not sure how many words

[Piscator]

Actually it's not how many words but how many lines. As part of the 14 line challenge, I was working on a diatelle which is listed in the Poets Collective as a as a 14 line form with a syllable structure of : 1/2/3/4/6/8/10/12/10/8/6/4/3/2/1 and a set rhyme pattern of: abbcbccaccbcbb.

But there are 15 lines.

The Write Words

I
write no
sonnets so
take your red rose
further along poet’s row
find Will, he has a way with those
romantic words, though you’ll pay through the nose.
Yet at his words she drops her nickers, winks an eye
spreads legs wide open to her moist pearl expose
together joint love overflows
afterwards she’s aglow
he withdraws slow
then off goes
seed sowed
bye.

​

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Actually it's not how many words but how many lines. As part of the 14 line challenge, I was working on a diatelle which is listed in the Poets Collective as a as a 14 line form with a syllable structure of : 1/2/3/4/6/8/10/12/10/8/6/4/3/2/1 and a set rhyme pattern of: abbcbccaccbcbb.

But there are 15 lines.

The Write Words

I
write no
sonnets so
take your red rose
further along poet’s row
find Will, he has a way with those
romantic words, though you’ll pay through the nose.
Yet at his words she drops her nickers, winks an eye
spreads legs wide open to her moist pearl expose
together joint love overflows
afterwards she’s aglow
he withdraws slow
then off goes
seed sowed
bye.

​

Wow! Just found this, it's amazing.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Covidecentric

Isolation is nothing new to me,
I am happy in my own skin.
Even sickness I would rather face
alone, no fuss or fluffing of pillows.

But now I long to touch someone.
give a hug, kiss a cheek, hold a hand.
From the road below strolling
strangers wave commiseration,

dog in tow. “We are lonely too.”
Days pass regaled in bad news,
death lurks everywhere,
the produce aisle, the ATM,
the pharmacy, nowhere is safe

and yet I watch the clock
for seven p,m. when we honor
those who bravely form the front lines,
nurses, doctors, essential supermarket cashiers
and thousands more unsung until seven
when our village rings, hoots, clangs.
A minute of childish, meaningful noise
that brings us all together once again.​

 

[Piscator]

[*]

Kilimanjaro

Far
Away
in space
and time, yet
fixed in memory
we wake in the dark
and climb the spree by
flashlight reaching Gilman’s
Point where watch the sun rise
rise over the Indian Ocean, just like in
iHemingway, then past Leopard’s Point
where the frozen feline was found in the 1926
at the edge of a receding glacier and no one knows
why was it there but then I’m not sure why was I there
and then we trudge onward through the thin air to Uhuru
where I sign the summit list, and will get a certificate at the base
but only on our return home do I discover that the Blue Jays blew a
3-1 lead in the American League finals to KC who won the World Series​

 

[Angeline]

Like a Miracle

Laura and Patti and Nona
hand and hand in hand
rush down the steps at Midtown
34th Street, late at night
when Penn Station is almost empty
and echoes bounce through the cavernous halls.

They sing in rounds, voice follows voice
sweet and powerful, three strong women
in a rainbow of sound, raising soul
from its doo wop corners to blend
like a force of nature.

Women are the wind that sails
to the tracks and settles
on trains that carry it
everywhere.

This is New York before the gritty seventies
end, before the inevitable cleanup begins
soaping over penny monte games and sex
palace Rialtos, before the crash of Towers,
the monetization of grief,
before Times Square becomes fully corporate,
made safe for Mickey and Elmo. This was

when the city had a knowing but innocent
heart, where the Marlboro Man blew
lazy smoke rings high above the neon
and garment workers pushed racks
through side streets, when pie cost a dime
a slice at the Automat.

Laura and Patti and Nona
sing like wind, like a miracle
blown in from far, far away.

 

[Piscator]

Bridges

I sigh at bridges
knowing the trolls
drive their Mercedes
over the homeless
beneath.

 

[Angeline]

Please sir I want more.

Put a bowl of words in my cupped hands,
words born in symbols foreign to me (so much
world is unknown). Fashion words from letters
I know, that come to me like friends.

Please

nourish me, bring me ideas
to swallow, fill me, mass mountains
in me where empty sky has been mute,
where wind carries nothing
in its hollow cries.

Pour the words in me like soup.
I've been hungry too long.

 

[Angeline]

Atlantic City

I'm so tired of these voices,
Eastern Mid-Atlantic twangs,
nasal and dropping r's
like dandruff and not a one
tempts me, no fantasies.

Oh how I miss your voice,
smooth, devoid of accent
rich and deep, a NorCal voice
that rolled words easy
and friendly-like
without a spot of meanness.

