Best Word Painting Poems
Word-painting, they say; or painting with words,
In charm, it's charmer than most charming birds;
Feeling, for many, is its first foundation,
Expression, in words, brings affirmation;
Sentiment and muse must fondly marry,
Verses should flow-grand rhymes and rhythms carry...!
Does my work, yet, picture of life portray?
Do all colors intertwine, like sun-ray?
Do joys evade the scene when pains flourish?
Does bliss its jubilant psyche nourish?
Do feelings of fear, anger and surprise,
Find: it's impossible to compromise...?
What's the inner-flow of my florid words?
Are they merely beautiful flocks of birds?
Flimsy butterflies that flutter around?
Cats, rats, geese, cattle and horrible hound?
Do beasts of the woods and reptiles well-blend?
With their hitting and killing stories end...?
Do they paint pictures of human struggle?
Or stop just with some selected snuggle...!
The deaf, dumb, blind and the lame, who, in calm,
Add, to this futile life, tremendous charm...?
Young, and old who're, forever, deserted,
In my poems, with honor, inserted...?
Composing poetry, is not mere fun,
A divine mission, with this, is inter-spun;
Painting of actual facts should pave way,
Toward opening of a small headway;
Life without struggles is unfeasible,
Dissensions, yet, could be made peaceable...!
26 April 2022
POEM ON POETRY MUSE Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Beata Agustin
Awesome Gems, As Were Set By Divine Measure
The Sun, a shimmering sky fired lake
Oft penetrating the soul, body and heart
No worries, shining glow it never fakes
Radiant beauty it freely imparts!
Who has never sang praises for its gifts
Those stirring dawns, its beauty basking in
Flow, oft as fine as a great guitar rift
Bequeathing, that which we beg for again!
The Sky, O' the grace of its flowing blue
Oft so deeply -setting hearts aflutter
In youth, we reached for it as we grew
Tho' from its raging storms we oft shutter
Awesome when we see heavenly night views
And dare to ponder in our wealth of dreams
Oft we'd fly up to live if we could choose
Float away in its bright galactic streams!
The Sun, the Sky, our earth's beautiful dome
Indeed, both a most sweet blessed treasure
Nature's allies - its bounty in this our home
Awesome gems, as were set by divine measure!
Robert J. Lindley, 6-22-2021
Rhyme,
( Dreams And Word Painting The Beauty That Came Forth )
Note:
This creation, inspired by a most blessed
and beautiful dream last night. A poet must
consider such golden treasure as is gifted
and rise to the occasion to preserve it in
poetic verses, to give back unto the world.
Even when ones muse says, "you are not up
to the task my friend"! One quite simply
must then so dare!
today I pick up my grammar pallet
and paint for you a personal couplet
something in a monochrome line display
something to enjoy in a special way
transforming emotions onto a page
becomes easier with practice and age
sometimes I look and then I remember
sometimes I can echo your nerve center
in my portrait I have only one chance
to express to you in a single glance
something in one sensory dimension
something to translate my late ascension
my painting refracts my colours in hue
my painting, a self-portrait, simply true
THE END is a little something Mark likes to call a surrealist word painting.
“Ouch! That hurt, I’m not doing that again,”
I laughed.
Now that I’m here I must ask how the everything why the reason.
So I asked the question expecting an answer that may in some way challenge my intellect.
When all of a sudden a voice spoke out in silence with eyes that would square the round
“Always is a word that you should never use, And never means for now, Drink the lemon
sweet words”.
I turned to walk away and find my thinking place,
“Hey come back,”
Said the answer, a being of infinite wisdom
I know this to be an un true fact that it helps to think while standing on a rock of pure
marshmallow
I tell myself this as I try to master the art of falling up.
“There is no use for the answer”
I said if the question just ups and walks away,
“Okay then listen and I shall show you”, said the answer.
Then true to her word she did, and as she finished her words got up and flew around me
like butterflies and I sang the song we all sing,
“Look,” said I, it’s beautiful, the books are birds,” then looking out over the sea of sky
all of a sudden I knew,
“So this is how the everything begun”.
------
Original work 1995
Word Painting In Black and White
Cubed ice dismantling the plank bridge with pliers
made of syrup spilled with a dash of grief and brawn
the reptilian doughboy mixes up another cosmic batch
of truth cookies designed to mislead with wishes of
the big power grab all manifesting inside the largest
television set ever devised with a flat screen as big as
a flying saucer that has at last come down to earth
so large and compelling my eyes were sucked out of
my sockets for five seconds of blind purgatory something
I thought of as an impossibility what with the moon landings
in the last century and all the heart transplants with
a dozen doctors dedicating a day of grueling hours with
silver forceps and scalpels designed to cut and close
as with all relationships between a tight skirt and a mustache
on the floor by a black vent kissing with fingers touching and
moans muffled by the hand of fear there on the green carpet
in a mad darkness by the black vent and the trees with lemons
invading from days and decades earlier when young women
found the tile smooth and electric with sharp tingling sensations
on naked nubile skin rubbed down with cold creams made of fish
ransacking a thousand anchored ships with knives made of pearl by
old pipe-smoking hippies who make love all day with sprawling girls
looking for hot thrills inside gardens made of stone and bootleg love.
