Long Sobriquet Poems
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Continued from Part 2
Beyond the suburbs, farmers’ fields (where donkeys often brayed)
inhale gray gusts of barren dust where living seed once laid
and in the haze a scarecrow sways, impaled upon a spade.
Green trees gone dark in palace parks (where kids once paused to play),
watch lifeless things on phantom swings (like statues made of clay)
guard marbled tombs in graveyards groomed for grievers bent to pray.
And castle clocks, unwound, defrock with speechless spinning spokes,
unfurling blight of reigning Night by sweeping off her cloaks,
and flaunting dun oblivion, her Baroness evokes.
The sun-bleached bones of those who'd flown lie scattered down the lanes
while other souls who’d hid in holes left bones with yellow stains
of plaintive tears (shed insincere, for no one felt the pains).
The wraiths that scream in sleepless dreams have ceased to terrify
though terrors wrought by conscience fraught now stalk and lurk nearby
within the shrouds of curtained clouds, frail fabrics on the sky.
And fog no longer seeps beyond the edge of doom’s café,
for when she trails her mourning veils, she fills the cabaret
with sallow smears of misty tears in sheets of shallow gray.
The City’s still, like hollowed quill with ravished feathered vane,
baptized in floods of spattered blood, once flowing through a vein.
The fruits of life, destroyed in strife... ’twas truly all in vain.
No umbras hum with jagged tongues nor sing a silent psalm
nor lade pale lips with languid quips to pierce the deathly calm –
they've seen, you see, life’s brevity, beneath a neutron bomb.
EPILOGUE
Beyond the Silent City’s walls, the victors laugh and play
while celebrating PEACE ON EARTH, the devil’s sobriquet
for neutron radiation death in places far away.
End
Without Knowing Your Gender...,
(nonetheless ex post facto still flattered)
Bhutan names defy affiliating,
determining, identifying... gender,
and what a faux pas this dada admits,
when a blessed high school
student did league gully tender
benighted, gifted, ordained yours truly
with sobriquet "Guru"
alluded to in previous poem, render
ring this foolish hearty good fella (me)
falling prey to embarrassing situation,
(I did misrender
as would be expected
from this crash test dummy,
who dented his psychological fender),
vis virtual mind bender,
when an initial presumption
smarted Matthew Scott as offender,
asper online youth NO pretender
by him, aye mean the sender
communicated his admiration,
adoration, adulation for this big spender
of sincerity, viz singular poetic magi - (ha)
made presumption that
unknown messenger slender,
and female, and
upon enclosing appender
referencing person as "lovely princess"
did respondent clarify finding deface
of zee poet here -
logic chops went thru blender
as if slapped by a suspender
experiencing irrevocable shame
as though a contender
attempting to guide false supposition
playfully mistaking sexual
identity of male sender,
he (young kneeler)
bowed as winning scoring goaltender
down as mine professed
metrical feet, he who acquiesced
non Asian minor, friender
NOT seeking moneylender,
nor mistook my heart of gold),
mine apology I did obligingly surrender
and possibly chuckled to himself,
asper an uproarious hellbender
whereat my countenance turned
fifty plus shades of lavender.
Henry, you tried and tried and tried —
turkey legs and beer kegs of great import*
Did they get between you and the ladies,
many of those waiting...
You got your way,
but your seeds unharvested
after 1603.
How fair these children of a greedy king —
Edward, Mary and Elizabeth.
Edward VI, king at nine,
lives to be fifteen —
a child the whole time.
Lady Jane Grey, not one of Henry’s kids
would be royally screwed
after nine days,
Mary grabbed the crown, as was her due.
Queen Mary I, like her dad, caused a beheading,
Grey would wish she hadn’t stepped on her toes.
Sobriquet, quite sobering, of Bloody Mary,
vilified in Foxe’s Actes and Monuments.
Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, after her sister dies
in 1558. Video et taceo — she sees but says nothing.
Perhaps better to keep your trap shut in the family vault
or die trying to try and try and try to one’s detriment.
11/2/2020
*concern
The Trojan of our heroic struggle
The heroic struggle against chains
Which beckons with pains
That tends to make us insane
For we are already stained
As they offer us disdain
Nowhere but in the scorchy rain
From the cradle lipping with light . . . of wisdom
Grew to be part of the struggle against the kingdom
Clenching fisticuff against the host hoarding our freedom
For the student movement’s struggle against the fiefdom
Reigned like others that thinketh not of the days of doomdom
Whilst the 80’s have those that have seldom
Bothers not about their selfishly accrued freedom
And bear brunt and boredom:
The late Chris Abasi
The late Rotimi Ewebiyi(RE)
Lanre Arogundade,Emman Ezeazu
Olu Oguibe, Labaran Maku
Ogaga Ifowodo, Bamidele Aturu . . .
