Quasi-star, Quasimodo, Quasimandias for sure
Eating stars, black holes, and planets, celestialities galore
It's no wonder it's so big with an appetite like that
Galumphing through the universe not caring where it's at
The size of a hundred thousand skies, you go just where you please
The only thing left in your wake won't even raise a breeze
Nature abhors a vacuum and this might just be the model
Of what happens when God himself is leaning on the throttle
Of a cosmic train that's runaway and making it's own tracks
Leaving holes where 'ere it goes, whether white or red or black
They'll be here until the end, where they'll spend their final eons
At the end of which comes something we can't readily agree on
Which is fitting for this splitting and emitting long enduring
A Providential palindrome... as enigmatic as alluring
Craven cupidity, contemptible crow
Your talking is squawking as black as your soul
If birds of a feather would gather your hem
A collection of seamstresses darker than them
Would weave from hole cloth a pattern of lies
From a harvest of calumny dark'ning the skies
Who rates this performance, whose benefit there
With bait this enormous just fit for a bear
Who else in the forest could relish this feast
Galumphing, triumphing, it must be a beast
Wallowing, swallowing, swampy at best
Content to recline there and dine on the rest
Immobile as a trophy, stuffed for display
On future repast, blackened feather filet
Blow hard and bellow with yellowing cries
Gather like fellows who feast on these lies
If chapels had been churches, your cathedral would loom
'stead of gathering shadows in this canyon of gloom
With your bins full of blight and your gather of smut
We hasten to bid you not good night but... what?
We wonder still under quick'ning despair
In search of escape, it must be here but... where?
There must be some light lest this darkness o'erwhelm
We must brave the night til the Good take the helm
Infinite bottomless
Infinite limitless
Limitless stamina
Limitless energy
Energy overload
Energy burdening
Burdening burgeoning
Burdening flourishing
Flourishing enterprise
Flourishing company
Company safeguarding
Company sheltering
Sheltering enemies
Sheltering predators
Predators sauntering
Predators wandering
Wandering aimlessly
Wandering mindlessly
Mindlessly faltering
Mindlessly fidgeting
Fidgeting nervously
Fidgeting worriedly
Worriedly galumphing
Worriedly galloping
Galloping anxiously
Galloping fruitlessly
Fruitlessly gathering
Fruitlessly harvesting
Harvesting wastefully
Harvesting foolishly
Foolishly challenging
Foolishly strenuous
Strenuous exercise
Strenuous practicing
Practicing stringency
Practicing discipline
Discipline lineage
Discipline progeny
Progeny fornicate
Progeny procreate
Procreate thoughtlessly
Procreate heartlessly
Heartlessly sickening
Heartlessly hideous
Hideous ordering
Hideous sequencing
Sequencing endlessly
Sequencing infinite
Endlessly…
Infinite…
----------
I think this may officially be a Whirtle McBlitz :-)
THE TALE OF THE AWSOME WINSOME KNIGHT
© 2021 John T Haupt
Armed with luminosity,
And with epiphanous numinosity,
With snicker-snacks,
And a few quick hacks
The winsome knight vanquished
The frumious bandersnatch
In all the fierceness of its abundant ferocity,
And came galumphing back home
In victory.
He said that it was brillig, but what did that word mean
And slithy is a word that I had never seen
If you gyre and gimble, what do you really do
I guess when in the wabe, you seek the meaning too.
Lewis was a master of words that were not real
He made you fear the Jubjub, and he made you feel
Like your very being, is a door without a latch
It takes bravery to shun the frumious bandersnatch.
We attack the world of words with a vorpal sword in hand
Verses, like the Tumtum tree, sprouting in the sand
And structure with rhyming can be a manxome foe
Whiffling and burbling, the flaming words will go.
Choosing careful phrases can bring a frabjous day
And poems not dead, like borogoves, find their mimsy way
While galumphing through the tulgey lines with uffish chortled joy
It makes me through and through a whiffling beamish boy
So Lewis paints a picture with unreal words so clear
The Jabberwock seems so real and something we should fear
Poetry is the art of words, with phrasing, tales and fun
Proceed carefully, and beware the Jabberwock my son.
Nudnick
By Sy Roth
Self, I say
Self,
Wake up.
Your ganglions
Are asleep again.
Wakey, wakey…
Those around you, nudnick,
Are whirling dervishes
Those who come and go
In the Speakeasys of their lives
And I am a silent partner.
Wake up dammit
It’s slipping away
You’re letting it slip away
While the humped dowagers
Prepare their casseroles
For the hungry men who’ve passed.
See in their eyes
Your sadness, Nudnick,
Where’s the fun in your voyage
Careless self
Elf of the bygones,
Shelf where the platitudes lay
Dusty
Fusty hungry dinks waiting
For their revival
Wrapped in their silent home
Domicile of mordant cells
For the somnambulist to walk echoey corridors.
Awaken before it is too late
Or perhaps it is.
