"It's RUBY TUESDAY night" declared Charlie.
Why do yer call it that when it's ruby murray for curry?" retorts Steve.
"It's coz we 'ave it on Tuesdays that's why mate" replies Charlie.
Steve shakes his head "But Charlie, we do 'ave it on Saturday nights too."
Charlie laughs."Last one your ANGIE cooked, my guts felt like WILD HORSES were stampeding inside and lets say it wasn't quiet the TUMBLIN' DICE coming out the other end either."
"Too much info there Charlie boy and if she hears yer say that you'll get more than a clip round the ear, bunch of fives more like. You still helping me decorate Jades bedroom this weekend? She wants us to PAINT IT BLACK" asks Steve.
"Black? ain't that gonna be dark and make it feel smaller?" Charlie asks.
Steve sighs "Yeah, probably, it's her space so she can have it. Not my choice but YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT even in yer own house when yer surrounded by HONKY TONK WOMEN. Anyway, gotta get this splinter out that's UNDER MY THUMB from sanding down the skirting. Sort that, grab a beer and play THE ROLLING STONES cd the Mrs got for me birthday. See ya later mate".
in the corner
of a blanched bungalow
sits a self-portrait:
loose bantu knots
the color of volcanic ash
her living nightmare
it was so much-
stampeding rain
wild winds
the icon of tropical thunder
with summer lightning
but the spite of ash
threatened the fete
smashed the sun
morning had broken
an island smeared
like God had face-palmed us
judgment for another place
another people
resting on your gables
the deadweight of ash
crashing queenie's
garden party
The Lord is come.
handling her Scriptures
squeezing the Holy Spirit
out of print
was she wholly confessed,
to be due robes of white
satin?
the sun reawakened,
ash washed away, passes
through her window
where she sits
cornered
The river is not wide
but it is violent,
it funnels down from the mountains
like a running horse.
You can park your car
at 'Overlook' landing
to watch the river stampeding.
If you're a local
you know that
there's white water ahead
before it leaps over
'Baker's Falls."
Beyond that cataract
your parked car
forgets how to chase down roads,
you have to reset the GPS
urge it to backup,
it's like it understands
that only the river
knows where it's going
from here.
PARDONING HELL
(Red Monday Justified)
It’s one thing forgiving those who have erred.
Criminal and criminals a free herd:-
it's another to grant then clemency;
Their injustice stampeding you and me:
Hell, what a term this is going to be:-
The high moors slant giddily over gritstone edges
where torrents overflow gallons of sky.
Grouse are blown sideways
by a bone-twisting gale.
The land is harried by fishtailing winds,
a sparse tufted earth blown beyond its roots.
In the valley, cats crouch; dogs snap the air
their barks as full as storm-drains.
Torrid echo’s outrun stampeding frights.
In the village pub,
locals move away from the smoke grimed
rattling windows,
gather around a coal fire in the taproom,
speak about past storms, compare and contrast.
Street sparrows survive
by doing what they always do,
though nobody knows how, what or where.
October gallops in as stolid as a gray mare,
a blunt wind snorts furiously through autumnal trees.
Foliage rattles, but does not fall, it clings still
to green stems.
Appalachian backwoods have tough roots,
shod as they are into an earth salted
with a dark gritty ore.
Bears are foraging and reaping,
their black silky pelts clamber over gusting winds
to reach the furthest fruits
before first snows overburden stoic pines.
Today the sky is unharnessed
and racing at full tilt
It whips my raw lips like a wet mane,
it rears up to stamp down upon its own
animated onslaught.
I adjust my rucksack and reshoulder a shotgun
grin, eyes watering
caught under the stampeding gale,
buffeted now by its muscular flanks.
I need to bridle this striding wind,
to halter its headlong charge,
or better yet just surrender -
turn my back on it,
let it ride me
as we leap down from the hilltops
whooping it up like cowboys.
Super Souper 9-16-24
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Super Souper
Super Soupers wrangle rhymes
into verses quite sublime
Taming wild-eyed metaphors
into iambic strophes galore
Lassoing doggy ironies
with clever lines, entendre ease
Galloping alliterations
corralled by personifications
Silencing cacophony
with gentle mooing euphony
Bucking wild imagery
herded into symmetry
Stampeding loco thin illusions
bulldogged into chutes of allusions
Bad hoss herds of assonance
saddled for a dressage dance
Bucking broncos hyperbole
Juxtaposed by analogy
Anaphoras on loco weed
settle into quatrain reads
Super Soupers let words rip
in rodeos of craftmanship.
