Long Chalky Poems

"The Payload" 

The payload 
came crashing down
like rain expelled
from the fat belly 
of a ruinous pregnant cloud 
bilious with buxom promise

it came crashing down 
like school fish released 
from the tight confines
of a course rope...

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Yet at this very moment the cathedral was crumbling
down upon the cries of foresaken refugees, 
the monastery's walls wobbling from war's wreckage, 
and as the black bursts billowed into sun drenched brutality
with the bodies of...

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(*The Gift)
This here is a side trip, nothing more,
To our country home far and away.
Grandparents own one by the seashore,
This a gift, gramps in-law and mentor,
They raised teen/gramps, not a runaway.

Gramps helped older sis and...

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Across the land this morn, a roll of light 
Gave birth to shadows, cast from chalky hills
The larks ascended, sang away the night
Vibrated sky to waking with their trills
‘Tis Summer; round the circle swirls the...

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I bent over to touch my toes
               and the ground tore open like a backbone.

I tried to feed myself the sky;
to...

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COOKING WITH JIM                      

actually, with him in spirit, in the kitchen 
of his quaint...

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A curse. It's what she was ascertained to be.
A plague which has been put on the burden of the residents of the world.
People discarded her as mere trash for they considered her as an ill-omen.
Misfortune...

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My green evenings and 
honey suckle sunset were
warmer than my kid fists
that wrapped like velcro
around those tall patches
of tiny yard onions
and my chalk-stained jean skort
packed with hand-picked acorns
that spilled from my pockets like
apple juice as...

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Lines, Launch Angles and Curve Balls

The boys of summer 
Set up for a season of lines, launch angles and curve balls
With straight chalky lines leading to a field of dreams
Where line-ups keep the line moving...

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You don’t know how parted we are
Uncharted we are
The piano keys sooth the turbulent sea and music melts the burning icebergs
Pride sinking a ship…giving into nature
Hands severed and torn, pressing lightly on the stained ivory
The...

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I guess this is it, I gave it my best shot
But this is now the only option I got
I know you'll be angry, maybe even be sad
But there was no other choice I had
I've planned...

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It's a quaint little street, bustling with tourists
Shops selling ice creams and coffees, sandals, and seashells...
People rushing, a bike or two in the street, a car searching for a place to park
A baby cries, and...

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Leave a man to him and his words
and telescopic terrains will open,
as splendid as the midwinter constellations
sprayed in a barbarous sublimity across the sky,
with the serene orb of Jupiter hanging unflickering over the land.
They tell...

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The morning sun stretches across the sky, 
charging a palette of blues, greens and chalky coastal whites.  
The smell of salt is carried by the early morning humid wind, 
and seagulls search for their...

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Billowing taupe clouds, hunker down and hem in the Peninsula,
The morning rips open
A glimpse of sun shone; a lemon curd slivers between slits of of silver illumination
The first hint of light glances up frothing crests...

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Inside familiar folds of my hanging apron
I encounter a blinkless miniature figurine
Glossy, posable, plastic as a Lego creation
Loyal component of kitchen enforces routine 

Breakfast allures with buttery muffins toasted
Lunch- a- lot predicts sandwich towers teetering
Dinner...

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With a cosmopolitan tabloid draped upon her lap,
A girls sits at her vanity wearing an underdress unstrapped.

The woman on the page portrays perfection with a pleasing smile,
Upon her curvy contoured shape she draped in an...

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Swans row the sky
just feet above the copper water.
Gulls twist their necks to watch 
a lone sailor on the prow
of a sludge-decked dredger.

On the slate thatched gambrels
of a lesser known roofs
spotters search for night bombers,
the...

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I see an old house alone on the plains,
abandoned a century or more,
wood siding faded to a chalky gray,
with rotting planks nailed right across the door.

Boards on all the windows, except for one,
and not a...

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O Wallace, I heard, and could not believe
Like the school days when things you conceived
Made us aghast or grieved
And anxious for the next thing up your sleeve.
You were our magician
Bringing humor out of no where
The...

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I dained that I'd distress the Dutch,
Refrain the French with such - and - such.
'Gainst Germans I'd my victory forge,
Churchillian chants in Cheddar Gorge.

Send Poles packing from our building site,
Put the Belgians - bang -...

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Cliffs of Dover
© Ben Burton

Leah, lovely Leah, looking good and well tonight
As you walk the Cliffs of Dover with a faint, but regal, smile
And paint your wistful dreams on the facing's chalky white
The Cliffs of...

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I wear blinders of my own ignorant
Creation I stumble aimlessly albeit
Backwards into a pile heaped with 
The stench of her own devilish lust 
To feast upon my immortal weaknesses 
I am but a moth still...

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Chocolate bars full of nougat and peanuts,
Sour gummies that get stuck in teeth, 
Chalky fruit-flavored tablets,
Things coated in colorful candy shells,
With metallic wrappers I constantly hear crinkle, 
Covering an entire square foot of countertop. 
The...

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Bring all of humanity to it's knees 
begging on your whim, your mercy;
Then judge it.
Your cold, quivering, cracking lips
quipping tips to the 
wicked; to the rich.
Whilst knock-kneed choking
broken backed masses 
lay on the floor:
These are...

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