Sluice Poems | Examples

National Poetry Month

ghost, river, shiver, gaze, tender, cold

Ghost River

Ghost river runs without a shrink.
Little known in polite circles.
With cupped hands, the shameless down drink.
Suspended place, not inked in journals.

A decisive shiver up spine.
Why’d a boat wait at foggy shore?
He’d smiled at me, as we’d cheered wine.
Trepidation ripe in my core.

His leather gaze; something so strong.
It’s cold in this romantic boat.
The oars sluice in mud; bid ‘so long.’
This life offers me an antidote.

Awful the scented rose petals,
so inky ebonic afloat.
Tender whispers amidst nettles
of thorns piercing my inner throat.

Before I thought to scream, the hosts
in revelry asked me to join.
“Get out of the boat…” (drown, they coax)
Madness! Their eyes’ covered with coins.

My eyes flutter open at once.
There’s a knock at the door. It’s him.
I’ve been warned; palpitations in flux.
Satan’s given a pseudonym.

I shake off my trepidation,
it’s only a dream; excited.
Suddenly - a celebration.
Down in the waters, invited.

No longer a dream, a nightmare.
I’d never awaken…no prayer.

Lord, Save This Unholy Baptist

Lord, save this unholy Baptist!?
     Her lactation, like mother's juice,
slakes thirsty tongues with creamy gist.
     To flush her slick love-chamber's sluice,
with corkscrew thumbs, and practiced wrists,
     like a gander she mauls her goose!

If hairy chest stirs those supple breasts
     in whorish barns (near lover's inns),
then with my cock's erectest crest,
     the buttocks (of her cleft nether-chin),
like meat pies, I durst hurry test,
     lest I, limp, err in deadly sins!

But I pray Thee, O holy Godhead!
     I durst not be so thus content'd,
when, like dogwood, is my sainthead,
     when goes my pizzle unlament'd;
and, like Pan, to c*nt the nunhead,
     I've foregone your grace, unrepent'd.

The Fine Art of Bathing

On the subject of bathing
There are two schools of thought:
In a shower or tub,
Which you do,
Which you ought?
Of course, some people say
Either way is okay,
While others are a tad more particular.
They'd rather scrub in a tub
And recline on their spine
Than to sluice standing up,
Perpendicular.

Fishing Holiday

Fishing Holiday

A kingfisher sitting on the old harbour wall
Listening to the geese from the mud flats call
I'm here for some sea fishing until after the thaw
Braced against the north wind so cold and raw

No Kamikaze diving into a frozen pond
The quickest route through to a life beyond 
I need to cut a hole to fish with rod and line
To catch minnows like an Eskimo for my  tea time

A sound of crunching from the lake what can it be
I fly over the marsh to take a look and see
Two swans are on the salt lagoon a winter wonderland 
I watch from the sluice gate where the water is damned 

The leaders pushing through the thick sea ice
Slowly inching forward, heroic self-sacrifice 
Jet propulsion is required, web feet redesigned 
Whilst tail end Charlie swims serenely behind  

The Buntings skating through the reeds ask me to stay
But I've frost bitten feathers and don't want to play
The brochure promised beaches and sunshine every day
I am flying further south for my next Seaside holiday

Keyhaven Marshes, 17th January 2023

New Life Curriculum

Dreams continue as he pursues and fits into those new life shoes/
Steams of old morose songs singing sad blues in dark venues/
Has his hold paddling multiple life canoes/
His eyes mold maddening views of how not to use or misuse /
Less issues to load tissues and blow revenues /
He construes the con’s cruise how he’d abuse and throw a fuze /
Irrelevant spoofs but now he refuels and will refuse /
To lose how he broke a fuzed fool loose into bomb grooves /
Explodent raising the roof with booms and more proofs /
Next go sent is praising a nerd goof’s blurred sluice see through / 
An Oxymoron to use without suboxone, oxycontin or any proxy plottin /
That’s rotten like heroin in pill form not an option /
From hereon in I’m building and recovering /
I’ve beaten my cranial region and more covering/
It’s a pain in the neck and the back sore hovering /
Pain multiplied by the passion is what caused action /
The symptom is contamination leaving one ultimatum /
Create a new life curriculum to cure ick-n-glum

Gateway

Outside the sanctum, clenched teeth, tension, 
    a sense of being spun slowly, in comical ocean drift
    Bobbed cork barely able to rein my orientation. 

    Luckily, current flux of haphazard happening flapped 
    a variable vantage.
    Blown as though by silk hankie butterfly blessing 
    launched under lead light detail dragonfly wing
    
    Inside the sluice. 
    tender seagrass arms greet me, surprise caressed 
    Silky entry to a tepid tub, a calm community
    of smug inner sanctum club members, afloat. 

    Blind to bedlam, their faces automatically accepting
    Smarmy, aloof, knowing the code
    Clicked into correct holding pattern
 
    Galvanized now among the longed for, 
    unlocked passage
    Boasts a right angled me, porthole refuge
    Catatonic sanctum immune to struggle
    Bay of steady abundance 

    Top step mission for admission somehow granted mine
    Spotlight shon on my cloned social demeanor, 
    Meticulously honed modesty of highbrow gallery. 





      24th February
      Written for Contest: Gateway
      Sponsor: Constance La France

The Sightless Sea

Lowing fog horns
shake scales from rooftops.
We see the seawall drowning,
the surging waves rising
unfolding spume and brume
into mountains.

