.
Curse of life, my gangling knees always creak.
Everyone giggles whenever I stroll .
My kin labels me...a wobbly antique!
To prove 'em wrong, I twirl a rock and roll.
Sciatica! Joints lock while floor tiles squeak.
In the morning, putting on pants, its gangling legs
become entangled with mine.
It has thrown pillows on the floor again.
It has made a permanent dent in the recliner seat.
Leafing through notebooks of old poems,
I find more evidence of its hand sabotaging my life.
It stalks me in Target like a thrifty wife,
while my thrifty wife controls it with remote eyes.
It is older than me, fatter and less agile.
It sends ornaments crashing to the floor as I pass.
On rainy Wednesdays it will shrink itself
into a small hump-backed mood.
Tonight I suspect it will drink too much.
Yesterday evening it trod on my spectacles.
It will be sorry tomorrow morning,
but I am done with all of its excuses.
In the morning, putting on pants, its gangling legs
become entangled with mine.
It has thrown pillows on the floor again.
It has made a permanent dent in the recliner seat.
Leafing through notebooks of old poems,
I find more evidence of its hand sabotaging my life.
It stalks me in Target like a thrifty wife,
while my thrifty wife controls it with remote eyes.
It is older than me, fatter and less agile.
It sends ornaments crashing to the floor as I pass.
On rainy Wednesdays it will shrink itself
into a small hump-backed mood.
Tonight I suspect it will drink too much.
Yesterday evening it trod on my spectacles.
It will be sorry tomorrow morning,
but I am done with all of its excuses.
Deep within the decrepit graveyard
Alight by a circular moon
Concrete creaks
Gravestones crack
Grotesque bodies rise
in ghastly fashion.
khaki grass crunches
beneath gangling feet
mechanical movements
macabre murmurs
and creaking bones
march forward, famished.
Crunch....
.....
Crunch...
Crunch.
filling
darkened streets,
crowding alleys,
stalking backyards...
Creak..
...Crunch..
flesh, falls to the floor...
Exposing...
the
gruesome grey,
skeletal,
Dearly departed,
undead.
Flocks of odious creatures
Litter streets
Masticating and munching
unsuspecting society
sheltered in the shadows
you watch,
blood drip from toothless grins
As they siphon the essence
of humanity
A cadaverous finger
slides slyly on your shoulder
hair spiked on edge
goosebumps grip your skin
chills caress your spine
Pins and needles nettle your flesh
Slowly you swivel around
turning,
to
face..........
book
RISE ...
breathless, calm ...
I face the morn ... possibility
mists crawl 'neath gangling willows
dew drawn from the keening hem of twilight
spattered on green and growth like atomized sachet
patient for the sun and its timid truths
as I listen for the silent cry
a new day's glory ...
soft-born.
~ 2nd Place ~ in the "Brian's Choice Y, Any Form, Any Theme" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Judge & Sponsor.
I stand here 'neath these vines of old
Wrapped by the arms of stories told
The lads and lasses, bright and bold
A dancing brown-eyed blond
Of whom I'd been quite fond
I'd found her here, below this green
Those chestnut eyes, all of fourteen
Brought I, a senior, still quite green
Thru metaphor, to my knees
Her fain pawn, if you please
Then shared in all that love imparts
We gangling fools, in fits and starts
Too zealous for our bleeding hearts
To care where passions led
Found reckless in its stead
Now I'm back here, gone the years
Yet stirs my soul, amidst the fears
Her sweet voice still avails my ears
From all the memories lost
How much our loves can cost ...
How much, our loves ...
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Late February 2019 Any Form Or None" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Judge & Sponsor.
Last winter on the village pond, but three
Geese. Brilliant white with yellow beaks, come see,
With pride they sit and guard the village green,
Such anserine confidence must be seen.
Spring spawns new life right here, remarkably,
Nine gangling goslings waddling awkwardly.
Maturing fast, they shed their yellow fluff.
Clad now in snow-white feathers, smooth not rough.
They sail around the pond with dignity,
Their orange paddles working regally.
Watch carefully, you think you have their measure,
But at the slightest cause they honk displeasure !
Traffic halts. Across the road they straggle,
Haughty heads held high and tails a-waggle.
