"horseshoes" poems
Hey there, you, driving the lawnmower,
sitting atop your shiny red toy--
state of the art, the best of the best
in lawn technology.
My meager fields are no longer in disarray
since you came around;
Tell me, Mr. Lawnmower,
Do the aspiring clovers and rogue dandelions irritate you?
Is their determination to survive a mere inconvenience,
Or is that the slight trickle of fear running down your back?
What about the bird's nest perched perilously in the gutter
and the rusted horseshoes nesting in my flower bed?
The disused swing set, now eroding in my backyard?
I rather like my own personal jungle!
Still, I suppose someone has to trim the branches
that hang over the power lines.
The poison ivy sneaking its way toward the roof
needs an occasional reminder
of the terms of our uneasy truce.
Perhaps I need you after all.
Mar 30, 2012
Mar 30, 2012 at 5:27 PM UTC
A cowboy in love with his horse
was convinced they should marry, of course.
They’d spent quality time roping cattle
And he was happiest when in the saddle.
“Love is Love, the high court has opined,
So why should folks deny me mine!”
The neighborhood blondes he found silly,
So he went for long rides with the fillies.
While he flirted with Pintos and Roans,
the Palomino he loved as his own.
Such idylls they spend in the bower
That he threw her a nice bridle shower.
He rented a barn as the hall
and invited his friends one and all.
While Mendelssohn is favored by most
He chose the “Call to the Post”
For their first dance he hoped they could play
“The Run for the Roses” that day.
All his plans came to naught, sad to say
When the love of his life answered” Neigh”
If an animal is your “one and only”
Better make it a sheep, not a pony!
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 7:38 AM UTC
SOMEBODY'S little girl-how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.
Somebody's little girl-she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.
It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse's Head.
And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went into the house and her mother washed her face and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel voice, "I don't want to."
Somebody's little girl-forty little girls of somebodies splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches, pyramids-forty little show girls, ponies, squabs.
How easy a sob story over who she once was and who she is now-and how the crabapple blossoms fell on her dark hair in June.
Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter-and the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show is over and the street goes dark.
Let the girls wash off the paint and go for their midnight sandwiches-let 'em dream in the morning sun, late in the morning, long after the morning papers and the milk wagons-
Let 'em dream long as they want to ... of June somewhere on the Erie line ... and crabapple blossoms.
2.2k
the clouds are breaking
slowly
and sweetly
and just enough to let ribbons of sunlight splash down on our faces
let's play today
let's fill the car with gas
and beer
and horseshoes
and disappear for a few hours on end
further south
on the lake shore
let's run rampant today
kick off our shoes and paddle over the cracking pavement barefoot
at full speed
and full of laughter
let's jump in the puddles
and build in the mud
and dance in the wild flowers like we used to
before we learned that others may be watching
let's fly a kite
unfathomably high
upwards enough to tap-dance through the rings of saturn
and scoop us up some treasures-
astrological costume jewelry just waiting to be adorned
let's sing like we aren't afraid
snap our way to center stage
and bathe in sweltering limelight for the world to hear
we'll sing away all our blues
and the rest of the world's blues too
let's jump off the high cliffs
in our steam pressed sunday best
to show at least ourselves
we're all we've got to impress
and as we're weightless and pressurized
beneath the surface of a glossy green lake
let the buttons
and cufflinks
and pearl earrings fall away
so we can see ourselves some clean way
again
let's forget
let us never remember being scared
and lonely
and lost
at cumbersome crossroads of the past
let's rebuild ourselves from scratch
press stardust and dirt
from the ground up
to make us new
and real
and something we can finally feel proud of
let's be magic
light in the dark
and love to the lost
we can heal hearts
we can hold hands
we can be friends
and be happy
let's play today
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 9:56 PM UTC
*" It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews,
Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and
Illuminations from one End of this Continent
to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
John Adams – July 3, 1776.*
Webster Groves - 2016
The Townhall fountain dances
cheerily in the morning sun.
The red-white-blue shirted crowd
rises as one for the colors.
Laughing children scramble for
tootsie rolls and sweet tarts
tossed by a strolling clown.
Philadelphia, July 3, 1776
Carriages sped toward Philadelphia
where resolute patriots
would turn the pages of history
and tell an unsuspecting world
that a new nation had given birth to itself.*
Sousa strains peal from the marching Statesmen,
Girl Scouts guide their well-groomed mounts -
hooves echoing through concrete caverns.
