User Poetry

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

.


The Whistle-Pig Manifesto


It was the whistle-pigs with their rocket powered rear ends that took care of the high voltage power lines and once they were gone the electrical grid collapsed followed shortly thereafter by civilization itself. The moral of the story: Keep your whistle-pigs happy and safe lest you end up wallowing in the muck.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 2/2/2015

Kenny, I know that you write what's called "free verse", and I'd like to learn more about it. Can you explain what makes this poetry rather than prose? To my uneducated eye, it looks like prose.

[ChesterFritz]

Chess Goddess

Amidst a late night game of chess,
with daunting aspects to assess,
with fickle pieces I transpose,
to oust this goddess I oppose,

Upon the table rests a clock,
with threescore minute's ticking mock,
and on the board the pieces pose,
to mate the king we must disclose.

I ponder long and deeply strive,
to place my pieces where they thrive,
thus from my thought I move my rook,
and clear the knight of which it took.

Beneath her apathetic nose,
to my surprise no grimace rose,
not on the board did her eyes look,
to mend the weakness she mistook.

Now from the board she rose to stand,
extending her unpolished hand,
and to me did this lovely dame,
in dulcet voice exclaim "Good game!"

With my position much sublime,
my clock had ceased to tick with time,
and hence her gesture did defame,
my army that I yearned to tame.

Chester R. Fritz

[kennyc]

.


Cow Town


No bull. They were excluded by law. Only cows allowed. Yeah, it was sexist but they wanted their own way without all that snorting and stomping and posturing and my God the smell. So much better without them around. They each had their own loft arranged just the way they wanted it; some with pink frilly curtains and others with plain curtains made from feed sacks. They could have calves if wanted or not. Just a matter of artificial insemination and none of that bull on your back crap. It was a pleasant society, a serene society, a sober society with no bull.



Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/1/2015
(as posted on my Mansions of the Mind blog)

[GeoffC]

minus perfecta

Beneath the shaded boughs of an apple tree
young lovers joined in love;
in a nearby field leverets played
while their mother dosed nearby;
not far away a vixen slept, replete,
while her cubs, they kept themselves amused;
the sky above was a perfect blue
and full of joyous tunes;
the field was strewn with new-mown hay
while colour flecked its edge.

In another place:
young girls screeched
as a razor ripped and cut;
a child with ho-hum eyes sat
mired in his soil
while fetid flies buzzed;
elsewhere other weans
suffered grooming abuse.

Beneath the shaded boughs of an apple tree
young lovers joined in love;
seeds were sown
fertile ground prepared.
Another babe
in a time to come
would be born
into a far from perfect world.

[kennyc]

(a couple from my new collection)


Cyano Love


Cyano loved life, loved freedom. The world was his oyster. He was free to come and go and do as he pleased, float about consuming the abundant feast, free to grow, reproduce and enjoy his life in the sun. His freewheeling activities however changed all that, changed everything in fact, forcing him to seek shelter behind and even within others who had better adapted to the deadly environment he had spawned. He abhorred relying on others, but it was unavoidable and in time they came to enjoy one another’s company. It was love. He moved in. They became eukaryotic together.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 2/3/2015

----

Pilar


I, an old man cast my line into the sea hoping for marlin, hoping for the best, but distracted even in this adventure by the presence beside me and those who came before. Those that died and those that wonder if death is hard. Those killed in the Spanish War and those who passed in the back of his ambulance. The bulls in the afternoon, the elephants of course and that poor, poor soul on Kilimanjaro. Death is pretty easy, but it all depends. I fight and fight until finally he helps me lash the small fish to the boat.


Kenny A. Chaffin – 1/30/2015

[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

[jdawson59]

In memory of Debbie.

I brushed back her hair
Dabbed away a tear
Kissed her cool forehead, Goodbye

[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!