A long night folds inwards.
Fast breathless dreams run together,
old stories retold
absent of beginning's or endings.
Between them
lucid periods, when the mind
reviews many fleeting scenes
seeking reasons or even
a prophetic forecast
to hang tomorrow upon.
The house creaks
as if he were walking the floor,
but deep within a suffocating bed
he is chained to tumbling thoughts,
while a hard riding night
ties him down upon
a stampeding rocking horse.
Torrents overflow a rocking sky.
The high moors slant giddily over gritstone edges
dark are the claws of calamity.
Small birds are blown sideways into scant
bone-twisted trees, crooked branches spear each other.
The land is harried by low and high fishtailing winds,
the tufted earth blown beyond its roots.
In the valley, village cats crouch; dogs snap the air
their mouths as full as storm-drains.
A banshee wails in our hearts
while we listen to its silent screams.
We are nothing but torrid echo’s run through
by stampeding feather-light frights,
guttering lights that seek a less bruising way
to escape grip of this blustering day.
Off was triggered a rebellion
And it was by a Battalion:
Troopers stampeding like stallion -
More than lost was Hundred Million;
Someone checked it: A Half Billion!
Some day might notch up, A trillion.
The contents of art Bank’s Bullion,
Each soldier’s stirred mind cast-iron
Of his own Devil – A scion…
I guessed what they’d stirred up-Trouble,
Whirlwind from sown wind reaped double!
Press I soldiers be promptly paid
And on Pay-Day nothing else said:
Money not paid shooting skills fade
Dues not settled like Razor Blade.
You don’t one turn An Avenfer;
He’ll be worse than A Scavenger.
"The Ghosts of All Those Lost Tomorrows"
voiceless Munch seen laughing
when all the ghosts of those lost tomorrows
come stampeding into dreams
like a forewarning, carrying the colours
of their ever changing empathy
jokes
seen through
kaleidoscopes
of dead others
(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)
Some part of him tore its robes,
some other part stitched them
together.
Don't say he is awkwardly made
he had to get dressed in the dark.
He eats boneless words, stays inside himself
painting eyes on closed shells.
It is another torrential morning
that he must plunged through.
The world is stampeding over him
and he trembles under its heavy hooves.
Today or tomorrow
his head will crack open,
a pustule of self-hatred erupt,
and a slavering beast will emerge
to gun down what he cannot love.
I invite all human kind
to shun Trumpeting Towers
because they are irrelevant
to all MeWe things therapeutic
And because
my depressing blues songs
and green signs
tell
and retell
ultra-nonviolet me
we don't feed narcissistic
angry red
rabidly stampeding
ballistic elephants
Cuz it's not healthy
nor resiliently wealthy,
compassionately unwise.
Familiar storm - stampeding, impeding,
drawing in colder days, lighting up
monotone skies, winterizing holiday rise.
Thoughts of yesteryear - their existence
unclear, relegating nonsensical notions,
subjugating my mind - celebrating life.
12/18/2021
Bite Size Poem #30
Sponsor: Line Gauthier
Dancing in the Void
Dancing in the void
Sanctuary delighting in the sparks
Welding contemplation to an ever exploding new creation
Flash dancing in transient exploding flickers
Stampeding through transient ethers
An arabesque leaping from opaque to lucid
Elegant grace unclothed in transparent cabrioles
Of eloquent staggering bliss in currents
Flowing visceral electricity
A revelry revealed in electric leaping caprioles
Charged with revelation
In flaring truth often viewed with eyes half closed
Illuminated luminosity embraced
On a stage where stoic suspended anticipation
Finally emerges to be energized -
Artistic synchronicity -
Where leaping quandaries, charged dark enquiries
And ascending aspirations for moments of beauty
Pirouette in soaring surges
Dancing in the void of veracity uplifted.
8-10-21
Contest: The Void
Sponsor: Unseeking Seeker
Related Poems