Down on the pier, the midmorning bright,
Thronged wives, husbands, lovers,
And sons, friends, young daughters,
All eyes perusing the grand and gray ship
In long-simmered hope of glimpsing one face,
One much-beloved grin, among antsy sailors
Arrayed in white jumpers along the tall deck,
‘Til, filing like ants, crew at last disembarked:
A long, gangling line descended the gangway,
Dispersed and filtered, absorbed by the crowd,
One young and trim yeoman elbowing through,
Enfolding his wife—petite, trembling gal—
Into long, lanky arms, her buxom breast pressing,
Squeezing tight to his chest
And stoking, thereby, his half-a-year’s yearning
To hold and be kissed,
To kiss once again this doll from high school—
And the assemblage transformed
By thinning and ebbing away from the pier,
While that sailor still kissed, hugged his wife tight,
Past months dissolving, by love overwhelmed,
‘Til, still holding close, they silently strolled
Relieved he’d returned—
He’d come home to his wife.
Slate clouds stretch low
over urban rooftops,
sun’s hopeful warmth
vanquished:
man with a limp
pauses.
his weary eyes,
wary,
survey that sky,
grimy gangling
fingers
fidget
buttons,
wind biting through
plaid jacket’s
worn fabric;
on, he hobbles
behind
shopping cart,
cluttered and dull,
left front wheel
shimmying,
sere, dun leaves
and discarded wrappers
tumble, rustle
alongside
in the gutter.
They could be heard across valleys with their screeching echo
Flailing above tree height they’d flock in their thousands - the Black Cockatoo
Like nature’s eclipse, they would descend in clouds; all great gangling wings
Flapping madly at each other, swaying this way and the other
A perch full of hysterics - oh ravishingly black
Black raucous baffling broils of beak n feathers and
Snapped off sticks and nuts that crack and pop from
Ancient giants tall
All crowded in crowns hanging and swinging and larking about
A jest from the nest, others cuddling n kissing
Fanning tail feathers – pretty
But now they fall, their numbers appal
Thrown out of their homes, death by starvation, another species lost
But who gives a toss…
A red tail feather once so common on the forest track
As we yearn for their call, the lone screeching echo
That haunts the valley floor
We no longer hear the vanquished
It’s only when they’ve vanished
Will we truly pray for these ebony eccentrics?
Of the Australian bush
28 August 2014
CLOWN
Hard day at the office – circus in town.
I hear the Sousas yellow, or dark Pagliacci brown
All in all I hate this one here clown,
Striding right into my space,
Hiding the other side of his face –
The hurries, the gestures,
Paint so thick it cracks when he smiles
Paint that don’t run, and this here gangling style.
He trips, goes down, frightens a child,
But the freaking holiday crowd rises, croaks, goes wild!
You think of this here kind, usually, as stubby, or fat,
But this one’s long and slim,
A phallic maypole, that damn well describes him.
I hate the cheering, all the rah, rah, rah,
Hate the noisy wildness of this insane Mardi Gras.
I gotta leave, but then I spot this tiny, little girl,
Fall in love with her four-year-old, golden curls.
She laughs, she gurgles, gasps – doll face so fragile
In spite of flatulence, headache, in spite of myself,
I smile.
The sun-bleached exoskeletons
of old dead trees stand like sentries
along the towpath riverfront
exfoliated and gangling.
In a former age they stood tall,
grandiose to all passerby’s
but they too are dead to recall
their once impressive colossi.
Eventually these remains
will meet their final destinies:
to fall-never to rise again-
among forgotten progenies;
yet many springs have passed since then
each sprouted trees, time and again.
Old friends you come to reminisce and share
The stories of better life, another day compared
O I have question to settle matters here
Before I pack and go again - something here is seared.
Did you too
As a child with gawking eyes and gangling dreams
Pursue
Through silence the rights of adulthood?
Did you too
Long for the day when we would be the only law
And work would only be play?
O what giddy headedness! Why were so vain?
For here we come to this place
Almost the end of what we longed to embrace
And here this hollow sense of something missing still
Did we do something wrong
Or was this there all along
Was it irrevocably fixed
A gene in their actions, some invisible mix
In all the years before their years
In the legacy's spiralling stairs
The sun is set
And we cannot alter it.
O children who long to leave
The world of innocence ... beware
For we too are children
Carriers of the Sisyphusean dream
The web only glitters ... but mortal is our scream
I would have taken all of Jacob's ladder
Where only angels climb
O but so gullible we are
We seek to to catch
When wise men follow stars.
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