Quicker than life can blink, death lobs a bite
To end life's beauty with a startling jab
As swine rootling truffles, it stalks with might
Trapping motley, rich or poor to its web
Amidst pleasures, our finest hope they steal
And cast in vaults where upon we shall slab
And soils are strewn over without repeal
It’s a drab drape on our wound like a scab
Who can halt this dark implacable plight?
Even conjurors’ mourn this scaring blow
With grunts, in grief and so without respite
A lobbed spear from the earth's shady shadow
Would the hand of sorrow and death be nabbed,
Yet their clutch leaves the heart stabbed.
All Rights Reserved ©? 2022
Flash, prance, shout, stare, glare
He's there, everywhere.
Locked in, stuck in snare.
Always in your face.
Focus locked in place.
Attention is grabbed.
Distraction has nabbed
Any free thought, stabbed.
Topics shift, switch, drift,
Avoids being miffed.
Avoids shun and shrift.
No time to dwell think.
No time to smell stink.
Chaos reigns to blur
Shake, rock, smash and stir
Away the demur.
When I was a little boy,
I hunted down frogs, trying to catch them,
but just before I nabbed them, they would hop away.
Could it be, maybe, it is the same with truth?
I cannot hope to catch it.
It's an elusive mystery, ever to evade my searching grasp,
and it cannot be found outside, but only exists internally.
It may not be the truth others try to impose -
although they may live by their own gospel.
No, my guide comes from inside,
and what is true today, may not be true tomorrow.
What is true for me, may not be for you.
I abandon the quest for truth,
and leave fleeting frogs free, finding faith inside.
We were lonely,
Our children newly grown.
If only,
we could find someone for our own.
Apart from our kids,
our first marriages weren't great.
They hit the skids
more than ten years ago, plus eight.
We learned to survive
until the day we caught a leprechaun -
nabbed him alive,
and we had something to dream upon.
And so,
the two of us wished and thought
we caught a rainbow,
and our leprechaun was on the spot.
You were a beauty,
Your colors were to have and hold.
It was my duty
to be your pot of gold.
Naive like kids,
we'd caught a rainbow it had seemed,
but fate forbids,
and we hadn't caught what we had dreamed.
Written: November 06, 2023
___________________________________________
A swarm of herring gulls amassed
Nexus Nautilus nabbed by zealous winds,
whitening the black soil
we hold spears in our hands.
blood-stained thorns on the side
sullen squawks a skirmishing sporophyte,
dubious, grayish rumors must be buried
drave in a drizzle, drape to deities.
Installation of sentry fences
Sisyphean stones
anchor down using seal and string
flaws in the swings used by blacksmiths
Unborn burning bullion bludgeon
Savage sunless swords embryonic
Edgeless, with no reflections.
Each peak over the Edenic Steppes is sprayed,
using torn paper candles as bait
climbing scaffolds with lumber rungs
pounding of leather-heavy boots
darkened, grimacing features
Flocks failing feathers or flight.
Our hold slips on windswept
Windswept updrafts carry us away
as offspring of the royal family.
Sought ya
Caught ya
Nabbed ya
Grabbed ya
Hotcha
Gotcha
There was once a weavin' driver named Joad
Nabbed by cops, drivin' in manner forebode
Asked if he had been boozin'
No sir, I am just cruisin'
Tryin' to avoid potholes in the road
The High Constable received quite a jolt
When the nut he nabbed decided to bolt
T'was discovered he muffed
When the scoundrel he cuffed
Worse yet, he fled on the Constable's colt
Under the cover of daylight, beneath the mill
and hustle of teaming crowds; a need
and a life-grinding poverty
swept her down a wrong way.
She strayed into streets so narrow
entered them as a shadow-less shadow
stayed where rank rooms were rent by the hour
where tussled bedsheets her only ownership.
A small child might have slipped past
the ranks of pot-bellied loungers,
but the pimps were as thin as switch blades
and their eyes scavenged
for any walking flesh.
No one kidnapped her; abused her much,
she was taken by her own weakened self,
nabbed by an ever willing surrender.
Did she come to a dark end?
Only the flickering city lights
at the end of a day
can both ask and answer
that long searched for question.
Maimed in Miami’s neon glare,
Dead in Dallas under blood-red skies,
Cut short in California’s golden air,
Obliterated where Oklahoma lies.
Consumed in Colorado’s mountain shade,
Fired in Florida’s humid, fevered breath,
Killed in Kentucky’s shadowed glade,
Torn in Texas by the hand of death.
Murdered in Michigan’s cold embrace,
Shattered in Chicago’s restless night,
Nabbed in New York’s frantic pace,
Critical where Connecticut’s lights burn bright.
Gunned in Georgia’s sultry, silent fields
Mad men wielding iron forged in rage,
Liberty twisted for the fool who yields
to chaos, where no reason turns the page.
They cannot spell the sacred worth of breath,
nor grasp the fragile pulse that time has lent;
a culture fractured, courting violent death,
where guns replace the quiet argument.
Yesterday it stained the Texas plain,
tomorrow’s shadow falls on unknown sod
in that wide land where logic lies in chains,
and steel alone decides the will of God.
A shepherd girl named Bo Peep lost her sheep and her Jeep
And didn't know where to find them.
She fell asleep stoned,
When she woke they were gone,
Leaving hoof prints and tire tracks behind them.
She offered as ransom a handsome reward
And assured there'd be no repercussions.
Then the cops said, "Go home
And wait by the phone
For the culprit to call with instructions."
They nabbed an indigent herder who confessed to the murder
Of all of her sheep and to stealing her Jeep.
But still Little Bo Peep lost her job herding sheep,
And then, to her added dismayment,
She lost her practically new Jeep Grand Cherokee, too,
When she couldn't keep up with the payments.
Let this be a lesson, boys and girls, when you're grown
And are working and making it all on your own.
Though it is an annoyment, you only get unemployment,
If you're laid off, not fired,
From the place you were hired.
A young kangaroo pickpocket
Got nabbed when she tried to hock it
But Joey saw
Sex in the raw
And damned if he did not cock it!
Meant enquires consequent
On ken Sampson The Eloquent
Wishing now to himself acquaint
With the conflicts that were frequent,
Where his people are domiciled,
Currently to odds reconciled,
So that he might about them speak
And The Still-Kept Hidden leak…
In the darkest drain slain body,
Not long traced to B Goodie
By some folks loved for being civil
But by their Union ruled ‘Evil’:
To all Good Remarks had sniveled
And on Grave Issues had driveled
Some see A Demon just vanquished
He wouldn’t have Swipes relinquished
Goodie’s killer is distinguished:
Has Satan’s Fire extinguished!...
Ken has The Final Picture grabbed
Slain Goodie was tortured, first nabbed!
Ken would treat not ‘Emergency
From Juvenile’s Delinquency:
This is about Unsafe District;
Every cop to wear a face strict…
suspect
hiding out
incognito
in ol’ Tijuana town
nabbed
lucky
border guard
recognized him
in Juarez, Mexico
Sunday
captured
at gunpoint
handcuffed and jailed
extradited Monday
then freed
Written July 17, 2022
The "poem length police have nabbed me again - so I had to put my new piece
"Sunny"
in the story story section.
Here's the URL:
https://www.poetrysoup.com/short_stories/sunny_9449
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