not sure how many words

Ear Trumpet

After eagleyez' last avatar

Sometimes I need to feed
reality

piped through a funnel
into my brain

because television
distorts

everything.
That's when your poems

offer me tactile
bits of a real and living world,

even if it is one
where I am always reaching

through my arrangement
of words

for your soft and idled hand.
 
Cinnamon and Nutmeg to Taste

It's spring and fresh Farmers Market
asparagus always calls for a quiche,
so I dig out the May,1986 Milk Calendar
recipe, you can’t get more Canadian.
We use a pressed wheat germ crust because
we’re not good at real pastry, the secret is
cold hands according to Sarah’s mother
and I guess we’re too hot handed.
Sauté 1 cup of chopped onion,
lightly steam approximately one
pound of chopped asparagus and place
onions and asparagus at bottom of pie crust.
Beat 3 of our neighbour’s farm fresh eggs
(4 ‘large’ store-bought eggs), then add
two-thirds cup plain yogourt, a cup of milk,
and a cup and a half of shredded old cheddar cheese
(yes, very much the 1986 Milk calendar but I
did use canola oil instead of butter for the sauté)
a tsp each of salt and dried dill (2 tbsp fresh if available),
one tbsp Dijon mustard and cinnamon and
nutmeg to taste (in my case this means a lot).
Pour egg mix over onions and asparagus over pie
(if desired top with a wheel of asparagus spears).
Bake at 375℉ for 35 minutes, let. cool for 10
and savour the taste of spring.
 
Asheville, 2012

Blue Ridge mountains
hold my world
in a a reassuring sprawl
of spikes, dips and curves, extreme
green of June, a stoic firmament:
centuries tangled with vines,
azaleas and hickory nuts

that patter and scatter roadways.
Flowers wink and snicker pink purple,
even thick rainclouds come alive,
frowning from a grey distance then
clapping yellow over the far drift
of a smokey holler.

When the Sun falls it splashes
lemon and lavender goodnight
to the day, good evening fireflies
floating on the wings of dusk.
Mac the spike-collared tabby,
my friendly goth kitty neighbor,
slips across the porch
mewing hello and rubs my legs.
I rock and creak, search the sky
for Diana's arrows.
 
quiche poetry for lovers

no rules he said
so heavy cream got swapped
for milk and cream cheese
broccoli and a knob of asiago
thrown into the mix
the smoked infusion
of turkey and cheeses
blend with the onions
bring tears to my eyes
just like these poems
left here
by the ones who know
what it is to love
no rules
 
Indeed no rules. EE was most definitely not about rules! I love how we've all kept his thread going. :heart:
 
Homophone Hospice

Round Mudville Market, foul air was omnipresent
butchers rent fowls’ necks to make tenant's rent,
the scene that was seen was most unpleasant.

As sunset fell, we watched through evening light,
as Casey mighty Casey held his stout bat tight
while striving poet searches to right words write.

Seems a southpaw would tear up bravado's montage
Casey’s legend scorched by unknown pitcher’s flamage
and tears like diamonds sluice down his visage

As darkness gathers, a lone bat flits round diamond site
with Casey wiff, the bleacher rift, for sure a sorry sight
as we quaff stout, raise glasses high, E. Thayer's tale recite.


Blue Jays to return to Toronto July 30
 
Last edited:
Love it. New signature?

Maybe though I'm very attached to that quote I have now. Also I don't want to suggest I know more about metrics than I really do. Iambic is the only meter I notice in print or speech. I can find the others if I look for them, but the iambs jump out at me. I think iambic must be the most used meter in standard modern English. Maybe? Tzara? Help!

I'm just amazed I said it in a dream! I actually woke up saying it.
 
Maybe though I'm very attached to that quote I have now. Also I don't want to suggest I know more about metrics than I really do. Iambic is the only meter I notice in print or speech. I can find the others if I look for them, but the iambs jump out at me. I think iambic must be the most used meter in standard modern English. Maybe? Tzara? Help!

I'm just amazed I said it in a dream! I actually woke up saying it.
Yes, iambic meter is the predominant metrical foot in English.



I just love getting to sound as if I know what I'm talking about. Even when I do. :)
 
Yes, iambic meter is the predominant metrical foot in English.



I just love getting to sound as if I know what I'm talking about. Even when I do. :)

Thank you.


You sounded very confident. But we both know you can dance with those metrical feet. :rose:
 
Outing

I had forgotten
how green is New Jersey,
that it is the Garden State,
a notion lampooned
by those whose experience
is the northeast corridor,
highways and ticky-tacky houses,
strip malls and crumbling urban scapes,
sulphurous stench near the Lincoln Tunnel
and Lower Manhattan.

