Best Syracuse Poems
TURK TATIL MIZAH
FOREST GUMP
Did you hear about old Forest Gump
Went up to do a parachute jump
Gave the rip cord a jerk
Found out it didn't work
Hit the ground with one hell of a thump...
JED
In the care home was an old boy called Jed
Always given some blue pills with his med
And every night
He didn't excite
But it stopped him from falling out of bed...
THE BAKER
There was a baker from Hemel Hempstead
His loaves were the best you've ever tasted
But what people didn't know
LSD was in the dough
After eating his bread they'd be wasted...
PETE
A meat factory owner called Pete
Won gold awards for his sausage meat
But his meat supply
And this is no lie
Was of meat from stray dogs off the street...
SANTA ( NOT FOR KIDS )
Santa Claus was out preparing his sled
Whilst all children were tucked up in bed
Put some presents at the back
Had a fatal heart attack
The elves rushed out but poor Santa was dead ...
THE SWIMMER
A young man went for a swim in the sea
Smelt a bad smell wondered what can it be
A woman shouted swim back
The sewer pipe has a crack
He then realised he was swimming in pee...
JOHN
John was heading off to hot sunny Spain
When he landed saw snow falling and rain
Went through immigration
Hit with realisation
At the airport he'd boarded the wrong plane...
SUZE
She was born in the city of Syracuse
Was a stripper with the stage name of Suze
Was ginormous on top
That made all men's jaws drop
For private shows she's the one men would choose...
FRED
Fred went out for a curry vindaloo
All okay till he bent down to his shoe
A sharp pain then some gas
He was sure it would pass
Too late, he never made it to the loo...
Written on 24th September 2019.
Categories:
syracuse, humor,
Form:
Limerick
When Philadelphians wanted to see a basketball game,
the “Warriors” was their first team’s name.
They had several players achieving great fame.
Familiar names included Joe Fulks and Paul Arizin.
They were joined by Tom Gola and Wilt Chamberlain.
However, it was in the year of 1962
when the NBA franchise packed up and bid adieu.
The only professional team Philadelphia would know,
moved their operations to San Francisco.
Therefore, Philadelphia was without a team for a year.
However, the Syracuse Nationals relocated here.
In the City of Brotherly Love, they took a new name.
The “Seventy-Sixers” were now playing the game.
They traded to bring Wilt Chamberlain back.
The offense sported a formidable attack.
Among the big names that were playing here,
were Chet Walker, Luke Jackson, and Hal Greer.
The city’s basketball fans were in seventh heaven
when their team became world champions in 1967.
Categories:
syracuse, history, sports, basketball,
Form:
Rhyme
Oh Syracuse, Syracuse,
A bright star born to you.
This genius of three was touched by a muse.
Pi, levers, bringing a king great mirth;
With his brilliance this man moved the earth.
Oh goddess of the moon,
Indelible event!
Your festival doth give cause to swoon.
Circles, a shadow, slain dead in the sand;
A horror to mask even an enemy's land.
Categories:
syracuse, history, people
Form:
POEM BY BASHO
We were quiet now,
still breathing deeply from
the sexual exertions of our
late middle age, guided by
the music, gliding toward a
landing through the ambient
haze of unconditional love
The Japanese singer with the
black eyes and hair and the
rising sun mouth, lived her
rhythm and blues through the
discipline of the koto, did a
high soaring wail as the final
jetliner of the Syracuse evening
climbed toward the moon that
was a cold silver smile above
the snow-covered city where
we daily delight in the details
of desire
Our transition into clarity
was the sonic antithesis of
a poem by Basho:
Seventeen seconds
of screaming haiku on a
February night!
Categories:
syracuse, love, marriage, sexy,
Form:
Free verse
He didn’t have a native land,
therefore, he had no reminiscences of any sort,
neither good nor ill, other than reckless killing
at the battlefield where he was compulsorily taken into
and deployed to fight unwanted fight: the legend of warmhearted provisions provided in the name of el Cid Rodrigo Diaz De Vival
to the foes is only the beautified story of Castile.
