Eric Patrick Clapton
failed at being a sea captain
great guitarist who started many bands
and earned the sobriquet Slow Hand
Willie Howard Mays
set the baseball world ablaze
for many an NL MVP he did bid
and earned the sobriquet Say Hey Kid
Snared for an errant tweet
Never thought to be discreet
Escorted by a kick to the seat
Hope fell to grieve at his feet
Kremlin brass-knuckle browbeat
~ Carves innocence into mincemeat
There is a legend of a cowboy down in Texas
To whom they give the sobriquet of Pecos Bill.
It's said he rooted and he tooted
As across the plains he scooted,
Stetsoned, jeaned, bowlegged, and booted,
Pursuing cows and wooing gals
As was his skill.
The story goes one day while Bill was out romancing,
A cyclone came and rudely whisked the gal away.
He hopped atop the thing to ride it,
Quickly lassoed and hogtied it,
Then none the worse for wear and tear and rough foreplay,
Out stepped the gal,
And Pecos Bill had saved the day.
Now, legends often tend to get a bit inflated,
And this one here is no exception to the rule.
Some say it's too exaggerated,
I say it's well imaginated.
Like alimony oilmen often pay their exes,
Things are always so much bigger down in Texas.
Of course, it's hogwash, rubbish, bunk,
And yet how often have I thunk
That the tale of Pecos Bill is kinda cool.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree…
—Joyce Kilmer
LOOSE LEAFS
In the dusting of the Springtime,
blush petals fall - sobriquet-youth.
Scented thoughts of yesterday, rhyme
elementary, with loose leafs.*
Poems Sweet Honesty, presume.
Honeysuckle lines with hair pulls.
The binder, neat, with florid bloom.
Exaltation of the classics.
It’s only in looking behind,
observation of curvy tree,
wholly beautifully designed -
the step by step instruction wings.
With irregular ruler edge,
falls sweetest words along the ledge.
Long time ago, a pup was born
Red pup grew, eating lots of corn.
Pup grew big and hid
Bigger than Hagrid
His was fame, mine a flame that horn!
What do I call that young coquette?
My shadow self; my silhouette.
Those clothes, that hair, a cigarette.
The joie de vivre; the vain regret.
What sort of pithy epithet
will she recall, lest I forget?
Perhaps, instead a sobriquet
for who I was back in the day.
But what would she wish to portray?
Somewhat naive, a bit risqué?
A wounded child or power play?
“All that and more!” is what she’d say.
That girl who played a victim game
(though she would make the counter-claim).
A femme fatale; a wild flame.
A spirit not a soul could tame.
Both full of pride and full of shame,
all contradiction just the same.
It all feels now as but a dream,
that martyr of her own regime.
A fog of war; a distant scream.
An echo of one’s disesteem.
A soldier who would self-redeem
and break her shackles at the seam.
Now when she comes to mind I smile,
recalling each and every mile
we marched and fought in rank and file.
We failed, we wailed, we shed the guile
to wake and heal and reconcile
a misspent youth and life worthwhile.
*****************************
This Is Who I Am
My first name is Belle, that’s a sobriquet *
My feelings are being anon is best.
Empathetic, helpful, Inquisitive
Keen on humour, poetry and music.
From a band of sisters, there's five in all
Imagine bedlam when we were all small.
Love my family, neighbours and my friends
And know I will do to the very end.
Pet hates are cruelty, terrors of war
People being homeless, hungry and poor.
Have fear of losing my precious eyesight
Unable to see, to read or to write.
I'd like to see the world share perfect peace
That no one went without something to eat.
I wish every child who arrives on earth
Love, joy, happiness and only kind words.
I live in England, in the West Midlands
My last name’s Bellevue on PoetrySoup.*
13th July 2021
***
This is who I am Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: L Milton Hankins
* Belle Bellevue is my user name on PoetrySoup only. *
*******
"Who am I?
Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask,
but on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of my dramatis persona.
Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran,
cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate.
This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished.
However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
LOL,.. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you, and you may call me V."
