Bard, write through the blizzard!
Icicles, grow from ink!
Gibbous at the gizzard?
Thus, trickery, I think.
Ginkgo, garish gecko.
What herbivore eats this?
Drink thy sweetened tea down slow!
Crow carrion, abyss!
Death. O riddle, wrought in red?
City, rise the dead.
Heaven and Hell, hold thy head!
Careful where ye tread!
Hate, boil up inside my skull!
Overflow and burn!
Clean the end of every trull?
Turmoil taciturn.
Clarion? The count concurs.
Minnow, thy murmurs.
Yellowing scroll, languid lures.
Blue as vision blurs.
Adhesive, thy autopsy.
Blackguard, bounty's broadloom.
Stuck inside, apostrophe?
Apostasy, doom.
Motifs of the hedgerows?
Escarpment, extinction.
Ocean water, harsh thy blows!
Prose, profit the pun.
Toadstool? Viscosity of blood.
Food for thought and gods.
Sonic rain, hurricane, flood.
Vintage, O voivods...
Bare foot walking on a primeval beach
Before people, (it was just 3 o’clock,)
Balance hunched with longer stride
My feet made indentations in the sand.
With each rising step, my prints
Filled with toe-sized ponds and heel-sized lakes,
A tidal microcosm of a pulsing beach.
Life before people after all.
Far away, I saw a scrap of white
Propped against escarpment rock.
Assessed as some precious speck,
As so rare a thing so often is.
Already grains of sand had worked
Between my sandals and my soles.
Curious, I strode towards it,
To more closely see.
A sign of white posted my accidental crime:
Turtle Nest
Do Not Disturb
As easily saying, “Forgo knowing to let things be.”
"Out to Sea"
In the immediate times
we rush to consume it all
before it is all swallowed, and out it all comes salty,
like an Ocean pummelling our crumbling sures
eating away our solidarity
insouciantly the sandy impermanent escarpment caves in
on our gossamer dissolving world
and in the eye of the storm
in the middle of it all
for a small moment all is calm
while the catastrophes move blithely around us,
hitting us brashly like we’ve been hit on a caffeine high
we are simultaneously aware of time standing still and then,
the swift pull of a rug unceremoniously out beneath our feet
some strange gravity slides
towards that ridiculous prophecised inevitability
of kingdoms come and gone
we thought we knew everything
the truth is we were the dumb awake
knowing little of everything
and much of what mattered little
and all as one
we are drowned soundly, gladly,
like into an open-eyed baptismal grave
we are forever and ever
naked as a child
washed clean
out to sea
Candide Diderot. ‘25
Do not be fooled by the power
of the king, by the shadow he’s enveloped
open your eyes to the shadow
he pokes, pricks, and stirs the fear inside
drowning in remorse, regret, and sorrow till
nothing remains but the hatred
hatred has the king for his paper kingdom
a tyrant evolves
Fragile like the house of cards
Tis but origami paper meticulously folded
with patience, is his castle
Immigrant why do you come?
Immigrant you must have dire reason
you’ll only find division, malice
and disfunction
So many dwell under a rock
blindly leading blind
toward the precipice
Tis this charade! The king’s been tricked
as he parades his symbols
dangerously close to the escarpment
How do we choose
Who will vie for king?
Riddled by the law
not founded on solid ground
after all
The two dimensions
The jack-ass consistently
kicks the lion
discombobulating him
Heretical in families
misjudging the way of the world
Nothing ever resolved
In his paper kingdom
how should society work?
Whose ethical ideas?
Whose ideology?
Spectrum such as the left,
the centre or the right
Running out of road, windshield wipers are useless for tears
Close my eyes and count to… not yet! reaper hasn’t appeared
Lights flashing across the dashboard, warning indications
Speedometer reads a ton, don’t care for vindication
Stripping back life
for all to see
The lake below
reflecting me
Going over the escarpment, free falling through a cloud
Brakes I leave redundant, accelerator screams out loud
Weightless grow my memories, the rear view mirror is bleak
Exterior one’s more streamlined, if a little oblique
Dug my own hole
admission’s free
Revealed the sin
got the car key
Not much on the horizon, seen a few birds here and there
Was playing around for a long time, now she’s gone elsewhere
And our song’s on the radio, I’ll never hear it end
(Stairway to heaven) rifts in stasis, just as I transcend
Oblivion
nihility
A growing bump
delivery
Hey! who’s that smiling lady, pushing me along the street
I look out from the pram, peekaboo! my heart skips a beat…
Rumoured to conduce a mine shaft abandoned
Reserve behind rural residential too steep to traverse
Sacred scope gazes at Gold Coast Grand Canyon
Struggle's reward - rugged mountain slope reimburse
Pull surges me along across rubble, rollerskate
Pursuit is overcome as corpse, nestle needs in casket
Ravine ripples rise in ellipse repeat reciprocate
Feathery ferns fed by felled black stump escarpment
Each easy attempt equates to triumph
Cognitive storage organise strong carpentry
Problems tandem with answers turn up
Every earnest try results in Taj Mahal mastery
Sovereign track conquest, ocean span colossal
Steeple reaches quiet, my climbing mind inseminates
Forest folds me into sheltered shaft, stone fossil
Grey gum coliseum deposits amber sap permanence
Sixth of May
Sacred Place
Les Braves
(Iambic Pentameter)
Tan sands conceal deep furrows of their pain,
As churned emotions scream on the light breeze.