The Faithfulness that even risks own life for fidelity is
though lonely one’s heart’s desire, he knew not the friendship
for he lived the life without a friend other than ghastly cry of tottering, collapsed, crawling and mutilated bodies of neither to call the enemies’ nor friends’: the beautiful friendship that of Pythias and Daimon is
the drifting clouds above the Sicily, it is the fancy of dearest wish,
the concocted tales that to honor the tyrant of Syracuse.
He didn’t have a home; therefore, he doesn’t know what is the love,
other than the deep wound of maternal love he saw at the battlefield;
the grief that of an old woman who was holding her slain son in her arms
with absent-minded, who was washing the blood off
from the slaughtered son’s face with tears: it is the horrifying myth
of Persephone who can only able to have a stillborn child.
It is the dark shadow of the daughter of Demeter who goes back and forth
along the other side of Styx counting days till spring is to come.
He didn’t have wife, therefore, he lived his life without knowing
what is the intimate love, other than touch of a foreign woman
who sales long kept chastity for a loaf of bread in the gathering darkness;
who weeps alone in the ruin at the roadside where
the cannonade booms to deafen the air: it is the shadow of the curse
on Oedipus who though able to solve the riddle of Sphinx
able not to flee from the irony of life. It is the damnation on the king of Thebes, who roams in the darkness led by two tender aged daughters.
Categories:
syracuse, dark, death, lonely, myth,
Form:
Free verse
TAKING THE OATH
For those who are born again through the Oath of Citizenship
at the Onondaga County Courthouse, Syracuse, New York!
The morning prayers over
the neighbor’s car cold, the ride
to the court house quiet as snowfall,
the city enshrouded by a gradient of
gray between the darkness of dawn
and a day without sun
The oath would be simple, something
sacred and short, syllables of English
welcome as the script that conveys the
Qur’an, once harsh-sounding words now
the potent poetics of opportunity
at hand
She will be Umm Almaliti, an American
name in a Dar-es-Salaam, as portable
as the infant asleep in her arms
She will work with her husband, send
her children to school, dark brown and
Berber, the mothers of their mother from
The Rif and The Atlas, the enduring
dynamics of water and stone and mountains
that murmur of hawks on the wind, the
fathers of their father from Granada and
Sevilla through the dye-makers’ guilds
and the sinuous medinas of
Fez and Meknes
Hand on her heart, she knows
the gift in her life is not the promise
of eternity with a rough desert deity who
lets the nervous ulema be afraid of her
face and the lay of her hair, but the
courage to run quickly toward the
uncertain miracles of a precarious life
in a place with few rules on this scary blue
diamond in this corner of space
She is all the new people who come
to this land, the music of hope on the
breezes of faith
She is all the new people who ever come
to this land; she is a needle of light, another
fragment of color in a reckless mosaic
unique on this earth
Emanuel Carter
Categories:
syracuse, immigration,
Form:
Free verse
Considering all the people there, it’s a big state!
Many members from New York have talent that's great.
Poets hail from Syracuse, Rochester, Albany,
Plattsburgh, Scarsdale, White Plains, or Schenectady.
They may come from Niagara Falls or Binghamton,
or one of the five boroughs such as Bronx or Brooklyn.
From Long Island Sound, to as far west as Buffalo,
the poets from New York are the ones we should know.
These folks can write up a storm of impressive poetry.
Their fanciful works defy comparability.
They live anywhere between Yonkers and Utica.
The numbers of their great poems are a plethora.
So we salute all our members from the Empire State
You are the people everyone can appreciate!
