I'm the vessel of your verses
The voice of your vice
The product of the dream you nurture
The nature you hide
I'm the vessel of your verses
For better or worse as
I killed as much as I healed
For your own selfish causes
Though like I
Sprinkled in time – a wrinkle in time
Distort this course of pattered patterns
As we try to advise
I come from a plight your voice invites
Yet through that noise my choice is mine
I'll rhyme with vice from time to time
But rhyme my course through what is mine
To frame my words:
Picture my verse reversing a curse and nursing a hearse
Purging the urge to merge with the merchant of murder or worse
Piercing the person that persecuted my pride
Piercing the Plight that worsens the worth of the words I write
Purging my urges, the grudges held from the judgment of hurt
Purging my hypocrisy, when it gave you hurt much worse
The stanzas alliterate to reflect the repetition
The verse of illiterate veterans on a mission
To verse you in their permanent "medicating" religion
Most mean love, while most only deliver what's given
When the Earth Woke Singing
The sun came up, the day anew,
leaving behind the fresh morning dew.
The sky stretched endlessly and ached in blue,
making my grass and flowers stretch upright,
shaking off sleep in the morning’s hue.
While the sun shone low in the morning sky,
children emerged, wide-eyed and bright,
ready to explore and play.
Laughter and chatter could be heard near and far,
even before the day hid the very last morning star.
Before even the first cars and trucks hit the roads,
my topsoil had been pattered by bunnies and toads.
Then, as my roots unfurled to drink from the morning’s honeydew,
I again drank in the children’s hymn of promise anew.
Their shadows framed their joy, and the sun moved higher,
leaving my fields a tapestry ablaze with laughter.
The rain as it fell yesterday
spoke to me. It said it has
fallen since the time the earth
began. It pattered the window
near my desk after I got out
of bed. It said it was sent to me.
In the next breath it said it was
bringing spring. Early May
after April, and April,
a lover leap. Its soothing voice
says the ones I loved will always
be with me. Then it said someday
I will find someone else. Now
my ears ring as I linger in the moment
in-between, I gaze out my window
as the sun shines on a stem rising
from once-dormant ground.
Looking Back at Forest and the Storm
Friday morning and lightning rippled the sky
as I stood under a vast canopy
rustling leaves spoke
and I wondered
how to write a poem
with so much to say
the forest breathed
It was a Friday, the last day of the work week
waiting to go home but I listened
to the wind speak
in a language
I couldn’t understand
and rain pattered leaves
as it surrounded me
Back home I lived a life of mortals
did laundry, and saw friends
with so much to say
about my life with trees
and they were calling
me back
the language of gods
* braided haibun form
I still think of that day,
rain pitter-pattered gently around us,
clouds were the color of gravel.
Your smile broke through shadows,
and our laughter mingled like gold.
Paint splattered against a canvas-
that's what we were.
Unpredictability. Chaos. Adoration.
Does any of it make sense?
Does it not make you want to crawl out of your skin and sink into the what if?
He was a director by trade
With little or no pretense
And throughout the world he is known
As the master of suspense
Sounds of the audience screaming
Was the one thing that mattered
The crowd on the edge of their seats
Where hearts pittered and pattered
No matter which movie you see
His films will keep you sighing
Leaving hairs standing on your neck
And all your popcorn flying
So grab a ticket when you can
Let there be no distraction
Coming to a theater near you
Billed as the main attraction
It Happened on a Rainy Night - Collaboration - 9-5-23
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Foggy mists engulfed the bright
When raindrops fell throughout the night
The lampposts glowed at midnight's dark
When sweethearts kissed at Lover's Park."
Raindrops pattered like two heartbeats
Nestled in a sheltered retreat,
Shared the velvet touch of a first kiss
Secret love, moments of bliss.
I never asked for this gig, she reminded them.
Her father was apologetic, but wizards are weak.
Her mother rolled her eyes at the weakness of him.
You will see, she told her daughter, there are those who seek.
We are mystical beings, and we have souls of gold.
We can fly into the night, and it never grows old.
You are lucky to be a witch like me, her mother said.
What about her auntie? Her husband asked. Isn’t she dead?
Your aunt never fully embraced the magical life.
She got wrapped up in drugs that took over her strife.
You will be like me her mother told her daughter.
Her wizard father kept his eye on his glass of water.
The teenage witch was not sure what her mother meant.
She was tired of being different, not feeling heaven-sent.
Her father pattered away, down the hall, and went to bed.
The teenager took off on a broom, and her soul was fed!