The rushing lather bubbles with red stain,
While mortar clouds suppress the dying wheeze,
That madly dared to reach the cliffs in vain.
The hostile bluff still taunts a flying skein,
Where warriors bravely tried to scale the crest.
The rock secretes long tales of plaintive strain,
Of ones that fought abreast for the oppressed,
and finally achieved the winning gain.
Yet no win comes without a shocking loss,
As the escarpment holds the treasured sons,
That fought the menace of the iron cross,
to fall heroic to opponents’ guns,
but proudly rest in peace ‘neath the grave’s moss
Note: Just came back from a visit to the D Day beaches and the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-mer, a great place of reverence.
3rd place trophy winner
10.21.22
Contest: 3 stanza poem in quintain (Sicilian)
Sponsor: L. Milton Hankins
An
Escarpment of memories
Distills in form
A different layered light
Before the storm.
I have visited vagaries
Of such places where,
Measuring worlds and
Matching faces
Upon the inward surface
Of a glassy eye
May bring me tears to cry.
To hold them from escape
I try,
But I,
Cannot be their jailer,
Stand without argument,
A drunken sailor.
Leaning on rebuke, watching them
In stronger currents,
Drawing torrents of futile resistance
Until their vision gone.
So too,
My silent shout.
Let us chase each other‘s urge on scalding heaths,
Like ponies on the gallop without rein,
A deep seat harness cast into oblivion in the spurt to sea green passion‘s cosmic haze.
Equidistant red clouds now they
ripple at the thought of sensual hearts with pine ablaze.
Soaring pulse rate lodger
on the snoop of citrus rue.
Plume of lilac giggles scare the awestruck azure perch bird whose mating patterns seem like beaky pecks.
Homing pigeon instinct gets the better of our maple leaf alliance as we wade through vapid marshes at the foot of Alum-kuh
NB Alum- kuh is escarpment in Iran
Pine as human need
Equal and Opposite
In stone, fruit, thought,
breaking free like fugitive drops,
from arrest to arrest,
gravity punishes inclination.
Mechanic, escarpment-teethed
it grinds the inconstant glass
of orbital fall, mental elipse,
until the motive light again
leaps up, and on, out,
over, in, and through
trailing like a spray
the bright scarf
of un-Newtonian surprise.
The curse of an
inflated imagination.
An escarpment of thought
in a blistering mind.
An invasion of insolence
amidst a tempest-tossed
cacophony
of mewling memories.
A throat restricting,
heart galloping,
and eyes trembling.
A voiceless scream for help.
A crouching body
in cold defeat.
A quivering being,
gasping for an
exasperating breath.
Then, a ferociously seized breath -
transplanted
from an enchained soul,
gives birth to grave apathy.
A silent tear dissipates
into an endless ocean
of trepidation.
The escarpment in spring is a beautiful sight
Way above, I see the melting snow
Travelling down a zaigzag course
That Mother nature traces
Like a little waterfall flowing to the bottom
Running through a field, moving more rapidly
Becoming one body , growing stronger
Eventually reaching a stream
SKY VIEW FROM THE Q.E.
Dark grey squalls
glide off of Hamilton Bay
trailing snow
look like old time proper ladies
their dainty booted feet
stirring up a wake
of frothy silken finery.
one behind the other
they file toward the escarpment
dropping crystal lace hankies
in coy consent
“I am approachable”,
the squall ladies whisper
“the hour is late
my mood so melancholy”,
as their cold breath
caresses the cheek.
a pale sun breaks through
shafts of light reflect
from delicate flakes of snow
appearing as though
finest gauze wedding veils
drift to earth
earth sleeps
awaiting Persephone
time between white velvet comforter
and a lacy leafed wrap
exposes her bones.
A lone Piper stands on the rise, the breeze swinging his kilt
And flattening the patchy grass at his feet; below,
Spread before him, the land slopes down to the silent river,
Running deep, willows at its edge sighing softly as the evening
Air caresses them.
His plaintive lament hangs in the air, then echoes back from
The escarpment beyond the silent stream; the ivory full
Moon hangs low on the horizon, its pallid light haunting
The landscape and his sad voice.
The lament is for the fallen, brave heroes who broke their
Mother’s heart in service to their country and the indifference
Of Politicians and Generals alike.
Yet also, its echoes are for all of us whose hearts are not mended
And who grieve still for lost hope.
Yesterday, I sat in the level wane of dusk
Watching the sun slant with the birds towards the taciturn escarpment.
Soon heaven was a floorless sea of stars
And the two hundreds miles of country was a endless communion of cattle bell-notes and fireflies.
I thought to myself how stars and fireflies are alike...
-- Always there even when we cannot see them...
I saw white petals seated on a shrub open to the warm folk of crickets beneath my sofa of rock
I thought to myself how time flows like the now brimming Izuma brook
And remembered how girls from my neighbourhood are growing greener with the rains of puberty...
I then pulled my thick beard to feel how long it has grown
With words of a wiser man than me coming to mind
-- You don't choose the beard, the beard chooses you.
09/08/17
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