not sure how many words

Starlings

Delinquent birds
clattering to the feed station in
twos and threes on ragged wings,
black rags wind-blown and blustery, they
squabble and snack. Contentious companions
in loose cliques bullying the smaller birds and claiming
the suet as theirs, flexing their neon legs and wiping buttery
beaks on anything available. They hang about like louts with nothing
better to do, then suddenly as if called away they leave as one to terrorize
some other well stocked table.
 
Starlings

Delinquent birds
clattering to the feed station in
twos and threes on ragged wings,
black rags wind-blown and blustery, they
squabble and snack. Contentious companions
in loose cliques bullying the smaller birds and claiming
the suet as theirs, flexing their neon legs and wiping buttery
beaks on anything available. They hang about like louts with nothing
better to do, then suddenly as if called away they leave as one to terrorize
some other well stocked table.



I don't know if you realise the scale of meaning this poem could potentially be a metaphor for,

the musicality in the language is eloquent and well written, alitteration bounces through lines stringing it together the bounce could be akimg to the squawking, but prettier.

this to me is where poetry is at, imagery, language, pacing and a metaphor that goes well beyond the page.

well done
 
I don't know if you realise the scale of meaning this poem could potentially be a metaphor for,

the musicality in the language is eloquent and well written, alitteration bounces through lines stringing it together the bounce could be akimg to the squawking, but prettier.

this to me is where poetry is at, imagery, language, pacing and a metaphor that goes well beyond the page.

well done

I agree, especially about the musicality of it. The words not only convey really strong sense words that make the images come to life, the sound of the lines do too. But then I am a GP fan from way back. Way way back lol.
 
I don't know if you realise the scale of meaning this poem could potentially be a metaphor for,

the musicality in the language is eloquent and well written, alitteration bounces through lines stringing it together the bounce could be akimg to the squawking, but prettier.

this to me is where poetry is at, imagery, language, pacing and a metaphor that goes well beyond the page.

well done

I agree, especially about the musicality of it. The words not only convey really strong sense words that make the images come to life, the sound of the lines do too. But then I am a GP fan from way back. Way way back lol.

Thank you both very much. I'm in the process of "spring cleaning" the files I have of phrases or words I collect for possible future use, a kind of poetry tool-box, and came across this poem.

Too many "way"s Ange! :D I fudged my "join" year by rejoining, don't give me away. :eek:
 
Birdman

Besides me
you had a relationship with turkey.
I can't even count how many times
I caught you at the midnight hour
in front of the refrigerator, a piece
of the bird attached to your mouth.

We got the news on a Thanksgiving night.
My mother was dying 1,000 miles away.

You looked longingly toward the plate
piled high and glistening with leftovers,
took my hand and said, "We'll do
whatever you want," so we packed
a suitcase and jumped in the car.

If I ever forget how much you loved
me, I'll remember you gave up those
beloved leftovers to drive fourteen hours
into the crisis of the life I'd left behind.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DAqsC1ZhoU
 
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View from the Sideline

It is never wise
to brandish a severed head
outside of Shakesperian tragedy.

As a joke the appeal is cheap,
meant to tickle the lowest funny
bone, far beneath an innocent
banana peel or any slapstick shtick.

Let's call it slapstick shtick (twice!),
which is better than it deserves!!

The exposure is ugly and ephemeral;
association with the very thing
you chose to satirize. Your act
will be recalled alongside horrors
of the past and present.

Eventually no one will distinguish
between who did what, only
that you all did it.
 
The Straw

He accepted his role
as a soldier, a sniper,
accepted the grit and the heat
of Afghanistan, even the smells
weren’t so bad.
He even grew to accept
the indignity of the loss
of his leg that his wife never could.

Went from wheelchair to walker
in record time, now you’d hardly
know his leg was a replacement.
The meagre pension was hard to
swallow but he never gave up
looking for work.

Then, against
all odds, Trump was elected
as leader of the free world.
He watched in impotent despair
as this parody of a man dismantled
democracy, destroyed his beloved country.

Every “breaking news”
revealed more ignorance
and bent laws until, one night
he hears a re-run of Howard Stern.
The guest that night was a cocky
Donald Trump boasting about his
sexual conquests in the nineteen sixties,
casually describing avoiding dangerous
STDs as “My own personal Vietnam.
I felt like a great and very brave soldier.”

The faces of dead comrades, the same
dead young sacrifices from Vietnam,
Iraq, Bosnia, rose up in anger, raged
in his dreams, screamed at the insult
from this orange faces buffoon. Two
days later he unpacked his rifle, drove
to Palm beach where he knew his
president, his prey, would be and
lay for several hours in the rough
before scoping his target and firing.
Trump was a sitting duck on the 18th hole.
 
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watch this space

Michael Flynn's no longer in,
his discussions with the Russians
muddied the road for the Tangerine Toad.

May was keen and offered the Queen,
Abe Shinzo didn't know the arm wrestle scenario.
Justine, Trudeau not The Beeb, just looked like an awkward dweeb.

What's next for this wrecking crew? Andy Puzder, so, who knew?
Conway shills for ‘Vanka’s line and Spicer thinks that that’s just fine.

Vlad is Donald’s bestest pal, soon we’ll see the rationale
when good reporters start to die no need to ask the question “why?”
The Russians do it all the time so Donald thinks it must be fine.

Environment and public arts are targeted by Donald’s darts.
He’s no cupid, plain to see, just walking mayhem in 3-D.
 
Every story is a ghost story

"Every story is a ghost story"
a David Foster Wallace quote in
Laurie Anderson's film 'Heart of a Dog'
so this ghost is is a derivative of a
derivative and there is
no way to integrate.

I never did reach the end because
I got lost in the circular referentialness
of it all when "the clocks have stopped"
and I'm stuck in the bardo with Lou,
Dave and her dead dog but there is no
Abe because that's a different story
which I've yet to read
 
Florence
(1917-2017)

You were no nightingale:
your voice was strident and you dropped
r's and g's but your voicings were rich
in vocabulary and idiom, your body
language extravagent. You'd wave
a beringed hand, dismiss low-income housing
in Pennsylvania: "a blight on the landscape"
as you'd pass the hors d'ouevres,
no small feat of delusion for someone
in a rent-controlled flat in Queens.

You were another mother
for peace, marching with Bella and Gloria,
your fist was raised and you had a pendant
decrying the War. I still see it.
You brought the races to your Seders,
some distant Ethiopian cousins, a convert
from Spanish Harlem. I watched,
big-eyes darting from one
pronouncement to the next toast,
Welch's in my wine glass, waiting
to search for the afikoman
in the blue velvet bag.

Later you were angry at me
for being too broken to speak
at Daddy's funeral and I don't think
you ever forgave me, but maybe after
Paul of blessed memory shot himself
you understood me better. Surely
your remaining child does,
both of us accomplished
and scarred.

And now you are gone
I've discovered from the blog
of my half-aunt, the one who
doesn't even know I exist.

We are twisted and maybe
no different from any family,
but I remember that Daddy paid
for your nursing school with money earned
in the nickel-plating room,
which was filthy and loud and I never
heard you thank him for it.
 
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Starlings

Delinquent birds
clattering to the feed station in
twos and threes on ragged wings,
black rags wind-blown and blustery, they
squabble and snack. Contentious companions
in loose cliques bullying the smaller birds and claiming
the suet as theirs, flexing their neon legs and wiping buttery
beaks on anything available. They hang about like louts with nothing
better to do, then suddenly as if called away they leave as one to terrorize
some other well stocked table.

Definitely not a murmuration. Really like this - can be read and interpreted in so many ways. Excellent.
 
Beach Life

Ain't all it's cracked up to be
sand gets everywhere,
in your sleeping bag,
hair and yes down
there too.

More arrive every day
some even worse off than
you, who have nothing
guess that puts them
into negative.

While the castles that
we make wash away
with the tide.
 
Dove sono
After Mozart/Da Ponte: Le nozze di Figaro

When the Countess began to sing
those first soft notes
of her lament for i bei momenti,

I remembered my father,
furious, as angry
as I had ever seen him

because I had come home after midnight,
because my mother was so worried
she had shredded tissue

like piles of sawdust over the floor,
near the telephone, pacing,
waiting for the police

or the medical examiner to call
with the leaden news
of my unfortunate death.

I began to cry.
For the soprano, in her misery,
for my mother, in the pain

of her worry, and for myself,
for I had had parents who, whatever
problems they fought through

in all those years, loved
each other even more
than the wayward child they had borne.
 
Poem for S.

i have left here a gift
for you, some few words like roses,

that are quite beautiful, although
they will soon wilt

but then i will replace them with fresher words
in the vase of my poem for you
 
Polaroids

These photographs, though
not of you, still

remind me of our attic room,
the inexpensive wine

we drank by candlelight,
the nasal tremolo of Edith Piaf.

If I am lugubrious,
it is because I now regret how

we fought over nonsense things
like politics and fashion

or my embarrassment
at speaking French

in your mother's house.
My flat accent

embarrassed me, which was why
sometimes I iced up

in bed with you,
or one of the reasons, anyway. It's odd

I can't remember who
the woman in these pictures was.
 
My love for you
has not decreased.
You inhabit all the spaces
that are empty, even those
within me carry your expressions,
the way your legs looked
when you walked, your sighs
and sad moments, your face
struck with love or fear or pain.

Even your voice, deep and well
modulated is talking, talking
in my head and our conversation,
like our love, is neverending.

How can that be? I don't
feel like I'm trying
to recreate you, but here
you are in a place of your creation,
your cap says Celtics, you wear
that dark green mock turtleneck,
navy basketball shorts
and your 40-year old Birkies
still on your big flat feet. You,
my dear boy who lives
so loud in these empty spaces.
 
Sequels

They're almost never as good
sort of like sloppy seconds.
But the industry loves them,
the brand is established and
the public flocks in greater numbers
to see what they know is coming.
 
How many?

how many words does, will
it take
to tell, show,

shadow

you?

I Love you
with every breathe
every moment

spent, in your
arms. You share

secretly, a breathe
new life within,

with nothing

but


a whisper...

a quiet storm

gathers.
You speak, I
quake.

In YOU


I aspire.
Each word upon your lips

I silently .. trace

curve


scope,

Silently
sculpt!
Every utterance
every,

fragrant
phantom,
Sizzle

that

traces, my
lines. My total body
eruption ....



__________________





 
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Gold Stars

I don't know what I have to offer
my child's generation. My secondary
school education consisted
of learning beneath a glass ceiling so low,
even the shortest girl in physics class
had to duck to escape the lab
and find freedom to simply breathe.

Did those skipped math classes
spent in the clearing in the pines,
down by the railroad track,
with the stoners and the drinkers,
steal my potential to make a difference?
I don't know how to explain my notion
that, even if I could finally get credit
for my answers in a group project,
the boys would still get an A and I
would get a gold star instead.

Gold stars don't win scholarships.
Gold stars don't even let you fit in
with the stoners and the drinkers.
Gold stars can't change your advantage,
when a girl's potential is measured
in the A, B, C's of bra sizes. I wanted
perfect to mean more than how hot
water is when it boils, I wanted my A's
to be C's and my gold stars to be 100s.
 
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Gold Stars

I don't know what I have to offer
my child's generation. My secondary
school education consisted
of learning beneath a glass ceiling so low,
even the shortest girl in physics class
had to duck to escape the lab
and find freedom to simply breathe.

Did those skipped math classes
spent in the clearing in the pines,
down by the railroad track,
with the stoners and the drinkers,
steal my potential to make a difference?
I don't know how to explain my notion
that, even if I could finally get credit
for my answers in a group project,
the boys would still get an A and I
would get a gold star instead.

Gold stars don't win scholarships.
Gold stars don't even let you fit in
with the stoners and the drinkers.
Gold stars can't change your advantage,
when a girl's potential is measured
in the A, B, C's of bra sizes. I wanted
perfect to mean more than how hot
water is when it boils, I wanted my A's
to be C's and my gold stars to be 100s.

This is worth framing, but for what its worth thank you for the write, what you have to offer is the experience of life, what you had, and push them into the opportunities they have to reach for whatever they consider an A, because if they don't have drive and motivation to succede, encouragement then it ain't worth shit, if your life's experience aren't worth offering then out aren't lookin hard enough :)
 
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