Best Threshing Poems
***Dedicated to a wise old man
I once knew***
-----" There is no such thing
as death..."
------ an old friend
'O desolate wasteland,
filled not with flowery rushes,
threshing green fields silted,
earthy and ether months;
there can be no solstice,
no progress ----
where the tides are naught
The barrows long for life,
the painter's easel and stroke;
yet not even rainbow shadow
could colors so evoke,
life into thy nostrils -----
English barrow grave;
the dead are not there.....
Saxon King no more.....
Though they are not gone,
for very long;
our hearts be all we have,
among memories,
tides, and song
So do they hearken
~The Fruit of labour~
A frail body rests upon the bed; silver grey hair spread
on soft pillows; the fan turns lazily as her mind
travels slowly through memory’s winding paths.
Under the blue sky she toils in sundrenched fields,
bent and aching, brow dripping, eyes stinging.
She wipes her face, stopping to rest, then back to work.
Sitting on the porch watching the setting evening sun
and her young boys play, she runs her hand across the swell
of her belly, feeling the faint movements within,
anticipating the pain of an imminent deliverance.
Change of scene, and a relaxed smile strays on her face
as she recollects the abundance of harvest’s crops,
the laden crates of colourful, juicy, mellow fruit,
the threshing floor where golden straw and grain are strewn.
One last liberating push; as a cry fills the room
her husband’s anxious features soften with relief.
The pangs of childbirth now replaced with satisfaction,
she holds her little daughter in her hands, tenderly.
A smile still plays on her lips; her eyes flicker and close.
Her breath is soft as she slowly slips into peaceful sleep.
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18th June 2015
Contest: Sweats & Sweets
Sponsor: Olive Eloisa Guillermo
Placed 1st
They slipped their chains and spread their brains
On walls of bricks and mortar,
Bared their teeth in their belief,
Prepared themselves for slaughter.
Howled aloud in the smoke and cloud
That prowled the streets and alleys,
The sounds they made in their parade
Echoed down the valleys.
They shed their blood in crimson flood,
It stained the roads and gutters,
And people hid and crossed themselves
Behind their doors and shutters.
The gunfire cracked and bodies stacked
As one fell on the other,
When it was done and lived there none,
Each sister mourned each brother.
The sun it rose, diseased and froze
Out on a wracked horizon,
The jackboot bastards drank their fill
And cried out: “What’s our poison!”
Black as soot on a winter night,
Thin with eyes red to the core,
The tourists armed with skulls and guns
Beheld the Dogs of Warsaw.
Torn like rags in a threshing mill,
Shapeless sprawl on a killing floor
Yet history will not forget
The butchered Dogs of Warsaw.
***At the bequest of a friend
or two this poem is a
continuation of Tennyson''s
'Ulysses'; though I don't
expect much glory for this
write, it was one of my
finer poetic attempts;
especially Tennyson who
I think was perhaps the
best.Like Ulysses,
Telemachus, his son now,
speaks to the masses in my
continuation...***
" On the great mount I have stood,
upon the shoulders of my father,
Ulysses ----
and I too tasted of war and conquest
and the breadth of many soul;
'lesser' men have thirsted less
than I, and fell to vice;
What 'fair' dole to fortune that I have
drank a mighty more,
yet have lived to wake with warm wife,
though their faces haunt the drears
of night....
Hammer ringing Plains of Troy
where Zephyr sleeps her lair,
and whispers upon the world
peace ----
then war, and legions carrion,
then better days come round;
When the apple of life is a fairer fruit,
and the tenants of Mother Earth
wiser with their short stay,
teach soft love ----
and make mighty the low,
and not a stomach tis barren ----
But alas! ----
Many moon has passed
since Odysseus walked The Isle
and pledged a greater good,
and 'tis darker yet lighter
these strange 'new' days
swift with doom, yet hope ----
resting always in her Helicon Hills;
The happy Isles lie 'neath the heart
which beats a tender song,
spirit of the Brae and vales.....
and the seas with their threshing ----
now they long the Lover''s Field.....
and Artemis to rear thy golden Kin,
the morning star thy diadem,
Aeonian with ancient youth;
Too long have the people wailed! -----
yet as deep earth must cry they -----
to the gods,
with one voice in the booms of thunder
and cracks betwixt the brooding night;
For justice too often sleeping
in her shady slumber.....
