"mincing" poems
You're the Wacky Wolf-man,
Tearing through our pages with a single huff.
Breathing life into us little piggies,
Blasting your way through the daily fluff.
You're the Word Wizard.
Leaving us in awe and in dribbles.
Waving your wand,
Conjuring magical and spellbinding scribbles.
You're the Living Legend,
Almost like a deity of some sort.
Garnering shiploads of admiration,
Through words of encouragement, banter and retort.
You're the Bad Boy Bard...
Never mincing your words.
Unconventional, you howl amidst the flocks...
You never did chirp like the birds...
You're the Minstrel Mobster,
Shooting your Tommy, never missing.
Flicking forward your fedora,
Strung lute ever smoking.
You're one Cool Cat.
Fending off haters with a bat.
Everyone just wants to be that.
Like a superhero whose symbol is a bat...
You're a Gem Generator.
Cogs and gears churning the jewels laid
Machine malfunction! My system's jammed!
Well I guess that's just it... Enough said!
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 3:18 PM UTC
Because one loves you, Helen Grey,
Is that a reason you should pout
And like a March wind veer about
And frown and say your shrewish say?
Don't strain the cord until it snaps,
Don't split the sound heart with your wedge,
Don't cut your fingers with the edge
Of your keen wit: you may perhaps.
Because you're handsome, Helen Grey,
Is that a reason to be proud?
Your eyes are bold, your laugh is loud,
Your steps go mincing on their way:
But so you miss that modest charm
Which is the surest charm of all;
Take heed; you yet may trip and fall,
And no man care to stretch his arm.
Stoop from your cold height, Helen Grey,
Come down and take a lowlier place;
Come down to fill it now with grace;
Come down you must perforce some day:
For years cannot be kept at bay,
And fading years will make you old;
Then in their turn will men seem cold,
When you yourself are nipped and grey.
7.6k
I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,
I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?',
I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.
'I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti's Plain',
'Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?'.
He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing lane,
And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.
The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,
So they tied him to a lampost and he slept against the wall.
But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
The lampost and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!
So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,
You can be sure that Africa's the place he's trying to get!
5.1k
Quick! Call the poetic constabulary
I'm mincing words about my vocabulary
Help! I'm drowning in my thesaurus
evidence that i'm merely a brontosaurus
Listen up to my Greek chorus:
"Such silly word play should place her in poem prison
a ponderous place from which few have risen
Locked in the cell, losing her sense
consequence of writing with no poetic license"
Writing on with no reason or rhyme
just doing my poetic time
iambic meters bite me in the ****
trying to force me out of my sonnetic rut
stumbling on ideas most trite
all the pitfalls of making the choice to write
Jun 19, 2017
Jun 19, 2017 at 2:39 PM UTC
Come to think of it, Garrison Keillor reads poetry like he'd feign be Bukowski or something.
(sonnets #MMMMMCCCXXXII and MMMMMCCCXXXIII)
I
Bukowski. If I'd known--and there must trail
Off seeking an excuse to bother hence
With aught. Nor should I have writ these his sense
Of our supposed age could acknowledge bail
For, since his voice kills any spirit's frail
Hope of existance, while he coughs from thence
To fiercely say the madness dictates whence
As chopped, clipped phrases whereby he'd prevail.
And Shelley, who saw further than now's poor
Horizon, said art veils her glass whilst through
The centries curs as ole Bukowski tour--
To vanish, sans a note. Yet here all who
Aspire think vile is tops, our work as twere
In vain and refuse. Cuz such never knew.
II
Lo, ****** Surrey, Wyatt, and aught hence
Who bowed themselves to Petrarch's mincing scale,
Yes, "polished our erst homely," ruder tale
Of lines and poetry, whose manners thence
Became refined thus as we yielded, whence
Far more rebelled than dared submit, t'assail
What set us 'part from beasts as if in frail
Excuse to cavil suited their intents.