.. from the movie, V For Vendetta
Henry, you tried and tried and tried —
turkey legs and beer kegs of great import*
Did they get between you and the ladies,
many of those waiting...
You got your way,
but your seeds unharvested
after 1603.
How fair these children of a greedy king —
Edward, Mary and Elizabeth.
Edward VI, king at nine,
lives to be fifteen —
a child the whole time.
Lady Jane Grey, not one of Henry’s kids
would be royally screwed
after nine days,
Mary grabbed the crown, as was her due.
Queen Mary I, like her dad, caused a beheading,
Grey would wish she hadn’t stepped on her toes.
Sobriquet, quite sobering, of Bloody Mary,
vilified in Foxe’s Actes and Monuments.
Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, after her sister dies
in 1558. Video et taceo — she sees but says nothing.
Perhaps better to keep your trap shut in the family vault
or die trying to try and try and try to one’s detriment.
11/2/2020
*concern
Her ironclad pride protects her glass heart.
She lights up every world but her own.
She fights her mind, body, and soul alone.
Biting her tongue is her usual art.
She has become a slave to her grave past.
Faded echos shout at her every day.
Failure is what they call her sobriquet.
They taunt her by claiming she won't last.
Her dusted memories now are dingy flames.
They slowly rot her away to the core.
Setting her old self to muddy vapor.
Using her feeble remains in their games.
~
8/13/2020
Contest: Be Inspired
Sponsor: Regina McIntosh
Stacy Applebean, every teacher's pet
Without a doubt, straight A's she'd always get
Hated and unpopular
Her yearbook summarized her
'Rotten Apple,' her lasting sobriquet
At Last
09/08/2018
Old thoughts in my mind
Found it hard to be kind
Undeserving, unnerving
Unwilling to unwind
So positivity blind,
To myself unkind
Defeatist, hedonist
True pleasure find
Searching for moderation
Full of resignation
Obsessive, compulsive
Unsure of destination
Questioning my commitment
Thought I’d be committed
Irrational, delusional
Suicide attempt committed
Sanity a soul search
Don’t snuff out my torch
Hopeful, loathful
Alone in the lurch
Reaching down deep
Ruminating can’t sleep
Deception, reflection
Decide to take the leap
Hard to ask for help
Though willing in self
Castigated, Motivated
Bereft of my health
Detox, rehab the help I need
Drugs, my mind and body plead
Addiction, affliction
A hunger, greed a need I feed
Clean of mind and thought
New thinking I’m taught
Sobriquet, Sobriety
Balance in life sought
Do it for self
For no one else
Dedicate, unmedicate
True wealth in health
Physical, mental, health balance
Self love forgiveness, all encompass
Spiritual, physical
True to self at last
If I may, to my fellow would-be poets,
Hereon pose an imperative query
(Yet mostly destitute of the greatest urgency),
Then I who, in the gross majority of my inditings hereon,
Am of quite a Shakespearean and Miltonian bent:
Yet in the years succeeding the terminus of my schooling,
During the everlasting course thereof, I learned many a thing
Indeed an immense preponderancy of such,
And among these congeries of learning, there can be accounted
Even a myriad of the manifold precepts of poetry
And the fiats and decrees, commandments and
Ordinances governing it;
Yet for all of the sufficiency and yet preponderance of
Poetic enlightenment and enrichment, I recall nary a thing
Thereof!
It may be inborn, inherent,
Ingrained, innate...
But do I, who is of a Shakespearean ilk,
To my fellow aspiring poets, writers, and poet-writers ask:
Is this, or aught of my other poems, in anything
Remotely likened to the metrical sort that he and Milton were
Wont to use?
And an it be so,
Beteem me to learn its name,
And an so, is't truly termed by that sobriquet
Known as "iambic pentameter"?
Is it in this that I write?
Are all my poesies thus enwritten?
Did you see the sunset past day
Across the sky colors did play
When saffron and purple then mixed
Many streaks of beauty affixed
To this rim of earth of our stay
Did you see the sunset past day
Lasting moments of time’s decay
Some responsibilities gone
To be renewed at break of dawn
Beauty is my God’s sobriquet
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