Short Sooty Poems

Praisin' Kringle, jolly Nick
for last minute Christmas 
smashed-torn gifts.

Cause pop-pop suspects
dad's stuck again,
inside the sooty chimney.
...

Read More

Love

Unrequested rule, extreme desire
Unfair play, selfish will of out of life
Drowning, sooty air, life killed by
Wants a stable existence with 

no love
for life

air
love
...

Read More

Stiff wings
Of the sooty tern
Carve the edge of this corral sea
Then, you free fall but never touching land
Glide, tumble and soar above the white sand
Still, your wings carved the sea...

Read More

suffocating,
sooty smoke
swirls silent,
serpentine;

coils around,
hisses above
crude contours
of blackened
smokestacks;

strangles the air,
dims morning light,
darkens ashen fog:
toxic smog....

Read More

Serpentine,

   sooty smoke floats,
      swirls slowly above
         shadowed contours 
            of city smokestacks,
         darkening ashen fog,
      dimming early light,
   poisoning air:

venomous smog....

Read More

Mary had a little lamb.
He stepped into some soot,
and everywhere that darn lamb went
his sooty foot he put.

He followed her to school one day,
and this I must confess:
He got into the classroom
and made a dirty mess!...

Read More

high above an early fog
atop the township’s home and shop
stepping warily over the eve

a cough from a smokestack choking
sooty steadfast grip to the bricks
and a winter’s worth to clear

following after the sun
black hand prints, the only signs
of a lonely climb...

Read More

The golden sunset drew me in
To gaze upon day's end beauty
Like a gentle fireplace fire when
The golden sunset drew me in
With speed changed not like it had been
Orange flame to red almost sooty
The golden sunset drew me in
To gaze upon day's end beauty  ...

Read More

Damp campfires burn mouse bones,
their sooty ghosts
flavor the tattered.

The trees that don't turn,
stay hung on a scaffold
drab and dreaming.
Grey ribbons hang
from pall-bearing branches.

Smoky hollows wallow,
leafage languor’s in the smolder,
colors run in the reek.
The earth hugs its litter,
pulls it under to chew on itself....

Read More

Sooty Grimalkin
with ears all in tatters
Stealthy Grimalkin
all paws, pitter patter

Sleeping Grimalkin
curled up by the fire
Dreaming Grimalkin
cream and fish his desire

Scheming Grimalkin
his yellow eyes narrow
Stalking Grimalkin
creeps up on a sparrow

Generous Grimalkin
brings in a mouse
Sullen Grimalkin
kicked out of the house...

Read More

"It’s a dying winter, lad” he would say
crunching his words around
a gnawed pipe stem.
Then one day he went back up
the gravel path
to his small, low cottage,
with its oily cans, coal dust kettles,
its sooty cats
never to be seen again.
This morning, decades later,
I see him from a black grate
where embers and ash
form a remembered warmth....

Read More

 Playing Football - A Children's Poem


There once was a lad from Baghdad

who sat in dad's Porsche, a fad.

He liked to play footie

with ball he'd got sooty,

so messed up the car for his dad.


-------------------------------------

2/5/2017

Contest  - Limericks, Old or New

Sponsor - Carolyn Devonshire

A Win...

Read More

The coal train blows across main street.
Sooty birds scatter over the rainbow.
Wet sidewalks tremble
as tracks grip iron wheels.
One hundred cars hooked
to a snorting nose
that often halts on the tracks
right there in the middle of our homes.
The gift of time
to smoke another cigarette
and feed the cat
before we chug off
to nowhere much once more....

Read More

I built a mountain to collect dew.
Glaciers are formed when ice and water glue.
Sculpt valleys out of the rock face of hills.
River canyons run ophidian to the spills
God constructed this beauty.
Humans build their homes from sooty
Farm work is acrid, and this costs blood.
And they might endure the flood

Written: November 09, 2022...

Read More

I don’t recognize myself;
this is not uncommon,
but he seems to me like a pale root
dragged-up to be exposed to sooty clouds;
one raw and unearthed by quarrying shadows.
A grainy tinge shades vacant eyes.
In the distance, tenement towers -
grey tusks in a monochrome sky.
A callus of light embalms a sallow horizon,
revealing just enough of the child
to spook the dead....

