O bathysphere, thy sinking.
Seen: what, as you descend?
Life and death a-stinking!
Break fast around the bend!
Thy formation, O blastocyst.
From whence do you produce?
Rapier, twist! Slip, my wrist!
Pining, be profuse!
Throw sparks, O bright beryllium!
Electric wire, wild wind!
Fire of heaven and hell, come!
Tell me, tamarind!
Biennium, be bearable.
Split in half, two ones.
Pigeons, be thou pair-able?
How that parable stuns!
O boniface, thy full career.
Grinded? Inn. Goad gear.
Cliff by seaside, art thou sheer?
Are thy dropoffs drear?
Honey, O my kinkajou!
Leave it for the bees!
O for hearts that beat untrue!
Claim them, my deep freeze!
O tether to reality!
Cord etheric, hum!
Saffron scents in sabbath sea!
O tomorrow, thrum!
Were he stripped of his rapier-like wit ~
John Lawless would be paw-less
She eyed open like a broken mirror.
Her mother claimed
that her legs were bowed
so that she could catch the moon
between her black knees on moonless nights.
Tiny mandibles chewed her leather tongue
until it was as thin as a razor edged rapier.
it was her beef jerky meditations
that kept her words fibrous and tactile.
I married Ladybug inside a bottle
of sweet yellow Merlot
(we were stuck and sticky
in the last drops of a licking love).
She wore a red spotted dress
and her shoes were pincer bright.
I flagrantly fought her to a standstill
in my usual green camouflage.
Her father chased me for days
for I had stolen her hard shell-like mind;
he never caught me
though he did put a spell inside my head,
a Catholic chain-mailed spell
that bound me to her hard carapace
as if I were an aphid -
a gummy mouthed aphid
that could only hitch a ride
strapped to her ever searching hunger.
"While the sufferings of the poor majority remain unknown to the world, the achievements of the rich minority are trumpeted to all" ~By Poet
The heavens grew darker with rain clouds
The day looked like a misty shroud
Soon rain pelted down, whiplashing
Lightning unleashed its lethal rapier
Brandishing the flaming steel across the skies
Thunder growled and rumbled
Like a giant stamping in rage
Causing vibrations like seismic tremors
Sending fear through every nerve
Men sought shelter in the shade of trees.
Some ran to the shelter of roofs
Sound of wind whistled and boomed
Trees arched and shook, leaves flew about
Unceasingly the sky wept in torrents for days
As the men grumbled on being shut indoors
I heard the plaintive ballad of the homeless
Victims in the hands of an unknown fate
Their sighs fated to die out in their own smoldering hearts.
They live unknown with languishing identity,
To wrestle with the dark unknown
To die unknown and to lie under the sod unknown!
April.17.2023
Writing Challenge ‘U’ Words Poetry Contest
Sponsor- Constance La France
Who...
Am I.
Am I who I am?
or, who I want to be?
The difference is in me.
Night and day,
not the color of my skin,
or the way I intend,
but the way that I am,
and will be.
I represent me.
More than that,
I am us.
We together are who we are.
We can be bad or good,
hands to heaven or feet to hell.
The difference...
the simple ring of a bell.
Stomping the weak,
that want to speak,
or romping through the grass,
giving criminals a pass.
We need to do better,
or we will be made less, by the few,
that hate the all.
Watchers on the sidelines.
Good men of good breeding.
They are high, and mighty,
and have no known faults.
They have made sure to bribe,
or even own to the bone...
all descenters,
the decliners' with a pen, and paper.
It is a rapier wit they have.
Many laugh at the party
because they have not realized
they too are part of the meal,
so feel as you like...
but dinner is about to be served.
featureless blur
sharp rapier claws
fend a black featureless blur...
death is no lap cat
(haiku)
04/07/2022
Black Cat Haiku Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori
Short
Haiku hiatus
Powerful and wonderful
A waffle-free zone
And
Three lines together
So observations recorded
Synergistic sum
Sharp
A needle sows scene
A razor shaves the landscape
Rapier round-up
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Haiku set written 20 February 2022
(checked with poetry soup syllable counter)
The Eyes Have It
Eyes sharpened at the whetstone
Honed to a glistening edge,
They used them to slice and dice for
Homeworks forgotten;
Rooms left in cyclonic disarray;
Reports unfiled;
Presents left ungiven;
Promises unkept---
Scythe-like orbs slipped into you
And poured you into the ground an
Unripened watermelon pulp
oozing red and pits.
They said that eyes had not
A rapier wit, nor rending ability
Though you learned they did,
As life essence formed a puddle
Like water broken before birth.
