On a whim a black lab waited
where other people do.
At a bus stop man created,
he smoked a cig too.
His paws outstretched ready to pounce
onto the shuttle of spluttering fumes.
He'd ran away and this was his last chance
to leave the humans painless; still humming their tunes.
This bus would take him to fields of squirrels
To an old friend he had played poker with
Where the loquacious woodpecker always trills
He'd have to do all this before his joints got stiff
Staying close to strangers legs,
He lifts one paw on.
The sight of his owners, he begs:
Will you please be gone?
I am dying, you cannot see,
you must not see ever.
You'll forget the posh afternoon tea.
Those traipsing, frolicking memories lost forever.
It's easier if you let me step on this bus,
Wave goodbye.
I'm still not sure what that does
but I know you'll always try.
Ears floppy, mouth drooling; sometimes I wish I'd played ball a bit more.
Eyes gloomy, paws aching; those times were never a bore.
Flashes of lightning at dusk
in dark dank distant clouds
heralds the storm brewing.
So far, its too far away to
hear or feel the claps
of thunder rattle the
windows in their frames.
The storm engulfs the sky in spewed splodges
of dark ferment
as it draws ever onward on
the path towards you.
It embezzles your attention, sucks you in, as the flashes rear up,
like a wolf with white teeth snarling, getting ready to attack.
The storm is closer now flashing, banging, barging
its way to fill the sky with foreboding torment, anger and gloom.
Its overhead now, dropping its hail like cluster bombs, banging
on the roof, trying to shatter the windows.
The sky is filled with whip-cracks
and blinding flashes of light
as it builds to a cosmic kaleidoscopic crescendo.
The wind builds to a snarl,
blowing the storm away like a parent
scolding and grabbing at a naughty child.
The storm moves away with fading, spluttering flashes
and murmuring grunts of thunder.
Outside the eerie sunset scrubbed clean by the storm
is tinged bright with shudders of lightning light
and the haunting smell of rain emitted by the grass,
splattered with hail,
white, bright and melting.
SUPERMAN?
“POW!; “SPLATT!” say the speech bubbles
In the Superman cartoon
As our hero zaps the baddie
And zooms off round the moon.
>b>Tick tock goes the clock
As he swishes through the air.
And the hands have scarcelyticked a tock
Before he’s back standing there.
But when exposed to Kryptonite,
He loses his powers again.
Coughing and spluttering, sneezing atishoo,
Weak in the arms of Lois Lane.
With the Kryptonite safely removed,
He sighs and jumps up from the floor.
Then he’s off to save the world again
And POW and SPLATT once more
6th July 2021
Omomatopoeic poetry contest
Sponsor - Emile Pinet
I told that guy in the trilby hat
that when we create something in our mind
and push it out into the universe willing it to manifest,
it will, in some way, manifest,
though maybe not in the way we expected.
It may appear in the small print of creation
perhaps as a footnote or an addendum.
Trilby hat man gawps at me
as if I'd gone raving mad.
I blithely continue:
“if a cowbird comes to nest in your garden
then goats or cattle will visit your cabbage patch.
not now maybe, maybe never,
but the possibility hovers.”
I notice his trilby is trembling now,
he’s backing away from me
spluttering in outraged disbelief.
As I watch him depart, I have a vision:
The trilby catching fire while on his head;
naturally this will not do.
I imagine a rain cloud drenching him
then LO
It rained.
Breeding and for that matter breathing has taken over the spluttering world
Retroviruses conduct symphonies for nostalgic post-apocalyptic mindfulness
Entropic madness gathers its pace as fast as loo roles escape from the shops
Xenophobia implicates the roots of all epic evil as derived from foreign strands
Itinerant chaos does not adhere to manmade boundaries as the clock runs down
To be fair though Julian Assange can surely be blamed as a harbinger of isolation
29th March 2020
i called you hurricane,
and you called me weather girl;
i laughed in your face and you
tore down buildings.
i called you soft and you erupted
into a category five not even i saw coming.
i saw you,
a tornado hardly spinning with its feet barely off the ground,
spluttering around in search of your perfect storm.
i saw you,
feet planted in the ground like a safety net,
like one wrong move would send you hurtling towards the sky.
built from the start like a chain reaction,
i watched you sweep backwards through towns with populations i could count on two hands,
watched you try to build yourself back up in all the destruction.
i watched you, like i knew it was coming.
after all, aren’t i the best at predicting storms?
Sometimes my happiness leaks out of my eyes like poorly done plumbing,
It drips down my face and I can taste it on my tongue when I sit too quietly,
Cheap candy,
Sweetness gone too quickly,
I’m wondering why all my eyelashes are falling out,
I have nothing to make wishes with.
No candles to blow out.
It drips down my face like warm wax,
My happiness,
Cooling into casts of what it used to be,
Pictures of memories I can’t remember.
How funny it is to be stranger to your five year old self.
I remember I was happy back then but I don’t remember much else.
So when my happiness leaves me,
I am not mad,
I’m surprised it was ever there in the first place.
Falling from happiness hurts so much more than not having happiness at all.
Pretending for a moment that you can feel everything.
That the sun is so warm on your skin,
You hear the laughter.
You hear the laughter.
You laugh
You laugh,
but you don’t know the punchline,
You laugh but slowly stop,
Like an engine running out of petrol,
Spluttering.
Coming to the end.
