Cannons sing where dreams ignite,
flanks ablaze in shifting fury.
A tide of hunger drives them forward,
bellies growling, eyes shot with fire.
Empire surges in their veins.
Pervitin hums a dark rhapsody.
Dive bombers scream their discord,
night and day, tearing silence apart.
Blood is absent from their tongues
only steel, only ash remains.
They roll, ruthless, through broken shadows,
flattening all under their sharp wheels.
Fortifications crumble like wet paper,
the enemy whispers swallowed whole.
Nothing stands; all things fall.
Shock trips, outflanking chaos reigns.
Victory tastes of burnt iron,
a bitter kiss of almost-complete empire.
War dreams devour the sky with noise,
and dusk ascends in violent, silent reverence.
life is constant
light, waves, and sound
always in motion
collapsing into itself
oscillating to and from
arriving to the return
life is the diameter
between then and now
shapes of lens
flattening the dimension of time
determining,
whether you float
or sail through the journey
It creeps up on me early morning
and again late afternoon
a microcephalic shadow,
almost the length of a football pitch,
Land of the giants view
My childlike head is miles
away and dwindling,
constantly deflating
Proteus syndrome echoes
back through generations
crossing time zones too
Elongated diffraction
casts a very long shadow,
tapering reality
Low sun dysmorphia
projects a reflection of me,
A filtered perspective
revealing my only truth
Those beans I threw away
yesterday were not magic
No golden goose lives atop the stalk
just a grotesque shell,
and one giant (yoke)
flattening all potential
I try look away
but as always
a grain of sand
blocks my view
Come chop me down,
flinch as I fall
Step over my shadow
you’ll need
(seven league boots)
But most of all,
no fixed roots!
Go and gather up the known affiliates.
We're gonna build a village of idiots.
We gotta make sure this gets crazy.
"Getting out of hand" to me is just lazy.
Had our fill of tastless "pain et cirque".
Contorting dough into a shape won't work.
Hunting down cerebral stimuli.
We got the time to kill but it won't die.
Gonna paint this town the bloodiest of red.
A thin veneer of all the living dead.
Choking to death on the lives they've led.
Infected by the many lies wide-spread.
Blunt force persuasion you beg us to stop.
As we eyeball the pyramidal top.
It's "for the greater good" just "flattening the curve".
Please you must excuse our unabated verve.
Treating us like pets you got a whole lotta nerve.
We're the only cure you will ever deserve.
We got the hunger and we're coming for a taste
Won't be over until you resemble paste.
So we're disposable? now look who's a waste.
Editing the gene pool til your bloodlines erased.
Illuminati, elimination.
Very soon to be a not so Freemason.
More than welcoming your depopulation.
No political parties bring celebration.
The "ruling class" now holding no dominion.
Truly free no longer an unwilling minion.
Wind circulates, lifting and flattening
an otherwise, benign, breathless world,
relying also on deeper, slowly moving
tectonics, belching foully, scattering
seas...effecting change. Seasons like Sun
rejoice and fold. An occasional comet or
meteor perhaps a compassionate
God-sent, heaven rethinking the dawdling
pace of destiny…. Man a defiant offspring,
rejecting patterns seemingly not of his own
making – good angels know better, dutifully
soothingly serving.
We were flying back
after flattening Coventry,
all of us cheerful,
confident young men,
all heroes.
On the return landing,
amazingly
we saw that the airfield was deserted -
strange,
for we had left with many aircraft,
the mission a great success.
Then from the ruins of a hanger
they appeared,
people of all ages, families,
all wore gasmasks;
their torn clothes smoldering.
Bewildered we raced back
to the bomber.
Aboard once more
we lumbered into the night sky,
where later
we were shot down
as we fire-bombed Dresden.
I love the wind
Blowing softly against my face,
Fanning it on a hot Summer’s day,
Stirring my hair;
Making the branches and leaves quiver
And the grasses to dance and sway,
And all the while
Whispering a soothing melody
If one but listens intently.
I hate the wind
Roaring violently,
Making the branches and leaves fall,
Bending the grasses till they break,
Whipping the dust around
That stings the eyes,
Finding its way through nooks and crannies,
And whistling an eerie tune
Auguring a storm.
I’m scared of the wind
Blasting at everything in its path,
Causing whole trees to tumble,
And flattening grass, blossoms, and all;
Generating huge waves
That claw their way to shore;
Crumpling poles, posts, and walls,
Howling and shrieking like a banshee,
And snatching the life of the unwary.
