I love my diet, rich in protein,
Of snakes, squirrels, doves, and rabbits most lean.
I tell you this, and I am on the square,
Furry mammals delight beyond compare.
The swiftest, sleekest raptor in the sky,
I soar wide, circling with the sharpest eye.
As feathered death I swooped upon my prey,
But the rat found a hole and got away.
As Taloned Fate I still search and survey,
For careless critters to feast on today.
Snipe and Curlew are skating on the mist
they sing of the water
that sky-water which sways to their songs.
Flat is this land with no coastal margins,
here I am the peak of a mountain
my coated form
darkly winged with strange desires,
an ardor compelled to rain down
upon these wandering streams,
to babble and pour in the Wash is my pleasure.
Osprey skim between the worlds
as they plow the brume and drizzle.
Silver trout dangle in the air
hooked by the wringing and the wet,
the taloned and the dunking beak.
You gandering Grebs where are you gone?
O yes, you are swimming a soaking river
betwixt the two poles of this sodden world,
you wade and paddle, dip with a breezy ease -
with dauntless sweeps you divide the oceans.
Stunned I stare from a rocky shore
As eagle architects swoop and soar.
Avian aerobats stretch my mind.
Carving arcs in cerulean air
Building an aerial cathedral
Framing clear high walls across the sky
With headlong three-sixties upside down
Form gothic spandrels toward the ground
Flickering feathers turned them around
Racing sunward as a fleur de lis
In a uniting swirl upward bound,
Forming a pole for staffing a cross
Construction stopped at the sight of fish.
As if their cathedral struck the sea
Eagles spun in tsunamic circles
Diving for salmon they taloned tight
Flying swiftly off, soon beyond sight.
I shrugged, amazed by what raptors do.
Jet jockeys may but sigh and admire
Eagles flight gift with dreamy desire.
With Careful Spoons
Your perfume essence speaks of lazy afternoons under sage trees.
You kissed my bent neck with a pointed snake of sweet saliva eyes.
Now we are twisting inside my slow tilted bedroom with creep shoes.
Your gray short skirt shows slender legs flashing firm nylon divots.
Panties white and tight beckon my touch amidst the soft furniture.
Lips gesticulating now with puckered tentacles made of sugared spit.
Taloned fingers with pink polished probings find the noble charge.
Music-playing minestrone tasters come to dance with careful spoons.
Why have you lead me into this frothing dream web of lilac spume?
We kiss now with mind-rushing lip lashings glued to the secret night.
We delve now with our bending statuary into the new morning light.
When first the flame, a wayward glance
Is met in kind, as if by chance
A timer starts, till fervor tame
A wayward glance, when first the flame
The path to love, a thorny briar
How oft it ends an ashen pyre
Infatuation’s taloned dove
A thorny briar, the path to love
As fever quells, two captives smile
When both acquitted passion’s trial
Now free to thrive where reason dwells
Two captives smile as fever quells
The tempered heart, love’s cooling balm
A mooring true as tempests calm
Devotion blooms with frenzy’s part
Love’s cooling balm, the tempered heart
12 Jun 2020 - Swap Quatrain
eagles
winged predators
surveying their domain
pinnacle of taloned birds
raptors
(Cinquain)
02/12/2020
The mountains crumble under the mist
Loss with taloned finger tips hangs
from the creviced wrinkled faces of the lost
Mouths are bent
in unshown emotion
Loneliness stretches over each eye
holding tear at bay
all the words i never used
and those i never say
buried in the grave of yesterday
Gloaming is wont to quell
the ginger smoke,
expunge the crimson flames
that surround the mill.
Lilac shadows encroach
to cloak the hull's mossy patina.
Autumn's wild rooster,
struts its brash plumage
among fallen shingles and rotted planks
until a black hawk soars,
eclipsing feral zinnias' embers
just as calliope chimes
of a fallen carousel
disappear in taloned pine air.
5/22/18
We wander all, in feral dreams
of jagged thoughts and cryptic yearns;
a labyrinth of mirrored turns.