The monster is caught galumphing to Bedlam
And the nudnick sits on the side of the road
Waiting for him to pass
Like a hundred-car freight train crossing.
Wake, I hear it in my ear!
Wake the nudnik from its dream
The train is a never-ending circus cavalcade,
And he yawns as it passes by.
They all yawn as he passes by.
I yawn for myself
Yearning to avoid the parade
As my eyes close and sleep invades my reality.
Hurry not, tarry not, worry not
For life yours to live, yours to squander
If you slot the wrong plot
Swimming with a groggy gander
To plunder the best resources life offers
In the best years you enjoy
Banking and investing in companionship coffers
Bereft of joy
Too little to warrant any recognition
In social circles, spiritual spiracles
That set in motion the ignition
That with mischief dismiss pinnacles
You previously reached in style
Without nurturing a grudge
Against the guile
Galumphing in a sentiment sludge
Ranged against your move to offer an olive branch
To opponents who feel
Your attitude to consume brunch
When you muster more care than steel
To awaken feelings and ceilings
In a swathe of hope
Meant to caress and bless dealings
Summersaulting and halting the sentiment slope
From rising too steep
Erasing opportunities to hold hands
As you keep your promise to peep
Into blessing bands, lands and stands
That suggest you reconcile
With opponents who argue your kindness
Can’t file fickle feelings and domicile
Moves towards sharing and spreading for all concerned doses of deserved happiness.
Gangly ghosts galumphing in our lives
Gamble
With outstretched knives and chives
Fumble and mumble
Encouraging us crates of lager to quaff and drink
Tomes of *********** for our eyes to dabble
Contaminated thoughts for us to think and slink
Trouble and rabble to double in the stable
Life we feed, mislead, lead and weed
As mistakes upon mistakes we apply, satisfy, supply and multiply
In our Creed
We modify and codify
Our liver cooking in an overdose of alcohol
Our lung choking and dying with nicotine
Our wellness and health we overhaul and stall
As debauchery and dissipation we redefine in a can of worms dustbin
In our lifestyle given to extravagance and waste
Dwindle, dwindle and dwindle
Devouring vats of sin in a haste
As the quality and standard of sane life gangly ghosts from us swindle.
Prejudice and malice
Both besotted beggars
Gamboling, galumphing, griping and gripping a solstice
In limpid lives whose tigers and daggers
Stagger, simulate and strut along
Craven
Oblong, wrong on a song gong
Sloven and driven
Unexpectedly pop up in interpersonal interactions
Writhing like serpents
Wreaking heady havoc in their insurrections
Contents, events, proponents and deponents
To defy, modify and stupefy logic
Contemplate disunity
In a rogue republic
Whose unity
The besotted beggars bring down
Tearing one member from another
Assuming every crown
Becomes anathema as Jack and Jill like each other
To the detriment
Discord prejudice and malice promote and quote
In every contrary condiment
Ever taught or caught.
Don’t denounce me when I weep
Soaking blows right, left and centre
From angled arrows that keep
Galumphing near my fort vying to enter
The crib the moon loathes
Which the venom sunshine can’t sear
While sadness bothers
To rain pain and fear with the clear
Motive to abuse my space and stretch the surface
On which horror refuses to die or lie
As it rears its Dracula face
To feed my parched mouth the poisoned pie
I strive to expel
While ebbing strength and determination
Cry to exhale
As intimation of incriminating information
Smears my spine with the ice
Whose temperature challenges the lowest Kelvin
While each slice of its frozen price rolls a die that doesn’t suffice
When far from fruition floats Melvin
To ask me why I cry
Grown and gone alone as I am
Although rows and crows of sorrows multiply
Cursing the slum
That moulded the character I hold
In my person
As life travails succor withhold
To teach me the lesson
Life feels I deserve
For excelling at school
At the forefront of the erudition preserve
Life feels makes me a flamboyant fool.
Oh, a mangy little doggie went galumphing down the street
And as his luck would have it he just happened there to meet
A warden with a wagon and a heavy-duty net
And he nabbed the rabid mongrel and he took him to the vet.
In my childhood
they
impressed on me
not to galumph,
lest I be typed
in stereo
as my eternal twin,
and yet,
somehow it pleases me
to see that you
are now
constrained to know
that I will go
galumphing off
into the nevermore.
~
I know a scamp who chortles frabjously
as in the springtime galumphing he goes.
And just to show how wacky he can be,
he makes his tongue point up to touch his nose!
He has no wicked claws or eyes with flame
to match those of the manxome Jabberwock.
But just beware his jaws. Although he’s tame,
he can’t be stopped once he begins to talk!
I vouch that he can jabber endlessly
and have me at the end of my short rope.
My ears just might fall off one day, for he
gyres gibberish just like a gyroscope.
I dub my beamish grandson “Jabberwack”
for how he acts and how he loves to yak!
For Debbie Guzzi's "Go Ask Alice" Contest
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