They steam,
They glare,
They fume and frown,
My ideas snarl and knot.
They slouch,
Resentful to be asked.
They stare and duel,
And pout.
Then suddenly -
A random thing
Flies through the traffic jam,
A buzz of green cicada wings -
The tune splats guts
Across my screen.
The indents and lines upon the Earth
From snow melting, has written its fluid song of rebirth.
The sky, cold blue, wars with the sharp heating sun.
This moment of exclamation says Springtime's begun
Splats of snow lie beneath cliff's high rook.
They splay like asterisks on the pages of a book.
A hiker on foot notes the changes in spring airs,
While the snow under the cliff sheds the last of its tears.
Feeling sluggish, shelled.
Lithely lingering in the dust and grime.
Palette grey and dull, devoid of crisp bright hues,
Brushes all furry, frayed, blunt, incapable of fine detail.
Apathy and complacency palls to gloom and doom in my room.
Inactivity and being non-committal, chokes the creative urge, to be stillborn.
But then, words and poetry flood into the brain during sleepless nights.
There's no stopping it.
Its spell, dispels the squashes, and quells the squishes to splats.
Why does my new girlfriend always wear a cowboy hat
She lives in the big city in a high rise council flat
I gazed up at the window of her flat up in the sky
And when I did a bloody pigeon did one in my eye
So as I walked away I’m wiping poop to clear my sight
But droppings kept on plopping on my shoulders left and right
All I could do was duck and dive and try to dodge the splats
I looked around and everyone was wearing cowboy hats
On the top of my delicious spaghetti
Always covered with cheese
I miraculously lose my poor meatball
When someone uninvited sneezes
It rolls of a marble table
And splats onto the floor
Then my poor meatball
Heads right out the door!
It rolled in a grassy garden
And right under a bush
Now my poor meatball
Was nothing but a mush
The mush was still very tasty
As tasty as can be
Then early next summer,
It grew into a wooden tree
The wooden tree was covered
With the prettiest moss
It grew the most lovely meatballs
In fantastic tomato sauce
So if you like delicious spaghetti
Always covered in cheese
Hold onto your poor meatball
And make sure you never sneeze!
The plumbing here is atrocious
With clattering so ferocious
It spits and splats, like angry cats
And can also; be quite precocious
Just a tiddle, as with its handle i fiddle
Gazing into its innards, only a dribble!
I peer so intent, on my knees in a dent!
As concrete makes; pain so complete.
Wow, I lurch without perch and numb feet
In I draw breath, then rattle smash bash
A torrent’s comes flash' a watery lash!
In sodden clothes, I must beat a retreat.
©Joe Maverick 20-11-2022
It's a flat summer day
the sun pushes down hard
so it squeezes the color and
the juice out of everything
Her body lies between me
and the small attic window
It's hard to breathe in here
between the heat of the roof and
the warm dark curve of her side
she is turned toward the window
"Lie still," she says. "Go to sleep."
Tonight it will rain
When the window is dark
sharp jagged lightning will flash
outside the screen
where mosquitoes come and go
Loud claps of thunder will crack open
the sky like an eggshell
I might be able to see through
into morning!
Big fat splats start
to pat on the roof
gradually increasing
comforting in their irregular melody
Thunder gone
lightning gone
the roof is slowly
stretching and cooling
In dark rock-cleft with guano splats,
There dangle many thousand bats.
A lowly worm evolves therein
And in bat flesh begins thriving.
Now man arrives for bats to eat,
For hungry poor, some tasty meat.
And so our worm transfers to man,
Thus species barrier now it span.
For little worm this is good news,
As further afield then it moves.
Now clever worm it gets a ride
When in long-haul man it does hide
To depart from the Orient
And widely spread in Occident,
Then many folk start feeling ill,
As lowly worm begins to kill.
Perhaps a lesson man now learn.
Don’t underestimate that worm,
For sometimes it will disappear
To change its guise and reappear.