The world still sleeps, except for me.
O'er the horizon of the sea
I welcome sunrise as it sweeps.
Except for me, the world still sleeps.
Daybreak dribbles its honeyed glaze.
Dawn is painting in shades of maize
'cross the sky in amber scribbles.
Its honeyed glaze, daybreak dribbles.
Marmalade mornings, I treasure,
offering a day of pleasure
until clouds become storm warnings.
I treasure marmalade mornings.
Lightning flashed in dark shadowed skies.
Nature declined to compromise.
Fair weather plans would all be dashed.
In dark shadowed skies, lightning flashed.
Rain splattered on my windowpane.
Sunlight vanished, to my disdain.
Echoed sounds that pitter pattered
on my windowpane, rain splattered.
September 9, 2022
Swap Quatrain Contest
Sponsored by Emile Pinet
Eden’s garden manifest
Disgraceful sins confessed
Lily footprints scattered
Nutrient droplets pattered
Eve, deprived of paradise
Exiles ultimate price
Misdeeds penance pour
Tethered tis utopian door
Devious snake most elated
Abiding piousness over-rated
Resentful of mortal campaign
Relished serpentine reign
Aromas pierce thru deceit
Flowerbed mornings greet
Thwart desires craved
Embosom allure saved
3/23/2022
Although intoxicated within ethereal madness;
bound within the chains of this soulless prison.
I'm desperately in love with this Gothic sadness;
whilst staring into a fog of disheartened reason.
Walking and stalking through dark rancid streets;
stopping for pints, now the pain's finally receding.
Through smoke and crowds; reverent and discreet.
A bottle to the abyss, now heartless and bleeding.
Watch the frightened view my new lifeless prize;
found there in the dark of a White Chapel lane.
A gutter splashed in blood; wasted faceless lives;
I feel not of blame, nor absolved of pious shame.
A grave awaits all that tempt this pattered wraith
from the streets of lust, to the arches of festoon
stealing their souls whilst courting a devilish faith
I'm in love with blood of all devoid of a moon.
Muffled be the moans through all incised dreams;
Inhale a swirling mind while exhaling into hell.
Humming in rhyme of timed whispered screams.
Clock chimes bye, so off go I, leaving now as well.
1/28/2021
Murder In The Tunnel Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Spiralling around in pattered grooves
Oblivious to throb of bliss that within renews
Immersed in delusion discontent
Strangely yet hoping on for happiness permanent
Go in oh hermit into the heart
In bliss as ignition within each moment restarts
30-September-2020
I once met a Spanish high flyer
She wiggled and danced on a wire
Her pitter once pattered
Grew ninety pounds fatter
And now she sings bass in a choir.
Feb 4 2020
Daniel Turner
Tide out ...
Swells break far and creep slow,
sweeping tender 'cross washboard flats
where they used to dance -
where they lauded the ebullience of life
in purpose ... and pairs.
Beach ballerinas, flaunting perfect line ...
toothpick legs busy as Baryshnikov 'midst the billows,
leopard mantle still as stars
while they streaked and pattered forth-and-back,
never touching the hem of the combers.
Nature has no humor, they say ...
yet 'twas a game they played with the ocean's edge,
the sand they pranced was just as cold -
just as wet and wobbly and wild ...
it served no critical purpose to shun the wash in such diligence.
Yet they were masters of the art, and graceful,
as tho' it had been thus for eons ... and of course, it had.
That very game and dance is what I miss so dearly now,
tears disguised in the salt spray on my face,
as I pull another clump of plastic ...
From last year's nests.
~ 4th Place ~ in the "Last Year's Nests" Poetry Contest, Craig Cornish, Judge & Sponsor.
Scented Leaves
Flowery fragrance sorts divisive airflow and cooperates amidst plethoric aubergines that bathe breathlessly, brushing raised exemplars of strewn unfurled chartreuse fronds, lain in the wake of humble pattered feet enthralled in its tangy betrothed crisp path,
Ingratiating themselves against engaging tickles of countless laddered leaves being crushed, bursting citrus piquant squirts that flavors a blessed orangey tawny forest of verdurous lime greens and lemony leaflets of carpeted existence essences,
Autumn gifts a luminous prism of extraordinary combinations touching rainbow eyes to favor, and unimaginable pleasure of incalculable noses to savor, as per crowning Heaven, immerse its creation re sun-drenched over-shades lathered in a pool of multiple redolences.
2019 November 12
*1st Place*
SCENTED LEAVES
~~Kim Rodrigues
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