Clouds in a Walmart mirror.
The galvanized roof is
eclectically painted and rattling
its shifting shadows.
Some mutter,
hurry to the unmanned checkouts,
some seek a deeper shelter in the
sporting goods aisle's
The distant sounds of fire engines
and sirens,
a howling chorus of trepidation.
Outside in the midday gloom
parking-lot geese
are forming escape lines.
Squirrels gawp and chatter,
hit the ground running.
Another shoplifting tornado
has come to town,
pushing empty carts ahead
of its imminent funnel of fear.
A store greeter
grins like death,
as the gatecrashing wind
steals his breath.
The aftermath has yet to be counted,
though bargain priced Chinese calculators
are readily on sale everywhere.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Dim tunnels curve a segmented ocean.
Bat-winged feeding specters
browse glass. Scaly hulls
blow gas tanks. Rainbow skimmers
flick and soar.
A child’s sweet nose pressed
against a face so horrible,
bubbles of fear pop
in my brain.
Above us, jellyfish swim,
dendritic minds dangling.
tentacles of electric awareness.
Sharks circle waiting to be fed.
shark lovers, perhaps fantasying’
swimming in and out
of their bloody teeth.
It’s a movie - we gawp and admire,
shiver and savor
between margins of beauty
and grotesque gulping’s.
Red and blue squadrons
of directional floor arrows,
lead us out into the light -
a place that some believe
is a safer landscape.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
My memory endures a tourniquet
as it tries to forget, while holding blood.
It used to sport a bouquet
as it tried so hard to boast.
Bouquet becomes tourniquet.
A flow is held.
A part of me is throttled, my throat is squeezed.
It wants to loosen - but strangles.
Some things will not release.
Eyes will gawp, try to pop.
Memory can cause so much pain.
That tourniquet that holds so much.
(4 May 2003)
Categories:
gawp, body, memory, pain,
Form: Free verse
Small birds fall from their songs.
Sticks fly up invisible chimneys.
A strong wind unearths
the stringy and unlatched,
in the ruptured earth, makeshift mouths
gawp and gape.
Whoever has a quiet lamp,
takes shelter from the helter-skelter,
for the graveyard owls are loose,
their feathers are flared and fly
above the clouting forest
as it whips back and forth.
A north wind remodels
a cringing landscape.
We were warned,
the sky was read and foretold.
A pretty girl spoke ugly words
but we are distracted by cute.
Then of a sudden the sky erupted,
fell apart, while we were changing channels
to find a place of sunny smiles.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
The pole is slick
there's a smell emanating from the toilets
body odor and a thick male musk in the smoky air.
I'm not here to gawp at the dancer
just bar tend.
The floor is sticky, the glasses dirty,
the canned music sleazy.
It's not a classy joint.
Nobody tips, not many drink,
the head of the skinny manager
materializes from around a drape.
The head wants me to clean off the tables.
I get my coat
walk out into the clean snow,
wash-out the muck behind my eyes
with handwipes.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Dim tunnels curve a segmented ocean.
Bat-winged feeding specters
browse glass. Scaly hulls
blow, rainbow skimmers
flick and shimmer.
A child’s sweet nose pressed
against a face so horrible,
bubbles of fear pop
in my brain.
Above us, jellyfish swim,
dendritic minds dangling.
tentacles of electric awareness.
Sharks circle waiting to be fed.
shark lovers, perhaps fantasying
swimming in and out
of bloody teeth.
It’s a movie - we gawp and admire,
shiver and savor
between margins of beauty
and grotesque gulping’s.
Red and blue squadrons
of directional floor arrows,
lead us out into the light -
a place that some believe
is a safer landscape.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Long did Odin recline
nursed by the long slain.
Long had he relied for news
from his two ravens,
from a world he still thirsted after
and long did love.
His one eye itched
for their long expected return.
Muninn
(known in the old tongue,
as Odin’s Memory),
at last appeared.
The birds sable feathers
were now ghost-grey.
It stumbled in its speech
as it spoke of
what it had seen of the world.
Long were its strange tales,
long were the gaps in its telling
until Odin could not piece together
the recalled from the unrecalled.
In time his second great raven
Huginn (Odin’s thoughts),
entered his awareness
together with its dark ponderings.
Its dire re-telling's
they smote Odin with such force
that he gasped
in a toothless gawp of horror.
He called for his nurse, alas
no nurse was to be found,
he was adrift
upon the long night.
Dawn found his caregivers
searching high, seeking low.
yet only the long discarded bones
of ancient ravens littered his abode.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
A thrown sky pushes and scatters.
Small birds fall from their songs.
Sticks fly up invisible chimneys.
A strong wind has come from the north,
it unearths the stringy and un-mulched.
Fusty heaps scud, makeshift mouths gawp.
Whoever has a quiet lamp,
Let them take shelter
from the helter-skelter,
for the graveyard owls are loose,
their feathers ruffled
they fly as loud
as the clouting forest.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Dim tunnels curve a segmented ocean.
Bat-winged feeding specters
browse glass. Scaly hulls
blow gas tanks. Rainbow skimmers
flick and soar.
A child’s sweet nose pressed
against a face so horrible,
bubbles of fear pop
in my brain.