Jazz piano scale skip quick notes implore me
Siphon symphony verve blurred by saxophone sass
Floated lilly pad leap frog spring legged surety
Splats on brass buttoned soldiers dedicated amass
Bulbous glass swirl burgundy grape stem bitter
Absorbs oak barrel sentiment, forested persuasion
Ace praise expires, a swiftly swallowed splinter
Comical dive antics of cork fragmenting abrasion
Dissolving Elizabeth, shabbily written character
Simmered limply submissive, a nouveau improvisation
Vat of pursuit poured by Stu picks a passenger
Chords hover mahogany piano cascade syncopation
Composition three minute summit misconstrue
Violins textured crescendo vibrates bow tight strings
Apron strewn, Libby leaves her rolling pin askew
Butter heart hails harmony a true companion brings
22nd January
Stu calls me Jasmine
The glimmering magic of my watercolor painting
a reflection of my mystical ways.
Moonlight witch’s fat black cat next to jack-o-lantern gleans laughter from me.
I drip watered down paint onto the page with giant splats and splashes.
Possible escapades of mummy and Dracula are expressed by my imagination.
I implement these unsought suggestions, and my art begins to dance.
A shimmery pretty Halloween scene complete with bats, gravestones and rain.
One of my favorite all time paintings.
I thank my muse, but she gone, probably trick-or-treating.
I hope she has worn her mask.
Eccentric? Ha! I throw off my goat-hat and laugh.
My mother adds something, but I do not hear.
I am busy drawing another cartoon to paint.
The fifty canvases on her living room walls do not deter me.
You are different than others, she cautions me.
She has called me names trying to slow me down.
I laugh at them, catching them in my teeth,
slinging them around the room
Firing them onto my canvases with splats.
I am enjoying every aspect of my life.
No one tells me what to do any more including my mother.
Her habit of trying to guilt me into being normal has not worked.
I am sixty years old now, so why is she still trying?
I put on my knee pads, and strap on my roller blades.
I’ll be back, I tell her in my Terminator voice, the long deep one.
She does not recognize it. That’s okay. We have dementia now.
We may not even know each other upon my return
If I find my way back.
Plunk plick plat splat
The drip of faucet compels me to
Throw down a few notes
Words I had not thought of six seconds before
Cardinals and sparrows
Twittering and chittering
I listen hard, capturing nothing
Yet inspired by everything.
My subconscious grabs these sounds
Work on them as I slumber
Astral travel my go-to-place
As my muse sings what she finds funny
We wake up suddenly
A helicopter of a mosquito
Dive bombs me
Urging me to write of my killing ways
I pick up a pen
Dashing down an inky path
in a notebook full of everything
and nothing, twisting me with crazy ideas
Shiny thoughts, dark ideas,
Whimsical dragons, laughing at my silliness
Leading me down paths with their plunks plicks plats and splats
May showers come and go, not loitering,
not lolling about long, to drench and drown
the seedlings you planted, hoping for rain.
Hand watering hydrates, but not like rain;
It's the slow steady sprinkling that matters,
which no hose spray, can ever duplicate.
The pitter patter of raindrops in May
caresses the leaves with moist love kisses,
leaving droplets sprinkled on dampened leaves,
to soak in, like perfume droplets on skin.
The soil below embraces the rain spots
falling gently in splits and splats in May,
drawing the water below to the roots,
to be absorbed, nourishing the dry plants.
The May rain's gentle and gossamer veil
drops like silken shroud on the garden bed
A loving sustaining warm covering.
A moist blanket to tuck the seedlings in.
Showers in May are Bliss!
We're supposed to get rain,
So where did it go.
Instead of the rain,
We've got big flakes of snow.
Oh it's post card pretty;
Okay here's the thing,
We're supposed to have rain,
Because now it's Spring.
It's slippery and slushy,
And splatters and splats,
As cars rushing by,
Slide this way and that.
The flakes are now smaller,
And blowing sideways.
So where is the rain,
They said we'd have today?
It's a universal soup for two --
The medium for all known life.
A magic, elemental, H2O stew.
In fat storm-puffs of water rife.
Breathing in and over the world:
In a rare, thirsty-desert deluge;
On peaks of snow, wind-whirled;
Beneath the streets it rises, huge.
Where you live, it rains and smells.
That Ozone-fresh feels the best....
Listen to trillions of droplet-knells,
A sizzling, misty downpour fest.
Drooping drips of splats and sound.
The pitter-patter of sidewalk echoes,
Extending from rain-soaked ground.
A poet paints water-of-life frescoes....
August 11, 2016
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