Best Turret Poems
The night was fickle as November
A time when all sleep in slumber;
A moist mist hangs over the river,
And a still cold moon hangs as a sliver.
A soft liquid light captures the glow,
Of the first few flakes of new fallen snow;
She shines her light on turret towers,
And tucks in bed the sleeping flowers.
Her crescent rides through clouds that fly,
Shining on wolves as they howl and cry.
Etching the transient phantoms of night,
As wings of an owl brush the dust of flight;
The crystalline light shines on lovers,
Yet pale and still the moonlight hovers;
To tip with silver the restless waves,
And on tombstones marking silent graves.
Cast your moonbeams, cast them down,
As you float in your silver crown;
And the ribbon of dawn will wrap your head,
And put your shining eye to bed.
A repost
With the onset of advancing age, so I find,
A man grows weary of all mundane talk;
Occupies his every spare, idle thought
With that of the slow, reflective kind.
Regretful of many a squandered hour,
Turning his back on the squabbling nations,
Their woeful, self-serving deliberations,
Dreams wistfully of his own starlit tower.
Should he hopefully find that blessed stair,
Wound insides of the ancient, dim lit wall,
Where tread from unseen feet sometimes fall,
He could but elevate himself above his cares;
There, throwing his soul upon the night,
Lift his gaze upon a tumultuous crowding!
His thinning pate adorned with a crowning
From a far-flung, pale, distant light.
And if he was to fix his mind upon that point;
To that moment forcefully bring to bear,
With every ounce of fibre when stood there,
An unremitting will to somehow exploit,
That, which, the mystics so jealously guarded...
Then, perhaps, he might too ascend?
For, in all reality, at the very end,
All is thrown off...the very body discarded.
Therefore I will choose my own finality.
I give my remaining days to old worn steps
Enclosed in rock, a turret that silhouettes
Against an endless sky; and if it should be
That I find such hallowed battlements
Give aging legs the strength to slowly climb,
To praise the celestial and sublime,
When reaching up where my God frequents.
For though those stars seem out of reach,
Unattainable by grand, omnipotent design,
Nevertheless I am thusly to be inclined
To offer up a prayer and unto him beseech:-
"Immortal father who created mortal man,
Ye who sits above all earthly thrones,
Give unto me old tools and rubbled stones,
And I shall endeavour to do what I can...
To rebuild that abandoned, crumbled tower...
For, Lord, be it only by dreams men are
Truly empowered"!
I remember the dream of Austria
As the war for me was finally closing
High in my turret upon the Sherman
I entered this mountain paradise at last
Until I reached the earthly gates of hell
Within those eyes I found despair
That spark of life long dead
Their hearts filled of solitudes poison
Muted voices no longer calling out
Thousands of souls starving for hope
Existing amongst corpses who had lost it
Now just shadows of the once proud
Crushed by tyranny simply because they “were”
Empty men drifting about lost in a miring haze
Praying for the peace only death grants
So very few seemed to hold onto humanity
They had nothing to fear because all was lost
As I stood at the hells gates called Mauthausen
In that moment I found the truest of evils
Under the threshold of Hades a toxoid of hatred
Not truly comprehending what my eyes spoke
Numbed in fears I never knew subsisted within me
Standing frozen I wanted nothing more than to run
As the shell of that crying man fell in my arms
I am haunted by his words…”godheid bedanken”
My faith transfused giving him a moments hope
Within those high peaks of the songs of paradise
I lost my soul at the gates of a concentration camp
Every night since I hear his voice thanking God
He called us the wrath and thunder of reckoning
But…I was just a boy with rifle searching for a respite
WITH A GENTLE HAND (MYSTIC)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No stained glass, just a quiet sanctuary~
her hands, a cathedral of skin and bones.
Eyes closed, fingers laced together, a fragile turret~
her hands pointing towards heaven.
With her gentle hands, she silently prays~
a silent language spoken to the Unseen.
Her knuckles, beads on the rosary of faith~
the soft curve of her hands saying surrender.
In her private convent, a connection is formed ~
effervescence flows; tranquility descends upon her spirit.
The heavy burden of suffering is brief~
given over to a higher source.
Her prayers acknowledge something greater~
an admission of need, a submission humble.
No grandiose ‘hallelujahs’ or declarations~
only murmuring of hope, held in her tender hands.
