Long Hackles Poems

Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch

I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.

A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral...

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Mist, Mist..
Why not whisper, why not speak?
When upon thy shrouded depths,
Thou knowest truly, what we seek

Darkness, Darkness
Why be quiet, why not be shrill?
When your hoot and squeal and growls,
Shivers our spine, with unbidden thrill

Cat, Cat
Why...

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We decide to hunt in the night as our prey leaves a trail 
With my pride on the line I must bring it down without fail 
My pack leader’s orders are absolute only for this...

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He heard the car and came running,
Jumped and whirled in the air,
Barking his happiness! 
Dad lifted her down in her yellow-flowered 
Camisole  and high heeled shoes.
The dog dropped,
His hind quarters hunched down,
Body sprung parallel...

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I remember back a year or two when waiting for the barber’s chair,
where Bill Crosbie snipped around the heads, relieving excess hair,
and Bill’s as typical a barber that you’re ever deemed to meet.
He liked to...

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TERROR, TERROR
Mist, Mist..
Why not whisper, why not speak?
When upon thy shrouded depths,
Thou knowest truly, what we seek

Darkness, Darkness
Why be quiet, why not be shrill?
When your hoot and squeal and growls,
Shivers our spine, with unbidden thrill

Cat,...

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My mind is full of stolen dreams
And nothing is quite what it seems
When everything bursts at the seams
And we become separate teams
But life is here in your hands
Billions of lives like grains of sand
It's so...

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We’d been fishing in the Shady for some crays up in the hills,
where you fight the blackberry and elude the snake with skills,
were leeches have the power of near sucking all your blood,
and you cannot...

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I can’t walk out on this feeling, 
Cigarette burns phantom-project onto
The backs of my hands like leprosy, 
Hackles rise on the nape of my neck, 
Ghostly pliers wrench my fingernails out, 
Dripping protoplasm, blood and...

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He was to be for my daddy, they'd said
as they scooped him up from the pick up bed
He was speckled & flop eared & soft as a sigh
My Daddy knew he had lost by the...

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in the chilling crisp night
	with out a stirring trace of breeze
tingling fear of unseen eyes
	as my hackles begin to rise

Ebony skies with bright jewels scattered
	pinpricks of rain bowls that quickly glitter
pale moon like watching eye
	baleful...

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It Slithered
By Linda Hays-Gibbs

Darkness caressed it. I heard it before 
I saw a piece of it, a bit?
Black & shinny
But so, so cold
It froze the air 
my thoughts said it Exquisitely tiny but
It was unafraid,...

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No more cheese!

By Stanley Russell Harris
Poetry Soup Honorable Mentioned.
(The mad author)

Saw my doctor the other day.
Was a routine appointment I say.
Well was for me as I’m unwell.
Better than saying as sick as hell.

Another tablet I...

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A part-time poet's destined to be plagued by pressure
  The press of time, the pulse of work, vanished years
Barely a moment to reflect, swirling phrases unmeasured
  Envisioning the thrill -- pondering ideas at...

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The moon hovers there, shining aloft,
its form the infamous crescent,
its glow so luminous as to reveal the rest of the orb,
oft-hidden when its time in the sky is not nigh.

Underneath, a fog coats the cold...

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Blackie mounts my broomstick every Halloween
With her silky coat and eyes of emerald green
We’re silhouetted in the moonbeam's gleam
Kitty meows so loudly if ever we are seen
Children point at us and let out a scream

Look...

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The howls of the wolfs strike the beast beneath the bed it roars 
For it’s the full moon to night Scary of course
The little kid crawls out the bed to go to the toilet that...

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The incongruity sparkles, dirty diamonds in a drain,
With hackles rising, lips drawn back, in lemon peeling pain;
A psychodrama stage of sleight springboards the stupid head,
“I know,” she thinks, “I’m always right, I know that’s what...

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SPIDER SILLY CRAWLINGS UP AND DOWN A WEBBED WALL 
THERE ARE GOBBLINS AND MONSTERS &  MEOWLINGS TOO 
JUMPING JACKS THAT POP AND LITTLE SLY FOXES THAT RUN 
FOR GOODNESS SAKE BE SAFE, SAYS THE...

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Kisses from insolvent grave,
Stole the dying breath away
So dizzyingly fast,
It escaped as fleeting vapour;
The hackles bristled, raised,
Clouds of ink on sunny days,
As scratching quills engraved 
Upon white paper

Who among the sprawl could feel
If it was...

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He crossed my path, while walking through the woods. 
He was a little grey wolf.
Though merely a cub, he was fearless.
He came to me, hackles raised, teeth bared.
I held my hand to him, for I...

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Soft-shelled things by their sources laid
On spots assuring them no raid:
In my poultry picked up by maid,
With care handled or her upbraid
“Boiled or Omelets but with bread,
For my breakfast do as I’ve said!”

I’d quip: Mirror...

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CATERWAUL

A sound unpleasant to the EAR
A screeching LUTE that’s loud and CLEAR
A sound that makes your hackles CRAWL
An EAR-drum pierced by sound wave AWL
A WART, an ULCER; leaves you RAW
No TRUCE, a WAR, against the...

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A thunder, rolling, pitches and growls.
The Sheppard, leading, his sheep and fowls.
A precarious steep, crosses and twists;
Escape and evasion, a hunter's grip.

Closer and closer, clouds do come.
The rain and sleet, the coming undone.
Awakening and edgy,...

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Face to face , eye to green eye , introduction to an unknown
      I pray this concept, unjustified :  never to be cloned
      ...

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