Categories:
syracuse, dedication, on writing and
Form:
Rhyme
GUN VIOLENCE BLUES - corrected
They built a gun-violence memorial
in a god-forsaken corner of my
struggling city
A collaborative effort of a few academics,
a handful of neighbors, a preacher or two,
and some interested parties with a mission
and a grant, a willing grad student, not much
more than that
It was a soul-searching journey and a
harrowing process – forms and permissions,
research procedures, long-delayed evening meetings,
the scouting for a site among derelict properties, a
preliminary design, an eventual installation, a degree
soon conferred, the grieving still sad, the shooters
still bad, the community had!
And shortly thereafter, back to the suburbs, back to
the exurbs, back to academia, armed with self-serving
stories about heroic interventions and making a difference,
their skills and tax dollars, their lofty educations, their
political connections and faith in the future denied to the
community where they would matter the most, and the
beleaguered population which, in lieu of resources only the
fortunate can bring, got a memorial project and a feel
good event before more shots were fired there
later that spring!
Several months later at a gut-wrenching funeral for yet
another lost soul, the exasperated preacher whose cadences
were linked to the moaning and swaying of a tabernacle
choir, sought answers from The Lord, who had nothing to say!
But the following summer a gritty, sweating singer, who
somehow knew Syracuse much better than The Lord,
used the trance-like rhythm of a walking bass blues
with a mournfully melodic lead guitar line to drop a
verifiable truth on the crowd at Clinton Square:
“Don’t be asking where He is, now!
We’re on our own, y’all!
We are out here, out here, out here
ON OUR OWN!”
Categories:
syracuse, community, conflict,
Form:
Free verse
I loosen my belt and remove my shoes
So, dear, what's going on in the news
They blocked the streets; tore down statues
No surprise there; of what were they accused
The protestors, nothing; but the statues held leftist views
What? What are you saying, dear? Now I'm confused
Honey, it seems that a staunch abolitionist was the first one abused
Huh? An abolitionist? For what was his statue so cruelly used
I don't know. He organized a militia to fight slavery; he was super-enthused
-- Oh, yeah. Hans Christian Heg; maybe one of those religious yahoos
Then that explains that!... Darling I'd really like to continue to schmooze --
But I promised the girls I'd help topple Arethusa of Syracuse...
Notes: Hans Christian Heg's statue was, indeed decapitated today in
Madison, Wisconsin. His 'crime:' He was an abolitionist who organized
a group of Wisconsinites into a Union militia in order to fight against
slavery in the Civil War... Go figure!
Arethusa was a naiad nymph of the sacred Greek colony of Syracuse.
Virgil felt that she inspired pastoral poetry. (Like the above... lol).
Categories:
syracuse, america, satire, violence, women,
Form:
Monorhyme
On a snowy Sunday night in the City of Syracuse, NY, as I sit at my computer and write part of my story from the past.
The weather is very cold outside and I am snuggled up in a comfortable position in my chair.
As I look out the window on this cold night, I think about when I was a little boy in a small country village call Lamont, Fla., located about 29 miles south of the capital.
I think about my grandma who raised me there. Some people said that the town was so small that the state, wrote on the same sign, 'enter and leaving'.
We had no electricity, only table lamps. In the wintertime, it was very cold. We had to cut wood for the fireplace in order to keep warm. We place the newspaper in the cracks of the house in order to keep the wind from blowing through.
One time doing the winter, it snowed and the front porch was full of snow and my grandma saw us playing very rough together and doing many difficult things. She knew that we played with water lots of the time and when she came outside and saw the snow, she said in a very loud voice; “Why are you boys spreading all that washing powder out there on the porch!?” We said; “Grandma, that’s not washing powder, that’s snow! She said; “Don’t you boys lie to me, that’s washing powder!”
Then she came out and felt it for her self and said; “Oh boy, this is the first time I ever saw any snow; that’s cold, ain't it?” We said; “Yep grandma, it's snow."
So she said; “come out of that cold before you catch a cold.”
We said to ourselves; “How do you catch a cold?"
That’s part of my story and I’m sticking to it.