From the pub on the harbor front,
we can hear the buffeted gulls feeding
on the sluice of passing squalls.

"Look out the window" you say
(the window is a hundred pieces
of sky caught in a fish-eye).

"No boats will fish today," I whisper,
but we both know
that there are small boats out there,
they call out like cows, as wind- ghost
lead them through gray havens.

Once Upon a Scummy Pond

A skinny black girl, her torso submerged,
long neck holding her head up like a swimming Anhinga.

I should not know what a ‘snakebird’ is --- I am eleven years old
and have lived in the same dirty part of London all my life.

Florida is a missing piece in a school jigsaw,
while the British Empire is a scummy quarry basin pond
behind a brick factory.

My body feels rasped by cosmic sluice gates.
I could tell the girl wonderful things, 
but my skull is an open hatch
jettisoning the rest of my life.

Small boys call to me in a trilling tongue,
a pictorial language made from sticks and stones. 
Their faces familiar but their names
long drowned by decades.

I am recalling, falling through a time circle
in a rippling pond. 
Anhinga-girl circles around,
eyes wide, waiting for me to say something.

I don't know how to speak to children from other places.
I gulp water and splutter from a faraway memory.
She grins and frog-legs away.

Dog In a Turning Pond

Paws paddlewheel a roundness.
Mouth wide in the sluice, a sodden rudder
pushes sideways braiding a foaming wake.
Pond and dog orbit an ocular sky,
watery eyes memo the turning scene:
a bobbing hat floats beneath clouds,
a heron fishing over its stooping shadow,
a nodding woman upon a snorting horse,
a stroller, a mother,
an old man shaped like a walking stick.
The delirious dog bites a wave and sneezes,
while to-and-fro, a bobbing ball seductively,
turns his world.

My Beautiful One - By Your Love

The sluice gates of my heart are lifted
and downstream my love boat is drifted

Mind Ferrets

Insomnia- the madman napping in the attic.
Alarm clock set for a second past the ogre's hour...
His greasy head resting on a burlap bag. 
Filling with ferrets and rats-firecrackers for teeth.

The alarm goes off-he opens the bag.
Laughing while injecting with red bull and meth..
He lives to plant a sluice box into your mind.
Washing the last nugget from your tired life.

High Sea Low Shore

Bawling fog horns
shake scales from tiled rooftops.
Spume and brume
spray momentary mountains
over submerging sea walls

From the pub on the harbor front,
we hear the buffeted gulls cry
as they fly
on the sluice of passing squalls.

"Look out the window," you say
(the window is a hundred pieces
of sky caught in a fish-eye).

I shout into her whisper:
‘No boats will fish today,’
but we both know
that there are small boats out there;
they call out like stray cows,
kelpie leading them through gray teeth.

Homophone Hospice

Round Mudville Market, foul air was omnipresent
butchers rent fowls’ necks to make tenant's rent, 
the scene that was seen was most unpleasant.

As sunset fell, we watched through evening light, 
as Casey mighty Casey held his stout bat tight
while striving poet searches to right words write.

Seems a southpaw would tear up bravado's montage
Casey’s legend scorched by unknown pitcher’s flamage 
and tears like diamonds sluice down his visage

As darkness gathers, a lone bat flits round diamond site
with Casey wiff, the bleacher rift, for sure a sorry sight 
as we quaff stout, raise glasses high, E. Thayer's tale recite.

I Sense

languid doldrums, swaying lanyard, sails hanging loose

  dreary small drums reverberate, neurons dumbing down

  nerve ends fuse, sunlit shadows depict my numbing frown

  feelings grind dull, thoughts stranded in the dangling sluice


  sudden intermittent draught, strengthening breeze

  mind and body free-falling, spontaneous pressure

  sinews stretch, skin on skin, pulsating probing pleasure

  senses tingle, tickling laugh, lengthening squeeze


  breathe in deep, sniff olfactory aroma drift

  gustatory tasting plates licked and tongued

  erotic amalgam squished and belly-bunged

  nostrils flare, exotic pungent odour whiffed


  cavort, canoodle, drooling lips, flavours of the beast

  rhythms rise where delirious frenzy can often be

  harmonic screaming near the edge of cacophony

  weave distorted images, dream-dancing above the feast


  fleers, seekers, washed-up innocent sinning on the beach

  subdividers and King Canute howling at the wind

  viral loads onboard, invisible invaders grinned

  collective cowardice casts the truth spinning out of reach

Post the Rose

Like a scouting ranger
The cowboy's flower will
Be my secret messenger
To show how much
I cared and do still

I never told you how bad it was
How much I missed you
How I drowned it
How I almost came through
Like you wanted me to

Sluice gates shut and
I blocked my flow
Vault doors closed to
Hide the treasure
Vanity stopped the show

Because of family illness
I blow the dam, I explode the cache
Out everything pours
Gold coins glimmer on the floor
Untamed flood of feeling, reeling

My mother will not disappear!
Like I have for her!
Like I made you do!
I will take it all
And I will feel it too!

There you are in the
Precious pile, the frothing jetsam
Like losing my mom's mind
It was this bad only one time
When I was losing you

After a generation
When my hair is grey
Instead of sandstone
And I am crinkly not handsome
When it is far too late

I'll do it on your birthday
And our anniversary
For how special you were to me
A picture to hold the place
Of my old face

I hope you know that it
Has meant tragedy arose
Now it's in friendship's style
You'll never see my profile
But I'll post that yellow rose

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