Bare foot walking on a primeval beach
Before people, (it was just 3 o’clock,)
Balance hunched with longer stride
My feet made indentations in the sand.
With each rising step, my prints
Filled with toe-sized ponds and heel-sized lakes,
A tidal microcosm of a pulsing beach.
Life before people after all.
Far away, I saw a scrap of white
Propped against escarpment rock.
Assessed as some precious speck,
As so rare a thing so often is.
Already grains of sand had worked
Between my sandals and my soles.
Curious, I strode towards it,
To more closely see.
A sign of white posted my accidental crime:
Turtle Nest
Do Not Disturb
As easily saying, “Forgo knowing to let things be.”
Skimming through the pages of core memories
Burnt yellow walls adorned with Western art on Blake Road
Watching Merlin with my siblings
Climbing an abandoned tree house behind our land
Fishin' near a ditch with a family of snails
Hiding in the barn while journaling
Hearing coyotes in the night
Chasing the sun before the horizon
Having picnics in the Sandia Mountains
Harvesting our vegetables and fruit
Seeing Jocelyn was the highlight of my day
Vivi swerving in her Kia on Central as we listen to 1901 by Phoenix–
Let me sink into the pages and reminisce my childhood.
Time has stolen from me
Where is my pause?
Where’s the mother tree?
Where am I now?
Please, let me be part of a moment that punctured my heart
I could go on and on…
Maybe I am caged to what was once a rush.
I hope every minute you think, a flower of guilt blooms. I pray your garden of guilt goes on forever.
Your living is a privilege you shouldn't get to have.
Does your harm have no boundaries?
When you look into a mirror do you cry?
Every one of those tears you squeeze out of your eyes are just the tears of those you have harmed.
If you cried for every minute of every day it couldn't compare to the billions of tears you have created.
A monster in the making since birth.
No one could even fathom how you got on earth.
Do you ever walk through your mental garden of guilt?
I wonder..are all the flowers white?
Do you fail to recognise that all these flowers are blooming thoughts of the ones we had lost.
And all you see are inanimate, dull flowers?
Flowers that may never bloom because they had fallen ill to your hands.
Scrap Note
(Heb 4:13)
Nothing
in all creation
is hidden
from God.
Everything
is naked and exposed
before his eyes;
he's the one
to whom
we are
accountable.
© 2017 Celestine Ikwuamaesi
Scrumptious Scrap
‘Twas Love I thought in my valor days
With air perfumed intoxicating daze...
Time stands still in the Valley of Love
On passionate peaks where Angels shove
Whirlwind wines of saporous sites
With poison ivy’s approaching, apatite’s
Is it Love?... is it really really true?
An enticing elixir or bewitching brew
Let me ingest this nectar of the Gods
And admirably avert the frivolous frauds
But Venus venues her trusted trap
As I lie discarded a scrumptious scrap.
Dec.19.2016
But it was not real - Contest
Sponsored by: Lewis Raynes
Thousands of cars, now junk to their owners are dumped
Here every vehicle has a story, why they are abandoned
Elegant was I, silver rims, stylish lights and painted white
Silenced for life, now my rusted body remains on ground
Careless driving changed my fate and left me unwanted
Red, black and yellow, rust didn't spare any of my friends
All my doors now broken, wheels and windshield are gone
Painful was the fatal crash, it cruelly ceased my existence
Youth was done so soon, I no longer could race on roads
And now I am waiting for my useful body parts to be sold
Rest in peace, that's what my owner said and left me alone
Dead am I, under silent sky I remember my good old days.
June 14, 2016.
Rusted and Busted - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Casarah Nance
In the scrap book of the heart there are special memories galore...
And after all, isn't that what a scrap book is for?
There are times and dates and memories of things we've done...
Some good, some bad but many where we had ton's of fun.
We each have a scrap book we'll carry until we die...
And with many of our memories we just pause and sigh.
My scrap book is full and it grows each day..
But you know, it's more fun that way.
I am going to keep on filing until I die..
Because it's fun; that's why.
TK<
I can see a
pale green
farmhouse
against the
nearly neon
vegetation
of the cornfields.
Soybean sprouts
are shooting
up here and
there.
In this place,
there is no
existentialism
or angst
questing
against our
sanity.
There is no
god or God.
Just the cornstalks,
the soybean sprouts,
and the pale green
farmhouse
in the distance.
Library ~ daytime, empty, shelves are stacked
book for every reason, season, nothing lacks
waiting for the internet, it's Oh so-o-o fast
and my mind might diminish, with the facts!
Speed one ~ and even reading, can't sit back
I'm focused on the treason, of life's act,
so many foolish faces, filled exact
the mind, a precious reason, just reacts!
Is thought this busy please zone, not contract
some daydream, left, a glee dome, to look back
and not create that interest, struggles sack
to try and fail, the fall owned ~ by contact!
It's information's wedge cone, mindful swap
does sift with memories stilled hone, toting hack
can't cheat ~ there's more to glean through, cover's flap,
my selfhood on this steamroll, just distracts!
Guess I'll go home, and sweep through
staid errand's bric-a-brac
something is lost to mean's view, creation's scrap
The slower versions, schemes few, the writer's craft ~
Are eyes, and ears, the seen to . . . . my own thought's wrap!
They came like locust
A clustering crowd clattering leaves
And when the cloud into cirrus strads had fade
I saw nothing the same as before.
Heap upon heap they came
Tormenting everything whose structure
Or bone or faith is metallic,
Tearing down bridges, or train lines
Or cables of communication
Leaving us to be spectators
And non-strategic commentators of greed.
It is a strange occupation
In a country without mines, or manufacturers
Forging iron and steel into added value of history
Our energy and vision
Has no capacity for such excursion
From the dilemma of our tormented box.
I shudder when the land is barren
When we no longer import the finite supply
I shudder when the pockets run dry like rivers
Whose beds we do not clean
Or is it only I that see the forecast of the storm?
Scallop shell of old
First vehicle of Venus
Left to rot on blocks
By Robb A. Kopp
All Rights Reserved © MMX
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.