Who scrawl their sobriquet in the Ingrained
Annals of the Nigerian student struggle
Those whose names sends
Cold and shiver to the Military junta
Chima, a born Trojan
Had no laurels and medals to display
Except for broken ribs and
Bruised lips with a bloodied head
For a cause he believed in
Ubani, a masculine Amazon
It just occurred to me that your demise has left
A big lacuna in the revolutionary kingdom in Nigeria
You remain the unassuming link amidst
The ultra-leftist, the progressives
The right activists, the social critics
The liberals and other change seekers
All along, you raised the slogan of
System change and Regime change
Craving for a working class mass based
Political party to take over
So that we can move over
Whenever we see the sign of cross over
In order not to spill over
In our quest to possess our possession
You remain a Trojan in the gully
Having kept your head above murk
In the human right trenches
You have scribbled your name boldly in
Gold on the sand of history
The road claims another Trojan
Unable to lose us out of your life
We gain from the blood and pains
A living testament to earn us new hearts
And firm us on the more
Forever in the struggle till we wet out
The blood of our tormentors and oppressors.
Alayande Stephen Tolulope
September 27th 2005
4.45pm
Form:
Written: December 2, 2025, for contest by Anoucheka Gangabissoon
**********************
It begins as an antiphon—
ubiquitous call—ominous retort
betwixt depth of marrow and ethereal sky mist,
amid the gelid nimbus of solitude
and the vibrant, exuberant surge
of your presence.
You are the guide of my steep slope,
leading me away from lifeless despair.
to zenith’s luculent luster.
Your mellifluous sobriquet
festoons my threadbare silence,
a rhapsody against the noisome palaver
of the world’s officious slogans.
I wobble in despair,
but I wake up when you tell me to—
perseverance turns into symbiosis,
and my healing heart smudges
the sacred diction of touch
once again.
Love pulls akin chiaroscuro,
a janiform force:
one face of catharsis,
one of hubris,
Yet both sanctified
in amaranthine flame.
You exculpate my imbroglio,
untangle the fastidious knots
of my ossified fears.
Even in the dismal cloudscape,
your intrepid light
spasmodically festoons
My wilted petiole of hope.
I humiliate before this sanctity,
yet rise gamesome,
gregarious,
intrepid—
an ergate in your hive,
a viceroy in your kingdom.
The zeitgeist evanesces,
otiose burdens fall away,
and I disport in your eleemosynary grace.
Even hornswoggle and yarborough
cannot undo the synchronicity
that binds us.
Love pulls—
ubiquitous, unabated,
a hecatomb of solitude,
a panegyric of symbiosis,
a luculent valediction
to the moribund self.
And so I prowl again.
In your cimmerian,
I find sanctity.
In your treacle,
I taste eternity.
In your amaranthine pull,
I am beloved.
The first automobile I ever had,
I bought when I was a sixteen year old lad.
Since it was numerous times pre-owned,
Its gears and innards groaned and moaned!
It was a nineteen-thirty-seven Ford Deluxe,
And as I recall it cost two-hundred and fifty bucks.
It had sixty-five horses under the hood.
To keep apace of traffic, I pedaled as fast as I could!
The great Barney Oldfield I tried to emulate,
As roaring about town I did perambulate!
I made intimate acquaintance with many a cop,
And as a result had some serious chats with my Pop!
It was known by its sobriquet, the Blue Goose,
And although I put it through lots of abuse,
It got me and my dates to movies and proms,
But I suspect it was a bane to some anxious moms!
Since my youth I've owned finer automobiles,
But I've never been prouder of a set of wheels!
The Blue Goose got me everywhere I wanted to go,
And compared to prices today, sure cost a lot less dough!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
Back in seventeen eighty-one
The revolution hit hard times,
Britain had taken Charlestown
And at Camden had crushed the lines
Of General Horatio Gates,
Leaving nobody to resist,
Except the Swamp Fox Marion
Who alone was able to persist.
South Carolina had fallen,
And Cornwallis was marching north,
The patriots had to stop him,
But could not yet match up with his force.
So they called up Daniel Morgan,
A brawler who had earned his fame
With his actions at Saratoga,
As a soldier he knew the game.
He was sent to march out westwards,
To harass and gain new supplies,
Cornwallis worried about this,
Let Banastre Tarleton fly.
Tarleton was a cavalry fame,
His infamy now widely known,
He’d butchered his foes at Waxhams,
When upwards their hands had been thrown.
The patriots called him Butcher,,
‘Bloody Bann’ was his sobriquet,
Yet many feared the young colonel,
From his legion they would run away.
