Long Kernels Poems
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Dare Listen
by Odin Roark
Time chooses to whisper,
Having endured shouting decades,
A species’ feigned listening,
Maelstrom's obsessive noise-making.
Still persistent
Is but a parade,
A just married tin can raucous
Tied to mankind's bumper.
How tenuous one’s duration.
Yesterday…
Sitting inside time's tree house,
This place of early discoveries,
Where do and don't became but chaff-covered kernels
A slow growing wisdom first heard,
Through Daddy’s cheap wine curiosity
Slowly washing away innocence,
Introducing adult fantasies
Through the malaise of unknown tomorrows.
Synchronously, tiny sparrows
Nesting in branches above
Chirped their own hunger pangs,
Awaiting mother and worm.
Below, a squirrel foraging acorns paused,
Looked up and listened to the now of Nature’s family,
Savored sounds of his own way and means.
Today…
Time awaits the next moment.
As far as the eye can see,
Old roof tops recede,
Conifers hold firm their rightful place
Hosting fowl and predator alike,
Remaining ready to engage the next of reality’s misdeeds,
Endless out-of-control concussion of erosive man,
While Nature digs in for another encounter.
In duration’s not too distant future,
Man’s earth destroying roar
Will hopefully stumble and be swallowed
By the unsullied trees,
Rocks,
And life-consciousness,
Allowing the essence of Nature's inexhaustive patience
To be heard.
Dare listen…
Some will hear the desperate existence whisper
The harmonious nocturnes of everything that is,
Embracing the elusive nothingness of peace,
Even as attachment and resistance
Remains forever tone deaf.
Author Notes
Nature’s often abstract way of communicating may someday be all that’s left. (Image by M. Meir)
© Odin Roark. All rights reserved, 9 hours ago
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Wizard
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My soul grasps how to reap life's unique goal.
Style ushered as an epic quest, a stroll
I'm fraught with findings to an ad-hoc probe
Throughout the time frame of our respite roll.
I was spurned by a hodgepodge of light strobe
By then, I knew what direction to throb
A diaphanous shed haunts our capture
In bearing, there is a celestial globe.
It's a matchless range gain from the ledger
Spite the spirit's sharpness, body's rapture
Chiefly have bestowing way, their insight
Dreamer's best stance is his decoy nature
Upon abyss veiled in sheer azure bright
Kernels had been seared by a dreadful blight
The stubborn mindset that stifles their voice
Tethered a faint guide in the shrouded night
Before drowning, our uttermost darkness
Beset by datum, view, knack, and strictness
Our heart's need, masked by a snarling ego
Bold eye buried by a slight abhorrence.
Written: January 19, 2022
Earth Life Purpose poetry contest
Unseeking Seeker
“The purpose of poetry,”
wrote the man with a brazen manner,
“reveals truth with steady hand
to heighten our sense of life.”
His flowered mode of expression,
making a poignant impression,
calls for expanded understanding,
to heighten a sense of life.
His seeds of change fell on dry clay,
were trampled by shiny shoes,
swept by establishment's constant breeze
into the river of yesterday.
I wondered how one who knew despair,
whose closest friends were sorrow and strife,
who wore a brightly painted mask,
could heighten my sense of life?
And yet, he spoke convincingly—
demanding fresh enlightenment,
impelling me, compelling me,
to heighten my sense of life.
And then, a doubt crept through my door.
It challenged with a boldness,
beseeching, begging, pleading for
a pledge to hold the status quo.
But I will heed the poet’s call,
will plant his field of grain,
with no concern for pain or price,
then thrash his kernels on my floor,
and heighten my sense of life.
Allow the mind
Afford its need to conjure
Profound:
If exaltation and majesty
Require a bit of provocation and amnesty today
Humor:
As remedy and coagulation
From the bleeding of
Pain, stress and anger
Affection:
To reach out from solitary
Disconnectedness and remind
Ourselves that human beings exist
For purposes greater than commerce,
Ridicule and acceptance (approval?)