It's funny
how a voice can deliver
me into nostalgia, pining
for what can never again
be.

Just last night I heard dear Levon,
his voice broken and cracked
as his lined face sing Everything
dies baby, that's a fact
and I plunged into the past,
crying.

 

[Piscator]

SAD*

When right is wrong
yet wrong isn't right
I lay awake on winter’s night
vainly searching for inner light
finding only emptiness within.
There is no form here only
an amorphous vapour
obscuring all and
revealing nothing.

*Seasonal Affective Disorder

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

A Story

The story goes that,
in an Iranian village
not long ago, a child,
just a toddler,
wandering away from
others too young to go with their parents
to the fields. Their watcher,
barely more than a child herself,
was distracted by another’s tears,
"only for a second”, but
long enough for legs, deceptively reliable,
to seek adventure.

Horror, slow and shallow
then bone-deep
shakes the parents weary from day’s work.
They search their village,
turning neighbours out in
infectious panic. Night comes
but not sleep. Before light the search widens.
Other villages join to hunt the little quarry,
blanched lips whisper of wolves,
bears, careful not to let the frantic
mother hear but she has had
those haunting thoughts herself.

Another night,
another day,
some give up
but his parents can’t. A few of the men
go into the high forest, further
and higher still with no sign.
No one speaks the fear they hold.
One more valley, one more cave
and then they hear, yes!
A child's voice, deep in this, one,
last cave.

He is cradled
by a huge she-bear,
gently in the big, clawed limbs.
Milk is freely running
and the boy is fed
and well but, seeing his father,
starts to cry. The bear, fearing danger
for this strange, new baby, tightens
her hold silently staring them down.
The story goes that the child
is retrieved but nothing of the
tender mother bear.
I hope she was allowed to live.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Memo to Self

Stop apologizing.
Don’t say sorry when
you spill food on the shirt
clean on that morning.

And don’t kick yourself
over dropped things,
your glasses,
the T.V. remote,
your hairbrush,
all have to be retrieved.

That can’t be helped,
they know that.
Instead, apologize
for chewing your nails,
that’s not unintentional,
show penitence for blurting out
swear-words if you will
everyone knows, it’s not
Tourette’s.you suffer from.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

J'accuse Muse

I’ve said it before, Excuse for a Muse,
giving me diddly squat, just blowing smoke,
you dig your heels in and simply refuse
to help with my cause, you are just a joke.

I get buggar all whenever I call.
sweet Fanny Adams, you’re just shooting blanks,
not even a whisper, nothing at all.
pull out your thumb and I’d give you my thanks.

Zilch, zip, and bupkiss is all that you give.
Motivate and galvanize me. Help me,
you are supposed to be cooperative,
be my inspiration, don’t you agree?

You no-count companion on barren nights.
goose egg presenter, refined bagatelle,
I should rely on you, one of my rights.
I’m tempted to bid you bitter farewell,

But I need you, you rascal, MIA.
I flounder in a poetic limbo,
rejected thoughts, a wordy tabbouleh.
I must take my role, poetic bimbo.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Arrested Ambition

As I scroll through
the “5 Senses”, “A Poem a Day”
or “Live Write” threads,
reading as I go, when
something interrupts,
the ‘phone, a voice or
just some neglected duty,
I am always haunted by
the thought - there are too many
poems to do them all justice.

Just as the nagging thought
of all the books I will never
manage to read, or re-read
as planned weighs my mind.

Life is just too short.

 

[todski28]

Arrested Ambition

As I scroll through
the “5 Senses”, “A Poem a Day”
or “Live Write” threads,
reading as I go, when
something interrupts,
the ‘phone, a voice or
just some neglected duty,
I am always haunted by
the thought - there are too many
poems to do them all justice.

Just as the nagging thought
of all the books I will never
manage to read, or re-read
as planned weighs my mind.

Life is just too short.

I feel that!

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

And that's jazz

Hot summer night,
Montreal streets
jostling, jubilant youth,
happiness evident.

Doors open, the cool
music drifting out onto the
simmering sidewalk.

Downstairs it is hot
but the jazz is cool where
pungent smoke and sax blend
seamlessly.

A girl stands,
asks to sing
shoulders shrug
disinterested
but when she starts “Summertime”
the noisy chatter halts midsentence
and the band sits straighter
embraced by the pure joy
of the husky voice.

The unexpected found
in the unexplored,
the thought-stopping solo
or improvised perfection –
and that's jazz.