She has a fever.
I leave her dozing fitfully on the veranda.
Halfway to the woods there is a farm gate
where she will often squat
and piss.
The grass is brown, but still thrives,
strangely adapted to uric rain.
Paris the giant poodle is here,
his nose a rapier seeking past and present.
Several dogs from good families arrive
to vie with each other
in search of her ‘wherefore art thou?’
Tragically, Romeo (a bulldog neutered last week),
today plays alone
with his squeaky bone.
Avatar Queen
The mask or the screen,
What’s never to know
What’s never to see
Avatar Queen
Your name to mislead,
One more cryptic posting
That always deceives
Avatar Queen
Both petty and preened,
The bees in your bonnet
No stinger foreseen
Avatar Queen
You know what I mean,
With feelings all borrowed
And vistas unseen
Avatar Queen
The sourest cream,
No reason to wish
All hope dressed in green
Avatar Queen
Your anger unweaned,
My answer then sharp
My rapier free
Avatar Queen
Not to sleep or to dream,
Your nightmare awoken
In daylight you scream
Avatar Queen
One curse washes clean,
Your blessings defaced
—no chance to redeem
(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)
It’s all for fun, fun for all, brothers, three
Like musketeers, they’re bound by oath and blood.
To Mom, the rules are all a mystery,
Their games are equal parts laughter and mud.
With rapier-like sticks in little hands,
Imaginary evils they must fight.
They gallop ‘cross the yard to foreign lands.
Be wary, minions, of this trio’s might!
Then, victory declared, they march inside,
Their weapons safely placed outside the door,
To brag, to boast of all who lived and died,
And pledge, come the morrow, there will be more.
Then fed and washed and resting ‘til the morn
When brave adventure sounds again its horn!
So, what would you have me write?
Dulcet words of limply lurid metaphor
stuttering staccato of acceptable alliteration
preposterously impersonal personification
drab and dreary diluted imagery
innocently innocuous innuendo
insouciantly inane sonnets
neutered non-rapier wit
squishy, soft white bread limericks
fettered faint hearted free verse
sanctimoniously soft spoken rants
devoid of do’s and don’ts, can’s and can’ts
all to fit in a box
with invisible locks
displayed on a Common
of “creative” stocks
John G. Lawless
©6/30/2018
URBANE DISDAIN
Rapier wit, persiflage and banter
In repartee, an eloquent out-flanker
Faced with insult, virulence and rancour
His response could not be ‘insoucianter’
When attacked or critiqued
He will not be piqued
Smooth as whisky antique:
These - his words cool and sleek
“You’ve a face like a snapper,
Your sister’s a slapper,
Your mother is built like a tanker”
.
Insidious, insipid, id-inebriated imbeciles
incite impetus into inevitable immolation.
Bombast, bluster and bluff: blunt batons of barbarian bullies;
backwards behaviour blackballs baronial breed's burdens and bonds.
Weasely, willy-waving warmongers wage wanton war of words
without wit, wisdom or worldliness, whilst we weakly watch and wait.
Regrettable, repugnant reprobates ravage refined realms with
reprehensible rapier-rattling and rancid rhetoric.
Clash of corrupt, contemptible cutthroats carves calamity 'cross
continents and culminates in catastrophic conflagration.
Pointless predatory and political power-plays pale as
pirouetting pariahic pyres patently a pyrrhic prize.
------------------------------------------
(16 syllables on every line, checked with howmanysyllables.com)
14 October 2017
The wind rattles and shuttles leaves into fall
And grass wipes off its tears in the pour of night.
I hear throbbing haunches and tramps of stallions.
Garlands of blinking cowry shells
Ferried long from the treasury shores of the hoary moon circle their ripe manes.
Their hooves are cobbled ribbons that swim in the vicinity,
In a green picked from the virgin gardens of orion.
Then he appears on a grandeur chariot,
Sublime in the way he stoops for my being.
Every turn of the draconian rims, grand and millennial.
Crickets kick in creak and hearts heat in beats and him speaks in flickers.
The seraph spread of the white of his wings shines,
In purest and fairest of odd
Streaming milky in the way it pours out light unto the sun
His robe was torn from the scintilla of clockless nebulae
His skin freckles in sparkles of the gold of lyra and emeralds of taurus
He is not an enemy yet carries a triple-edged stainless rapier
Fetched from the mouth of draconis.
An aura of pirouetting cub whirlstorms keep him faceless
He thirsts my glory and haunts again
He's my angel of success
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