Best With A Vengeance Poems
Out of the dark, a lambent, lovely day has dawned
In silvery brilliance the early morning is drowned
In the sapphire sky, the sun has appeared on his diurnal shift
Over the firmament the vagrant clouds aimlessly drift
Pigeons nestle with their fledglings in the eaves
Bright sunshine seeps down through the leaves
Flocks of birds take on wings for their morning flight
Like diminutive dots they eventually disappear out of sight
All around is seen spring’s mesmerizing presence
The dormant bulbs have sprung back with a vengeance
They bear blossoms of pink, purple, yellow and white
Flashing before every watchful eye a spectacular sight
Like a bride, the Earth is clad in her silky emerald dress
Around honey laden florets, the bees restlessly buzz
Every heart overflows in cheer with no tension’s trace
On every face, smile shuttles from lips to eyes
In the wind I hear the lilts of a forgotten melody
From a woodland nearby, a lone bird sounds its parody
It seems Heaven has flung all its treasures down
And the Earth appears regally decked in floral crown
Within me, all of a sudden, I sense a divine elation
Erasing from my sullen soul, all traces of vexation
Through every fiber of my being, the waves of joy rise
And my spirit leaps out in ecstasy to the skies!
In nineteen eighteen there was an outbreak of flu
Caused little concern, only affected a few
But it returned with a vengeance later that year
And the world over it caused widespread fear.
First reported in Spain, and around the world spread
When it was over, fifty million people were dead
Hospitals were stretched and they struggled to cope
For both young and old, there wasn't much hope.
It affected the lungs and caused skin to turn blue
Only comfort was given it was all they could do
In effect it caused people to suffocate
And continued to spread at an alarming rate.
People advised to avoid crowds and to wear masks
They struggled to perform even basic daily tasks
Remote areas in the world were affected too
By this airborne killer virus, the great Spanish flu.
Effort's were made to slow down this disease
But slowly and surely it brought the world to its knees
Shops opening times were staggered all over the lands
People strongly advised not to shake hands.
Undertakers were struggling to cope with demands
Families' buried loved ones with their own hands
Healthy men and women and children too
Were all falling victim to the great Spanish flu.
Because of World War One, doctors were few
And those that were available, many fell sick too
Temporary hospital's set up in schools or church hall
With many brave volunteers answering the call.
They closed many schools, services were hit too
With workers struck down by this merciless flu
Late nineteen nineteen the virus reached its peak
Immunity grew stronger but it still struck the weak.
Sadly mankind had suffered and paid a great cost
To the great Spanish flu with millions of lives lost
The pandemic was now over, survivors started to thrive
But were mournful of the millions who did not survive.
Written 4th April 2018.
( Dedicated to the fifty million people who died
in the Spanish flu pandemic in the years 1918 to 1919. )
Farcical, extravagant
My birthmark is a scar
A speckled blotch ...
A spot of pox
An icon from afar
I'm an upstart, I'm an eyesore
Ranting with a flair
In a tempest, I'm a rabid bird
Setting fire to the air
As dauntless as a hellhag
Unmoved by love or care
I can hold up in a cyclone
Feasting on your fear
I'm your last hope
As a laughingstock
I'm your courage in a dare
As audacious as a terrorist
With death-defying hair
When it's time to play the tragic fool
I'm as flagrant as a glare
Seething with a vengeance
In a tantrum of despair
Written by © Raven Drake
Ponded and becalmed after the downpour, lying in shining stillness, I reflect an earthly existence; above me newly leafed limbs, and beyond, the wild beauty of motley skies in the afternoon’s brightening quietude. On the side of a country back road, I daydream. As leftover clouds drift in light and dark moods across my mirrored face, I ponder the possibilities of ‘what ifs’. What if life had taken me elsewhere - to a different time and place, filling another space, in another form and shape? What if I had fallen soft as a summer drizzle instead, dressing spider webs in misty strings of mini crystal beads.. or had filled a rusty-relic watering can, left behind ages ago beside an ivy-smothered stump.. or maybe had been wind-whipped with a vengeance into a swollen river rough and ready to ride the rapids.. What if, I had fallen as snow eons ago and now was found deep in an ice core in Antarctica.. how exotic! Straying cumulus find themselves captured in my imagination as well as in my liquid looking-glass oval, and my thoughts stray back to the soothing smoothness of my present reality. I know my time here, though sweet, is short-lived; and so I set my pondering aside and decide to seize upon the moment with contentment in my tranquil state of repose.
placid puddle mulls
lost in reflections of clouds -
spring rains laid to rest
Susan Ashley
May 1, 2019
~Third Place~
Contest: Happy Haibun
Sponsor: Caren Krutsinger
I'll tell you a tale
of our own Devil's Island
and the demonic crash
of the waves in the swell.