Above us, jellyfish swim,
dendritic minds dangling.
tentacles of electric awareness.
Sharks circle waiting to be fed.
shark lovers, perhaps fantasying’
swimming in and out
of bloody teeth.
It’s a movie - we gawp and admire,
shiver and savor
between margins of beauty
and grotesque gulping’s.
Red and blue squadrons
of directional floor arrows,
lead us out into the light -
a place that some believe
is a safer landscape.
Categories:
gawp, poetry,
Form: Blank verse
Look you for Matisse's Daughter?
-------------------------------------
The cat glides paw in the water.
It is glaring at three goldfish.
Jolly tulips are on left side.
The bowl with fish is on a dish.
Gawp at colors so bright in frame...
The cat glides paw in the water.
I guess the fish have fear inside!
(No sign of Matisse's daughter.)
The wallpaper has hearts on it -
Look garish in Fauvist color.
The cat glides paw in the water.
Nothing here to mark as duller.
This cat goes yellow, mark it well...
Never like the one of daughter.
The three fish look up to the cat.
The cat glides paw in the water.
------------------------------------------------------------
The painting describes "Le Chat aux Poissons Rouges",
translated correctly as goldfish, not red fish.
4/24/2017
Contest - Celebration of Art
Sponsor - Kim Rodriguez
1st place win
Categories:
gawp, art, cat, fish,
Form: Quatern
My mouth is weak in gape
That night my eyes in gawp
The night of war in memory
Horrendous ISIS brought Paris.
Horror! The world in anguish
Bataclan Theatre in despair
Before Eiffel shrieked in anguish
The dead, maimed, the innocents
The glints of Eiffel now in glitch
Begrimed! 13th of eleventh month
As bodies in bags she sees
But cry not further, Eiffel
Borders shall be in open
Eiffel shall tower and smile
Bow not shall we to them
Cowards, men in dark visitations
Categories:
gawp, anger, sad, sorrow, sympathy,
Form: Elegy
.
The wild wind’s whisper haz
touched the budding roses
giving them life
The gawp from the writer
before the readers
yep
wuz jaw dropping
Yep
I’ve seen other roses
budding
yet these which were before me
yep
tumid
and were an umber
sought by many uh poets
Yet
I
yep
I
have outwitted
the masters
*Les clins d'oeil de poete
Categories:
gawp, sensual, vanity,
Form: Free verse
I know we could make it.
You’re bashful;
You grin with the innocence a temptress feigns,
Spouting out outrageous eyefuls
Of an open garden gate.
Prodding thoughts that tiptoe up to high heavens
And crack down like lightening,
Like bodies from buildings when they hit cement;
You are the long-lost riot I dreamt.
You take hot baths and listen to Bach and hide under the bed;
I sit at your feet and gawp up at you like you were unreachable,
A star in the dust overhead.
I know we could make it;
You and I go together like salt and wounds,
Like a moth and the moon,
Like spools to a loom.
You were the fall that came for me too soon.
I only write when I am at the tip of unsteady introspection,
And can see death from above.
I only care for you because you are the last person
I know I’ll ever love.
Categories:
gawp, loneliness, longing, love, love
Form: Rhyme
Nights turning into morning
sun goes down, we come alive
two wounded birds, awaits the dawning
the days of our life
each night, afloat in my sphere
you shoot athwart my dark sky
but life isn’t fair
the reason I cannot fly
some nights you’d appear as the blood-moon
to keep a lonesome me cheerful
and perky like the crescent-moon
then I gawp and feel blissful.
Categories:
gawp, best friend, firework, first
Form: Rhyme
STUPID GIRLS
THINK THEIR ALL THAT
THEIR JUST MESH MASH
WHILST OUR PERSONALITIES CLASH
THEIR JUST TRASH
LOOKING LIKE WAGS
THEIR JUST TRAMPS
YOUR SPEAKING TO ME
I DON'T SEE ANYONE ELSE HERE BUT YOU
SO WHAT YOU GONNA DO
GIVE ME A BRUISE 'CAUSE I WAS RUDE
YOUR THE ONE WITH THE BLEEDIN' ATTITUDE
ALL OF WHAT I'M SAYING IS TRUE
WITH REAL HAIR
THEIR WANNA ALL GAWP AND STARE
BECAUSE WHAT'S ON THEIR HEADS AINT THEIR'S
THEIR WOULD'NT KNOW A GOOD THING UNTIL IT WEARS
THIS AINT RARE
THEIR TRESSES GO WITH THE AIR
IT DOES'NT STAND THEIR
I ANALYSE HOW THEIR BARE
SELLING SEX EVERYWHERE
WITH ME THEIR TRY TO CAMPARE
ONE SHOUD'NT EVEN DARE
I'VE GOT MODESTY
I'VE GOT DIGNITY
THINK YOUR NICE
YOUR NOT WHAT I DON'T LIKE
THINK YOUR PRETTY
SHAME MEN ONLY LOVE YOU 'CAUSE YOUR DEROGATIVELY DIRTY
THEM OF YOU STILL HAVING BABIES
DON'T YOU THINK ABOUT STDS
I KNOW THE AUDIENCE HAS HEARD IT ALL BEFORE
HERE'S IT TO YOU RAW
Categories:
gawp, anger,
Form: Rhyme
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