Excuse my impertinence for asking
What pray tell gives you the right
~ Who will fix this ugly mess
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
the outside floated inside
white seeds seemed fluff
floating & frolicsome
until their rooted relic
of bitter dandelion wine
wished we hurried
to busy our bones
do something thoughtful.
yes..we’d pluck a stem
or two and gift
but this gift in ever after
would list and wither
so quickly amidst
the coiffer of quarrels
pushing of the dander
of matters we stuffed
our pillows with at night
nightmare of nettled
never-never disappears
snow white impurities
implicated our insides
empty and forlorn
forgetting our vows
our impertinence
of the importance
of marital bliss
which doesn’t begin
with tricks and treats
but with travails
that lead to immemorial
memories and progeny
a long lasting kiss
carry your wife
over
the threshold barrier
don’t let complacency enter
let a garden of delights
bloom within
learn from occasional weeds
pluck…let sun in…water
tender your every day kiss
invite in joy and praise
********************************
(I’ve been married 45 years)
Embrace your inner hatred and release
Love; fullness forever, to realize.
Embrace your unhappiness and release
Joy; fullness forever, to realize.
Embrace your hostility and release
Peace; fullness forever, to realize.
Embrace your impertinence and release
Patience; fullness in life, to realize.
Embrace your mercilessness and release
Mercy; fullness in life, to realize.
Embrace your debauchery and release
Goodness; fullness in life, to realize.
Embrace your unkindness, ever release
Kindness; fullness in life, to realize.
Embrace your agnosticism and release
Faith; fullness forever, to realize.
Embrace your intemperance and release
Calmness; fullness in life, to realize.
5th May 2021
Grandmother October Tree went bowling
Using the most yellow-orange moon she could find.
Sure it was easy, as it was right in front of her
A harvest moon, easy to pluck from the sky
How do you do that? The younger trees queried.
G.O.T. held her secrets close to her bark.
They were not ready, and might never be.
She was alarmed by their impertinence in asking.
Seriously, one of the younger ones said, “Can you tell us?”
I will tell you, she told him but only you, if you can follow in my footsteps.
He could not figure this one out, as trees do not have footsteps.
But he did not say this, which is too bad, for it was the question
That would have unlocked the key to her wisdom.
Morale: Ask the question you want to ask.
Dawn's soft silence kept under gauzy veil
Lifted by harmony of harp and flute
Colors dance along roses, bright and pale
Rainbows springing where fertile sky takes root
Elfin robins follow the fitful wind
Across freckled grass, where new faith consumes
Mossy velvet bark, and sunny bees send
Assured calendars of glory bound blooms
Coy autumn flirts with stately august shade
In kisses of crimson impertinence
Where barefoot rivers rush in eager aid
Hope overflows the banks of reticence
This sunrise drips with beauty's sweet syndrome
For it brings me the day you're coming home.
8/30/20
She misted into the bar
and stood blinking in the neon wash
Her gaze meandering
over tribal councils
of youthful conquest and conflicts.
Curled trestles of burnt blonde
hair framed her naivety.
Greenest eyes with hints of jealous dragon scales.
Red satin shirt worshipped her shape
and time stole her space
The murmurs of mirth
and sated thirst
could not daunt my gaze
From a tortured corner
a group of amazonian's
poured over a beer soaked table
a voice chipped the silence
"Susan.over here"
The slightest smile burned upon her face.
She shimmered by my table
to take her place within the gaggle of shadows
Eyes devoured her as she made her way
Unwanted advances spurned
Gigolos and gents rebuked
As the night unfurled my thoughts
could not erase that moment
played and savoured more
Night had stole the night
as orders were refused
Watched her group fit their armour
and re-attach high heels.
In the midst of drunken laughs
and squeals
And as her hand pushed the exit door
I stood and voice pardoned words
"Susan"
her hesitation turned to turn
and unfamiliar eyes met hers
"See you later"
My impertinence produced the slightest grin
and a moment shy of sin
I’m pinched, not sweet, and ferociously piqued!
A stomp of vines, my feet juiced red — and drunk.
Embossed my boss — his painted smile. He freaked.
Impertinence! I’d put up with his junk!
Worked extra hard to please this balding… (squeeze).
The constant drip...the bitter pills...my wrath.
No girl! No life! To serve this jerk...this sleaze!
I’ll pluck this fattened grape. His stink needs bath —
An hour long shower walloping...indeed!
I’m a great guy - no sense of humor mean.
This cream of the crop creep, he has no creed.
I’ll hire this donkey’s toot and shoot the scene.
But cheer this vat, I cure my awful state.
Conceive revenge, sour pittance for my hate.
8/13/2018
Mark Massey’s Sour Grapes Poetry Contest
8th place
*Embossed - hunted like an animal, to exhaustion
Woe to you Lust
Nemesis of men whose conscience you manipulate and ensnare
Reducing their pituitary gland to impotent dust
Singing their future and dignity with no iota of care
To plunge King David to his downfall
Steal from King Solomon wisdom
Hurtling mighty Samson into a spectacular free fall
And modern midgets you ensnare in Sodom
Bereft of the moral compass
Drifting in the wind like a vagabond
Who at the slightest glance at a skirt the fallen midget makes a pass
As from matrimonial home besotted midgets abscond
Squandering family jewel
Splurging to delight jezebels
With purloined family crown
Which in pitiful submission fools at the sound of Hell’s bells
Turn into automatons
You manipulate pulling strings left
Then right as the fallen midgets give up bliss batons
To sink into your theft cleft
Where midgets rot wondering how they came
To Charybdis and Scylla
Filled with shame and blame to their disgraced name in a sordid game
Where they emerge thinner and taller
In sin standards
Where their cubits and fathoms pale into insignificance
As bliss bards
Wave them away to self incriminate at the tomb of impertinence.