.....the snoring lion lazed
and stretched out in the fields of Troy,
The tongue-less Voice would call them
Lords of Peace;
(End of Part One)
December is cold without my friends, I need
To ladle from their words laughter like soup
And from full remembrance of their love feed
My imagination, embracing the sweet, little loop
Of family. O for we have cried in songs together
And laugh with pain in every cyclone of weather
And we have kissed each other's joy, for truth
Is ever the gardener of our gifts and fertile root.
I will not talk of missing days of solace now, here
Love speaks in every tongue of joy, but will embrace
Those whose messages in my absence told care
Their hearts the tolling fingers my beady blindness taste
Each time I come to sup at kindred table. No creed,
Or race here, for all our difference sweet loves exceed
And we are one where the word throbs like flesh
Butterflies threshing fragile wings against granite mesh.
Unrealities and realities
grind together in mortar’s mouth,
spilling, pulverizing, volatile perfumes—
succumbing scents of citrus, crushed copper,
musks of bruised lightning,
threshing thunderous throbs.
Instability incarnate sings her reveling wails,
fragrances of something
Beyond Name.
I guide existences into black curve,
severing them against sharp, obsidian walls,
letting them rupture—letting them bleed
—syrups and statics—
messy marrows of forgotten equations.
Their shapelessness mutable,
pliant pages to pulp in the plunge
of the merciless pestle.
How many combinations will one
blend and crucify—
to crush, to coax, into coherence?
Rasps of bone bend against sanguine salts,
sheens of opulent oil merge with ember embryo—
iron filings licked into life by tempests reigned.
Anything of matter becomes
moisture—mass—mold—
hunger pooling at my basin’s heart,
seething for impending strike,
for sudden and unforgiving
birth.
As days get shorter and night stretches out.
Summer fades away and earth gets colder.
Soon, Oh too soon snow will again rule and
the earth will slumber under its folds.
Until then we enjoy the fruits of bounty
smelling the last of sweet summer flowers.
Crops stand ready in the fields for collection
Combined harvesters busily at work.
Fat stalks of golden corn, rye and barley
tied in bundles ready for threshing.
Seductive scents of apples waft
as down they are laid for storing.
Frosts now lay the land bare
as the leaves part company
some red, some yellow, others orange
they blow and scatter in the wind.
Trees looking stark and bleak gaze
o'er the stripped fields with snow sprinkling
the now barren ground and soon Winter
will once more rule in her glory
Gone now the lazy days of Summer
her flowers and perfumes distant memories.
Now the hues of colour are subdued.
And all around the land sleeps on.
The Sounds of Korea
I hear the familiar sounds of Korea,
Of the crowing of roosters in the morning,
Of the fields, streams and marketplaces.
The tunes of shamanistic music band
The swirling of fire-lit cans of Jwibul nori,
The soup boiling sounds in a huge pot,
A crisp “tak, tak” sound of soybean burning
And the crackling sounds of dry branches.
Chanting at planting & threshing paddies
The singing of Hori and Gyeori songs
The striking of the bronze bell of Sangwonsa
Chanting-Beompae to Daeung Amitabh.
In the far-flung village of Sangyu
The flames of the daljips in the rice fields
Soars high in the sky on Jeongwol Daeboreum
Higher the flames, the greater is the harvest
Promising bounteous year and good health.
People dance Pansori at the tunes of Nongak
A feast is being prepared there,
The full moon catches people’s prayers
And spreads it to the high heaven.
Jwibul nori’-Mice burning game is on
Somewhere yet in another village.
The traditional burning of the rice paddies
To chase away the mice from the fields.
With crackling sounds of fireworks,
Warming and fertilizing the frozen fields.
=================================
Third Placement
Contest: Sounds Familiar
HERE'S A WOODEN BROOM. THAT'S
WE USE FOR SPECIAL OCCASSIONS.
THIS BROOM HAS BEEN IN MY FAMILY FOR
GENERATIONS.TODAY IT'S DECORATED WITH
OUR WEDDING COLORS. FRENCCH VAILLA AND
GREEN.THIS BROOM HAS SIGNIFICANT MEANING
TO MY ANCESTORY.THIS BROOM WILL SWEEP AWAY
THE PAST; AND SWEEP THE WEDDING THRESHING
FLOOR BRINGING US INTO A NEW.AFTER OUR
WEDDING VOWS WILL SOON JUMP THE BROOM.
