Oh, peaceful sentinel of green,
With sweeping boughs and leafy screen!
Most trees provide a tranquil shade,
For picnickers in any glade
But you, O Willow, choose to smite,
And pummel passersby all night!
While common willows gently weep,
You cause the very bones to leap!
With one swift swish, you wreck a car,
And launch a Ford into a star.
You care not for a bird or bee,
An equal-opportunity brute tree.
You guard a dark and secret door,
Where furry friends pace on the floor.
A gentle poke upon your bark
Will freeze you silent in the dark,
A magic trick of wood and limb,
To keep your temper rather trim!
So hail the violent, twisted wood!
Misunderstood, yet understood.
The only tree, we must agree,
That strikes right back at botany!
Unlike the model T Ford
They come in both black and brown
And also unlike model T
It’s brown that is getting me down
But what I refer to is no early car
And it isn’t a cute little mouse
It’s whopping great rats and they frightened my cats
As they gathered outside my house
I’ve baited the snap traps with chocolate and cheese
And, boy, are those rats hard to please
I’ve even tried peanuts and freshly popped peas
And tuna was barely a tease
They’re climbing my bird table like they’re on speed
And wolfing down copious volumes of seed
They extricate bait out of all of the traps
I’ll catch one tomorrow… perhaps… perhaps
Those hideous creatures are still in my yard
Should catching some rats ever be quite this hard
I’m halfway doolally from rodent war-games
And totally bonkers… for giving them names.
Cradled by a hammock
with the sun shining in.
Coddled with Summer fun.
Ice cream’s dripping
from a whopping sugar cone.
It’s sweet to do nothing
but tongue the licks
and swing in a basket
in the zephyr wind.
It’s sweet to read a book
as I settle in.
My heart can race,
with adventure and romance,
with eyes darting back and forth,
but the cushions are at peace,
except when I subtly shift
crossing my knees.
Counting sheep on staycation.
Letting midday, flow from the windows,
light up my quiescent countenance.
Occasionally I exercise my thumb
with a thumbs up. I hope someone
is cooking ‘cause it’s sweet
to do absolutely nothing at all.
i am on a stony peak
inches from
a ledge overhanging the sky
below me
rock ravens circle
on warm thermals
a tiny village
has dug itself
into a deeper world
than eyesight can reach
my companion
is dangling his legs
over clouds
my toes are curling
legs vibrating with
a thousand knotted chills
my fellow climber is whopping it up
waving his hands in the air
in a wild endorphin rush
god I wish I were younger than my bones
and forever
just this moment old.
For those whom the Pandemic spared
a real revolution's in the air
From remote work demands
come offices on the beach in the sand
From Teacher's Unions' selfish lies
watch a new improved school system arise
From a shortage of service employees
come whopping increases in their salaries
Politicians' autocratic lockdown response
heralds a massive civil disobedience renaissance
And the government's over-generous checks
prompt folks their life's priorities to inspect
So, what at first seemed an absolute disaster
advances the future ever faster
My trump suit against lifelong tragic tone
Lodged leisurely inside my funny bone.
By dismal doom I decline to abide -
I crack it up to a facetious side.
In each pickle, regardless size and shape,
There is a laughing matter in a jape.
When unwelcome hiccups simmer and spout,
I’d pick and poke something to smirk about.
For every spiteful slap and whopping whip
There’s an amusing snicker of a quip.
Farcical figures of speech I’d pour on -
Absurd, irony or oxymoron.
When on the dark my mindset dares to dwell,
Biting sarcasm and sharp satire mix well.
Last not least parody’s comical spin
Converts my frown into a happy grin.
Don’t sweat to second my funny bone, folks -
I chuckle and chortle at my own jokes.
Speaking of which the punch line in the pun -
And so I lived to die for - having fun!
April 23, 2023
Sponsor: Angela Tune
Contest: Character Traits
It's impossible to steal a rainbow, as much as it is impossible to steal true love.
If I could steal a rainbow
Would you appreciate me more?
I know you love all colours,
harmonized in a kaleidoscope of dyes,
pastel mixtures of inexplicable art.
But to steal a rainbow,
I'd have to trudge the earth,
sail over shimmering seas
or slog down verdant vales.
And if I do arrive somewhere
where a rainbow might begin,
I'd find it’s just an illusion,
a myth like the crock of gold
that elves leave at its foot
to enrich whoever really finds it.
But who has ever found a crock of gold?
So if you really want from me
to get you a big whopping rainbow,
I'll know that you loved me not,
that your kisses meant nothing,
that your caresses were for someone else.
And I, alas, am but a shadow,
an unattainable, fictitious illusion
who'll live to my despair?
Outside a butcher shop in London Town
I met an old girlfriend and she made me frown
‘I remember boyfriends,’ she liked to acknowledge
‘By naming them all after all kinds of sausage.’