Vintage firetrucks and autos
sound their horns and sirens
as candidates work the crowd, pressing the flesh.
*Each crass insult from the British crown
had tightened the noose on the colonial neck.
The middle ground was soaked with patriot blood
and revolution was the only course left.*
Barbecue clouds drift over Pat and Lee’s farm
Horseshoes spin and clang and frisbees fly.
A pot-luck feast with beans and franks
interrupts the pop and glare of bottle rockets.
*One by one, each patriot quilled the parchment
resolved to endure the costs of liberty -
knowing to the marrow that defeat
would spell certain ******* and death.*
We reach the lakeshore at dusk -
unfolding chairs - spreading out blankets -
strains of Americana drift over the lake.
then a pyro-technic extravaganza
blazes across the summer sky.
*Washingon’s tattered and bloodied men
cornered Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Then surrender - all British claims
to American soil banished to the tomes of history.*
The grand finale pummels the darkened sky
raising cheers and whistles from the crowd
Toddlers collapse in parental arms,
car doors slam, engines ignite
and head-lighted caravans, turn for home,
spiraling off in every compass degree.
“Happy birthday,” America and endless happy returns
"from this time forward forever more!”
Robert Charles Howard
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 2:07 PM UTC
Bare skin on dampened green,
arms pendent and the heavy,
near-sighted swing
of dull metal in the pit.
As I loosely ready myself
for another miss,
you call me an anarchist -
the word rouses
me, and I try it on,
gingerly checking
for fit, style and colour.
And yet
I haven't had the time -
or the ruthless abandon -
to learn and befriend it,
to humour and then
ignore it.
No, I haven't had
the time - something I know
we both measure
in cups and baking spoons -
brash spoons sound
anxiety and precision,
or the death-knell clang
of hollowed metal on sand.
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 9:42 PM UTC
I've been asked by our son and the grandchildren, Evan and Emily, "Granddad, what would you like to have Santa bring you for Christmas?" A stock answer with grandparents nearly everywhere is, "Don't get me anything, for I have everything I need or want, so save your money."
Although this is a true answer, I usually give some kind of a rediculous answer like, "A pair of horseshoes would be nice." They smile, laugh, but it wouldn't surprise me if they bought a pair.
When I say, "I have what I want", I mean just that. For you see, my family, our son Russ, daughter-in-law, Mea, Evan and Emily, and my "Guardian Angel", "Brie", are my Christmas gifts, 365 days a year.
I can't ask for more than that!
copyright: richard riddle- 12-21-2015
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 9:52 AM UTC
My metal detector doesn't work. I'm sorry my friend killed you, she has problems with her cerebral cortex. My metal detector broke, and I need to find the treasure buried by old ford himself; my ex said some meth-head said the devil was after him and he stumbled across the treasure covered in CD cases and hypodermic needles. They say he paid for a billboard over 75
Hey here, hey here it is baby
girl; blue shorts, bubble gum
in your hair? Here, here, here
and so I set out to find it. I don't care about my boyfriends other girlfriend; I'm hotter, I write poetry where the devil drinks what he siphones from gas tanks. My metal detector doesn't work. We only found out about the horseshoes in my ****** when he asked about insemination with his fathers ***** he always wanted a sister. I gave the horseshoe to my friend to hang above her front door in exchange for her twenty two year old metal detector. Nothing like the dentist bought me, but it worked. I found the treasure behind the VFW, stuffed into Kodak film bottles: maple leaves, water hemlock, and the keys to a ghost racecar.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 5:58 PM UTC
When every single rabbit's foot is rubbed down to the core,
And all your note's in lil' bottles fail to reach the shore,
And you realize that no *** of gold, has, nor will be found,
And not even one, heads-up penny, remains on any ground,
And all that Buddha seems to get, is a real bad tummy ache,
And you can't locate a wishbone, to have a chance to break,
And every finger becomes so stiff, that you just can't cross,
And you find the numbers, seven and eleven, bring you only loss,
When every ladybug becomes so sick, and appears surely to die,
And you search, but find no rainbows, to view up in the sky,
And finally, you must admit, horseshoes only work for fun,
Must it take all of this to know that's GOD's the ONE?