You are an engine with no running parts.
I know
It’s hard to remember,
That nothing lasts.
Even the laughter.
Tremulous soil plays host to fleeing frightened fauna as
cacophonic outpourings shatter my serenity.
Whilst my delicate limbs shake in symphonic sympathy,
spluttering engines of destruction belch caustic black plumes,
burnished blades gouging vicious fissures in Mother's carpet.
Horrified, I bear witness, as immemorial kin
are butchered and unceremoniously hauled away;
their dessicated carcasses destined to line pockets.
Now I stand alone: sole survivor of this massacre.
Left to contemplate my fate, I muse: when will my time come...?
--------------------------------------------------
(14 syllables per line - checked with howmanysyllables.com)
16 September 2017
For the "Personification of Plant" Premiere Contest, sponsored by Kim Rodrigues.
(4th Place)
Any night endless, in countless shop doorways.
Down on their uppers, and satanic. strange places.
Spluttering, sneezing, coughing and wheezing,
In old cardboard boxes, rest weather worn faces
Catnapping for hours, gleans little cold comfort.
It's quicker with liquor, in brown paper bags.
A pawnshop's shopwindow, bears witness to sorrow,
Where all is exchanged, for the price of some fags.
Wearing second hand garments, from salvation counters,
No hope without dope, they suffer in silence.
A world where surviving, regrets to forget.
Downtrodden, despised, more often with violence.
The homeless seek shelter, a bed for the night.
Too few, for too many, for too many, too late.
Indifferent to hardship, they just melt away,
Swallowed up by the night-times, irreversible fate.
5/ 23/ 2017.
It was an experience near to death
With swirling water and mind
Choking and snatching at breath
My eyes and voice unable to find
The pool attendant unconscious of my distress
Innocently my granddaughter looked on unaware
As my limbs thrashed with stress
And I gasped for air
Down I sank to the very tiles
And kicked upwards in fear
Was this to be my funereal style
No way would I choose a watery bier
So grimly I pushed my head back
And fought the water for my life
Spluttering I broke the surface through this knack
To grab the bar with joyous relief.
Never has the world looked to me
So vital and worth so much care
As when I gulped in with lungs free
To drink that blessed air
To drink that blessed air.
Spluttering, Muttering and Stuttering
Mandruka was always a spluttering
Wife was always talking and muttering
Then came Frank who was always fluttering
Golly, Molly was always stuttering
Mandruka’s wife yelled stop that blundering.
Written: Aug. 11, 2015
Theresa Marie W-C
Here on the lonely chair I sit and wait
For the little droplet of nectar that’s slowly forming
Inside the warm womb of the dahlia
The gradual coming down of night and her mystic attendants
I relish with a warm cup of coffee, I sip at
The bliss of being alone, when nobody’s around
Is that a shooting star? Has it gone right past my head?
I ask you, whose long absence I have grown used to
‘Cause light years ago we used to sit together
Little dew drops spluttering upon my head
A night bird screeches past, and in an instant
I find you, once again in my arms, your dead eyes still glaring.
The baby cries
A shuddering, screeching, howling force
that grabs her Mother by the throat,
shaking her like a ragdoll,
coughing, spluttering,
spewing spit and tears
flying from her face
The cries were
every other day at first,
then every day,
now every hour
or less
She knows now,
they won't stop
Until she finally makes it stop,
finally,
the only way she knows how
She crawls to the table,
opens her purse,
takes out her debit card
and scribbles the pin #
with the bloody tears
she's shedding
on the back
of the baby's
tiny hand
This is it,
there's nothing left,
the account's drained
and all she has left
is the knowing,
that they'll be back for more
and the cries will start
again
She empties her heart
of what was left of
her self/respect and dignity,
pulls the cord tighter
and kicks the stool away
with her left foot
Detachment, at last
She screamed and shouted
But i did not nudge.
She hollered and moaned
But again, my door, i did not touch.
I sat comfortable and played inside
For it was warm and homely
But of the other side,
I knew nothing about life there.
But when I heard her being slapped to silence,
Of her cries and screams,
I was well moved.
And out of love and pity, I opened my door.
As i narrowly and painfully came out,
I was blinded by light rays and i felt pains
But the other creatures there shouted.
Feet stamped and hands clapped
'A lad' I heared a white creature spluttering
Again feet stamped and hands clapped
'The third lad' somebody said from afar.
I discovered that I was crying.
Tired and wearied, my mum held me close,
She surveyed my face and touched my nose
I felt love and joy surging through her
Though she will have prefered a lass
'Michael, Michael, Michael,' she called
And went limp with me in her arms
And so Michael i came to be
And that was the last i saw of my sweet mum.
This is no illusion,
Time is never still.
If you were blind before,
What hope can the future bring now?
In this time of loneliness,
There is nothing but segregation.
Nothing more than the existentialist,
What hope can the future bring now?
Now that we stand guarded,
What will the new dawn hold?
If eyes can pierce a beating heart,
What hope can the future bring now?
In this time of bitterness,
Of exceptional cruelty and hate.
Could not the wise ones say,
What hope can the future bring now?
For scholar and learned man alike,
Can spout truths, facts and figures.
But amidst the pomp and spluttering,
What hope can the future bring now?
Rise then and be heard wistful,
No one has our stance and holding.
We are comfort in a sick world,
We are today, tomorrows little dream
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