Bizarre:
Lifting the veneer of earth-toned normality
To discover colors and shapes
Radiant with black dissonance
Thorny embrace
Begging for elbow room among the
Forbidden and unforgiven
Slow dancing to rapacious cadences
That salute unspoken, unthinkable
Luscious folly
Melancholy:
For no reason
Sans the blame of others
Spite of self
Grasping sadness leased
By absentee owners
Themselves insipid to the
Context of sorrow they predispose
And so empathy
Created by that
Ancient historian with his grandiose
Visions of humanity's
Zero sum pain
Reflection:
In, out
Distinctive and plagiarized
To give depth where blank existence
Stands naked, cold
And in need of decency
Reacting to the homogenous assumptions
That fill our tomes of daily dread
Momentary answers to eternal questions
Before the rain and incessant gray tender
Cover the need to be alive
Brilliance:
Where our grasp of knowledge
Tangled inquiry
Defines
Yields bouquets fresh enough
To place in the corner
For whomever looks our way
Kernels of cerebral popcorn
Gushing with flavor
Vengeance:
Arbitrary
Yet sometimes predestined
Stimuli and caricatures resembling
Organic matter
Causality reckoning from their
Intentional, dark motives
Resulting in your personal disgrace
And corresponding focus
Of their demise
Satisfaction:
At the end of journey
Short and sweet
Long and dreary
Each the test of mettle
From quandaries and dilemmas
Begging to be solved
Or merely maintained
Where we find ourselves
At the summit
Top of the heap
With broken smile
Tacit laughter
And the sigh of a lifetime.
(4/19/05)
Gran stands over me whilst I eat my corn
gee, I’ve hated corn since I was born,
but my Grandma says it's good for me
so she’s cooked a huge pile for my tea!
Gold kernels get stuck between my teeth
all my friends laugh at me especially Keith.
He’s lucky he doesn’t have to eat the stuff,
I’m sick of eating corn I’ve truly had enough!
I wish that I could be like all the other boys
I have to tow the line, mustn’t make a noise,
I’ve lived with Grandma since I lost my Ma and Pa
So in all honesty my Grandma’s a real super star!
Image 3 chosen
Realism Art Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Eve Roper
10/4/19
War World II was raging over this
southern Italian town* spared by a miracle...
a deluge that suddenly occurred:
a night of blasting sounds, of rising flames
as American planes bombarded its buildings;
the Nazis fled to occupied Naples.
In the North, the Fascits were executed,
as the Dictator Mussolini himself was.
The farms could not be furrowed deep and neat,
fear hung over the farmers' shoulders;
and wheat couldn't grow abundantly to make bread,
and brazen women to a distant granary they went,
risking their lives to grind the wheat kernels;
they were no young men in town, or the older ones
who had gone to war for a concept so deceptive.
Many youngsters and soldiers were kidnapped by the Nazis,
to be taken to Germany as prisoners of war...who would have
challenged the Third Reich, or disobeyed?
Old women with handkerchiefs on their heads, weeping loudly
and mourning the tranquil town it once was...so lovely and happy,
and their cry was too bitter and inconsolable to be hushed;
now, even bread was taken away from them,
damning the cruel Duce, who had betrayed them for vanity...
why did he bring prosperity to Africa, not to Italy?
Why was his ego so manipulated by Hitler's cleverness...
that he could have conquered peoples and lands?
Ruins and dead kindred...a scenery of dread and abomination,
and the lively memory of begonias on their sunny balconies
brought a sweet nostalgia in an hour of horror and death;
and gathered among the crumbled walls, their rosaries
recited with graceful whispers, gave them
the strength and the courage to desperately grieve:
"Peace, o beloved peace, have you overlooked
the kindness of such humble and honorable spirits?
Darkness brought the silence they had sought under the glittering skies,
to hide the ugliness of the war in their gloomy shadows,
never to reveal the devastation of their town;
and with the new sun rising, hope would have been
renewed in the sunrise's lasting glow.
They would have seen those wheat golden kernels
bend under their heavy weight and bow....
and heard themselves saying," Mercy, o mercy
of our righteous God, let prosperity abound...
as the misty rain slowly comes down!"
Southern Italian Town: Baiano
Copyright 2009 by Andrew Crisci
A former place this, a patch where roots rattle,
where stubble has a ferrous frizzle.
A long-truncated railroad stop
humming still with a faded reality.
As dry voices on the wind, they return
- the homesteaders and journeymen,
the harnessed horses.
Pants' cuffs carry kernels
long planted elsewhere.
Caps, coats, and carts
Sweat, rustle and creak,
an invisible locomotion of leaving and arrival.
employed upon an iron labor.
The tall dry weeds are talkative.
Brown boots seem to shuffle
as they wait here or idle.
A hollow clock clacks,
its innards now
are a nest for ticking birds.
Dandelions anticipate twirling flight
under a corn fed sun.