Categories:
syracuse, africa, age, black african
Form:
Narrative
The mayor of the city of Syracuse
Was widely known as a nasty old recluse
He absconded with some funds,
Along with cloistered nuns
And announced that he had a sacred excuse.
July 3, 2021
The nasty mayor led the nuns astray
Insisting on having his way each day
They prayed for some divine help
To stop him helping himself
Mayor lost ardour and drove them away.
--Belle Bellevue
July 4, 2021
Categories:
syracuse, humor,
Form:
Limerick
Do you know where I live?
I live in Rome
I live in Greece
I live in Egypt too
These three great kingdoms of antiquity
have all faded into obscurity
So I ask you,
do you know where I live?
Syracuse once was a great city
in ancient Rome
Philadelphia once was a great city
in ancient Greece
Memphis once was a great city
in ancient Egypt
Now, do you know where I live?
Categories:
syracuse, allusion, spiritual, truth,
Form:
Bio
GUN VIOLENCE BLUES
They built a gun-violence memorial
in a god-forsaken corner of my
struggling city
A collaborative effort of a few academics,
a handful of neighbors, a preacher or two,
and some interested parties with a mission
and a grant, a willing grad student, not much
more than that
It was a soul-searching journey and a
harrowing process – forms and permissions,
research procedures, long-delayed evening meetings,
the scouting for a site among derelict properties, a
preliminary design, an eventual installation, a degree
soon conferred, the grieving still sad, the shooters
still bad, the community had!
And shortly thereafter, back to the suburbs, back to
the exurbs, back to academia, armed with self-serving
stories about heroic interventions and making a difference,
their skills and tax dollars, their lofty educations, their
political connections and faith in the future denied to the
community where they would matter the most, and the
beleaguered population which, in lieu of resources only the
fortunate can bring, got a memorial project and a feel
good event before more shots were fired there
later that spring!
Several months later at a gut-wrenching funeral for yet
another lost soul, the exasperated preacher whose cadences
were linked to the moaning and swaying of a tabernacle
choir, sought answers from The Lord, who had nothing to say!
But the following summer a gritty, sweating singer, who
somehow knew Syracuse much better than The Lord,
used the trance-like rhythm of a walking bass blues
with a mournfully melodic lead guitar line to drop a
verifiable truth on the crowd at Clinton Square:
“Don’t be asking where He is, now!
We’re on our, y’all!
We are out here, out here, out here
ON OUR OWN!”
Categories:
syracuse, community, conflict,
Form:
Free verse
OCTOBER 6, 2022
Fall in the Finger Lakes,
a meeting in Canandaigua,
a nature reserve visit on West Hill
north of Naples, the season at early
peak, all the colors including green,
the thick, deep forests of the Allegheny
Plateau chasing the underfunded farms
North to Lake Ontario
Back up on Interstate Ninety,
heading home to Syracuse, farm and forest
blowing by, tractor-trailers slightly menacing
at over seventy miles per hour, global commerce
heading home to Portland, Maine and Boston,
to the Port of New York City, the territory
in-between drenched in the colors of confident
change, fanning the flames of our faith
in the future, calling attention to the
numinous rhythms of this beautiful place
where we live!
Categories:
syracuse, seasons,
Form:
Free verse
SYRACUSE DEPARTURE
Twelve degrees at seven AM
and the weather a sharp bitter
force off Lake Ontario
The daybreak is luminescent
gray, the bright star rising, the
cloud cover glowing like the
opalescent door to the mysterious
power source of some
Jules Verne wonder
Passengers board
Instructions are given
Men and machines withdraw like
medics now useless to a resurgent
warrior
On runway twenty-eight / ten she
turns into the wind
Bright light splits the clouds
The big fan jets roar and her
man-made mean heat makes her
airborne and silver, crashing through
the morning, banking east above the
city, screaming toward the sun
Emanuel Carter
Categories:
syracuse, journey,
Form:
Free verse