Jan 9, 2011
Jan 9, 2011 at 3:51 PM UTC
GIVE me your anathema.
Speak new damnations on my head.
The evening mist in the hills is soft.
The boulders on the road say communion.
The farm dogs look out of their eyes and keep thoughts from the corn cribs.
Dirt of the reeling earth holds horseshoes.
The rings in the whiffletree count their secrets.
Come on, you.
1.5k
Breaking waves, folding in river bends (meandering)
with an effortless grace
Cupids mouth, foaming to return -
broken and filling up the landscape.
Cracked horseshoes
waltzing across a vibrating brain,
all the worlds night
quartz, cutting drunk into
your Green city.
Banishing a sense of self
uprooting positivity, displacing our discontempt -
boil out the water from the soup of human condition.
Boredoms grace.
We're rotting, lizards tongues
wearing the past, skin deep
Imbued.
a morbid relocation of entrance
authority, a fee
Reflecting light off your face
always leading back,
back towards a tabletop nausea.
Caked in powder,
i make my way over -
licking my finger and rubbing away
at the cracks formed years ago
wandering in and out of Escher's wet dream,
hoping to settle mind and body
numbed and lethargic,
medicine doesn't help.
An open patio door,
grooming in the whisped brown dawn -
7.34am
God's rags, crisp
displacing particles against the mountain lip
red light brewing in the observers mind.
Cubes of water
pushing through into tomorrows wake
all unwrapping like 1,000 words
diluted into one second.
I'm tired
appetite gone
graven, knowledge of the inside of my mouth
encyclopedic and (almost) boring.
It's closed again
at the crux of abandon,
the skies youthful,
built from wood, holding up the trees.
Excess - child's play for Atlas.
Rogue, electric Blue.
Mollusc in hand
living, lipless
just outside the geopolitical borders
heading back towards maturity.
Nihil,
projects objectivity, sycamore due, borders
as happiness combed our soft necks.
A situation is only what you make of it,
we're all in on this
living together in leaves -
by roadsides
making homes where we sleep.
The sky is on fire
exploding into fruition
as hot chlorine licks against unwashed belly buttons and hair
going blind and stripping back
it breaks you.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 6:27 PM UTC
One almost tore away my wall
One almost said he chooses me
Another almost made me fall
One almost finally set me free
But almost only counts
in horseshoes and hand grenades
Fool's gold has luster
and sweet are borrowed serenades
You can't call it love
I'll call your bluff
because almost is only almost
and that's not enough
A roller coaster only climbing
missing the train by a minute's timing
A frozen bud in a snap of cold
An unfinished novel, story untold
A sentence fragment
A muddled accent
A pantomimed kiss
A swing and a miss
A pencil sketch
A warm up stretch
A suspended chord
A ringless lord
A lightning bolt, no rain or thunder
A child at play, no sense of wonder
Almost only counts
in horseshoes and hand grenades
Fool's gold has luster
and sweet are borrowed serenades
You can't call it love
I'll call your bluff
because almost is only almost
and that's not enough
I almost love you too
I almost let you in
I almost wish I was the one
I can almost begin again
And even if the words only almost rhyme
I only almost care by the end of the lines
While I could almost forget, in truth I find
that I will always remember how you were almost mine
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 5:27 PM UTC
mirrors,
marble floors,
windshields,
ice,
metal and painted surfaces.
comments, hockey pucks, bullets
and tossed horseshoes
that changed direction.
need to know, blackout
censorship, who you know and what
you said to whom.
could be logic, could be pay,
could be power, could be it ends this way
light or images
veering and twisting please redact me and let me go
for I don't want to be in the
dark and treated like a
mushroom anymore.
from the gross
left with a net
and you have earned your trap.
on reflection, deflection
redacting, deductions
a quiet pool of still water will give you
a clearer image and rocks won't shatter the water,
they make waves and rings and distortion but ... watch and learn and return to the truth about
you!
©ClemC012014
Jan 21, 2014
Jan 21, 2014 at 11:06 PM UTC
Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/30/2019
There, in my country, in a faraway land
a hundred dimmed stars shine in a crown,
one hundred extinguished stars above the field stand,
like a hundred knights in an iron armor clad.
There, in my country, in a faraway land
one hundred red-hot hearts with longing burn,
one hundred red-hot hearts pound in the chest
like a ghost into armor iron plates.
