Best Winnow Poems
a saraband
Your tirade comes, it doth commence,
a hundred miles away I sense
your raging, whiny voice so tense.
In restful tones, my evening sigh
doth thank these stars, you’re in L.A.
I shirk my duties ever nigh
and thoughts engage where'er they may.
As I recline, dark quickly falls
and in my dreams, I snub your calls.
Yet when I wake, receding walls
resound your dire return to home.
I sense both hearts long to be free.
Go claim L.A., just let me roam
these miles that winnow thee from me.
Categories:
winnow, 11th grade, angst, goodbye,
Form:
Rhyme
There is a refuge, sweet, whereto I rush,
(Where all but clever words would be remiss),
When cheeks of evening sky begin to blush,
As setting sun bestows a goodnight kiss.
I go there with my pen to thus inspire,
And churn my muddled thoughts to acumen,
To winnow passion's embers into fire,
Or fan a flaring phrase of 'what' and 'when'.
It feeds to me a menu, rich and rare,
Of musing souls as mine, that seek to plumb ...
The depths of rapture, beauty and despair,
A feast of all we've been and may become.
But ...
No meal is perfect, that I must bequeath ...
And this soup has sharks stirring ... underneath.
~ 2nd Place ~ in the "Shark In the Soup" Poetry Contest, Anthony Slausen, Judge & Sponsor.
~ 2nd Place ~ in the "A Stunner January 2018" Poetry Contest, Line Gauthier, Sponsor ... N/A'd on January 24, 2018, in the "Premiere Contest Number 390 Any Form" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Sponsor.
Categories:
winnow, analogy, friendship, muse, poetry,
Form:
Sonnet
We explore –
earn and exist –
with a language
of old exploitation.
Like a mulatto,
Indian English
is a hybrid.
It’s as our culture –
there’s a unity
in diversity.
We winnow ideas out
of dialectal chaff.
Language
mustn’t be imposed.
Linguistic
extremism is a myopia.
Wherever you grow,
your mom and hue
remain the same,
but your tongue can be
changed from the cradle.
English thrives above
creeds and colors,
connecting continents,
never demanding a passport.
First appeared in The Literary Hatchet
Categories:
winnow, language,
Form:
Free verse
THE WINNOWING
Wake of harvest, came time for winnowing
Separation loosing chaff from the grain
Bake of bread that gave them a bestowing
Creation: body nurture that they’d fain
Make in life, a time for spirit growing
Valuation of virtues not to strain
Then we might cherish food for soul above
When we winnow, retain the grain of love
Categories:
winnow, life,
Form:
Ottava rima
cattails winnow-
mirth abandons Red Winged Blackbirds
-inspired by Brian Strand's poetry
Categories:
winnow, nature
Form:
Monoku
How do you measure love?
With every breath and sigh
Cold winds blow by
Remembering winters past
Promises of friendship to last
I remember you
In everything I do
How do you measure love
Through what we have done
Memories of past
Stored forever last
Continuously remember you
In all that I do
Even in the snow
Windswept cold winds winnow
Steadfast weather of the past
Our promise of friendship to last
Incessantly remember you
In everything I do
How do you measure love
When time marches on with no ending
There was no future from the beginning
Just Connection I cannot lose
Eternally remembering
All because of you
Watching the birds take their feeding
Then hiding in their shelter of needing
Your covering was our affection
Then we lost all our direction
I lost my breath
And then I sigh
Promises foregone
There is no song
How do you measure love?
When there is none
Margaret Franceschini
2/17/14
Categories:
winnow, break up, deep, farewell,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
dodoitsu series (rhymed)
Winter is taking the reins
speeding past days of autumn -
Jack Frost smears the windowpanes
forefingers and thumb.
You who have no house to own,
too proud to seek charity,
you choose your path all alone
that’s a guarantee.
Your attic room, where risks run
rowdy as the eastern winds,
barren refuge while you shun
warmer help from friends.
Churches serve a daily meal
without impugning censure,
Would a shelter prove to shield
Christian adventure?
God casts no smears. You must know
you are short more than your needs.
God produces once you show
you will plant His seeds.
Twixt four fingers and your thumb
winnow pangs of laziness.
Earn warm lodging ere autumn’s
freeze spawns haziness.
for Elly Wouterse's contest 3 Proverbs and a Quote
For my series of didactic "germane" dodoitsu, I chose three German proverbs, being influenced much in my life by my German grandmother.
-A poor person isn't he who has little, but he who needs a lot.
--Charity sees the need not the cause.