As kings and queens spend idle nights
the growing corn keeps popping
old crows sit on the scarecrow’s limbs
to grunt and leave their droppings.
Long days slow turn to endless dark
as peons till the soil
knowing they, just like the crows,
barter sustenance for toil
yet do they dress for work each day
in the hand-me-downs of life
the scarecrow’s lonely, mournful, moan
at least they have a wife.
Fall’s fields low cut, the harvest won
the migrants presence fading
he suffers the impertinence
of kings and queens parading.
©3/22/2018
submitted to – Picture This – Poetry Contest
sponsor – Joseph May
Image 1
Common sense, larger than life
Encapsulated in minds that appreciate sanity’s value
To actualize and revitalize purposes more precious than strife
As people of goodwill enable diverse dreams to come true.
Common sense, invaluable ingredient
Couched in determined discourse
To set matters on the right gradient
And facilitate fruitful inter-personal intercourse.
Common sense, gravity glue
Fastening faces, aces and maces at variance
Endeavouring to validate value
Over impertinence, insolence and arrogance.
Common sense, pivot in human interaction
Immersed in templates teeming with opportunities
To promote quotes and votes for mutual benefaction
Despite chasms of infirm inanities and indignities.
Fields, shields and yields of love heal
Upheavals hearts harassed and heckled in circumstances
Maintained, retained and sustained on a hill
Disown and drown doubts in cocoons that ingratiate impertinence instances.
Fields, shields and yields of love lubricate
Gears and gaskets gleaned from garages of gregariousness
Feted and elevated to sainthood to subjugate
Spirits and writs to wean wads of wickedness.
Fields, shields and yields of love amplify
Overt and covert conduits carried over
From ashes and slashes of creativity to mollify
Hearts that vowed never again to dignify a patriarchal palaver.
Fields, shields and yields of love cure
Hearts on fire with ire to hire an empire
Driven and given to glorifying the lure
They claim names romance recidivists to fire, retire or inspire.
I fear happiness, I fear peace too
Lest I ignore strife and struggle,
The memories of past lived in gaiety
Won’t they burden the heart in woe?
I fear wealth, I fear power too
Lest I neglect the poor and the weak,
The memories of past lavish living
Won’t they trouble the mind in adversity?
I fear vanity, I fear impertinence too
Lest they corrupt my good conscience,
The memories of past treacherous living
Won’t they torment the soul in ignominy?
Yeah, I seek happiness but some sorrows too
Some pleasures of life but some pains too,
The memories of past normal living
Won’t they make one normal in troubles too?
Tell the monster
Tell the monster, you little coward
That it mustn’t murder
To show it eternally wretches and writhes
To show your inner maggots that crave malcontent
It mustn’t murder
To bring down all with its own misery
To give the world a taste of what they have inflicted
On such a poor, abandoned soul
Oh, deprived prey!
You were born for this man’s selfish strategy
Toward power and impertinence,
To desecrate the human body in the name of science
For one wretched worm’s pursuit of renown
Oh, murderer, you have done your damage long ago
The moment your pride turned to the innocent dead
To rob their shells in search of gold
Coward!
Abandoner!
Imbecile
Tell the monster the truth
That it murders to ravish your failures
To make your innards whimper and quiver
To sustain the guilt that has long eaten you
Since the creation of your surfaced flaw
Yes, in your arrogant aims, the murder of millions commence
Meaningless Numbers
The worst numbers are those with rough edges
Perversions of nature not smooth or level
With odd forms and shapes
Having them around insults circles
And the innocent curved numbered ones
Meaningless, are the digits not used
If there is more than one, figures get confused
Line them up with math and logic
Hold them against the wall with clues
Find some matches, loose and dry
Place a bomb, lit fuse, beside them
They will not move or tell the truth
They won’t go screaming into the night
They mimic all other numbers to make them numb
Not alive, not to imply they are dead
They are to be hated for that
And when the remainder remains the same
You can count on them for nothing
Their impertinence explains it all
Meaningless numbers are everywhere
Shameless, as even the old ones look the same
I don’t know their names and can’t explain absurdity
When shopping I have to take a number and wait
A cause and effect that escapes me and reason
THE DREAM OF THE QUAKER’S SON
A Quaker preacher had a son
Who loved the banker's child
Impertinence and religious talk
Made the banker wild
Tenacious Hayes still loved Elaine
Politely asked her hand
Her father said that he’d agree
If Hayes could buy some land.
Determined Hayes planned
To earn his stake
He traveled night and day
Until he found a growing town---
Seemed a likely place to stay.
He worked his mule team---
train to train
Delivered tons of goods
And every week he told Elaine
He'd love her all he could.
Once each month he mailed the pack
He sealed each precious letter.
When they arrived, she saved them all
Delighted times seemed better
And suddenly two years had passed
Clinked the last coin in the box
He whistled as he hitched his mules
Ignored the hours of mud and rocks.
Just at dawn he jumped the curb
Black wreathes were on her door
He knocked ---and found his fair Elaine
Was on this earth no more
Without a word, he headed home
His brother was in the field
But he knew there were no words to say--
This pain could never heal
In his mind he saw her face.
Grabbed a rifle from the shelf
He shot his pair of finest mules
And then he shot himself
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