The Beauty Of Baseball Poetry Contest
Matt Caliri
A supposedly wide-open, empty street
A rubber ball, a plastic bat, and a real game.
Kids playing to the baseball beat
The diamond asphalt is just the same.
Lines are drawn, and teams are picked.
The pickup games are for bragging rights
Where emotions are high, and egos are nicked.
Some kids haven't reached their grown heights.
The bigger ones hit the longer ball
The little tots hit short liners that hit parked cars.
Homers hit homers over the wall
A neighbor’s house is seeing stars.
Foul balls find a garden bed
Where a stampede of kids thrashes the roses.
A homeowner is cussing and seeing red.
Today's game comes to an end and forecloses.
Tomorrow’s stars have a dream
To play on the big stage.
Where it all started with the pickup teams
On the streets and to the homeowner’s rage.
Baseball is America’s pastime.
Hot dogs, sunflower seeds, and lemonade fill the plate.
There is a passion and a youthful chime
And these kids arrived early and don’t want to be late.
Void of silent echoes begin to listen
As obsidian stillness refuses to glisten.
A touch of unknown gentleness stirs the soul
Completely known, and yet its presence is whole.
The ego tries to suppress this magnificent event,
Claiming to survive with malicious intent.
Imminent calm touches the forbidden fear.
Whispering its true peace to the ego for it to hear.
The heart senses the conflict of this ongoing torment.
It feels the despair as the ego thrashes in pain; it foments.
The heart touches this conflict with the joy of Love.
Gentle Silence makes the ego aware, to let go of the dove.
The ego realizes that the belief it holds must dissolve.
For all that is human, must embrace anew to ascend and evolve.
Bizarre Blighty bonfire at the Gabbatoir
Starc like Slash just thrashes his guitar
The south paw so far the star and Tsar
Our bete noir ..to the Ashes lark au revoir
Beat the drum softly, and beat it with heart,
Lay down a rhythm that rises from soul;
Small though indeed is the size of our part,
That which it is, we can still play in full.
Loud are the clashes that crash from the street,
Ominous thunder that thrashes from storm;
Myriad pacing of multitude feet,
Let still not chaos be your inner form.
What is the all but the sum of the small?
Who knows what corner shall matter the most?
Stand for a moment before you shall fall,
Honored the watchman that stands at his post.
Beat the drum softly, your rhythm shall stay
Part of the universe winding its way.
You leave the safety
of your front gate
and enter into fear.
The early morning quiet
magnifies your every movement
into a noise - footsteps,
breath, the sound
of arms scraping
against a coat.
You don't want
to be heard.
There is nothing
to hold onto
in this ocean of streets,
houses and motorcars.
The world is bottomless
and beneath your feet
there is terror.
You are now
too far out.
You try and hold
your breath
as you begin
to feel the panic grip.
The mind thrashes
in a pointless effort
to surface but you
are too deep.
A scream gets stuck
in your throat.
Somehow you survive,
get washed up
feeling wrung out
and alone
on the shores
of yourself.
Beached between
guilt and shame,
you hide
in that familiar place
you keep coming back to,
time and time again.
Crack! I lay, beneath me creaking
Hath it taken from me? What to give?
Mayhaps yesternight another seeking
For not many there is to live
It approaches, shaking, floors creaking
To thee I will never forgive
The black, slender arms reach
It thrashes! THRASHES, thrash–
Follicles, it pulls, off me, I screech
With many a fang, I faintly see a gnash
Holding me, gripping such as a leech
Of my being, will you bash?
Desires faintly protruded, of a glare
I wanted to feel an embrace so warm
Instead, I long, gasping for air
Of my strangled state, you aware of enorm
Thirsted for love, endearment not there
Just us, our state one described deform
Despite conditions, not a sound shall hang
As I know we are bound to meet again
Bound, bound beneath thee embrace and fang
Thy body, slim and slime, gets off now then
You’ll return, but you go with a bang
As I am left to wonder when
Beneath the inscrutable sky, blinded by divided eternities,
We are islands of yearning, adrift in fate,
Each bearing a mysterious longing, a desert within the chest,
And with every heartbeat, my sorrow robustly grows.
Fate, the ancient dramatist who in astral maps has decreed
That we be star-crossed lovers, struck by the curse of the falling star.
Painfully sweet is our allotment, a share of shadow and nectar,
Tasting fleetingly, in profound flight, from the sweetness of ephemeral intimacy.
This is the light we endeavor to clasp tightly,
Like Odysseus, shipwrecked in an epic of froth,
Clinging to the beam that thrashes amongst the violent and caustic waves.
You remained locked in a loveless alliance, you've watched too long.
Belatedly, we discovered each other, drawn by a sublime magnet,
Which seemed, in its ephemeral moment, too intense to be contained.