---God gives, but man must open his hand.
My quote from an international celebrity is from German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke -
“Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone,” is from his poem, “Autumn Day”, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
https://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/category/poet/rainer-maria-rilke/
For word play:
“the four fingers and your thumb”, and “winnow pangs” of verse 5(6) play off of
“Jack Frost’s forefingers and thumb” and "window panes" of verse 1.
Word with two meanings:
Verse 1 – smear – v. to wipe or daub
Verse 4 (5) – smear – n. a slur or insult
double meaning proverb
A poor person isn't he who has little, but he who needs a lot.
poor person can mean poverty-stricken or a
poor person can be incompetent, inept
I used the normal 7, 7, 7, 5 syllable pattern of a dodoitsu but rhymed it ABAB. I really needed 24 lines to complete my thoughts, but I dutifully cut it back to 20 lines, adding it back in italics after contest was judged. Expanding on Rilke’s “Autumn Day” title, I took a different turn from his prayerful, more positive piece.
Categories:
winnow, 11th grade, home, winter,
Form:
Dodoitsu
The country road split the wheat field in half
A murder of crows seemed to prefer the right
Hope they leave some to winnow from the chaff
Crows seem but wavey lines against the night
A spectacular sight in the twilight
Fields of wheat in the final golden stage
Ready for the harvesters to earn their wage
Golden grains that hungry men have desired
This art lifts up some memories to engage
Remember the dirt road our love once required
Artful work: Crows In The Wheatfield by Vincent Van Gogh
Written: February 11, 2023
Categories:
winnow, bird, farm, life,
Form:
Ekphrasis
swift, creeping cat, bellying
lightlessly across
the backyards by night
a Cimmerian shadow with dun
short-haired quickness
not
so easily
caught
along the mottled sidewalk
the bounds of the city blocks, cast slight
beneath the dappling yellow of the
street lamps
a coloring
almost unseen ( for its own sake,
unseen )
a feline faith
dining on mice heads and rape wine, and
long adapting
daydreams
desire but bits and baubles of unfettered
fate
free and stupid to winnow its own blue
ambit and way, its own quirky
arc
blue guitars tuned with cat gut, oh
strings of mouser stomachs and bladders
twisted, tight weaves to
seized and
plucked
notes
( by fingers that once strung the
bow )
Categories:
winnow, allegory, allusion, america, anger,
Form:
Free verse
What is the purpose of poetry,
and therefore the meaning of the poet?
Beautiful style?
Aesthetic merit?
Artistic elegance or the beauty of its truth?
Is poetic purpose the meaning of its language
or the art of linguistic choices?
Of course it must be both,
symbiotically planting and fertilizing,
creating and cultivating, each incubating embryo,
flowing and forming regenerative language
An expression of intuition
with deduction, co-arising
refined with exegetically known
and felt soul-truth
through eisegetical sieved analogies,
trials and sub-optimizing errors,
evolutions and ecologies of syntax
conjoined within and without
through transcendent values
avoiding prosaic disvalues,
relationships inviting well-being,
principles of languaged left-brained human nature
dancing prancing right-brain's preposterous spirit,
dream-dancing DNA encryption
team-taught description
within each cell of healthy live
is not unwealthy evil.
Poets seed and winnow language,
thought,
understanding and unlearning
misunderstanding,
rationality
and polymorphic transanity,
form and function flowing fine flowering frequencies
comprehensively mentoring
and mediating
Earth's holistic therapy.
Eisegetical hopes and hypotheses disclose Time's exegetical ecology.
Poetic epiphany disguises Earth's logic as mythic teleology.
Categories:
winnow, art, earth, language, leadership,
Form:
Free verse
Love’s love spell
Barred clouds of red glows the sky
Night is premature and thins the light with a resonating cry
Spinning slowly around, regulated by Time as a Conductor
She humbly rides in reverence on the Swinger
Brewing below a pearl of brilliance marked as a Vulture
A vintage season when white is not worn after Labor Day;
Trees shed; and snow purifies natures sins away.
She orchestras in the cold and brings fog to the meadow
Lastly, she demands the forest fever to go
Her curse; as above will be what's bewitched below
Flip of her hand winnow winds whip the ripen vine
And twitter the leaves in acrobatic line
She harvests the heart under the full moon
The twigs snap and crack to the tune
A forest floor a pot of stew whose will it swoon
Who shall fall victim to Her love's spell?
