Mantles Poems

Poetic Practice

The poet is a physician of sorts
tending care to the physical 
of his craft -- His patients, the
hearts and souls of humanity -- 
Latching belts on sleds of words
a-summit he descends, precariously
no safe tracks when in lyric free-fall

Altitudes and scathing depths
are the wails and screeches of
his siren journey down -- when and
where, a dicey pit travel...critics
offer no parachutes...and his lovers
often unavailable, amending their
own wrong steps.  Can a writer really make
it safely to the other side, through the creative
pressures of ever revolving mantles and imperative 
crushing cores!?

try to rest

Those sparse promises are put to bed
Yet they ripen like a lie
The County Kingdom
is made from last years chancers
Darkened coaches reach their destination
Our smokey trails
are honed like marbled mantles
Predictable success are nothing
compared to the chirping of the birds
Call Summer a lie
Those bright mornings
folds its wings and flies
I cannot sleep

How to Peach a Troll

Languishing in liminal limbo
Feathers fray before striking harmony 

Tidal waves in my brain have ebbed and 
Flowed, expanded and contracted guiding 
Wings of my astral soul across desolation;
Precursors       upon mantles with no equal 

Sentinels of sanguine, like the Kings Guard
Watching over my journey, Angels cradling 
My thoughts and deeds                  push

Sometimes pull

The look on her face

Liquid

                    The Cardinals

Daybreak song!

Celebrate All Week Long

Celebrate all week long, let your spirit soar,
His goodness and mercy, forever outpour.
All life long, His faithfulness holds true,
With grace and mercy, as He walks beside you.

The waters are stirring, with healing embrace,
Miracles flowing, transforming lives and pace.
Rolling mountains bear witness to His majesty so grand,
As His out stretched arms create treasures untold.

All things are possible, with Him by your side,
He will never fail, nor abandon you from His sight.
Signs and wonders will follow you, His gifts unfold,
As heavens display His glory untold.

As governmental mantles fall, surrender your sight,
For His wisdom is behind you, in every arrow's flight.
With focused attention, aim true and steadfast,
He will guide your shoot, ensuring you get the bullseye.

But, dear soul, in this new season to prevail,
Learn to shoot moving targets below their mark,
As the Lord directs, let your arrows gather speed
In celebration, see His mercy enduring indeed.

Halcyon

Halcyon – 10-6-23
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Halcyon

Across the still and placid lake
Halcyon drifts
 In misty cloaks of tranquility
   Stitched with twilight patches of contentment,
Bits of unbound moonlight
Bow 
      In courtly minuets
           On adagio waves
Then lightly skim the face of the shore
 With twilight fragments
   Of fading mauve
As velvet vespers of soft chimes
Calm the ghostly wraiths of torrid afternoons
           With dusky balms,
To slowly stumble into mantles of lavender’s eiderdown 
  Wrapped in shawls of gently rocking barcaroles
As doves and nightingales
 	Sing remnants of dawn and dusk
                 Into lyric seams of rounded swells 
Capturing serenity in the cloth of fading light
 Shedding calm shadows on untroubled waters.

A Glimpse of Majesty

A sunset like this was never foretold.
Glistening gold midst deep scarlet red.
August skies shimmer in colors bold,
as though fire and ice together spread
in mantles of mystics, eons old.

Hues mingled in ways unknown to man--
coaxing clouds from fire to lavender.
Drawing upon quaint mysteries' plan.
Perfuming the skies with scented myrrh,
recipe penned days when time began.

Majesty seen when scrolling the skies.
Each cloud a blush of pink, then deep wine.
When deepest purple, tears filled my eyes.
Beauty happened, a flash of divine,
glimpse of forever's majestic guise.

October 12, 2022
For Milton Hankins' "Three Stanza Poem, Quintain (Sicilian)" contest

Perfumed Garden

Perfumed Garden

Twilight calls in soft floral amber lights,
Delicate in the scent of memory,
To fragile bowers of fragrant delights -
Saffron smiles wrapped in scented mystery.

Sinuous silk plumerias of myrrh
‘Twine satin fingertips ‘neath musky mantles 
When gossamer hues of incense demur
Bluebellvines bloom in soft chimes with candles.

Tender scents of tuberose, sweet jasmine,
Float from this shy perfumed garden glen
Petals spread wide as lotus buds begin
To welcome gentle moonbeams touch again.

Trembling seeds arouse spice scents on bloom's skin
As in pure union harmony ascends.

7-14-22
Contest: It's All About the Three Q’s
Sponsor: Constance La France
Theme: Nature

Rhymes check with www.rhymezone
Syllables checked with www.howmanysyllables
Quatorzain - 14 Lines, 10 Syllables per line

Bluebellvine is a flower in India.

Water Over the Bridge

The distant laughter of a child 
drifted slow from out of sight,
somewhere warm and undefiled,
over the festival lights of the night
gently flaring out bright and unrivaled,
they whisper of creatures that wistfully, might, 
gather unraveled in village-bound aisles, 
lying unfound inside valley bent rivers that
cry abound under the bridge it’s said, others 
who fall in the waters will be found delivered; 
they’ve wandered in farther, tar seeps from their armor,
it forms ceremonial mantles of colors
churning around them like ink in a cask;
inside the village and moving up onward
the wanderers now stand in front of the masked-
creatures so long and pulled-
thin by the tying coats wrapping their bundles of eyes to the dress, 
talisman lying close strung from the temple ropes,
festival-goers now lean in to dance.