But I was on the other side
heading south, an escapee
from the asylum, attached
to my current spouse, the oxygen tank,
and locked in a wheelchair, but somehow
free and drinking in life on the other side
of the window.

Oh the green profusion, the carpets
of manicured grass bright in the sun
and darker leaves and painted rooftops,
rows of corn and alfalfa, farm stands
and pastures with horses, cows, a lone bull,
all grazing or gamboling in green past
Cream Ridge and Plumstead into the wild
Pine Barrens with no hint
of the Jersey Devil but straight tall trees,
scrub and brushy bush, miles and miles

until the sand on either side of the road
grows more and the glorious ocean scent
of the Atlantic permeates, slightly brackish
here near the bay, the sweet smell
of freedom if only for this day.
 
I love this so much, Angie. I've probably spent more time on the Turnpike than off, driving from beginning to end more times than I can remember, but I've seen some of the real beauty of the state. New Jersey has a special place in my heart, so while I've never called it home, this poem resonates with me. :rose:
 
I love this so much, Angie. I've probably spent more time on the Turnpike than off, driving from beginning to end more times than I can remember, but I've seen some of the real beauty of the state. New Jersey has a special place in my heart, so while I've never called it home, this poem resonates with me. :rose:

Thank you. :heart:

In spite of identifying myself by the NJT exit near my hometown (7a; it's a Joisey thing lol), there are so many beautiful places here, lots more farmland than most people would think, many Revolution- and Civil War-era sites, beach towns both charming and honky tonk.

I think of all the places I've lived I loved Maine best. But Jersey is home.
 
Renewal

The light grows stronger,
earlier in the east now
each morning as
I complete my yoga.
Yet sleeping trees and
frost is what's revealed
outside my window in
the waking day.

The nascent year stretches out
so slowly we hardly notice
the extra vitality in the air
but the sun strengthens
with each morning and
the birds have new vigour,
crowding the feeder hungrily.
Soon Sureya Namaskara will be
the perfect way to welcome
the waking world.
 
I really don't want to ask
how you feel about me,
because I'm afraid of what you'll say.

Not that
you'll trash me, but
instead you'll say something like

He's a very nice man.
I like him.
Damned there
by faint praise,

while, in some literary way,

my lust for you,
the written you, plays out
in my incompetent poems,

where I am trying to be clever
with metaphor and subtle
word play, or not,

and all I really mean to say
is that I like to talk to you,
even though we'll never touch.
 
Knife and Fork ( a villanelle)

We work in partnership ‘tho seldom meet
but neither can we do our jobs alone,
a hand to hold us makes our team complete.


We know we should be edgy and elite,
our handles often ivory or bone.
We work in partnership but seldom meet.


Not needed to eat soup or cream of wheat,
we keep our council, lying distant, prone.
No hand to hold us, team is incomplete.


“Knife cuts me” I cry “and finds me effete.”
little does knife know but we’re all a clone,
we work in partnership and seldom meet”


The cutlery wars rage on with no defeat.
Our canteen shattered and its cover blown,
a hand to hold us makes our team complete.


Victory’s easy but so bittersweet,
beating my drawer-mate, my sharp chaperone.
We work in partnership but seldom meet
a hand to hold us makes our team complete.
 
Below the Tree Line

I love these trees
of inscrutable mist.
This forest owns me,
calls me back
to tranquility.

More shades of green
than words in a dictionary,
deeper peace
than a monastery holds.

Embracing with comfort
secrets kept for centuries
and sighing out the air
cleansed of our ignorance,
scented for our pleasure

At night, filtered moonlight
wakes whiteness,
turns the eyes
of wary creatures
into stars that disappear
at dawn.
 
Glorious Embrace

It seems that all I say comes out a little trite
when love poems and wishful words have been written down
before, we met, we love, we need, each other
when the world has locked the gates, and we cannot wander
through.

I long to touch your curling beard and sweeten
the softness with precious oils and pomade,
with my fingers winding through to your skin,
and brush your lips with honey in anticipation
of your kisses, that today I must wait a little
longer to realize

Never has a journey across a continent seemed so long
and you so out of reach, my wishes are futile whispers
against the shouting of the crowd as they mill about
without purpose on a winding pathway of avoidance
of the truths and inconveniences they don't want
to hear.

When we surge past the thronging mass, in a day yet to come,
we'll see the crowd is as frail as thin spun thread,
as insignificant as a common cold infection that itches
in your nose, then we will gloriously reach out,
and soon embrace, because we have survived it all and came
out of the pit together.
 
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