The smell and the taste
of the ball breaking weather;
the ghosts that deliver
poor sailors to Hell.
We were out in the water
in the Magdalens
the wind plucked the ropes
of our rigging at sea.
We looked for a port
and saw many lights flashing
"That's old Devil's Island,"
said the skipper to me.
Tongues began hurling
their fierce imprecations
"to come to the island
safe landfall to thee."
But the skipper turned round
the ship with a vengeance,
"That old Devil's Island
will never get me."
I thought he was mad
to be scared of a legend
it was my first time
in a storm on the sea
and two men washed over
to Davey Jones locker
"God bless 'em, they'll rest now,"
the skip said to me.
Protesting the treatment
of two forlorn sailors
I said to the skipper,
"It's not very well."
"It's better," he said,
"that they're resting in Heaven
than entering into
the portals of Hell."
The wind lasted the night
then the voices did falter
the lights blinkered out
and I saw very well
so many rocks, jagged
just waiting to smash us
the Devil's Isle gateways
await in the swell.
If you're on a ship
and the voices of demons
come tell you it's safe
in their harbor a lee
remember the shoreline
at old Devil's Island
then turn the ship seaward
and gracelessly flee.
As they say, “Where there’s smoke, there is fire”
In this case it is certainly true
For a people who once ruled so many
find themselves more in place of the few
For so long they have led with a vengeance
but the tide has now started to turn
The majority finds itself strangely, on the fringe of a party that burns
They arrived from the sea with a mission
Took the land and its natives by force
With their muskets and weapons of killing
t’was a violent beginning, of course
Then they sailed overseas with their weapons
for they needed a country to build
There they found what they sought in another
and the blood of the innocents was spilled
Man-made laws justified the enslavement
as they bartered for precious ‘black gold’
Never needed a currency system as the humans were bought and were sold
Generations of slaves built the country
all their blood soaked the land that we share
As the children were ripped from their mothers
they survived on their will and a prayer
But the winds that bring change were upon them
and the nation was soon torn in two
So they fought to the death with their weapons
From the blood and the ashes we grew
Many more later died seeking justice
slowly gaining new rights never known
To these giants we owe our freedom
and in time we have certainly grown
But in spite of our laws and our freedoms
there are many who hold onto fear
As they honor their ancestors’ visions and the power they once held so dear
All their talk of a government body
who will come and will take guns away
Truth be told it is not what they’re fearing
but a country that’s changing to grey
As the races are coming together
the majority slowly will wane
As descendants of those once in power
feel the strength of minority gain
In their hearts they are mourning the passing
of a time which has long-ago gone
And the power they had over others
now a reckoning is born in the dawn
So they scream out the 2nd Amendment
wrap themselves up in red, white and blue
But their time, like their fathers’ is ending
A majority rises anew.
You live on an island not at all on an island
But smack, in the middle of life,
The center of our small word loving society
If it weren't for you, I had drowned
In that Soup-sea of incomprehensible
rules for autists.
It isn't strange for hubbies to say: "I love you".
So there you go ;)
Ask your first hubby if we can share
to eternity and back, because that
would be so lovely.
Jan, life kicks us so hard sometimes
but we kick back with a vengeance!
One day we'll swim that canal
and meet halfway on our rubber duckies
Smiling broadly and drinking
ginger tea.
***
February 18, 2017
~
The sunrise this dawn remains sleeping,
clouds have now taken the show
Winter has come with a vengeance this morning,
coating the valley in snow
Still as I look out the window,
beauty my eyes can’t compare
Chilly this day in a blanket of wonders,
loveliness welcomed to share
For as my thoughts seem to wander,
beyond this December view
All I can see is an enchanting smile,
as I am thinking of you
So let the weather keep coming,
cold as it drifts on the ground
I will imagine your arms wrapped around me,
warm in the love I have found
~
Ok, you caught me...no snow here
but my mind is a little foggy this morning,
does that count?
