the bus bench on Hollywood and Highland,
crisp wind blows through a city in decay,
situated halfway in time
between nineteen-twenties Tinseltown
and twenty-twenties tourist trap,
hard like ice on an eighteen year old butt,
worked off on the night shift, eking out rent
in a strange new world, on my own
Struggling for so long
Eking it look so easy
They don’t believe me
With traffic flowing he stands in the street
Arms stretched, hands up, commanding a halt
Obedience and fate will now compete
His adrenaline pumping like a drumbeat
His eyes shut tightly sting with warm sweat's salt
With traffic flowing he stands in the street
Flinching at each tire screech, yet never leaves his feet
As if they were glued down to the hot asphalt
Obedience and fate will now compete
The driver’s brake and squirm in their seat
Some swerve, eking by in black, white and cobalt
With traffic flowing he stands in the street
He holds position and will not retreat
His reasons hid far away and locked in a vault
Obedience and fate will now compete
How many humans are more sour than sweet
If they don’t try the brake, is he solely at fault
With traffic flowing he stands in the street
Obedience and fate will now compete
November 2, 2022
Third-Person Villanelle Poetry Contest
Sponsor: L Milton Hankins
Gravitational pull like quicksand, her ebony eyes
Ripping into his outer space. He tugs at his collar,
Eking out the empty space of honeysuckle perfume.
Avant-garde arrest of his indeterminate heart -
Time like scented petals pauses — a prop
Entertaining the thought, the mockery of bachelorhood
Sought for too many years. Scented petals fall like snow,
Captivating the soul — love at first sight, can it be?
“Ariel! O Ariel!” I tunnel my way to find out your name.
People like me rarely jettison to the Milky Way.
Eagerly he made quick the great escape and married her.
1/15/2020
Fast wind sees off a dying year
The sense of fall strong
Hurriedly I see off my guests to my hometown
The Double Ninth Day is near
I wish my friends to cheer
Eking out a living as alien here
Has cost me half a year
Nice teachers I see everywhere
What a book of lessons dear
I read The Story of A Stone to my ear
(1975)
Mayhem, pandemonium
total chaos, bedlam, devastation.
A soft, soothing breeze turns
into a whirlwind, a hurricane causing
havoc, death, destruction and untold misery…
Is it the fault of the fair wind?
The life-giving rainfall
cool, refreshing, revitalizing,
turns into rainstorm,
violent thundershower, lightning
causing flash flood, landslide,
mass wasting and shambles…
Is it the fault of the water?
A common man
good, God-fearing,
eking out a simple livelihood,
living a frugal life but sparingly,
thrifty and weak-willed.
When politicians and priests
wreck ruin in his life and
he turns violent, causing terror…
Is this the fault of a mere man?
~10/1/17
~Best free-verse poem oct.-Dec. by John Hamilton
November’s Saint
I watch Truman’s Capote's tale
in November
the south, trapped in frost
bare, naked to the eye
a penury of snow
like poor folk clothes
hardly enough to cover
the jagged edges of bones.
a boy eking out love
as a winter bird
searches for warmth
huddled against the wind.
days sad and drab
the only colour in paper kites
and dime movies
shared with a friend.
The mosaic
A myriad of faces,
Most, long and forlorn,
Each in a constant flux,
Eking out a living
Worry, deeply etched,
Like parallel ridges,
On an otherwise barren waste
The many faces,
Painted with the ink,
Of the pains,
Of successive failed leaderships,
On the canvas; Nigeria
A giant mosaic -
A picture, yet of hope,
Hope deeply engraved,
On our collective psyche
Our collective psyche-
A Mosaic
Of our individual pessimism,
Nurtured in the manure
Of perpetual system decay,
It's foul stench,
Slowly eroding our gaiety,
Yet, delicately perfumed,
Perfumed by our collective hope,
Our hope for a better tomorrow
Amidst the mist, perchance!
The besieged me, accentuates..
gamboling at that ephemeral glance,
The demure Soul for a moment, eluates.
Defying every dulcet wrath,
with my erstwhile prudent..
eking out, what I ever hath,
ineffable! yet a halcyoninan incipient.
I ride astride now, towards then..
from what is lurking afore,
groping the gossamer, to a glen,
where emollience rise only to inure..
From Mastadonian timelessness
Thru Neolithic mankindliness
Past icy agey instances
Cave-ember dream sequences
Animal carcass sustenances
Tribal ritual religiousness
Guttural language utterances
Savage native dominances
Eking marginal existences
Toward era-ending extinguishes
To Nomadic brutal homelessness
Under cracking cultural bridginess
Under societal forgetfulness
Under Military expansiveness
Governmental negligences
A congenital hopelessness
Constitutional vagariousness
Evolutionary pervasiveness
Solitary survivalness
That’s my piece of boniness
My tent reeks of holiness
On the edge of precariousness...
A bird’s life …
Mean and meager
Eking out
A hard existence
Each and every day…
Yet always they strive
Are e’er eager
Existing out of
Pure persistence
Each and every day…
And wrest the best
From their meager
Subsistence
And take
what they’re given
…From each God given day…
As corporate execs rub their hands together
In greedy glee on seats of plush leather
The man on the street smells the breath of the city
Whilst the man in the tower thinks himself quite witty
As the look down upon the masses below
Eking a living, walking hungry and slow
On the sidewalk that feels like the skin of the city
But as the markets fall and crash
The wealthy man becomes poor in a flash
And in anxiety and desperation
His turmoiled mind finds a last inspiration
To walk to the balcony with a sobbing cry
And to spread his wings with hope he can fly
And the city below opens its mouth
As the suddenly poor plummets down south
And the stench of the breath of the eternal city
Is the fetid decay of the man that was witty
Yet the steady masses still stumble along
To the beat of the street and the city’s live song
Beeping, chirping silicon beasts;
no souls have they, to say the least.
Shrilly, shrieking, cell phones, beeping;
alarms that keep us all from sleeping.
Walking, stalking cameras gawking;
all of our privacy they’re hawking..
What happened to the common sense,
that kept those things outside our fence?
Creeping, sneaking, auto-voices speaking;
Horrid sounds, they are eking.
We’re just trying to digest;
the beastly, techo-mess.
Flying, spying drones colliding with airplanes;
it’s so asinine and insane.
It’s clear to me, we didn’t see,
The moment, common sense, took leave.
When breath returns sweeter,
From its journey into you.
Sent so softly on its way,
To blend and gently wend,
Its path to feed your heart.
When breath comes eking softly,
a returning theif it seems.
Bringing its treasures forth,
And brushing against a dream.
Sweetly it stirs the soul.
Oh how breath comes dancing.
The music of its step.
Rising to move as in a swathe.
Like swaying summer wheat,
in the fields of the lovers' lands.
When the breath returns so sweetly,
From its journey so divine.
The story of its temporary capture,
Speaks beguiled wonder.
And comes to fill my mind.
Then gathering like soft seasons' rains,
To loose ourselves and sigh.
The breath we share,
Is tenderly given to beauty,
sent so sweetly forth,
Again......again......and again
................and again.
exploitation continues
the thieves are ever at it
the heroes have departed
leaving behind the weaklings to be exploited
Here’s a worker sweating blood
while the eating homo-chewing dance frenzy
the tamed enslaved beings roam and wander
but only in the marked electrofenced domain
Aspirations limited,
Horizons restricted,
everyday eking
everyday fleecing
poverty adorns the wretched men and women
sentenced to rot in want and need
while the eating thieves wallow in intimacy
Whilst poor Jones stands at the door
guarding the fallen grumps of the dozing boss
billionaire feeds off his work and despair.
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