It is remarkably insane,
To look vacantly out the pane,
With a green bottle of Bollinger champagne,
Enjoying the wobbly rain, rain, rain!
I would rather spend a day in Spain,
Or sit by the seaside in Ukraine,
An alternative of gawking all in vain,
At the wet and soggy rain, rain, rain!
My entire day would certain remain,
Unstimulating and very mundane,
Before the sympathy could sustain,
I would flee away from the rain, rain, rain
I would pose and listen to Zakir Hussain,
Without experiencing the Nyctophobic pain,
And munching on the Christmas candy cane,
For my drink, I’ll gulp the rain, rain, rain!
Oh! I desperately have the need to explain,
The very day I had to constrain,
As it was not so germane,
To taste the polluted rain, rain, rain!
The cloudburst valiantly fights the Elaine,
The pellucid flurry wondering it's Shane,
Tries to stuff the muddy moraine,
But sadly cries into rain, rain, rain!
The baffled sleet faces refrain,
Awaits the rush hour of the town’s train,
To run away from the aubade, so urbane,
Sadly, the unconvincing rain, rain, rain, goes away.
[Arrival of summer]
BY SATVIKA UNDER THE PEN NAME SAVERA
Train
Locomotive rumbling - chugging train
Diners, sleepers, small caboose – no disdain.
Iron tracks to train the tracks of the train
Sometimes runs on mobile tracks – a seatrain.
Travels through the wayward wind and rain
Through valleys, moraine – mountain steep terrain.
Freight trains loaded with orchard fruit and grain
Thunders through wild wilderness and plain.
City stations, old depots to maintain,
Whistle stops, lonely nights – train refrain.
trees sobbing,
tortured by rain -
insane.
shedding more skin.
more flooding at feet.
their instinct
tells them
find the sun
or run.
the leaking
moraine sky
tumultuous, sly!
no hint of yellow dye
nor
floral tablecloth.
2/6/2020
Edward Ibeh’s Yalto Form
Line 1 to 15: 3,4,2,4,5,3,2,3,2,3,3,5,6,1,5 syllables
Amid the glacial hills of central Maine
There stood forsaken, gray, an ancient farm,
Which always filled us with a vague alarm.
Atop the humpback ridge of a moraine,
Abandoned now, for centuries it stood,
Defying time, and ice, and hurricanes.
Its windows now were yellowed, cloudy panes,
Its weathered clapboards, bleached unpainted wood.
We’d see its silhouette against the dusk:
Its gambrel roof was reared against the skies
With dormers like two staring, evil eyes—
Unyielding in their aspect, heartless, brusque,
Perhaps a touch of malice in their glare.
And though untenanted for many years,
It never failed to stimulate our fears,
Because the house seemed gleefully aware.
But was it haunted? So we all assumed.
Yet still each May we’d watch as swifts would nest
And use the eaves and dormers for their rest;
And in its dooryard fragrant lilacs bloomed.
February 16, 2019
Enclosed Rhyme Poetry Contest
Emile Pinet, Sponsor
The genesis of a hundred-mile odyssey
A happy little caravan of running crows
Everything is alive, sky wind, even the stones
Hearts taping time, glittering with hope
Morning comes the murder has thinned
Smiles replaced by blood blister and grit
The flesh is battered, bitten and minced
The mind has played a million dirty tricks
The odyssey has demanded its toll once again
Finish line, just beyond the shimmering glade
where a jingle of tears and medals await.
Miss Molly Morland might meet her modern mate Mark Martin, a maverick man, who mostly masters making multiferous machinations to make mellow amour with this maudlin maiden beside a mighty mazy mountain made of mossy moraine.
Pinhead sized raindrops fall in numbers, attempting to imitate fog
Green needled giants with red bark stand at attention and point at the sky
The odd deciduous turns yellow as though in fear of the impending cold
They are dwarfed by valley walls which are sealed above by oppressive clouds
Mighty Columbia drops an ice cold tongue, coloured from the cleanest blue to the dirtiest grey, to lick the valley floor
It drools crystal clear water and spits moraine
POP!
The wood makes the same sound being split by fire or by axe
We face each other on a bench by the stove
We alternate sides attempting to maintain a balance between the side feeling the heat of the stove and the other being chilled by the mountain breeze
Our hot side like the heat of summer and our cold side like the chill of winter
The seasons change in us as they do outside
Each season returning to itself in the course of time
White streaks through dark night-sky-hair to slowly become the meteor shower that awaits us
OUR FAMILY VALLEY
Mountains strong withstand the turmoil,
Protect our valley from the storm.
The river makes a fertile soil
And seedling trees can start to form.
The slopes are crowded with the trees
And their pine scent fills our valley’s breeze.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .
NOTE:
Moraine Lake in Banff National Park always
reminded me of a family of father, mother, and children.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Written for John Freeman’s Contest “A Nature Verse”
( syllables 8 8 8 8 8 9 )
placid ice castle
strong swift attacking currents
strewn rocky remnant
rubble of social dysfunction
spilled from the lip of time
shards of humanity’s decay
sleep in layered mounds
beneath eternity’s cold moraine