At head of a firm`s protocol
A differently able soul,
I have known for many a year,
Executes her job without fear.
Hunchbacked, she wears a welcome grace
A thousand watts smile lights her face;
No dimmer switch can blur her gleam,
A waking, smiling joyful dream.
Her smiles brighten the dreary days,
Chase from the blues, grey clouds away.
A warmth that spills from heart to eye,
Beneath the vast infinite sky.
Hunchbacked in a room, typing electric spells of doom,
breathing out fire, an alchemy of pain, suffering and desire.
Filtered beauty but oh, beneath, lies green skin and poisonous teeth,
with claws replaced by keyboard, where online posts replicate sword.
Eyes glassy, red with ire and fatigue; hate is sport, pole position in the league:
a troll swallowing prey in gigabytes whole; their innocence lost, our youth stole.
Son, you’ll rise before the sun breaks its chains
And work your father’s yard ‘til fingers strain!
You will bow and drop your knee to the ground
And soften your roar when grown folk around.
Boy, never dare meet my eye when you speak,
Be brave out there but in here, you be weak!
You must break yourself to my sage command,
This is the respect that I must demand!
Look at us grown, ‘respectful’, and hunchbacked
walking on tight whips that you all done cracked.
We’re still bending to our elders’ designs
Our heads folded and courage in confines,
Our peers push and sway like the sunflower
When we have been made to crouch and cower.
We are without conviction from their stem
For our fathers made us as theirs made them.
See us grown, ‘respectful’, and African,
We’re Perch in a world of the Pelican.
We hide our whimpers and we ground our knee
To all folk — be they grown or be they wee
It creeps over beer stained carpets.
Last night I saw its hunchbacked shadow
rooting in the fridge for spreading cheese.
This morning it peers out of my front window,
looking to see if anything has changed -
nothing has.
I know it will be up all night
shaking an unlit Christmas tree,
it will moan. It imagines
rearranging my leftover life
for another year.
It creeps over beer stained carpets.
Last night I saw its hunchbacked shadow
rooting in the fridge for spreading cheese.
This morning it peers out of my front window,
looking to see if anything has changed -
nothing has.
I know it will be up all night
shaking an unlit Christmas tree,
it will moan. It imagines
rearranging my leftover life
for another year.
Guess my reputation could be sweeter, but hey-
At least I'm not a skunk!
Backbiting scrounger you say?
I like to call it being environmentally friendly;
No waste when I'm around, I can assure you!
I'm not the coolest looking dude in the bush;
hunchbacked, slitty-eyed and spotty
But those alpha females go crazy for my shaggy back.
And what I lack in charm, I make up for in speed and wit.
You should hear the pack cackle at my jokes!
And my chat-up line works a treat:
'Hey darling, I've got a bone to pick with you!'
Survival in sub-Saharan Africa is no laughing matter
But we all have to let our hair down sometimes!
15.07.19
Pick A Title, Vol 6 - Personification - Poetry Contest : sponsored by Edward Ibeh
Into the wild scatter your docile dreams,
Like animals from rusted cages freed,
For seamless years hunchbacked by low-slung beams,
Now through ceilings of boughs can boldly feed
On oracles hung in the new-glimpsed sky,
Telling of the courage of late-fledged wings,
Paroled from pauses and a fearful sigh,
Bound for air so sapphire, the heart’s eye blinks.
Unbend those yearnings, lest they die craven,
For too long have they been told, it’s too late;
Let them be by this world unforgiven,
Or with waiting destiny at last mate.
Retake the time when life’s freshness thundered,
Before youth was by dreamless toil plundered.
For each singular occurrence fleeting before me,
All senses come alive to experience life’s motion
Filled with a thirst of discoveries—a hunchbacked
Rock gleaming, salty nectar pouring on the tongue,
An insatiable need to quill under moonshine..
Then to allow the unexpected to happen
Without examining its reason,
As though a vigor of the unknown creates
Some divine exploration, my belly on fire, down
To earth or above heaven’s ridges..and I would slither
Away from what is mundane…the hardness,
The softness of nature’s terrain assaulting
My being, that I find seemingly inconsequential
Moments consequential: Somehow, this willingness
To ride with uncertainty leaves me awestruck—
Encountering the uniqueness of new ventures , inimitable.
------------
11/6/2018
John Lawless’ Creative Conformity Contest
Cumulonimbus lurking
peering over white-topped peaks
like childhood's hunchbacked monsters
waiting there to pounce
Shadows lick the creviced slopes
as white and green become gray
lights flash behind the drawn shades
of ominous clouds
Darkness pours into valleys
where rows of birches waver
as if nervously laughing
on the river shore
Relentlessly advancing
the storm growls and cracks and snaps
and the landscape disappears
behind wind and rain
God's angry swords slash the dark
each plunge deep with loud report
and all bow at its advance
some shatter and fall
Gone now like it never came
still grumbling as it departs
to disturb more peaceful scenes
beyond the valley
Halfway up the mountainside
the sun plays at the tree line
below a more peaceful gray
ushers in the night
March 31, 2019 / 2019 Poetry Marathon Final / Sponsor: Mark Toney
Published in a seasonal anthology Kind of a Hurricane Press
she's gasping for
the lifelong turmoil
under the spotlights
and cobwebs
into the cavity
into the forlorn mill
by marshy meadows
a passer-by mumbles
and kids play hopscotch
meanwhile in cold blood
she has been cynical
and started a hunger strike
when the kids kicked all the molehills
tender surrender
to tuneful fragments
of Monday mourn
the pilgrim carried
a burden with legacy
and everyone heard
the coalmine symphony
playing overnight
it was a helter-skelter
a midwinter mirage
scrawled with dagger
on a corrosive corset
she watched the flamingos
out on a field
when all of a sudden
hordes of hunchbacked
mannequins stood up
and she was like
what the heck?
The hunchbacked man once asked God:
Why didn't you turn your face to me Lord?
But God answered the man:
When I looked down at your clan,
I saw your back turn to me like a gourd.
l.
When hunchbacked skulls drip of shrapnel stains
Of raked life quilted with torn-out noises,
Watery clay defrosts past maimed pains
As silk skies reap a smudge of roses
Of raked life quilted with torn-out noises
How shells tremble to resurrect flesh,
As silk skies reap a smudge of roses
Birthing ligaments meeting frail breath
How shells tremble to resurrect flesh
Watery clay defrosts past maimed pains,
Birthing ligaments meeting frail breath
When hunchbacked skulls drip of murky stains
ll.
Such chiffon night in serenade’s hue;
Littered with stars, orchestrating songs
Awakened bones form in spiral blue,
Stretching eyes grow frocked bodies of dawns
Littered with stars, orchestrating songs
Another sequel of twilight’s flight,
Stretching eyes grow frocked bodies of dawns
A white mist shimmers fermented light
Another sequel of twilight’s flight
Awakened bones form in spiral blue,
A white mist shimmers fermented light
Such chiffon night, in serenade’s hue
---------------
Highest View Contest: Hosted by Casarah Nance
*double pantoum
9 syl count
copyright
To have lived not being loved at all -
hunchbacked like a question mark-
your soul continuously on parole
imagine beauty in the dark
Perhaps we passed each other in the speed
of different trains colliding with the time
in one - abandoned newborn girl in need
the other - useless vagabond and wine.
Was it your Soul who shook the Jacaranda tree
and made it burst and rain with purple fairies?
Or just a whispered cry within the depth of me -
too much horizon and no space for prairies...
Imagine beauty in the dark
When wings demolish walls of sorrow
I'll die again an injured lark
Reborn in Phoenix bird tomorrow.
www.scripca.com
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