WALKING DOWN THE ALTAR'S STEPS. HOLD MY
AND LETS JUMP THE BROOM....
I’ve been adrift on the sea, a lost soul of ideal inspiration
Tossed asunder amongst realities harsh waves of the incomplete,
A disembarked being, caught at the mercy of a thundering riptide
Of indecision, floundering, drowning alone, with no life preserver
To cling upon!
Rolling waves crashing against my bare exposed mental flesh,
I’ve know the deeply threshing under currents of the starving mind,
Of the uninspired, the de-mused, without imaginations glory,
An orphaned child without thoughts infusion!
Once I disembarked on a sinking craft, a vessel without sail or wind,
Ideally wondering having no true course, or no dead reckonings landing
Point of reference!
A voiceless refuge unable to scream for help, to and fro so did
I just rock upon the waves of homeless, and helpless,
In this self- inflicted imprisonment so did this castaway dwell,
In this empty ocean, alone mariner aboard a sinking ship!
But than a far off light shown, it burned at my blind eyes,
With such brilliance did it so shine, as if by a magic I
Couldn’t understand or comprehended, my tiny boat
Find its way into a safe sheltering port, many open
Hands reached out to this lost soul and pulled me
Upwards towards inspirations dry land!
Voices spoke gently unto me in the whispering winds
Of imagination, your free here, you’ve come home
At last, soar, fly be at peace now drifter, you are welcome
Here amongst thy kindred!
Standing at the dock of acceptance, I turned and watched
My tiny ship torn apart by the hurling waves of change,
Then I realized that many others were still left on this
Ocean of aloneness, and how lucky I was to find my
Way home at last!
I’ve found my place in this big old world at last,
Here where I can express myself,
Amongst others whom have excepted me for myself,
On this island called the internet,
In a cyber-family, amongst my friends and kindred,
I’ve finally come home at last, in a place
Mixed with diversities beauty,
In this poetry soup of humanity!
Here I’ve tried my anchor, no more a wander,
Just a voyager remembering, looking upwards
At an inspirational sky and finally able to bath
In the guiding wake of my own imagination,
And sharing it with others of my own poetic
Experience, thank you for the welcoming,
I’m home at last!
BY: CHERYL ANNA DUNN
The threshing floor divides the brisk cold winds
and too gentle zephyr of mortality.
I choose the rose-red blush where death rescinds.
My mind reels with the thrill of whiteout blinds
buffeted by green field sentimentality.
The threshing floor divides the brisk cold winds.
Exciting the throng, leather football winds.
Gruff padded players gift us vitality.
I choose the rose-red blush where death rescinds.
To feel so alive in sweaters, not thinned,
bouncing along in haywagon of normality.
The threshing floor divides the brisk cold winds.
Pumpkin and apple pies, corn, all else tinned.
Harvest festivals of cordiality.
I choose the rose-red blush where death rescinds.
A scarecrow field stays put in our minds
filled with Halloween unreality.
The threshing floor divides the brisk cold winds
I choose the rose-red blush where death rescinds.
6/21/2020
Month of the year I like most Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Mohan Chutani
Non descript hedge rows sculpted into ornamental animal
via botanical artist wielding pruning shears and chain saw
carved, limned and sculpted with wrist wrought voila uber
prestidigitatiously head turning botanical picturesque Sun
kist animals at an exhibition transformed miraculously via
Te Deum divine fist bumping, whence realistic fauna burst
alive with an explosion of colorful twist and shout of foliage,
where scalloped superfluous detritus manna for naturalist
deciduous detritus capacious carpet boar animation punk
chew waiting groundswell Liszt ghost would arise from the
grave to produce magnum opus without a beat missed such
shrubbery mimicking the likeness sans glistening fleshy sin
yew, and gist about ready to become bone a fide (green be
hind the ears) thriving vox populist, per species and genus
wrought thrashing into birth as delicate craftsman promised
to imbue life, liberty and pursuit of happiness whittling away
leavings, thus did exist the nascent then omnipresent visible
entity emerging from cocoon an herbalist metamorphosed
from the imagination of a skilled, practiced and mentalist
conniver viz extracting the initially obscure blessed beast,
where with august magic wielding tools of this specialty vis
a vis bringing breathing manifest destiny ala Pinocchio (trans
formed from wood to flesh), whereby finest dexterous
chiseling blistering hands baffle onlookers as coterie of
topiary harvest breaths mind bogglingly astoundingly
authentic rooted ready to frolic in the grass menagerie
a gamesome group of linkedin live progeny, the Michel
Angelo of dirtiest canvass, an earthen tabula rasa of sorts
where application threshing re: electric cool laid ahs hid
test brings out chlorophyll doppelganger green hued key luster.