There, in my country, in a faraway land
one hundred winds are galloping through fallow lands,
one hundred winds are galloping through the steppe trail
like one hundred steeds' golden horseshoes beating the ground.
And when one hundred days, one hundred nights shall pass,
with hearts full of power knights will rise,
knights will rise, horses will mount,
and they'll light up stars in the golden crown.
Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)
Oct 30, 2019
Oct 30, 2019 at 2:10 PM UTC
Still winds catch silent and intent
sun beaten faces.
Dusty fingers effortlessly stretch
and find broken bits of sandstone.
Rapt eyes
never leave the primordial pool of sand
before gentle hands bestow return.
Like the two year old tosses pebbles
into the flush of a creek,
and the fifty year old throws
horseshoes to the metal marker,
we meditate.
May 31, 2011
May 31, 2011 at 9:27 AM UTC
I like long walks on the beach,
Total enlightenment,
Licorice, and whisky
I am one with the universe
In tossing the old bocce ball
Through the long stretch of crab grass
Knocked the kingpin off its hinges
The horse shoe head landing in the dirt
A sign of the times, reducing earth and god
And us to
Everything
Scotch Plains, New Jersey
Scotch indeed! Or was it wine
That spilled over and into the street
Like rain rattling and trailing in residual little
Momentary lines through leaf and dirt and
Into the gutters gurgling and glistening and
Crying out to the long-dead lights,
“I am here! I am here now!”
The stars, they say, hear even the muffled
Screams of water and earth and man and
Time, even the mean tabby cat that glides along
The carpet in the twilight
We played horseshoes and bocce and sometimes chess
We watched old family tapes
And walked on the beach, and I hated licorice
Never had whisky
But **** me if it’s no different now
Between the times and signs and then
Sitting in the crab grass, drinking and dying and seeing and
Being and living and lying and I
Imagine the fine engraving
Left by a horse shoe head
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 9:04 AM UTC
I
We are made of wood, we
rot from the inside out,
for men of STONE went extinct years ago.
We are the trees
our a r m s and l
e
g
s
are branches
Our fingers
twigs and leaves
our hearts easily set a l z
b a e by emotions carved on
our trunks
We burn for one another
like a forest fire,
but if we all fall to the flame
we will soon be men of a s h e s ....
II
Where are the golden halos?
the jeweled crowns of the gods?
have they tumbled from the h e a v e n s
down below the sea
pass hell's gate
and into your hands?
They're looking for them,
they'll find you.
But not until April,
because Persephone will be back by then,
and hell will be less tense.
Until then, guard them.
You know the demons come out at night,
ready to bargin,
but dont make the deal.
Wait for April.
Wait for the flowers to bloom,
and the rain to fall,
before you return the crowns.
III
They came on horses
in gold and red.
My father and his friends stared at them
in the way only arrogant American men can.
They trotted on by with their horses
that wore blindfolds
and gold horseshoes.
They did not say a word.
They did not look at anyone.
They
did
nothing
wrong.
My father sleeps with the blindfold on at night
and carries one of the horseshoes in his pocket.
I haven't seen the gold and red horse riders since they came
that one day
with no words to say
and no eyes to be met
on their blinded stallions.
My father says we're not allowed to talk about them.
He doesn't let me wear red and gold anymore.
Dec 1, 2012
Dec 1, 2012 at 2:16 AM UTC
mending the snow
has now become knitting white
to frost
as lost kingdoms navigate
from their obscurity -
hosting the hours of our doom
to decades of joy and inertia ...
even as you really love someone
on purpose... you forget
someone.
and all
is come undone !
from a kernel of honey
as ever was.
barking madly at false gods, while -
nipping at the heel of
Unhealing wounds...
all havoc and have at It
where the true wrong
believes You.
a sting of happiness
dashed against the stubborn
fuss of tossed rocks.
the milk of shadow....
clawing at the way you forget
a glowing medallion
of aching wisdom
And henpecked stars Henpecked.
a clutch of hit squad horseshoes, lucky in the dark.
the blue navel of a certain monotony
that jibes with your Apologies...
and a long Pause
A Lost -
Art
Founding the Church
of a Lost
Cause
and every Wednesday in a Box
of course.
hurrah !
Oct 30, 2016
Oct 30, 2016 at 4:54 AM UTC
There once was a lingering Almost
That followed you like a ghost.