And thus, nature staged its wild banquet,
A cruel show, unintelligible to hearts, stealing away our happiness.
songster brown thrasher
lands in garden, thrashes mulch...
stink beetle succumbs
Georgia State Bird
Tough, aggressive and has a large range of different songs
1songster brown thrasher 5
2lands in garden, thrashes mulch... 7
3stink beetle succumbs 5
SyllableCounter.net
Mother nature’s trees shudder in the breeze,
Clothed in ashened sky,bearing angry eye.
The winds conversation with birds to flock,
Branches of two trees interlock.
Angry eye is sporting black,
The fight for supremacy notoriously back.
Rabbits and squirrels retreat with their fear,
As an audience of trees lean as they peer.
Returning bird to referee,
The elderly tree resumes paying his fee.
His younger capture boasting minus concern,
As he thrashes with heavy twist and turn.
Wind is bullying close behind,
The elderly tree disadvantaged,he finds.
He creaks and groans,bleeding his sap,
Gentleman of the forest lye dead in rivers lap.
Succeeding opponent standing proud,
As a silent applause was never so loud.
Wisdom now is all that remains,
As the woodcutter starts to sharpen his blades.
Tightened by rope in the woodcutters truck,
It’s not the end,he’s back in luck!
Now he’s sitting front of house,
In a swanky restaurant in London Town.
All admire as they prop,
If only they knew the story from the top.
As they sip their drinks with chatter,
A distant sound of trees will clatter.
Nut-brown owl nestled in a crooked tree
above the mermaid and jellyfish sea.
Scaly horse & teacup-octopus lads
near the sea-soaked teen; tail thrashes with glee
as her amethyst hair bobs and flows.
Nut-brown owl nestled in a crooked tree;
leafless branches with fantasia-tendrils.
Speckled doe, circumspect and still,
keeps eye on darling-pink faerie and her eglantine esprit—
oft spied nudging toadstools & splish-splashing lily pads.
Nut-brown owl nestled in a crooked tree—
eyes shut, oblivious of the gadabout show.
Steel-eyed doe believes fowl’s not asleep but lazy.
She’s diligent, but unlike the owl, her hearing’s hazy.
Still, champagne-wing’d sweetbriar faerie fancies
the nut-brown owl nestled in a crooked tree.
9/15/2021
storm chaser
cotton clouds billow
feisty winds in frisky moods ~
thunder approaches
lightning bolts run wild
leaves flash in silver storm hues ~
driving rain thrashes
sunbeams chase the storm
summer stretches 'cross calm skies ~
storm makes quick get away
7/20/21
harlequin
cotton clouds billow
feisty winds in frisky moods ~
thunder creeps closer
lightning bursts run wild
driving rain thrashes tree tops ~
leaves flash silver hues
harlequin sunbeams
spring stretches across calm skies ~
storm makes get away
4-19-21
Contest: Spring Haiku Chain
Sponsor: M. L. Kiser
transfixed
I stumble down
shifting halls of
my angst my
distress
a cold stale breath
stagnates and permeates
its doom
onto my essence.
beguiled
I entomb myself
in the moment
asphyxiating
flailing
clawing
grasping for
desperately
disintegrating walls.
abdicated
I capitulate to
the lair
that cold cavity
pit of dread
that
pool of tears
where my devotion
thrashes plangently.
interred
in the filth
of want
of need
of putrefying wonder
entombed within
every pore
every inch
of my desolation.
moribund
I turn to stone
my listless gaze
fixated ruefully
on the luminance
the far distant
light
where steadfast
dim hope resides.
Part of the masses, another blue-bottle blip
ocean-sweeping ~ sailing blue-massive
oscillo-roaming-wind
spinning a dizzy-spherical war ~
The appetite to be sated where a new current
ushers constant unpredictability on its menu:
gleaming silver thrashes on its thready hang
Each usual sting, brings on a singular cringe
so predictable are its shivers of alas-morass
entrenched within a genetic-evolutionary psyche…
Luffing, she swells on the blue-flowing-feel
another turn, she is riding with the armada
Dining, diving, leaving divining to the wind,
yet wielding its surprising, wispy, sublimity ~
(11/30/20 For 'it is what it is or is it' contest)
When the river runs dry
And no inspiration can be found
Its no reason to cry
When thoughts are vacant yet bound
When the page remains empty
And you try to conjure the spirit
It starts and floods promptly
Suddenly you can hear it
Words flow out once found
As you look to the sky
It cascades and crashes
Onto your page emptyness is drowned
It's so profound what we go through
Upon your page the pen thrashes
Words come from thin air
Suddenly they appear
The drought is gone
The page is full
The tears disappear
And this is what you have
A poem full yet not clear
But the words they appear
The drought is done
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