A Defence For the Palestinians

In defence of the Palestine people

 I have complained my car didn’t start, how middle-class
I have become complaining about unimportant banality
instead of writing about the plight of the Palestinians
who has endured having their land stolen and also?
Losing the little they have left of land and olive trees
 to the unspeakable settlers.
Israel has demonized the Arab and demonized us who 
write about the inequity into silence.
I have noticed when I write about this conflict on other sites 
It is overlooked and not commented upon.
There was a time in Norway, when my uncles fought to help 
the Jews and suffered for it, torture and long jail terms.
Today the situation is different Israel picked up the mantles
of Nazism and ran with it.
I have no power but, I can defend the Palestinians in 
the knowledge that history is on my side.
The truth is stifled but never killed.

Patois of Yuletide In Yellow

~Patois of Yuletide in Yellow~

Yellow sings solos in soft folds of nativity
Satin strands of a radiant star’s light
Creation swaddled in clarity
Naked joy leaps up in golden delight
While hues of holy optimism flood night
Through the colorless stillborn manger ploy
Ecstatic shades of amber evoke joy
Gold rays serenade prophecy now seen 
All creation in citrine mantles deploy
Glory’s color, yellow, in dazzling streams.

Yellow ribbons weave through angelic song,
Enfold night in warm threads of a bronze day 
No jaundiced joy dims this heavenly throng
Nor drapes king’s eyes from far and from away,
To reveal a starlit path – to show the way -
Glowing lanterns seek the source of glory
Anointing redemption for Eden’s story
Heralds yuletide gold glory from above,
Glows in brilliance like fire forged offertory,
Yellow exalts the purest aura - love.

12/2/21
Contest: Y
Sponsor: Constance La France
Word Chosen: Yuletide

After Snow Melt

AFTER  SNOW  MELT

Their burden shed, trees  now  svelte -
Hidden beauties in luxuriant fir mantles 
Stripped, sunning  in balm light.

Grass, spruce, stream,
Once  blank and touchless, 
Crowd together, tactile, seamless.

Tall knolls the Leveller had  smoothed
Shallow  hollows had smothered ;
Landscape has  fresh verticality.

Waking birds fill the sleepy silence.  
Skyful white replaced by blue  vault.
God has lost his achromacy.

Shadows

I rest in a painting of twilight
muted in the solar tones of absent light
revealing vague and softly spoken shapes
of sculpted silhouettes
held vacant in its obscurity
in this portrait of contrasting verity
where age has no value
and depth is transcendent
absent of dimension

In this flat portrait
not of day or night
where mantles of phantoms sway
like soft black velvety feathers
in gusting atmospheric motion
unveiling our psyche with premonition
absorbing the promenade of forms 
eliciting the unknown
like an inquisition of undefinable secrecy

As an allegory of languishing butterflies
hyaline outlines of transparent motion
shift the curtain of the unknown
chasing the light of curiosity
flittering symbols dance
as disappearing brush strokes
on a colorless blank canvas
a dark illumination
striking a cadence of timelessness


Rewrittten:  November 30, 2020

Un-Rhy-Me Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Brian Strand

If I Could Only

If I Could Only….

If I could only fly on wings of balm
Into the chaos of every hemorrhaging heart
Each shredded soul -eyes flooded by a tidal wave of “why?”  –
If only and “yeah but” fleeting ghosts – if only….

If I could only revive the wonder in cynic’s cloudy sightlines
In shaky footsteps plodding through fallen stars,
In dreams that hopeless wander into twilight – in what can be yanked away - 
If only and “yeah but” fleeting ghosts – if only….

If I could only raise up hands bound by helplessness
Every voice stilled by a whisper named despair,
Long faces powerless to take in the borealis dance, abandoned visions littering possibility
If only and “yeah but” fleeting ghosts – if only….

If I could only soothe with oils of comfort
The chanting eulogies of threadbare hours
Lamentations of remorse - the dirge of shame hidden behind stones
If only and “yeah but” fleeting ghosts – if only….

Lord, let not “if only and “yeah but”
Be the mantles that I wear,
The musty wraps that grip my hands or holey shoes that hold my feet in one place,
But only fleeting ghosts of if I could only.

1/18/20

The Butterfly Garden

Under the light of a bright sunshine,
Sailing soft in the gallant wind,
Peaceful joys in acrobatic style.

Speckles of pearl, blend of rainbow,
Stylish lovers after perfume of them flowers,
Lullaby love songs, crooned in the jiggly wind.

Bright colours in their mantles,
As they hover in search for more,
And pretty flowers, they wave as they skim away.

African Minds In a Box

African mind thinks in circular shapes in a box
Freedom of expression cut in miserable pieces
Rights deleted from the hard drive discs
Children offered fish in schooling as education
Ask me; how can the African be African?
Never in this generation is answer available

More; mindset is framed, re-framed and fowled
Injected with doses of imported confusion as virtue
New generations taking old mantles in blind loyalty
Doom looming and booming without wings to fly
State to me; can such mind make African, African?

In a happy mood there’s pessimistic optimism
Not later but soon Africa can recover the lost glory

Assured is a bright but self-made future for Africa

Being a heavily enslaved, colonized and tortured race
Opaque foreign policy is the answer to development
Xenophobia, other phobias must be buried though

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