But General Morgan knew all this,
He was pragmatic in his approach,
Knew what his men could and couldn’t do,
Where they thrived, where they were laid low.
Knowing Tarleton was close by,
He found a spot called ‘Hannah’s Cowpens,’
Nearby the flooded Broad River,
Here all tradition he’d upend.
Knowing militia ended to flee,
And not face a hand-to-hand fight,
He put their backs to the river,
They couldn’t run to escape their plight.
Now they would fight, or they would die,
But he felt this wasn’t enough,
So he split his force into three lines,
Plotting an elaborate bluff.
If the first he put sharp-shooters,
Told them to shoot ‘Epaulet Men,’
Then set up local militias
To form a line just behind them.
And the back were Continentals,
Tried soldiers of many a year,
These he knew didn’t break and run,
They were the few the British feared.
To top it off he arranged them
All on the slopes of a small hill,
Then waited there for Tarleton
Who expected an easy kill.
Tarleton had seen it all before,
At Charlestown and Camden field,
These rebels could talk a good game,
But in a fight they’d run of they’d yield.
So when he spotted Morgan’s force
He did not bother to survey,
Bold and young, he rushed in headlong
Expecting the militia to break...
CONCLUDES IN PART II.
What do I call that young coquette?
My shadow self; my silhouette.
Those clothes, that hair, a cigarette.
The joie de vivre; the vain regret.
What sort of pithy epithet
will she recall, lest I forget?
Perhaps, instead a sobriquet
for who I was back in the day.
But what would she wish to portray?
Somewhat naive, a bit risqué?
A wounded child or power play?
“All that and more!” is what she’d say.
That girl who played a victim game
(though she would make the counter-claim).
A femme fatale; a wild flame.
A spirit not a soul could tame.
Both full of pride and full of shame,
all contradiction just the same.
It all feels now as but a dream,
that martyr of her own regime.
A fog of war; a distant scream.
An echo of one’s disesteem.
A soldier who would self-redeem
and break her shackles at the seam.
Now when she comes to mind I smile,
recalling each and every mile
we marched and fought in rank and file.
We failed, we wailed, we shed the guile
to wake and heal and reconcile
a misspent youth and life worthwhile.
*****************************
Writer's cramp here I come...
(to the rescue and save the day
and hoop fully a damsel in distress!)
Impending thunderstorm
"FAKE" MAGA (nah) if fuss sent)
thwarted, torpedoed - dag nabbit, and trumped
assigned, mandated, and self selected
online poetic writing session.
Yours truly forced to re-learn (ASAP)
at greased lightning speed
archaic pre-internet state of stone age
Neanderthal fashion scribbling.
Throwback versus instant
electronic, excel (lent)
and/or accessible wireless
modern twenty first century
glorious, illustrious, and marvelous
cyber space sand trap convenience.
Primitive pinched chicken scratch
unwittingly, albeit long since
atrophied, compromised, skully mouldered,
and penultimately quashed (innocuously)
manually cumbersome art
grinding fingers to the bone
sorely missed (ha)
archaic crimping methodology.
Etchings on papyrus long since
went the way of
rubber baby buggy bumpers
(sincerely Amish immensely)
reducing das dada do little
(spur of the moment sobriquet)
to revel opportunity
pecking out chicken scratch,
I will own sole misfortune
to attempt deciphering,
when long reign
of Zeus subsides.
One doth not realize
technological advantage
until adversity sidetracks
innovation to brainstorm
without compromising legibility.
Hmm...I wonder
if there might be an app for that
long lost painstaking
effort to get the lead
(er graphite) out???
Buck privates are designated the lowliest of the ranks,
And for all they do, they receive very little thanks.
The corporal says do this and the sergeant says do that,
And if he doesn't comply, he's in for a disagreeable chat!
The sobriquet "private" is a misnomer if ever there was one,
Because privates have absolutely no privacy and very little fun!
From the call of reveille to the plaintive notes of "Taps",
He's kept on a frantic pace until ready to collapse!
The sergeant rides in a jeep, the corporal in a truck,
But the foot slogging private is just out of luck.
With his weapon and meager belongings strapped on his back,
He walks and it's all he can do to keep from blowing his stack!
The recruiting sergeant's syrupy spiel failed to include,
That corporals and sergeants tend to be somewhat rude!
And to everything that moves he must render a salute!
Before enlisting, he muses, "I should've been more astute!"
He keeps plugging along and playing their inane game,
Satisfied that if anything goes wrong he can't be to blame.
He'll just continue to take orders from the powers that be,
Eagerly awaiting his discharge from the infernal infantry!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)