A mid-day heat thrums fragmented rails.
The station seems almost ready
to receive
as if its bygone world
had not forever disembarked.
Bountiful goodness of squash, pumpkins and gourds decorate hay bales
Elaborate labyrinth of vines dried by August suns lean against twilight fences
Autumn colors of browns reds and oranges and a flash of yellow light the way
Uniquely different each time yet recognizable from one fall to the next
Trickling leaves surround lazy sleeping cat shadows, illuminating joy.
Intricate webs made by Indian Summer spiders sparkle in corners of our porches
Football season unveils friendly animosity amid the joyous coolness of autumn
Ultimate prettiness resides in this well thought out palette of our master artist
Luxurious pieces of kindling lead to a red hot bonfire adding ambiance to the night
Flush with butterscotch colored maize peppered with red and black kernels,
Autumn magic has no comps. She is her own category, unchallenged
Lovely in her unparalleled radiance, honored with the year’s prettiest skies
Languishing in comfortable repose, not understanding her magnificent innocence.
Written 9-10-2018 Beautiful Fall Poetry Contest
Sponsor: John Hamilton
We drove along the secondary streets of Iowa,
Towards my grandparents’ large farm.
How excited we felt for this seemed like a yearly pilgrimage
To visit my old folks back home.
I always loved summertime with my grandparents.
Though I knew they worked hard, poor fellers.
I noticed grandpa and his group of hired men
Moving here and there like ants among the stalks
Of the corn that grew in our large fields.
Trimmers in hand, all would prune the suckers
And saw how tall they would grow, larger than me.
How grand it was to explore the countryside,
Making friends with Daisy, who lived nearby.
There we discovered a clump of oak trees
And a clean small lake that irrigated our land.
Swimming was a must and so was kissing.
I was madly in love with my friend as I dreaded
The day when I would have to leave her to go back home.
Meanwhile the cob was soon covered with smooth kernels.
And harvesting began which meant it was the end of summer.
But before I was to return home, grandma promised a treat:
She brought in some corn on the cob and inserted in each
A skewer, then grilled the cobs. Out they came piping hot.
Grandma spread generous butter on one and added salt.
What can I say? It was divine. And I wanted more….
Thus, we arrived after a long time, so full of glee and anticipation.
Daisy jumped first out of the car and rushed inside.
No one was going to make her miss her favourite dish,
A grilled corn on the cob. No doubt I followed suit.
Written: May 06, 2025 for contest by Edward Ibeh
*************************
Like kernels, the day's enigmas start to unfold,
The green folk are still waiting, eager to corrode.
The creaks of a shaky bridge echo pain and despair,
Connecting the shining heights where flows the air.
A vibrant veil of violin weaves, with fiery flares bright,
As the bus rolls by, mourners gaze at fading light.
It appears that diligence fails to become a hero
Signs may lead us to Rome, yet destiny is Nero.
Let's begin our journey to reclaim Rome,
To restore sovereignty of our cherished homes.
Everyone rallies behind me in this quest.
Yet home builders destroyed bluebird's nest.
Gather your steeds and your weapons,
Steer clear of the roots of Agropyron repens.
We engage with the tasks at hand,
Weaponless, knock on doors, striking with firm stand.
A prosperous goal feels like a distant dream.
Greed drives man, hope and desire fuel the scheme,
Until he clings to the fragile bridge suspended high,
Stretched over an abyss where destruction lies nigh.
Rome wasn’t built by mere artistry or lore,
Nor by tales sung to Babylon’s god, Marduk of yore.
Chaldean Dynasty measured the world in degrees,
While at Napoleon’s Circle, first trapeze swayed with ease.
The icy chains bind the Scythian main,
Once inhabited by barbarians on the eastern plain.
Watch as homes with cracked walls slowly decay,
In trendy townships, where clay fills the hallways.
Silent nights scream, a pale face turned to the wall,
Men forget the pain, and that becomes their downfall.
We labor with crimson lips that pulse with each kiss,
Longing for cold, clasping arms that we sorely miss.
Mourners depart, unraveling the chain,
Sadly, the dead linger in our souls to die in vain.
For memory flickers like a flame, it rises and goes,
Sinking in human light, grief swells in woes.
Cross the Rubicon with us, liberate those in need.
Are you with us in this noble cause, fellow friends indeed?
Unless we’re overwhelmed by terror, there’s no turning back.
Join us as we march to safeguard the areas and their tracks.