April 23, 2023
Among 1st Place
Writing Challenge - ‘W’ Words - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Constance La France
Dumplings
As I walk into the kitchen, for a snack,
my mother, her apron, night black hair, and jade bracelet,
makes me dumplings.
She combines the mixture of monotonous ingredients
into something extraordinary.
The water, like a youthful spring, rejuvenated the frozen, faltering fruits of nature,
Mixing the Yangtzee, Hei Long Jiang, and Chang Jiang into a savory paste of veal and kiwi green scallions and chives.
The distinct sound of chopping drowned my thoughts, easing my stress, and bringing a unique rhythm into my mind.
The dough, seeping under her fingers, was firm yet malleable
as if she was molding
the future.
The clicking of the gas stove, rumbling of the pot, flattening of the dumpling skins, the clinking of bowls and chopsticks, the scrubbing noises in the sink.
A rousing prelude to an intoxicating fugue…
Dinner
Silent thunder
Within heart toroidal
Cold heat
A ball of fire
Magnetic
Radiating
Third eye
Flattening out
Across the forehead
Spirit therein
Nodes churning
Whilst the navel
Has it’s say
Energising
Consuming nectar
Dripping
As for senses
They are and yet
Poised in animation
Of pristine stillness
Dissolving
The space time divide
Potent in each moment
Holds it’s breath
Witnessing
Soul blossoming
In the womb of eternity
18-August-2022
Fried Turtles
The little dog chews on the blue wire
His sharp teeth need blunting
So he picked this bomb wire to gnaw
He likes biting and such like
One of his main interests
His master’s fingers and boots
Car tires on parked cars
And his Holy toys
The gold cross from the church
That’s totally f*cked
Just like the blue wire he has
Look it’s now severed
And the bomb will explode
Killing ten million Chinese
Flattening central Shanghai
Good job the dog and wire
Are ten miles away
He’ll still get a tan
And ten million turtles
Will be totally ing fried
It was a Taiwanese bomb…
from LIZARD SNAIL 124K Nick Armbrister and other writers OUT LATE 2021/EARLY 22
It’s 2:30am
And I am feverishly writing
in a feeble attempt to throw a bone the other way
Flattening the tip of the pen with each thought
I crave so badly to feel understood
Even as I write
I feel a compulsion to over-explain how awful I feel
Just to force the pain down the throat of these pages
I stop to scan my thoughts
I try to decipher if they are good enough
I wonder, when was the last time I felt good enough
Little boy scales the snowbank
in Spider-Man boots
stomping snow,
relentlessly
a focused performance
superboy tantrum, gushing discontent
flattening worlds imagined
crushing lands gripped by villains
His mother, nearby, gleams
like heat under a stove pot
a wary gatekeeper,
extending love unmatched
to watch the giddy rush of boy
to dream a soulful future
to wonder on the needs of self
to view a son's awakening
in the freedom of spaces
Little boy
unfinished work
putting his stamp on joy
as bits of snow fly like a tale unfolding
As a mother watches the elastic bounce of youth,
till the real world runs away with him.
Poem composed: January 23, 2021
The tickling of a gentle breeze
Has detached my leafless leaves
Floating down into only a memory
Remembering the light rains
While the sun warms my crisp body
Then coloring all my other friends
Browns and yellows then reds
Almost all the colors of a rainbow
landing upon another all cuddled together
A sharp wind came blowing them all away
Scattering them among the roots of trees
I feel footsteps approaching
Crushing my outer wings flattening them
No longer able to float down to the ground
Now left dying and lifeless waiting for
To be placed,
Back into the ground
Contest: Self-Life Autumn
Sponsored By: Eve Roper
Date Created: 10/18/2020
Dawns Just Like This
Wake now, discover that you are the song the mornin’ brings . . .em>
-The Grateful Dead-
Dawn easing through
Needle-Eye The Organs once
clear-cut, parsed plain, it seems,
like the desert, flattening its curve
over bramble, pepperweed roughage,
just for us, on dawns just like this,
breath-fresh, not one woke soul sick.
Fragile in no way, pliable, flexible
Delicate? Hardly. Reaching coves and corners
Getting her monarch where she needs to be
Tensile Wings
Rarely broken, tough and durable, dependable
Lifting up the faeries into the hollow of the oak tree
Flattening themselves to slip into crevices
Tensile Wings
Vibrating with the hum of the wasp or the bee
Showing damselfly, dragonfly and mayfly the way
Lasting the duration of their life time
Tensile Wings
Giving an abused wife the push she needs to fly away
Escaping the wrath and injustice of a sad man
Who will have to find a new Luna moth
So he can continue to pull off someone’s wings
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