She's haunted your past
Leaves you downcast
and both lifeless and comatose
She decided to stay for a while
So long that she had a child
His name is Regret
who will make you forget
Exactly how to reconcile
But one day you decide you've had enough
And demand that they pack up their stuff
They were so close to leaving
And almost believing
Until they called your bluff.
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 10:51 AM UTC
It's dust, mostly
the kind that burrows
deep into the creases
of his forehead
and hides inside
the crinkles
around his eyes
It's forever stuck
to the soles of his boots
and never rinses out
of his denims
in the river,
not entirely
And it finds a way
to roll with beads
of sweat in dripping
lines exposing
parchment skin
but somehow never
penetrates the ring
around his head,
preserved forever
by his stetson's brim
And it's also ashes
from chaparral
and tumbleweeds,
lit up in circles
where he camped
leaving a trail
of where he's been,
like breadcrumbs
swept away in a
restless breeze
It's the creaking sound
of leather in his saddle
and the rhythmic
thud of horseshoes
pounding sunbaked ground
It's the wind in his face
that grits his teeth
and squints his
glassy eyes
It's standing in the stirrups
to fly above the racing plain,
keeping balance
with the whipping mane
It's the endless sky,
and the horizon
that never fades
But mostly,
it's the dust
that he holds
in upraised palms
slipping through
his fingers, disappearing
from his touch
in the wild and still
untamed range
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 9:57 PM UTC
Morning stretches across the window.
Soles stretch for the earth.
The sun yawns over the mountains,
pushing shadows over the landscape.
The sun dances over our hearts.
Passion like ocean froth, and love like
the face of rock.
Wind blows in from sea,
and it sounds of your name.
Salt sticks to your skin,
Ocean and sweat meet.
We stand around talking.
Eventually your job is done,
We leave in a cloud of smoke
The moon hangs in a crescent.
We throw horseshoes around a spike.
You tell jokes.
I taste the salt on your lips.
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 12:31 PM UTC
Easy Does It
mid morning walk about
the sun is shinning bright
maybe I'll stop by the coffee shop
grab a coffee and a bite
reach in my pocket
to find a whole in my pants
heard some jazzy blues playing
and I started to dance
blue-suede shoes stroll
real nice and slow
ain't no use gettin' up tight
feel the rhythm flow
I say easy does it
there just ain't no other way
easy does it
close my eyes feel the body sway
dream I'm with my woman
holding her real tight
yeah easy does it
if ya wanna do it right
got a nice holiday coming
going to cook me up some ribs
share some beer with buddys
sit around and tell some fibs
talk about the good days
when we were all young studs
we were bigger and stronger then
the fibs get bigger when you're drinking suds
playing ball and horseshoes
a little pick-up game of touch
used to run really fast
but nowdays not so much
I mean easy does it
that is the only way
easy does it
close my eyes feel the body sway
dream I'm with my lover
holding her real tight
yeah easy does it
if ya wanna do it right
Gomer LePoet...
Aug 29, 2013
Aug 29, 2013 at 12:51 PM UTC
I find myself
Sometimes
(But only then)
Thinking about it
(what could it be?)
Too. . .
What will happen now?
I have smiles some days
and on bad days I smile
the other way around and
Sundays are bad days
Because I can't remember
What happened for the last
Seven days; well you see
what happened was,
I left home for the west coast
and found myself a different home
and surrounded myself with a little bit
of friends in that little bit of shack.
***Beer, fish, grass and waves, **** girls, lights***
and strange madness erupted
into the canal streets of that little fishing town;
It was beautiful.
Like a dream out of a movie.
Made straight out of Hollywood in the 1950's.
For a split-second I thought about going back home
I think I did for a day or two in my mind. . .
and then suddenly I woke up!
This time on the easy-east coast
In a fluster of sandy beach hippies - my family
and friends scattered out on top of the yard
Days and days and days and days of
Drugs and rice and sand, non-stop funk, horseshoes, beer, waves,
more grass and more beer, sunsets and sunrises,
and strange women with multicolored eyes
and all of their weird ways.
It all seemed like a wisp of smoke now . . .
But I'd like to say that I built a ship that will sail eternally
Through these stormy seas of our fragile lives.
We as this corroded house will forever withstand the winds
Of nature and time
In itself - in ourselves.
We are one.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 5:21 PM UTC