Abreast in tank top
Seeds deflower battle myths
Red lace lingerie
Under shadow of turret
Flowing combat above doubt
Garland of poppies
Sword unsheathed for wild conquest
Guns orange roses
Heavy metal for comfort
White flag intimate cover
Make love and not war
Coronet for a bouquet
Tiara of peace
Sweet surrender in motion
Wreaths for a renegade cause
18th February 2020
Contest Let the Pens Flow Tanka Poetry
Sponsored by Jenish Somadas
Syllables checked howmanysyllable.com
Traditionally a tanka does not have a title, but I have to give one to submit the
poem. I hope that Exposure enhances more than it may distract.
Rubbing boys shoulders with sunburn oil. The sun smiles at the pain, the brush of fingers against raw flesh. But like a war wound, those boys be proud. Offer them a salve and they scoff, don’t need that stuff. Head back to the beach. Nudge them with a board and a wave, and they take off, up to their knees, casting themselves into the sea. Cheeks and hairlines have enemies, but the boys will wait for the tan that turns them brown, puffed up, back to tell the tales to jealous schoolmates.
They won’t speak of palm trees, nor the hot sand; perhaps they will not even remember what to say, until a prompt. Perhaps they won’t shut up about the knock down, drag out fights with the ebb and flow of riptides.
They might not remember the food that filled their empty bellies, but they enjoyed each bite of burgers at Ford’s Garage in the oldest city in America. I heard from an eyewitness that it has ghosts, the city, not this particular haunt.
Packed like fish, we headed to Florida, having to use one of the back seats for the overflow of things. My oldest grandson had to endure his seat, likened to a ball turret gunner. But this pubescent heartbreaker, though cramped, loved the isolation.
Speed traps, speedy biker, ear-splitting emergency vehicles, pelicans;
and a swift breeze upon a chilly-sunburn covered up with a soft blanket and cozied up to grandma (of course this is the nine year old).
Trip back as the GPS constantly pushed us farther from home, not in miles but in minutes and hours. But the miles moved quicker than a remembered icestorm where I couldn’t get home (only 10 minutes away), so like all long travel, the kids got their first taste, and survived.
So much to say, but signing off…
Once touched by The Holy Spirit
Our mind-body structure transmutes
Bliss symphony from love’s turret
In-pours magnetic attributes
Benign bliss friction rapturous
Pervades our form in loving tease
Delightful joy fortuitous
Grants from fears and desires release
We are still, as voids within fill
Divine currents encasing form
All doings done, as of God’s will
Ensconced in bliss elixir warm
20-November-2021
November or December Quatrain Poem Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Caren Krutsinger
This one’s a castle; that’s a customs-house.
They’re stolid, listless, just a little dull.
The sky supports an arbitrary gull.
The languidness of Liszt, the style of Strauss
are wholly absent. Colours are metallic.
The eye sweeps over cornice, turret, steeple,
then it dawns on us – there are no people.
Clock towers, mountains, minarets, all phallic,
are void of human life. Stark, empty chairs
adorn each arid, motionless interior.
As we apprise, eyes sneeringly superior,
we note acerbically his love of stairs –
A Will to Power, ever pushing up.
One daub there is, however, gives us pause:
it dates long before Enabling Laws,
before he dreamed of Kesselring or Krupp:
a bridge that’s quite impossible to cross,
going nowhere, has never carried traffic.
With a boy sitting on it. Startling, graphic,
without a hint of Schadenfreude or Schloss.
Self-portrait, this? What features may we trace?
What’s here vouchsafed? Incipient racist brute?
Hardly. A disarmingly awful suit,
and most revealingly of all – he has no face.
In Jordan’s desert, a building façade
has been carved into the face of a vertical cliff.
Stairs leading to the structure are lined with lanterns.
Looking up, a view standing right of center,
stone appears orange near the base fading to black at its top.
Where cliff’s edge meets the night sky,
darkness brightens into starlight.
While appearing more ancient,
this façade has features of Roman architecture:
columns, shallow gables atop flat roofs, carved figures decorating idle spaces.
It has two stories.
It’s first has six columns.
Two are set back from the entrance that is supported by four beneath a gable.
Two horses are carved on wall between first and second column,
two more are carved between fourth and sixth column.