Read More

Paste
Resin
Adhesive

Shattered on the ground
Porcelain, her cracked face 
Dripping sooty tears and snot.

“And over these scars, we'll paste stars."

-------------
Lately I've been trying out different forms of poetry.
This is called a Clarity Pyramid. You can find out more about it by visiting 
Shadow Poetry's site, I'm not sure what PS's policy is on links....

Read More

I don’t recognize myself;
this is not uncommon,
but he seems to me
like a white root 
suddenly exposed to sooty clouds;
a tendril unearthed
by quarrying shadows. 
A grainy tinge shades vacant eyes.
In the distance, tenement towers - 
grey tusks in a monochrome sky.
A callus of light is seen in the distance
it reveals just enough of him
to spook the dead....

Read More

wearisome is the ardent wine, 
icy corridors
we sooty birds descend nimbly into nests
high in drear corridors, collecting leafy glisten

among the psychotic-seeming industry
and throng of souls' bitter rinds.
i, tunneled roots, blackened bark clinging
feebly peel away, reveals then
what teething bishops sung.

a petty triumph of marrow... boxcars and
 boxcars clangin' fertile to the 
fallen ladders...

Read More

Hidden campfires
burn buried mouse bones,
their sooty ghosts
flavouring tattered leaves.

The trees that don't turn,
stay hung on a scaffold
drab and dreaming.
Green ribbons hang
from pall-bearing branches.

In the morning, bat wings rattle,
the light blinds them
but they will not sleep.

Shoes crunch,
and the earth hugs its litter,
pulls it under
as a bed 
for the recently seen....

Read More

HEAVEN  CRIES


Oh pitter and patter
you crystal drops from God,
and renew all Life's vitality !

Cleanse away the sooty degradations !
Of the technocrats cemented cities-
so all can breath again !

Whilst out up on His fruited plains
and far beyond the mountains side-
you quench the thirst of living things.

So rain you tears from Heaven
bedecking both Good and Evil-
until all the world is fresh again !...

Read More

truth in true form
withstand storm
minds transform
has their corm
beauty-norm
less deform 
look lukewarm
duties perform 

stands every great celebrity 
spell-bound in their beauty 
their smell is like fruity
aren't they so cutie?
having them is booty 
midst environs sooty
though they look bit snooty
my pen bleeds as though her duty


04 September 2022 
Charlie New-Ku Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Charles Messina...

Read More

The world's grey. Slowly, methodically,
Feathers from colorful birds have been burned.
Sheep in a fog on a snowy mountain.
One man thought uniformity equaled
Superiority, ugly furor.
Their ashes floated down all around us
There's no color left in this sooty world.
Beauty's palette swirled with color beckons.
Diversity screams for a slight foothold.
The heart just whithers in colorless worlds.


APRIL 23, 2016

Word count 62...

Read More

Fading in the crimsoning dusk,
like a predator stalking a prey,

            the gray fog stealthily creeps,
            crawls through dilapidated

warehouses in the dockyard
long abandoned by the years;

            a dockhand squints through
            cobwebs of a sooty window,

shadowless symbols of ships
that had come, gone long ago;

            his drunken ears could fairly tell
            which tolled as the funeral bell....

Read More

COPLA ONE:  This Bad Guy World 
                           (in all seriousness)

If this world has a true purpose
I’m sure it’s as a training ground
For the villain;
The good guys play hare to disclose
The great skill of the bad guys’ hound
For a good ol’ run;
The good guys of course bear the brunt
Of being stuck under the knee
Of bad guys’ jinn;
While bad guys get the fun to shunt
Good guys up the sooty chimney
Down boot black bin.

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2012...

Read More

Spark of libido was doused
in golden dust.
Let the darkness decide
the ascension of ice.

The possession of naked rose,
him, the pure jewel
panicks in the manipulation of hands
crawling on the purple sea

of corals. A battle starts
for a mystic wheel, for opening
the door of heaven. A sooty
entrance in the hall of sins.

The gathering of queens, a flock
of serpents; the failing guts
of the hero, what if the city
that never wakes.


SATISH VERMA...

Read More