 

[Piscator]

Dog Walkers

We know the name of each other’s dogs
but never exchange our own – first or last.
Your Chewie, a Pug-zu, a Pug-Shih Tzu mix
whose constant growling belies the amiable
nature of a puppy going on 14 years, while
my Suny’s a Bernedoodle, a Bernese-Poodle
cross, and will be 2 in July, so named as he
brought a ray of sun into his owner’s lives
but it wasn’t enough as covid and a divorce
took their toll and she had to put him up for
adoption as he needed an owner with more time
and a big yard, both of which I have these days.
So, he’s now with me and seems happy,
funny how dogs often come out of these
things better than their humans do and
as the dogs frolic in the off-leash area, we
chat about that bossy boxer and his macho
owner and how the breed of dog reflects
their owner’s personality and what are the
best kind of dog treats, my Suny loves a bit
of hot dog, while your Chewie favours Wheaties
and that it is nice that spring finally arrived
although it looks like rain this afternoon and
how important a companion animal is, yet
how with eight billion people in the world
there isn’t room for eight billion dogs, even
if they were small dogs like Enkidu, the
Chihuahua our son and his partner ‘rescued’
from the Dominican Republic or Ollie, the
Thai street dog, our daughter adopted when
they were together and teaching in Phuket.
Then we bid each other and adieu and return to
an empty house and the computer screen’s glow.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

A Coded Appeal

Come back to Yala, Eromi,
the monsoon has passed.
It is safe once more.

The Bodhi tree shades the pilgrims,
nature is everywhere.
At night there are as many stars
on the lake shore as in the sky.

Watchful, beautiful in their wariness.
Footfall, snapped twig or sudden cry
extinguishes the lake-borne stars.

It is black here at night without
your light and my loneliness is
complete.

Last night a jaguar
prowled in our garden but the
peacocks made his stealth useless,
he left only his footprints near the
pool.

Each day I find the most
beautiful flower to put in your hair
and keep the most lyrical birdsong
recorded in my mind to play for you
on my flute when you return
from Colombo.

Come home, Eromi,
everything means something else
and nothing makes sense without you.

 

[Tzara]

Persephone

Your body twines
along my body,
like vines twisted

together. Our hands,
our legs, are
blooms that flower

in the soft earth
of our bed.
When I tuck your hair

under my cheek,
and wrap you close,
I bless the soil

in which our coupling
grows. And then
your fingers, delicately,

remind me--
Seeds must be planted,
after all.

 

[Piscator]

Revenge

They were riding hard,

they were desperadoes

headed for state line Colorado

out to find their El Dorado

followed by the man of shadow

Zoro on his black horse Toronado

with his faithful servant Bernardo

and yes dark black was obligato

even in the noon day Sundiato.



Fire to the south, thunderheads east

so, they headed north-west and danger least

cross country unfit for man or beast

searching for that miscreant priest

who by sunset might be deceased.

 

[Piscator]

A Coded Appeal

Come back to Yala, Eromi,
the monsoon has passed.
It is safe once more.

The Bodhi tree shades the pilgrims,
nature is everywhere.
At night there are as many stars
on the lake shore as in the sky.

Watchful, beautiful in their wariness.
Footfall, snapped twig or sudden cry
extinguishes the lake-borne stars.

It is black here at night without
your light and my loneliness is
complete.

Last night a jaguar
prowled in our garden but the
peacocks made his stealth useless,
he left only his footprints near the
pool.

Each day I find the most
beautiful flower to put in your hair
and keep the most lyrical birdsong
recorded in my mind to play for you
on my flute when you return
from Colombo.

Come home, Eromi,
everything means something else
and nothing makes sense without you.

Deimn, this is too good for a casual like!

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Deimn, this is too good for a casual like!

Thank you, Piscator. I agree, those little faces somehow just won't do it for me either.

 

[butters]

Deimn, this is too good for a casual like!

reminded me of Neruda

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

reminded me of Neruda

Thanks, butters, that's very flattering.


Heat Wave

The sun is so hot that the rose is bleached,
white blossoms among the red.
Time-limits on hours for hand watering
(no sprinklers allowed) make plants droop.
The wind is hot, the relieving breeze in
the trees is absent, leaves hang despondently
while we try to keep our energy harnessed and
the sweat level low. Sex is too arduous, even
hand-holding is sticky and gross. Wait ‘til it
cools and I’ll take you as never before.

 

[Lyricalli]

Heat Wave

I love that little turn at the end from one form of very uncomfortable yucky heat to one that's much more enjoyable. This is written so well, I was nearly melting myself by the end of it.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I love that little turn at the end from one form of very uncomfortable yucky heat to one that's much more enjoyable. This is written so well, I was nearly melting myself by the end of it.

Thanks, calli. and thanks to 29words too.