Form:
Little leaf on my floor,
from whence did you come?
From the upper boughs,
or lower tombs?
From whence did they exhume
from low gales trembling,
your little monumental life?
Much is yours as is mine,
little life you are,
threshing in the wind....
I am big, you are small
(though monumental in my eyes)
I do hope you came from the upper boughs,
from whence there be many a friend
to shield thee from the wind...
little leaf on my floor
((MONUMENT)( to a little leaf))
The branches snap....
in the rain and snow,
the breath of days far gone
has teased the tense, creaking boughs
shifting back and forth to and fro;
The weary grasp, the life thus clung ----
time for worn-weathered days now,
the bones knock (and stems bend)
time and again, to flutter in the wind
fain... loyal to life to bitter end;
Until the snap and crash comes,
(and the end of days)
never immortal, like the wind....
Keith Hunt (c) 2013
Hip-hop hooray !!!
GOD is the dj!!!!
what else can I say..he spins the needle of the record of my soul,
every other record gets old and cold...but this record, his record, is as fly as Gold.
I am on the life request line....o this song is mighty fine!! On the phone......Oh Mister
DJ keep playing my song!! Everybody else keeps gettin it wrong....disco club heaven
is bangin.....sho nuff where I belong!!!
Night after night.....getting tipsy off of virgin drinks.....I'm eyeing you LORD....praying
you give me just one wrink!! Yes, meet me on the dance floor...... so you can pour,
your love on me some more!!! You don't play heart hockey.....that's why you are the
flyest disc jockey!!! I am thankful that you introduced me to your music!! Can't get
enough of this stuff! Can't stop moving to the rhythm..... sent evia email from the slain
lamb.....this is my jam.....I ain't never goin to stop listening to this holy program!!
You do your job so well...the vibrations of this track breaks every spell...it enulled our
appointment in hell!! No more captivity...cause I'm singing along with the son of
liberty.....loving his diversity.....delivered from all captivity!! I'm free......cause you put
it on me!!! This world is full of hocus pocus......but you have all my focus!!! All
theses other so-called jocks, can kick rocks!! My mind you fix....with an daily dish of
salvation remix!!! Can I join your band? Cause I'm your number one fan!! It's
destiny....i got your lyrics/autograph tatooed within!! I'm over-va here like ruth....on
the threshing floor...kneeling down at the dj's booth!!! Most high I exalt thee....I vow
to carry on this soul-ish legacy!! I got the key and it's your cd!!! I pop it in the radio
of eternity. It's playing from coast to coast..I offer up a toast.....as I boast...about
your name...... this album right here is on flame!!!! So,I say...hey hey, Mister Dj
Form:
I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
is winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Matthew 3:11-12 NIV
Song by George Jones
Perhaps you don’t live on a farm, so let me explain. Threshing wheat is an activity where you take a pitchfork, get a scoop of harvested wheat, and throw it up in the air. You’d always do it in a windy place so the wind could come through and separate the chaff from the wheat. The chaff would be carried away and discarded. Because the kernel of the wheat is heavier, it would fall to the ground and you could collect it and have it to eat.
Therefore, Jesus came to send His spirit within all which seek in this moment. Jesus brought judgement to come upon us in the harvest at hand from His death and resurrection. Into the spirit of fire at Pentacost. We have a battle within over our soul . The spirit of Jesus is the mighty wind which can separate the old self which is no good to be carried away and thrown into the fire.The chaff is of satan which keeps one from seeking Christ , oh what deceiver satan is to try and appear good, but is out to kill,steal and destroy all with division. To become wheat we must be reborn of the spirit promised, eating His bread, the true wisdom, knowledge,and understanding not taught of mankind knowledge of this world, for this new creation is to pull one out this world and to place one into the barn, with the old self left to the outside in flames. The spirit of Christ dwelling within one keeps the soul out of harms danger in the barn.