User Poetry

[kennyc]

.


An End to War


I planted the soldiers in winter.
They came up chocolate in the spring.
They were delicious.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 3/24/2015

[WT Sharpe]

I wrote this some time ago and thankfully can't even remember who inspired it. I just came across it as I was doing some housekeeping on my hard drive.


A Thousand and One Good Things Happened Today

By WT Sharpe

He died,
And no one noticed.
Save those who secretly sighed relief
To be free from the daily recitation
Of his thousand and one complaints.

Some say life continues
Beyond the body's demise.
I'm not that wise to know, but
If so, his thousand and one complaints
The saints must now suffer.

Or perhaps his remonstrances
Now torment Beelzebub;
It's all the same to me:
I'm free.

At least for now.

And Glory be,
If death be oblivion,
Liberated eternally
From ever again hearing
Those thousand and one damned complaints.

[kennyc]

I like it Tom!

[kennyc]

(I may have posted this one already. Prose Poetry, flash, ....)


Auto Mechanic to a young Steve Winwood
by Kenny A. Chaffin

You’ve got a low spark there boy.

[RonPrice]

THE BIDDING OF THAT IDEAL KING

In his banquet speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature J. M. Coetzee spoke about a man who “years ago…resolved to set down on paper the story of his island.” “He found,” Coetzee went on, “that the words would not come, the pen would not flow, his very fingers were stiff and reluctant. But day by day, step by step, he mastered the writing business, until by the time of his adventures……in the frozen north the pages were rolling off easily, even thoughtlessly.” But then, later, time passed and “That old ease of composition….alas deserted him.” When he sat himself down at his little writing-desk before the window looking over Bristol harbour, his hand felt as clumsy and the pen as foreign an instrument as ever before. -J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Lecture, 2003.

In his acceptance speech Coetzee mused: “And for whom, anyway, do we do the things that lead to Nobel Prizes if not for our mothers?” Mommy, Mommy, I won a prize! I would run to her. "That's wonderful, my dear. Now eat your carrots before they get cold,” and Mother responds. “Why must our mothers be ninety-nine and long in the grave before we can come running home with the prize that will make up for all the trouble we have been to them?” Coetzee concludes with a question we might all ask in our own way. –Ron Price with thanks to J. M. Coetzee at Nobelprize.org, December 7th 2003.

The words would not flow,
I remember oh so well, but
by degrees they came out
from their corners, their burrows,
their nooks and crannies behind
my stiff and reluctant fingers.

Some quiescent, nascent, existence
in the twilight of imagination,
on the vestibule of consciousness,
always on the edge doing some
other job: playing baseball, trying
to kiss the girls--without much luck—
and then my wife without much luck,
teaching Inuit, Aborigines and all
those kids from 3 to 83 and going to
a million meetings to discuss with tea,
it seems, the same thing every time.

But gradually an undisturbed, direct
flow, like Goethe’s sleep-walker, arose
and the river at last went down to the sea
past all the lights and houses, the boats,
the trees and mountains, the garden island,
and that unreality I had known for years
acquired the vividness of the real.

Yes, it was for mother that I did all this.
She had gone to that Undiscovered Country
and was in a sphere of her own, sanctified
from time and place but mingling she did
with my world in my receptive poetic state,
my literary earthquake, my dreams, my moonlit
verge. And now I mused that, perchance,
it was the bidding of that Ideal King Who
through some pure leaven leavened my world
of being and furnished the power through
which the world’s arts and wonders were
at last manifest from within and without.

Ron Price
30/1/'06 to 26/6/'15.

[kennyc]

In honor of Opportunity completing a traverse on Mars equal to a Marathon, an older poem of mine:


Silent Spirit


The pictures were brilliant
the best ever seen from the
surface of Mars. Then
as it reached out
to touch that surface,
like Adam reaching
to touch the finger of God,
it died, sending only a
nondescript tone across
millions of miles –
a heart monitor flatlined
leaving humanity listening
with perked ears and
waiting on Opportunity.

[kennyc]

I guess it's true what the New York Times said, "Poetry is Dead"



Protractor


The Ruler measured, slapped,
defined and ruled over
all his subjects and kingdom.

He paced his domain in measured steps
always doling out what to him was
fair and impartial judgment.

Still there was discontent in the land.
There were those who mumbled
under their breath, ‘Yardstick!’

Some of those gathered
in a conclave,
began a movement.

They focused on an emergent contender
in hopes of replacing the Ruler with one
who had a better angle on the situation.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 9/30/2015

[DaleDe]

I hope it wasn't a protracted decision. Nice.

Dale

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I hope it wasn't a protracted decision. Nice.

Dale

It covered all points of the Compass!

[kennyc]

Wow! Dead. It's Dead Jim! Where are all the poets?
Me? I've been working mostly on other things Flash Fiction and yes some of the prose poetry above (which merges and blends into fiction)
Anyway, here's a new one:


A Matter of Interpretation
by
Kenny A. Chaffin
All Rights Reserved © 2016 Kenny A. Chaffin


Little Johnny Rocket
had a cracker in his pocket
he pulled it out, pushed in his thumb
and Silly Sally sucked it.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 5/10/2016

[beachwanderer]

"I don't!"
she said,
and so stood still
secured in her own free will,
which she believed in as a child.
This sometimes drove her parents wild.

(C) A. Buck

[AnnGirdharry]

Nice.

[AnnGirdharry]

Here is a quick poetry puzzle -

in the dock
the most scathing
scrutiny isn't from the jury
it's from herself
for a life half-lived

(which book am I?)
clue - literary, women's

[Luffy]

I'm young
but sometimes
it seems like
I'm very old
I'm weak and alive
then suddenly
in my heart
there's a memory
how bitter? Very bitter.
that of my first love.

[Luffy]

There was a player called Eric
He was really a maverick
The goals he scored
made him adored
Thus ends this humble limerick