Along a ridge of moon stitched seams,
lie melancholic tapestries,
unfolded in an abstract frieze.
Subconscious angst weaves heart loomed themes
from pain sewn deep, through puerile eyes,
till daybreak’s alabaster guise.
As savage beasts from darkened streams,
complicit servants of the id,
form insights purged at slumber’s bid.
Claw toward light as urging deems;
these taloned gasps of hidden truth,
burst from the depths of shuttered youth.
We wander all, in feral dreams
along a ridge of moon stitched seams.
Subconscious angst weaves heart loomed themes,
as savage beasts from darkened streams,
claw toward light as urging deems.
19 Nov 2019
Frantically, I walk on a lane of vile secrets,
past glared dazes from hooded eyes
marking me as obsession’s target where a quest
to nail me taunts my fear : with endless
shrieks echoing , “ I will follow you, “ … a voice
raspy as brittle tones imposes its eerie
presence. And I quiver in coiled form,
Helpless, while the breath of uncertainty
wipes the restful assurance of most nights:
In a click of time, life smells danger
knowing not if those taloned hands would
clutch me in the darkness or light.
All at once, I watch myself drenched
In the cloud of foreboding , torturing
my lucid hours now haunted by one
incensed predator. Until I confront this
ghastly shadow laden with karmic
sins, wolves of yesterday assaulting my every
breath's intake…that I come face to face
with this damned nemesis in guileful pursuit
and the nemesis which haunts my spirit …is me.
Written for Silent One: STALKER 11/13/2017
What would you do then pretty lady
Should my passion turn to love
And when the eagle in my heart
Becomes the gentle dove
Do you cage the taloned beast
Before it tears the flesh
Or entwine the white dove
To sing within your breast?
Can you see the heaven
That lives above this hell
And will you lift the soul in me
To where it longs to dwell
written 2017.09.21
I've taken long journeys in dark places
Where the Devil dare not tread
I've shaken hands warmly
With the taloned hand of Death
I've wisely weathered ticking Years
Placed before me by Father Time
I've cautiously befriended who I am
So I can recognize all my Pain
I'm the Vessel of all that isn't
And all that shouldn't be
I've realized the Ability in my
Strength Integrity and Determination
I've become wizened Veteren of Travel
In places the Devil dare not tread
In panic’s metered dirge,
A sentinel of hope;
Amid a parlous surge,
One swirling lumened rope.
Vexed vessels churn and gaze,
In rabid waves of froth,
For safety’s tethered rays,
Through nature’s taloned swath.
One hopes that through the rage,
Lost souls will see the light;
Veer toward that flickered sage
…Escape Poseidon’s smite.
**09 Apr 2016**
Robin of the Hoodie
Alas, resides in Sherwood Forest,
one Robin of the Hoodie. He’s lost
amid the greenery, weeping
as sunset nears for underneath
the Hood he hides his deep
and lonely fears. The Hoodie
no protection here amid the
bug filled darkness, nor can
it quell the eerie sounds of
hoodless creature calls,
his secret handshake useless
among the clawed and taloned.
He drifts to sleep with visions
of “Air Jordans” that can fly,
carry him to safety, the
streetlit yellow streaks
of alleyways and thoroughfares
the Hoodie creatures know.
Summoning his courage
he storms the distant hut
enters into murky stink,
old wooden planks,
and curses those who left him
on his own, abandoned him
to Hoodie misery.
Fools who took
a city kid out camping,
fed him beans and franks
and stories until
“HE HAD TO GO”.
2/16/2016
submitted to – A twisted poem about Robin Hood – Poetry Contest
sponsor – C. T.
POLITICS
Propriety demands - we do not speak
Of others, either strong – or weak
Lest in the foray of the quest
Insiders, fall from grace, of safety’s nest
Take residence alongside taloned beast
Intent on making you the winner’s feast
Cloned puppets denying there are strings
Surrendering their truth to cell phone rings.
John G. Lawless
8/26/2014
for Judy Konos
How’s Your Acrostic? contest
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