Inside a portico behind the center four columns,
steps lead up to a tall entrance, black,
an opening to a large chamber inside the rock.
The second story, as wide as first, has a block cut from its center.
At each side are half gables, supported by two columns.
Statues are carved beneath each gable.
Between these gables is a turret supported with columns.
A statue of a human figure stands within the turret.
The grand scale of the western façade should be alien in the Jordanian desert.
It should be, but is not.
If taken from the rock and perfectly constructed in Washington D.C.,
with a coat of white paint, it would not look out of place.
A fusion of West and East, this place begs questions about the people who carved it,
political and religious beliefs of their civilization,
its purpose in a desert,
and how it could be ahead of its time.
‘Sankofa’ In 'Safranbolu'
This bird from Ghana’s legends flies forward looking backward
In the Twi language twinned with indigenous souls and wisdom
the feathered friend suggests to go back and get it and I suppose
some fly backwards while looking ahead but then life is not only
Chronos but 'Kairos' with the meter entwined and composed
At this precise moment not alone in this moving instant it waves
and oscillates conjoining what was and will be when the present
is the past in a flash and one cannot step into the same river again
yet the future is shaped by the past the here and now a 'Kairometer'
transcending artefacts and boundaries into ‘truths’ and reality
The bird flies and time flows back and beyond near and far
further on wings and pinions with roots at heart
In ‘Safranbolu’ the ancient Ottoman town on the Black Sea Coast
and thus close to Ghana in real time place and connection
the old man had been tending the clock in the tower both man and
the turret free standing and wise still present and one
‘Seventy years’ as he explained pendulum hands and the wheels
What memories pride mechanics precision preserved aspiration and
dignity flying into the face of the clock and the distortions of time
Mustafa had climbed those steps so often had rung the bell
oiled the time keeper had not forgotten a day of his duties
had become one with the time piece and stood still many times
in awe of monument and pacing the sleepy old town yet
he flew forward so peacefully looking back in retrospect and respect
He has watched birds history duration impermanence imprinting the
meaning of a life worthy of living in honour of what is the present
20th November in all past and future revisited
TOYSHOP WINDOW GAZING
A wooden castle with windows and a drawbridge wide
Which could hold a regiment of toy soldiers inside
And a turret with a big red dome -
No point in even asking to take it home
Then, each time we passed the toy shop
I just had to slow and stop
And muse and wish achingly without relief -
But it was never going to be my boyhood fief.
Now, my kids don’t stop there to muse
But chisel, saw, and screws I use -
The toyshop now is closed for trade
Instead I’ve cut and glued and made
That wooden castle for them
And doll-house, puppets,cars, and farm
And sailing boats and planes and things
Like tree house, stilts, and garden swings.
Absence of a small toy leaves heart unfulfilled
And makes big boy hands much more skilled.
You want to know what annoyeth me? Let me count the ways!
I could weave a veritable tapestry of all my aggravations, mostly in
light and deep crimson hues which signify the violence in my Heart.
Easily I could write a novel that reads like a laundry list of everything that
vex me to no fathomable End.
Pretentiousness, which is the ultimate Sin of Sins, maddens me more
than mere meager words can describe or accurately articulate. An example, perhaps?
Someone who claims to be a better poet than Shakespeare! Such heinous poetic heresy and blatant blasphemy! ONE WORD: HA!
Let's see...what else? Oh, how I loath- despise! an unannounced and
unexpected visitor, a "knock, knock" that sends shivers, like shards of glass,
down my disturbed spine. Yes, I know all about Jesus. No, I don't want to come to your church but I'll smile, be polite and friendly as I decline the invitation, then send you off on your merry way to pester someone else with your nonsense and throw your "literature" in the trash. I wish I lived in an impregnable fortress surrounded by a moat and guarded by ten-thousand Pinkerton Guards. They never sleep.
Driving, what a bedeviling task! Anyone remember the old video game "Spy Hunter" where your vehicle was equipped with bombs and lasers and such? How I wish my car had a machine gun or rocket-launcher turret to get everyone out of my way! Going too slow? KABOOM! Didn't use your turn signal? Ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat-t-a-t-t...-a...-t. So long, buster!
