September’s Apples
By Frank Daub
September apples rest in the cellar,
barely in the light,
mellow,
turning cider
beneath their shining skins like cinnamon wine.
I bite one –
juice bubbles out
to the edges of my mouth.
There is sweetness first.
Then at once the tart September taste and
the white circle roughly broken from
the red round.
How long, I wonder, before the white darkens.
The white goes nut colored
before
I can finish peeling the red entirety --
Or
after I’ve taken the first bite.
What is it that makes us put apples in the cellar?
To keep them Autumn-like, extending the
crispness of a season bringing harvest?
This, or it does something to their flavor that the sun can’t finish.
I try to remember how the apples tasted when the old man and I pulled them
from the tree.
They were cold.
A little less mellow.
They are sweeter now.
Being buried was good for them. Buried in the deep cool of this cellar,
away from the sun.
We all remember Captain Kangaroo
who lived in his treasure house as opposed to a shoe
he was a most enthusiastic storyteller
when kids went to sleep he’d head for the cellar
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Like wine
deep in the racks
poems
carefully age
Each of a
vintage
a time and a place
— labeled to consume
(The Rathskeller: July, 2015)
That's the trouble with her Miller:
Lots of fancy for fine killer,
Yeah not Real Life - The safe thriller
But it's no Decent Time filler,
Millers remembrance of thriller
The time wise neighbour turns tiller
And one they 've got in James Bila,
In the past fond of Godzilla,
Now in their church a strong pillar...
"Oh! Why had I accepted Miller
For thriller and wine from cellar?"
Anna had forgotten his villa
Marrying an owner a Willer.
Klaus is a ravening louse
WHO is his edict-ing house
Where he whips errant fantasy out
There he acts world bell-weather
Strutting and foaming of mouth
His offering Though's really small
A magnifier; here is the call.'
The maiden did shout
What's the slug all about?
So he slid through a crack in the wall
The window is long and narrow,
the casement-sill a brooding lid far overhead.
The glass is dirty, thick, and warped.
It is not a window made to see through.
People live in higher rooms; they dwell in the light,
they clatter down the staircase,
their shoes tap and thud on the pavement above.
Footsteps fade into a settling dusk.
Half a century later, a frightened child
awakes on a filthy cot.
The boy is trapped inside a man, an old man
covered in night-sweats.
The remembered basement has not changed,
it cannot change,
time hangs like a broken clock there.
The murky window is even now blind and dreaming.
The dream talks to itself,
it is obscure, possibly displaced
so long buried as it is under its own darkness.
There’s a boy in the cellar with a stone in his mouth.
In the stone is a bird.
In the bird is a future unhatched, unborn, unclean.
Unbeknownst to the world, he is dead.
In the dark there is laughter from faces unseen.
It is here you will stay and alone in this place you will
dwell.
With them.
With it.
For all time.
But I’m here, Mamma’s here.
I wish I could help you.
I wish I could hold you.
I wish I could save you from me.
I wish I could stop this.
I wish I could help this.
I wish it could somehow be better than it is.
But it’s not.
And I’m me.
And you’re you.
You’re down there.
I’m up here.
So it goes.
There’s a wound in my heart that won’t heal, and it bleeds.
It’s your fault little boy, yours alone and I’ll snap you inside
like a twig on a tree ‘till you’re still and at peace in my arms.
There’s a boy in the cellar with a bird in his mouth.
In the bird is a stone.
In the stone is a future reviled, rewritten, repaired.
Realized by the world, he is born.
The creaky old stairs disappear
Enveloped by the darkness down below
There lies an evil toxic place
He said you never ever want to go
He said he's pulled by a neurotic compulsion
That whispers incessantly in his mind
He fervently tries to fight it
Next thing he knows, he’s deep inside
He said there's solace in the quiet
All of the anxious voices go away
It's not euphoria
It's a reprieve - it helps him make it another day
It's in those sacred moments
In the calmness, the irony inside the eye of the storm
He’s found the golden key
He craves the cellar more and more
All of his troubled heartaches
All of his excruciating neurological pain
The lives he's ruined
In the cellar, they go away
But as the light emerges
From the creaky staircase rising above
He goes back to into a world
Where he's hurt the ones he loves
In the darkness of the cellar
He loses the thoughts that damage his soul
Its where he find his only peace
Tragically, It's the only time that he feels whole
Dust covered webs clinging to longevity
oily dirt floors aching to feel the sun
hanging pull string lights swing
eerie shadows a-dance on coal blackened wood
creaking boards arthritic lament
stone walls weeping in the dark
©10/10/2019
Goosebumps Poetry Contest
Silencing the voices of discontent
You're fired message sent
Yates was the first to go
Evidence of Collusion she did show
The great investigation of collusion
Now they beg for its conclusion
The leader Comey of the FBI
Damaging statements Russia did spy
Special agent McCabe of the FBI
Fired because he may have told a lie
Agent Strzok text we'll stop trump
Fired next on the burning dump
The war dance against the CIA and FBI
Justice department should let the investigation die
The threat to fire special council Mueller
Just beware of those cellar dwellers
In the cellar of my heart, the best wine of life I keep: Friendship!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
16 April 2016
He forgot to padlock the cellar door
Perhaps now I can discover
What it is he does below our kitchen floor
That he keeps secret from my mother.
I flick the switch but find no light
That just inflames this kittens curiosity
So I descend the stairs into the dead of night
Now lurking far below me .
A spider scurries across my hand
Then I hear the scurrying of mice
Too late for screams, I've played my hand
If I lose I pay the price.
I feel around the cellar wall
My eyes desperate to adjust
Longing to hear my mother call
but continue on I must.
Wait! Wait! what is this?
Another switch I've found
Light flickers in this dark abyss
I hear my own heart pound.
that step ladder should not be there
What are you hiding dad?
I want to look but do I dare
Its then I see that I've been had.
Devilish faces jump out at me
I scream and turn to run
Then I hear them laughing hysterically
and there stood dad with mum.
Poem inspired by viewing a painting by Stephanie Deshpande
entitled , ''Exploring the cellar ''
The animal that will choose.
He preys on the weak.
Stalking or striking.
The decisions he makes.
He whispers your name.
He strikes fear in your heart.
From down in the cellar.
He'll squeeze the life out of
you.
Manipulation is his game.
But he prefers persuasion.
Don't you dare speak his name.
Don't get pervasive.
There's two things you should
know.
He's not just a friend.
He's the enemy of darkness.
He will not give in.
in an old cellar mason jars
full of canned sunsets line
the shelves.
ripened years ago.
they have names like
sylvia's famous peach
halves.
Now the spiders have never
weaved such eloquent sermons.
The dust is beautifully barren.
untouched....
The preservation of sugar kept in shades of
Orange and Sun burnt yellow.
Behind the window-pane I stand
rubbing mist away
From a distance I watch them
holding hands
as Santa Clause pass by
upon his Christmas sleigh
Slow,So slow they walk
towards a mistletoe
He removes the veil
which covers her grey
beneath the falling snow
He kisses deep wrinkles
which outline her cheek
Each wrinkle a blessing
before eternal sleep
On a Holy night of Winter
they must be feeling cold
yet in their eyes
a fire keeps burning
of a secret untold
Their eyes tell a story
Their arms know romance
Their heart hold a song
Their feet know the dance
In their smile
I see the future I long for
In their dream
I build one of my own
I would be thinking
thinking of you
till the last of red hollies
till forgotten memories
till the end of starlight
I will be waiting
waiting for you.
Inspired by a Christmas song
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