The first time she made a man out of a boy
Was a lad who she now calls young Savaloy Roy
Her next feller’s member was beyond belief
She now refers to him as Pork and Beef Keith
She told me her next bloke she called B.P. Lee
B.P. is black pudding… interestingly
So I asked if she had a nickname for me
‘You betcha,’ she said, your name is Chippy.’
I said, ‘Is that down to me being a carpenter?’
She said, ‘Don’t be daft, it’s short for chipolata.’
*
[in the UK a savaloy is a red skinned sausage, about 8 inches by 1.25 inches, usually accompanied by chips (thick French fries); Black Pudding is a whopping great thing that, on a man, would be inhuman; pork and beef are usually stumpy but with a good girth, and chipolatas are slender, scrawny efforts that only become interesting if you wrap them in bacon at christmas]
Some poetic thoughts bubble
to the top of your deep waters.
There they congregate, bobbing up and down
forming slicks, oily smears that linger
only to accuse you later when you return to them.
There is a detergent for cleaning them up
it comes in a small spray can
labeled 'revise, edit, or delete.'
Fore heaven's sake
don't let them burst and spill
over the pristine innocence of a page.
Many whopping environmental disasters
begin with a wee smudge.
Once upon an outhouse dreary, while I strained there, lank and leery
of creatures scary down beneath the privy floor--
As my veins were close to popping, suddenly there came a whopping
rush of air, but nothing dropping, dropping from my nethers sore,
“'Tis but a sputter", I then mutter, “popping like the thunder's roar--
only this and nothing more!”
Ah, succinctly I remember - a distinctly warm September;
for bath tissue I dismember - an issue from the hardware store.
Eagerly I wish for passing - that which had been amassing
in my numbles far surpassing - any grumbles heretofore
A gassing foul and shameless to deplore
Nameless here for evermore
Then, methought the air grew smelly, perfumed from my askew belly
The fumes of fish stew from the deli, like the breath of Balthazor
“Wretch,” I cried, “as God hath bent me—by what devils hath he sent thee?
Respite – respite! No more! Some forthright output, I implore!
Purge, oh purge this burning urge I'm yearning for!”
Shall I potty... Nevermore?
With apologies to EAP.
Want to cancel your student loan debt?
Sixth call about it this week.
If I had an outstanding student loan
it would be fifty years old by now.
I read their texts and roll my eyes.
The next text comes in.
Want to add two inches to your willy?
If I did it would be a whopping two inches.
A happy jazzy song about tampons shouts at me from the TV.
Please take me back to the olden days, the fifties and sixties.
When none of this stuff was marketed on TV or on a telephone.
Life, still in the cradle of yearning
For a course of hope along which
Wanna run on to the spire of wishing
With facing fires and foes on the way,
But whopping hope halt the way,
Kills the soared longue to fore
And runs itself to finding a hope
Though creeps through the way it faces,
Yet the hope with which it wishes
To come along, can't be stepped
Nonetheless, it just wants on a vector
As a hope outside to make itself victor,
In what he itself has dreamt for and
Made true what others hope from it
Whopping big or small sized -
With inside red flesh of
Wonderful sweetness, this
Weighty fruit’s percent of
Water is ninety-two!
Wow! That’s great hydration.
Wish I had some right now.
May 10, 2021
For Kim Merryman's Pleiades W Poetry Contest
WEST WIND 2
Be willingly wise with worthy ways as us Westerners
cos winter wind of woes wanders about
like a wandering Wolf windsurfing in wildlife.
Winter windup waves of weird wonder
wondrous enough to bring back Wayne Wonder
and wheeled at will the whole world with wows
which pose pridely like a waddy,
a wacko walking within waves of woes;
Whatsoever west wind wagged we wandered
as we become wanners, wearing wan expression,
warmly staring like a Wagga Wagga wading-bird.
Welcome was the words of windy west
as winsome breeze wapped my window and
wafted her sensuous witty wet perfume,
into my wide Afro-Western nostrils
waving wheats and weeds at will,
twas a whopping war wafture waxing souls warmly.
Why would wingless wild west wind worries
yet still, wags us with it's wondrous waves,
withdraws our eardrums with her windy drums
and whithered the plantation of peace
from the furrow of the fainthearted?
Vick Manuel Poetry {VMP}
Form: Alliteration/Chandler Sonnet
Copyright© April 2021.
With a tweet and twiddle,
something sweet and little,
a birdie tells you to be wise
and never tell whopping lies.
Learn well from a natural tell.
Buzzing hives will honey swell.
Dangerous queens and wingers.
Avoid lovely-lively stingers!
Be wise, not afraid of the night.
bright as stars and super-moonlight.
The owl lifts you when your down-low,
woot-woots as bravo-brave you grow.
3/17/2021
I guess I just missed entering!
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