"downslope" poems
Through an open window, I hear
the Big Thompson's steady music
drifting up from the valley below.
May breezes and gentle rains
coax the snow-capped peaks
to surrender their alabaster cloaks
downslope into gathering streams.
Silhouetted by light from the waxing moon,
a cinnamon bear lopes along water’s edge,
pauses for a draught and meanders on.
A bull elk newly coifed with velvet antlers
folds his legs beneath its belly
and kneels into grasses beside a tranquil pond.
while the Big Thompson rushes on.
Spring beauties, calypso orchids and geraniums
shake off their winter's sleep and
dot every vagabond trail and verdant hill
while fresh new leaves adorn the aspen boughs.
The Big Thompson inexorably presses on
bound for rendezvous with time and space
and tumbles into the always patient sea.
© 2017 by Robert Charles Howard
May 28, 2017
May 28, 2017 at 8:57 AM UTC
The story is in Grimm’s ancient tome
Of the girl who wove straw into gold
Bamboozling the evil, gnarled gnome
With subterfuge both cunning and bold.
*Sing songs of cold tea in Styrofoam
And rude brown bread, dry without butter;
She knows no carriage nor castle home
Awaits the princess in the gutter*.
The dwarf chose not to concede defeat,
Rightly convinced that a deal’s a deal;
Filings and pleadings finally complete,
The circuit court to hear the appeal.
*Sing songs of cold tea in Styrofoam
And rude brown bread, dry without butter;
She knows no carriage nor castle home
Awaits the princess in the gutter*.
The panel’s judgment swift and direct;
The lower court had most gravely erred.
*Petitioner may rightly expect
Payment plus damages*, they concurred.
*Sing songs of cold tea in Styrofoam
And rude brown bread, dry without butter;
She knows no carriage nor castle home
Awaits the princess in the gutter*.
Bailiff took heir and inheritance,
Leaving nil which could be sold or pawned,
The king’s glances gave full evidence
The scapegoat would be a clever blonde.
*Sing songs of cold tea in Styrofoam
And rude brown bread, dry without butter;
She knows no carriage nor castle home
Awaits the princess in the gutter*.
There was no chance she could be returned
To her former home life in the woods
The miller’s girl, derided and spurned:
She’s a beauty, yes, but damaged goods.
*Sing songs of cold tea in Styrofoam
And rude brown bread, dry without butter;
She knows no carriage nor castle home
Awaits the princess in the gutter*.
A room in Amsterdam’s red-light tract
The former princess is on the game.
Still works under an implied contract;
The terms, however, not quite the same.
*Sing songs of cold tea in Styrofoam
And rude brown bread, dry without butter;
She knows no carriage nor castle home
Awaits the princess in the gutter*.
Oct 30, 2020
Oct 30, 2020 at 10:53 AM UTC
I felt you, Hemingway
Ghost lit in pale blood electric lights
On the downslope of the Holy Spirit's introspective nightmare
Cacophony in the bathroom stall, savages at war in the gutter
Kings in their drug fueled conquest of modern man's spatial reasoning
Angry cyclops guards the gate to the Fourth ***** Garden of Eden
The learned alcoholic in wino wonderland bursting at the seams for a halogen fix
Cultist camoflaged in black leather combat boots spiked iron altercation
Public domain genocide for the demure nihlist lower class
Never give those ******* the satisfaction
I felt you in Rapture, like lilac swastikas dripping melted candle wax down my frail spine
Blunt force trauma tinged lunacy for the jet engine martyrs, screaming at the empty spaces
For the imposters stigmatized by yellow journalist hype men
And the psychos just along for the ride
Be shameless in your insanity,
Be reckless in your love
Live forever to spite the mad god that molded your angry heart
And **** the sun with your empathy
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 12:16 PM UTC
On one summit
Among the myriad
Mountains
Ups and downs
Of the hiker
Crawling valley
Pilgrimized
Leaping crevass
Energized
Climbing huff-
Puffing
Downslope
Freewheeling
Each dawn
Each sunset
Uniquely
Surprized
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 5:39 AM UTC
believe the voices falling down the rift
of fading memory all lost to time
recall the faces touched with soot and grime
in days so clear and calm they seemed to drift
through subtle air and now all is too swift
hardly a moment between every chime
the downslope now but we were on the climb
and had not valued the taste of the gift
so here the choice is made and in the cold
dark of the rainy afternoon each deep
cutting word is truly cruel in its burn
the message is expected we turn old
and each day must bring reasons more to weep
even this day at eve of sunreturn
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 2:21 AM UTC