The teachers’ voices were loud and shrill,
but there was just one message,
“everyone sit still!”,
though it was hard on the parquet floor,
in polyester trousers,
bought the week before,
the first year head took to the stage,
like his long black cloak,
he was from another age,
our welcome to school it wasn’t the best,
being told we were failures,
in eleven plus tests,
brought up on praise for autumn verses,
I was shocked to hear,
we’d never be silk purses,
talents and abilities didn’t get a mention,
from the stretched and burnt out staff,
longing for their pension,
all around the system was failing,
I looked out of the window,
to life beyond the railings.
"We're going to need a bigger fig leaf."
Proclaimed the teacher to her staring class
As the model removed the last of his attire.
A collective, almost silent gasp
and the clatter of a fallen brush on parquet floor
confirmed this to be true.
Among the downcast eyes of most
was an accusing glance from pink-faced girl
to blushing secret lover.
Others scanned the body top to toe;
some fixed their gaze;
not all upon the model's eyes.
The over-fondling of a brush,
the squeezing squirting of thick paint from tube
A pencil slowly rotated in a mouth;
gestures, lost of innocence,
in steamy, thickening room.
A closeted sigh.
A wistful moan.
The heavy silence broke;
"As you may have guessed," the teacher coughed
"The subject for your sketch today is Adam."
This or That, Vol 11 Poetry Contest Fig Leaf, placed 3rd
Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
Date wrote: 31st March 2022
She lays on fine velveteen sheath
a body wrapped in the delicate
texture of malleable night –
With fondled taps, he pulls
her toward him spilling desire
all over womanly contours -
building up motions -- then to both sigh
upon love’s parquet floor.
June 2nd 2020
Some Kind of Sensual
Nette Onclaud Contest - 41 words
The boy gets teased for wearing Holy Keds
And never Michael Jordan tennis shoes.
A field trip for a Friday afternoon:
Today, it’s modern art, the locals’ wing.
Head down, he tags along behind his class.
At least he is polite, his teacher thinks.
The parquet floor makes crackling under foot.
A landscape hangs along a barren wall.
“In modern art, emotions bring in shapes...”
Not listening, as usual, she thinks.
“Look, that’s my home!” he shouts aloud and points
“No, that’s the modernist O’Keeffe!” she scolds.
And herds her charge with open arms past guards
And docents under disapproving eyes.
There I stood, flushed: gripping
a diaphanous pelvis of his guitar,
he rips a pulpy drool of velvet notes…
glossy under a roulette of lights,
saucy on the parquet floor upon
an artist's feet :his body movement
resembling a twisted weave; the
bossa nova of high timbre frothing scales
of primitive jungle moans,
while Latin hands roll with dizzy
Carribean beats as if Santana
and Jobim grooved with him.
Oh he aches, shakes like a livid soul,
more ravished than refined
in his groping music, my night's balm.
Streams of ‘Oye Como Va’ entice a trance
rippling down my spine, ready
to tug with the accompaniment of
drums and sax; till the last rhapsodic groan
prolongs a dazed jiggle for hips
to leap unto the heat of the sky.
My flesh perspires as I whirl,
unmindful of the exotic rhythm
prancing like a black magic woman!
-------
10/17/2015
Trashed Poem #3 Contest
Sponsor: Broken Wings
By nette onclaud
An oil painting wilted;
abuse has shaped it's rotted form.
It's been to war
...and for too long;
unrecognizable is the artwork it's suppressed.
Simply dripping,
dripping midnight pitch upon the parquet floor;
oozing and decomposing before the spectators,
awed by a slow, painful rigormortis.
Whatever color showed, has long been stripped.
Whatever joy remained, has long been faded.
Whatever hand had painted, has long gone limp.
There is only a black square, oozing
'pon the parquet floor beneath it.
Exuding noxious odors,
foretelling disasters yet to come.
There has grown a sports tradition,
On the west side of Chi-town.
Where a theam that played at Roundball,
Had taken man a crown.
From the parquet floor of Boston,
To the Hive down Charlotte way.
Then there's the Garden in New York,
And the Twin City dome where the Timberwolves play.
In these and other cities,
Fans often watched in awe.
As their teams were thrown into the Bull Pen,
And came out sore and raw.
Whille in Chicago the press hailed them,
As "Raging Bulls" or "Jordanaires".
As in their wake of victories,
Were left nothing but wide eyed stares.
The cast changed over those years,
But the results were still the same.
For at the center of that exciting team,
One man led them to win the game.
He left an impression on this country,
From the oldest fan to the youngest tyke.
His example of winning with excellence,
Made us all, "Want to be Like Mike".