Mint in the eyes, metal in mood
buckled in sunshine, burning in brood
You represent all in life that is good
I long to be in your presence.
Sipping your whispers, earful and shine
standing like I still believe you are mine
Sappy and spindly in limbs while I pine
I miss your touch with a vengeance.
Wind in my mouth, catching my breath
pulling me forward until I accept
we are a mist from our birth to our death
We are the virtue in essence.
Covid 19 what can it mean....
sweeping the World with a vengeance it seems...
A call to love one another caused by extremes....
Will we all come together to answer the Call...
bypassing deep divisions among us all...
refusing to let one another fall...
The Truth of the people is now what we see...
I care for you and you care for me
revealing the only division came from the media on TV....
We are deeply United in answering the Call
putting our trust in the God that created us all
refusing to again listen to the divisive that want us all to Fall!!!
The torrential rains
Poured into September with a vengeance
As the black clouds were driven in
By autumn winds,
Giving summer a sudden farewell.
Crushing my fading petunias
As the leaves along the dike
Were painted all shades of gold
And pushed to the sodden ground.
Darn! The wind is back with a vengeance.
Its howling,
making the trees and grasses become its instrument.
Gusts to 40 mph they say; I believe it.
But the sky is so blue and the clouds are illuminated from within.
Today the wind is so strong that I can smell the pine scent from the mountains —
from the mountains where his ashes swirl.
He lifts my hair and whirls it around my face, and in the scent on the wind
I am awash with cleanness.
The tune he plays as he surrounds my body is one of memories, and greeting.
The wind slowly becomes more gentle;
caressing now; touching me in a more loving way.
Exploring with long cool fingers, around, reaching under my clothing,
becoming intimate.
Forfeiting his boldness, with a sigh he leaves on soft goodbyes.
Darn, the wind is gone.
Micro-Feasting
by Odin Roark
To propagate the dung heap of ignorance,
Is to place on low simmer
A main course of illiteracy.
How festive the chefs of mental starvation
Make the tables of 140-character-feasting,
Luring the gullible
Along with the lazy,
The doltish
And the lost,
To gorge, then purge,
Then ignore the noxious vapor
Of sentience becoming residue waste.
So stirs this caldron of abbreviated ingredients,
Stifling taste buds for savoring delectable elocution,
Reducing vocabulary to bulimic shorthand
And expecting all to join this achromatic work-around.
Hopefully, the language of full syllabic enunciation
Will return with a vengeance,
Sending expression’s drive-by expediency
Into its all too deserving exile.
Consideration pauses in the distance.
One can hear the echoes of dismay,
“Does this mean we’re expected to read…
AGAIN?
Dearest,
There would be no nightfalls
thereunto your eyes but partly goosebumps
nor would be nightscapes along your brows
even an inch above their shorelines
where darkness heaves
no. When shadows dance in tip-toed pirouette to the tune of your hairfall
whose breaths breathe nothing but the fumes from your sigh.
You are but a psalm
the Tibetan monks hymn and a mantis prays with a vengeance
for three full moons bedecked with diphthongs and rhymes
only to show beyond doubt
that every squint of the lids of your eyes
is proof of all the gods' existence.
There are no sundowns
thereunder your limbs but scarcely woundscars
nor dimlights throughout the length of your nape
all the more onto its coastline
where thoughts
bloom. When crickets perch and croon
whose hymn chants heretofore each syllable of your name.
My breathe rests each time your eyes meet mine, my love,
for nothing falls thereto except my heart.
Tears herewith,
Samson
Author's note: Finalist September Poetrysoup International Poetry Contest
Contest Sponsor: Poetrysoup
Black plays red in age old battle
A click or two as dice are shaken.
Collect your thoughts before moving
Keeping a close eye on the count.
Gammon could be on the cards
As you counter move against Red.
Much jubilation as you hit a stone
Marching Red quickly to the bar.
Oh no, back in with a vengeance
Now Black becomes the under dog.