TAKE THE BUTTERFLY
Take the butterfly is what Mark likes to call a surrealist word painting
---
“Halt, who goes there?”
I said to myself out loud, and then I answered me in a soft loud slow dulcet tone type
style of voice and said.
“Who goes were?”
I surprised myself, as I was sure that I was the only one there.
“Do you want to ride my bike?
And
“Have you ever tried treading grapes while juggling?”
So surprised was I that I made my mind up there and then Never to buy those knobbly bits
That taste of flat square circles ever again.
Why does my left hand keep coming up and smacking me in the gob?
Still it’s dark outside and that’s the best place for the night to be.
So I sat very still while trying to balance on a moonbeam, and asked everyone I passed,
why are their feet going in opposite directions to themselves?
And why is my head on your body?
Wow what a night, still its early days but I think I have the answer,
Take the butterfly.
Take the Butterfly
A surrealist word painting Original work 1991
I go out for walks
once in a blue moon
when I do it’s a warm day
and the sky is many shades of blue
the moon
is just a clipped fingernail
I’m so happy now
I’m over the moon and weather
not under it
Whit Howland © 2019
My Top 10 Poems
1) There Is Nothing To Say About It
(Actually I had much to say about ISIS and their violence)
2) As They Danced Incognito
(This represents the type of poetic reverie I enjoy writing)
3) In A Suburban Paradise
( Storytelling in loose poetic form from my teenage past)
4) Still Life For Words In G Major
(Poetry for poetry’s sake. A word painting set to mind sounds)
5) A Singular Presence
(Memory poem about an old friend now deceased)
6) Even The Lazy Lizard
(This piece epitomizes my sometimes dream-like approach to poetry writing)
7) Newton W. Moon 1853-1904
(I composed 150 experimental epitaphs, all expanded and developed. This is one of my best)
8) The Endless Green Meadows
(A “dream poem” from another place and time)
9) Interludes Of A Night Rat
( This piece was chosen for inclusion in an anthology of poetry in 2013)
10) Your Eyes Are Like Magic Marbles
(This is a dream reverie of an old memory from a past love)
When I thought of the drawing
Suddenly, I heard some painting
I crave the draft, draught de kooning
Still is graining, still is graining
Long I stood there establishing, painting
I took the blank sheet of paper
My mind was racing
Grandeur, thoughts and flashes behind my eyes
My mind guides my hand
I secure the paper
I crave the draft, draught de kooning
Still is graining, still is graining
Suddenly, I heard the auctioneer yelling..
I'll give you 2 thousand dollars for this drawing
Still is graining, still is graining
Long I stood there establishing, painting
I had dreamed of canvases staining
It was pertaining
The developing draw delineating
All my soul within me withdrawing
The designing draftsmanship designing
Remembering many draft, enticing paintings
An echo murmured back the word, 'painting!'
For I the artist drawing, is now a painting that was sold for money
4/20/19
The Front Window Cogitation
By Sy Roth
Observed the others drowning in their tears.
A pasty rain inks the front window
Sad remnants of a broken sky in Kandinsky splashes
Marked on an ancient, bubble-blown glass.
Outside cars distorted,
People amble in sodden abandonment,
Shuffling along with the meanderings of their misshapen dogs
dragging their owners, who
clutch white-plastic bags filled with their
tick-tocking seconds off their tick-tock lives.
A mushroom cloud of moon splashes the sky white,
As they galumph slowly by,
These sloths in inches of time,
Their microseconds stretching to breaking.
Inundated by an invasion of seconds,
Gestating in a mitosis of time
Set to implode—
Or explode in a parade of Krakatoa rains—
A burst breaks the sky in half
Remnants of rain drip off bent grasses.
Along the slippery, bubble-blown glass
Smudged to icy, crystalline imprecision,
Thoughts melt into a frothy latte foam
Consternation of the other on the inside.
Looking out.
Brief quiescence returns, when
The bleating window screams of malformed ideas
Converted into dormant, spent lovers.
The quislings wither,
Mesmerized by the swinging bags of ,
Overflowing in a Mauna Loa of lava laved
And the inside begins to die in the fog.