The time had passed, they knew too well
when first they fell under true love’s spell
That delight they felt, a-stir in the garden
no longer tolled the arbor bell…
‘Respectability’ had pierced their fairy dreams
exposed them to sundry maudlin whims
rerouted their lodestars toward middling others
knitted them labels of ‘sister and brother’
We want to ascend
to rise above the mundane—
to better ourselves
transcending banal middling,
to be lucid, insightful.
What once dazzled fades,
mountains become mere mountains—
we back-track, restart,
embrace the ordinary
the bliss of the rinse cycle.
Presence is intense,
touché in candid feelings
mindfully aware
that enchantment suffices
in plain ordinary things.
It is too early
it's a middling time.
Nature lures,
leads us on to a pause
where the weather
is all wrong.
Ice licked stems
are unforeseen
by a too hasty thaw.
Defrosting groundhog's drip
in an almost warm sunshine,
loggers lean on silent buzz saws
their foreheads dry and clear.
People take a day off
from the winter grind
bobble hats
and puffer jackets
are laid aside like bad dreams.
They predict that tomorrow
the snow is going to be heavy footed
and extra lumpy
any hint of avian romance
will be indefinitely delayed.
Yet today is middling mild,
and Pollyanna
dreams of daffodils.
A middling pudding on the table
flies hover in the livery stable
Mud-covered boots ascend to garrets
frowzy days London inherits
Dickensian scenes to rive your heart
by urchins, street vendors torn apart
Yankees delight in their ‘good old days’
Englishmen sniff the rot of decay
Midwinter - means
transparent ice walls
pressed against shrinking skin.
Dead-eyed horses are revived
only by the steam of their nostrils.
No one predicts a beginning or an end,
'mid' is a frozen idea
in an ice-locked fountain pen,
it will not write even in warm hands.
Killer clowns' shelter behind
their fixed, blood flaked grimaces,
the whites of their eyes
reflect pinpoints
of a dawning apprehension.
Roads decelerate,
creaking through knuckled hands.
Chilled mounds toboggan off rooftops,
dump malformed snowmen
through unmeasured backyard graves.
At the hazy horizon of each grinding day.
midwinter blurs perspective.
This is the middling 'Mid'
a middle where the mind stops flowing
up or down.
One bedroom for two seems old hat,
And some bat for the separate—
One far right meant for ‘she’,
And one far left for ‘he’,
Middling, if mood is made for that!
_________________________________
Happenings (Cameron Diaz, Bedroom Story) |09.12.2023| marriage, love
In middle America — a small earth tremor,
not enough to scare the cat,
the cat felt it, and it told the mice
who lived in the walls.
"It wasn’t us", they said.
A mess on my desk;
the glass inkpot has toppled,
has spilled deep blue ink
on a sheet of white paper
printing upon it a smudging form,
— moth shaped,
and in the middle
a human figure– a man-moth.
I thought of ripple effects,
how all things run to the middle
when danger threatens.
I thought of Rorschach cards
and the anatomy of meaning.
Across the mid-point of the rug
the cat has fallen asleep.
The ink-image
tries to weakly crawls away,
its wet wings drooping.
I gently nudge it back to the middle,
eventually the ink dries and stiffens.
just the clarity of existing
within the relativity of being
it is life, we discern this middling
In an old briefcase
capsuled for years in a corner
of the shed, I found a rolled up wad
of poems, stalled, still looking
for something to say, frozen
in a futile gasp for air.
I should have thrown
them away.
There was also an old plane ticket,
a beer coaster from an Antwerp cafe,
and a few photographs taken
from a bridge across a canal
in Bruges with three nuns wearing
starched white cornettes
stretched out like enormous
butterfly wings perched atop
of their heads.
And tucked in a side pocket,
were letters from my mother
written more than thirty years ago.
Long dead, I could almost hear
her voice read each word.
In one, she told me how
she scored an A for English
in the HSC exam she sat
when well into her sixties.
She could recite Frost's "Birches"
off the top of her head. Stevens,
for her, made no sense. Mum liked
plain language pared down
to bone.
I am not sure why I am writing
these words about such
middling matters, much less trying
to shape them into poetry.
No matter.
Sometimes just ordinary things,
like those found in an old briefcase,
seem to find a moment
to have something to say,
at least for me.
you gave me assuredity
you're more than a building
you're a memory
you conjured a spell
each teacher worthy fitting
quality in those days
Later I learned I was deemed opinionated
Jackie Letts in a School Reunion
a quarter of a century said so
I question the reliability of memory
Obviously we have a different account
I was a near to do
only one GCE
swimming in a sea of CSE's
in the middling classes
but I wasn't amongst the dyslexics
maybe I had been cured
like a herring
Where are the magpies?
Where the ruined cathedrals
where are the birds
that once made their homes
in the hollow heads of saints?
Here all dwell in the new or the old
the days between are bulldozed,
the waste rubble resold.
Crowds seek out boarded-up exits
other crowds construct entrances
for new homes
that when assembled resemble all other's.
I need a hill to howl upon.
The land is flat, even the water is flat.
Mountains are small or not at all.
Yet there are midnight Magpies,
there are crows cawing in woodland churches.
Mythical back-eyed catbirds roam
from home to home. Many places are
not condemned to the newfangled
and yet still unoriginal.
Some magpie nests and appear almost near,
just under the eaves of a middling nowhere.
I'd be more than happy to endow my beam to you,
equally, I trust you'll impart with your own smirk too.
That is a proem forward into world harmony,
A prized seed with extremely useful whimsy.
I will endow my food with a smile,
And I'm confiding you'll nod in your style.
This feast is middling for two persons,
It is possible if we could deter arsons.
This majestic tree dispenses shade,
Nature has conveyed us with a unique cascade.
For everyone who needs to take it easy,
Let us enjoy it all around, indeed... globally!
I'd be heartily risen to relate my entity to you,
For every one of the dignities, we are apt to do.
The season minds about us, today,
While lavish panegyrics pave the way.
Accordingly, share a smile; this is a start rally.
An extraordinary beginning's blissful inventively.
1st Place Contest Winner
Written: March 6th, 2022
World Peace Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori
Words that do not speak to me
Fine poetry may very well be
My taste, middling mediocre
No literary bona fides
~ This wild card's a joker
I live here in the city
step on what was opened
I pray for my longing
my laugh that was released...
people here ignore
any gesture, of humanity
spreads bitterness that demonstrates
neither being able to have sanity....
I live middling without socializing
I live well or badly just for living...!
Let me tell you all about my friend Rita
She fell in love with a guy named Peter
He made his living as a panel beater
To Rita there wasn't a guy any sweeter
So Rita and Peter went into town one day
Happened to meet Sue along the way
Both of them asked if she was okay
Fair to middling is what she did say
Peter was a cheater and had a roving eye
If ladies were about he certainly wasn't shy
When Rita found out she started to cry
All she could say was why Peter why
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