Intractably, indivisible, not even death will be able to unveil
Their heart's, sense's and soul's will ply like tree root in soils
Suffer yoked hearts of pain or a kiss of joy through cursed toils
Whether they're near or far away it's felt like induced coils
Treasurer's heart will free-fall steeper than Niagara Falls
Held captive to psycho-physical calls
Ultimately in tunnel vision like closing in walls
Bloom of light is the spells biological start
One deliberating night emerged a deciduous heart.
Categories:
winnow, autumn, deep, eve, faith,
Form:
Rhyme
Inamorato,
Ascultate my vociferation!
Contravene your sepulcher.
Insurrect our omnipotent.
I enjoin thine quintessence.
Eupnea!
Eupnea!
Whilom anon.
Euphoria salvo.
Eschewal Valhalla's porticullis.
Genitive hedonic, envisage.
Erewhon betwicts my gammons.
Imbibe of my mammilla's.
In perpetuum cache me.
Gehanna upon macrocosm.
Forlorn.....
Forsaken......
Your Inamarata writhes.
Is thus kismet?
Cull Inamarato!
Winnow!
I abjure forthwith.
Abaddon velleity extirpate my noumenon,my pneuma.
Categories:
winnow, death, depression, grave, grief,
Form:
Free verse
Within this realm I can converse
Palaver, prattle or parley
So many words from which to choose
A choice to winnow, will and weigh
With words I can tell a story
Anecdote, fable or novel
Or just convey some useless facts
Unmistakable, data, gospel
They can tell you what I’m feeling
Sensations, semblance, perception
Even describe the way I look
Visualize, perceive, envision
Words can induce feelings of love
Affection, fervor, ardency
And all to often inflict pain
Suffering, anguish, misery
Sometimes words are thought provoking
Impelling, cogent, alluring
While others can keep you guessing
Uncertain, assume, surmising
With words there are no boundaries
Barriers, brims, extremities
So free your imagination
Invention, idea, artistry
Categories:
winnow, imagination, inspirational, on writing
Form:
Rhyme
How can a love,
When it fits like a glove,
Go from a quarrel to end?
Well, it sometimes unravels
When one of you travels,
And loneliness seeks out a friend.
If I'd only known
That you weren't my own,
I might have remembered to hold
The hours of sand
That seeped through my hand,
Instead of the glass, ever cold.
See, I then believed
That my absence was grieved,
My return given weight I thought due,
Yet I didn't grasp
Your needs with a clasp
That endeavored our bond to be true.
Beleaguered, I left,
A house then bereft
Of solid endowment below,
Those words, in attack,
We can never take back,
Like arrows set loose from a bow.
'Tis said, when apart,
That heart longs for heart,
And absence will winnow the fires,
But when I returned,
The embers that burned,
Were guaranteed only to liars.
I must now intend
That I destined to end,
The breath of my proxy, in rage,
But the voice of a child
At once calmed the wild,
And let loose my ire from its cage.
I wish I could blame,
But I did the same,
And sold you on stories divine,
Yes, you spun some fables,
But were just turning tables,
As I set the standard with mine.
Now I look back, anon,
At the life that is gone ...
'Twas a sad lover's quarrel, though just,
But a house built of size
On a bedrock of lies,
Is a foundation best turned to dust.
You see, lies that are lost,
Always bring a high cost,
And we both kept a share of that quarry,
But I hold naught but mirth,
And for what it is worth,
From the depths of my heart ...
I AM sorry.
** TENTH PLACE in the "Lover's Quarrel Poetry Contest", Lewis Reynes, Sponsor **
Categories:
winnow, betrayal, love, love hurts,
Form:
Rhyme
That angelic voice, I heard her
sing,
All of heaven awoke, to its
corridors ring,
But you'd rather listen to a
saddening tone, would you?
She had been told, to sing so
low,
Begin with E3, don't cross G4,
Our nervous dame began to
sing Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
She had been taught how must
she cry,
Winnow the grain, cook the rye,
You thought she couldn't make
you weep, didn't you?
She took in some air, then
broke away,
From the sired stranglers of
decay,
And from her lips she sang the
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Tell her when is the victory
knell,
When ferocious beasts will be
put to rest,
But you'd rather see her suffer
now, wouldn't you?
The eternal search for a change
of heart,
The lifelong request to play your
part,
Listen to her prayer, the
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
She only wants the simplest
glance,
From the oceans wave, the
mountains dance,
Do you want to watch her fade
away, do you?
She will fly, swim as well,
Till she breaks her tender leg,
Till she will forget how to sing
hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah.
Categories:
winnow, faith,
Form:
Lyric