Bad hair-do's are ALMOST as sinful and unforgivable as pretentiousness. I cannot abide a bad hair-do. It's a good thing I'm not a socio/psychopathic autocrat or I would have anyone with an offensive coif shot on sight. When I was in school and big, poofy Aqua-Net shellac soaked , giant crunchy big bangs were all the rage, I took great delight in smashing those immense, granite-like monstrous and monumental mega-pompadours. Some of those do's were hard as bricks, like they were surrounded and protected by some kind of hair force-field. I demolished many a poof in my youth!
This diatribe is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I could on and on and on and on and on and on...but I'll trail off here...
*What Annoys You Contest Entry*
JustThatArchaicPoet
castle bound
castle masked
masked by clouds
masked by snow
snow holding horrors
snow dancing in candlelight
candlelight deepening the hollows
hollows of deep sunk eyes
hollows of alcoves
alcoves with writhing lovers
alcoves with frosted pink floors
floors ripe for waltzes
floors hiding trap doors
doors open to dizzy guests
doors to back stairs
stairs to the turret
stairs to the dungeon
dungeon awash in the deep river's flow
dungeon where boats bring up guests below
below there are moans
below pain meets pleasure
pleasure gowned in satin
pleasure in black tie
tie the knots loosely
tie wrists behind thighs
thighs in silken hose
thighs open wide
wide eyed maidens shiver
wide worldly men gather
gather to watch the Mistress rise
gather them up
up, up the stairs
up to the minions who wait
wait as the snow blows through
wait as tangos blare
blare with the wolves howls
blare, bellow, and roar
roar as the dead dance
roar as the timbers flame
flame in the fireplace
flame in the living heart
hearts at the devil's ball
hearts soon to beats their last
last dance
last kiss
kiss at midnight
midnight feeding
feeding
midnight
Seven sorry soldiers
Hiding in a ditch
Errol caught some shrapnel
And then there were six
Six sorry soldiers
Barely glad to be alive
Barrett took a bullet
And then there were five
Five sorry soldiers
As brave as trained to be
Geoff and Tom stood on a bomb
That left only three
Three sorry soldiers
Curt and Blare and Ron
Blare was scalped from a turret
The other two went on
Two sorry soldiers
Ronald T and Curt
Curtis had to press right on
When Ronald B got hurt
Just one sorry soldier:
Curtis M McGee
One of seven not yet in heaven
That sorry soul is me
Once,
About ten minutes ago in the year
2006 or
2549, depending upon which avatar or
Messiah is consulted, I
Tumbled out of my bed to the
Untranslatable
Predawn
Cackle of
Frantic voices
Descending.
So, with urgency
Rarely experienced since the
Evacuation of my spirit
From the Land of
Possession Addiction, I was called to summon previously
Unknown prowess
Chancing traffic choked streets
Of Nakhorn (used to mean “New City” 700 years ago but not sure now)
Chiang Mai.
So there I was
Aboard my mostly pint-sized for a European descendent Kawasaki 112,
Red-blooded American head
Protruding
turret-like out of an
Undersized helmet that,
If nothing else,
Officially pronounced me foreign
Blazing a jutted path around
Decrepit trishaws,
Ubiquitously red baht busses and,
Not the least, a motorcycle with a sidecar bandaged to its
Aching side just in time to witness a
Spit-shined just out of the wrapper BMW
Brusque aside a
Sardine packed dump truck
Loaded,
Not with dirt, but five dollar a day
Laborers.
All this and more
Just moments before
Mounting the silted Ping and
Stampeding city gates, I glimpsed
Censored Snippets of TV reports blurting something unintelligible like
“Bangkok coup”,
“Corruption”,
“A King”
And
Somewhere,
Quite uncensored, of a not so pleased
Laozi,
Lotus splayed in
Meditation
Kneading the Eastern soil one
Daoist grain at a time,
Before ancient city walls
Rose up,
Monolithic in my path.
And then the recall that
Centuries before,
Burmese raiders
Resplendent in warrior garb
Plundered the palace and soul
Of the kingdom Thai before stealthily
Creeping back to their lairs,
Buddha-fat with riches.
That leaves the Siamese of 1935
And me, to wonder
Where is freedom
When we travel so far
Pell mell and
Peril, only to discover
In a fleeting brief moment the road to
Iniquity marked, rather
Erroneously, with the signpost to
Promises?