandma always wanted to teach you to quilt, he said.
I was astounded and delighted by this helper, Mr. Dragg-gayly.
Who helped me create quilts until I was also the one to be dead.
Categories:
swatches, 11th grade, 12th grade,
Form:
Rhyme
All the good in me unlaced I pull what I own across the floor,
books devoured to the spine, impressions the knees of my jeans
have made of kneeling, my ghosts of ghosts, the saint who is namesake.
I lay it out. A turtle can lay one hundred
thirty-seven eggs in the hollows of trash-filled beaches
and pray her young into the foam
and I know how she judges her almost-gone
with the shell’s first clean fracture, and how much she holds
when she owns nothing and watches it race away.
I line it up for you, lay it down, armfuls, fistfuls,
incalculable catalogues of rinsed fingerprints
released, as they are back-breaking, as this convex shell
is enough, as the body becomes the loudest resonating
home where I deadlock roomfuls of possessions,
where my valuables belong so unbearably to me
that they are not mine. And because I want to float
I lay them down, the swatches of fabric, the memories of places
I swore I had owned so wholly I felt them through to the relics,
laid down, the hopes I hold for the ones I’d kill to own
who swim between combs of aimless currents,
of whom I am no owner, of what I am no mother
I lay them out for you. And as the sea holds
each embryo to the memory of one
original shell, I am unforgivably enamored
with the ownership of all.
Categories:
swatches, life
Form: