MM's Represented Poems for 2009, Best of luck! Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

JANUARY SELECTIONS:


SONNET 73 Paraphrased by Ronald Jones


The fall of autumn leaves, denuding trees,
Regales in crispy crackling song-like sound.
A crunching tune arising 'round my knees
From boughs where boist'rous birds of song were found...
The price I pay is youthful years now passed,
For like their way, I too, have served my time
And so accept the years I have amassed.
Those waning rays, now set, forswear my prime.
But still in me, you see a spark, a glow,
Though ashes stifle embers, I'm still warm!
So let me crunch and crackle, you must know
We all return from whence we came, in form.
Let love abide, despite my dimming light,
And then, as darkness comes, my midnight's bright.



Late Snow by Larry D. Jennings


Emerging from my chrysalis, I see
the face of Winter’s crystal tressed milieu
abiding still. Her breath confronting me;
instead of flower petals washed in dew.

Something’s awry, for Nature’s call was clear.
“Emerge and go into a springtime’s youth!”,
away from prison chambers, which adhere
to limbs, still barren; gnawed by icy tooth.

I sense no respite near. With these furled wings,
a flight to other climes is not a choice.
Rime covered now from chilling wind which sings
my dirge. Life’s verdict read without a voice.

Upon the silv’ry shroud from fate’s wry hand
lies death, a rainbow frozen in time’s sand.



December Streetwalkers by Eric Linden


December darkness nibbles bits of day
until there’s hardly any left, it seems,
at least not much. Ice covered ponds and streams
are Meccas for both young and old to play
a game of shinny. Children on their sleighs
go hurdling down embankments – mortal screams,
as off they spill into a drift. Two teams
in forts let snowballs fly each other’s way.

Electric lights in rainbow-colored hues
adorn the busy city streets and stores
where shoppers bustle back and forth, like bees.
And everywhere you look, each avenue
has yards and homes alit in bright decors;
wreaths hang on doors, garlands on leafless trees.

It’s almost solstice time. How woeful nights
appear to one misguided, tortured soul
who works nocturnal downtown streets where lights,
like bright electric stardrops, hang from pole
to pole, aglitter in December air.

A speaker somewhere overhead blares out
What Child is This, then Jingle Bells. “Who cares?”
she thinks, and moves away. “It’s all about
the mighty buck today, which I ain’t got
and by the looks of things, I’ll never get.”

Salvation Army bells. Their plastic pots
hold hope that expectations can be met
and no-one goes off hungry at this time.
Each contribution helps – five dollars or a dime.

[Cleo_Serapis]

SEPTEMBER SELECTIONS:


Tunnel Vision by John Macleod


Bobbing heads, eccentric,
restive rustling feet
and scintillating colours
as people come and go.
For most who walk are strangers
and if friends do-chance to meet,
it’s only scant acknowledgement
to— so and so--.

The dank darkened tunnel
the rumble, the pound,
and syncopating rattle
from archway to the hall.
With clear glass eyes the newborn
hurtles from the womb unbound,
and with red-hot brakes a’ screeching,
welcomes one and all.

Animated puppet dolls,
sweat filled summer days,
and suffocating carriages
where luck fills empty seats.
The unfriendly— unnoticed—
stand in crowds of cramped malaise,
their bodies tired and worn from the city
and the streets.

Wheels, slip metal brake shoes,
slowly turn on rail
as stimulated motors breathe
out babbled blatherskite.
Untethered, the silver train
moves on down the chequered trail
to vanish, as a ghost, with the
spirits of the night.

SADness by Eira Needham


Tinged with melancholy,
chilled September air
tumbles with
desiccating foliage.
Sun weakly embraces blues
and sadness settles
into a crumpled carpet.

Restless swallows congregate,
trilling on telegraph wires.
I watch them flock
to sun baked Africa;
long wings undulate
until they dot the horizon.
Sucked into their void,
I yearn for their return.

Decreased daylight spills
into long sombre nights:
a body clock disturbance.
I slouch through stark winter
transformed into a couch potato,
pigging out on starchy foods.
Hedgehogs hibernate beneath
last season’s wrinkled sheets,
while I intermittently snooze
shrouded by a stratus duvet.

Springtime brings illumination
winking through dense woods.
I’m lifted, listening to swallows
twitter in the reeds ...…
and I sing.

I'm cosseted in sun’s warm shawl,
a bud ready to bloom.

Lightning Bolt by Sylvia Maclagan


In a flash,
voracious walls
of weaving flames
swallow coniferous forests.

Fireballs arching
over brooks and waterfalls
ignite woodsheds, barns, homes.
Goats agonize
in russet glades,
their coats burning bright
under orange heights.

Darting flares
trigger new conflagrations,
whistling through
brittle undergrowth
cowed by enduring drought.

Ravens swoop
over towers of smoke,
gauging nature’s insatiable guts.

Hydroplanes hover
above the holocaust,
resembling paper projectiles
flung by fools.

Midget mortals
defying the inferno
retreat from their trenches.
Goliath gobbles
buttress and bulwark,
sandbanks and hoses,
bolts over black belted roads,
ultimately succumbing to Patagonia's
chain of mountain lakes.

A colossus has drowned
but will be reborn
in arcane arcs
over time’s infinite flow.

Moon sheds serpentine rays
on leagues of smoldering Andean
slopes and valleys.

A child cries.
Its mother prostrates herself
on warm cinders of her home.

I wander in frenzied silence
as tears sear my heart,
a bulk of pungent pine cones
coddled in my hapless hands.

A bolt of lightning...
or a tossed cigarette butt?