He said the "mountaintop" was mine as twere
T'enjoy, but if I wanted friends maunt do,
As they all wallowed in the mud, each boor
Disgusted save by filthy scents. Sans clue
Of our high calling meant to raise th'obscure
Light for our fellow man, ye can't, who knew.
24Dec15c,d
Aug 17, 2016
Aug 17, 2016 at 9:18 PM UTC
Death waits beyond the gates and stuck on pikes or up on spikes,the heads of malefactors.
Eyes ****** out by greedy beaks and tongues torn by the laughing winds,ears that hear no rivers flow or travellers as they go to and fro across the bridge.
Skulduggery and thuggery hand in hand the outlaw land across the Thames,tarts and carts and herring bones and fish wives heading off to homes beyond the liberty,where lawlessness is more or less the way things are,
and a penny a *** of gin is a lot but for twopence you get one free,
the ribald are eyeballed and marked as fair game and as the fayre starts up on the ice,
everyone gets a slice of the quince as the fey boys mince down on mincing lane and head to the borough to join in the game.
London by nature and London by name and someone to scrub the bloodstains from the hands of those who hang loose in the
outlaw lands.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 3:55 AM UTC
Used to be convincing, now I'm word mincing
Funny guy telling lies, stop that face from wincing
Shut the word forge down, absurd surge start to pour out
Brain matter splatter in colored conviction, how I rattle off with four dimensional diction
Once this **** was scripted, now these lips don't do cryptic, legendary fiction, not yet mythic
Contemporary Christians sit listless, labeling those they hardly know
That's we, people like me, as infamous and wicked, can you even conceive
Not that I need the acquittal, never say please for a spoon full of ******
Hate this human disease; doubtful economic, muted mumbles of Ebonics, questionable hearts freeze
Turned cold-blooded because violence it seems is our cure all reprieve
Instead of honest admittance, no room for forgiveness, when we elect politics that lie
Ignite the engines that chain drive, infernal furnaces of the reapers design
Calling out to the sky; "forgive us were blind!"
Upon final inception, the birth of nightmarish conception
Awoken to world of hard line lesson, seasons of trick testing
So tell me then, can you live with A or B? dip those toes into sea and you'll know what I mean
Dare you to please.
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
He sits with aging canvas bags
Draped around him on the windy quay
Where blown from busy parks he's come
Sheathed in crumpled rags, in skin
Seasoned by the salt and sun.
An old man by the harbour-side
Mincing bread in callused hands
And casting crumbs
To a congregation of silver gulls
Which parasitic and competitive
Move in a constant emotional state
About his feet.
And he beats a slow sad rhythm as he goes
In tattered shoes
Amongst the city's spirallings,
Between the tidal, restless, to's and fro's.
On habitual, familiar paths,
Which only the vagabonds know,
He steers his ragged ship of bones
And breaks the bow upon the parting throng.
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 6:14 PM UTC
bicultural but not totally bilingual
kids will understand
the sheer embarrassment of having to copy-paste
what your parents text you
in their native language
into Google Translate
detect language
yes, to English, because it's the only thing
I truly understand
because I don't actually really know
what Mom's saying at the end
Do I really get the weight of each word she crafts
lovingly into characters I've learned
but words I don't quite string together
or meanings I don't quite grasp
I swear I do it's just I don't understand one hundred percent and if I could just
g e t those last few phrases
sometimes the entire paragraph she sends me
rather than rely on a gray text editor that spits back
in solid, black, unfeeling English alphabet
"Coming home is always welcome"
that's not my Mom's voice, with her smiling, sympathetic expression and
steaming rice and kimchi stew, warm laundry, and squeaky slippers
that's the translator mincing her words,
chopping and scrambling them into something
familiar to the brain but foreign to the heart
I know she means "I'm always welcome to come home"
but why
couldn't I have gotten that immediately
"I eat food well and I have to buy spring clothes."
No, Google, I'm sure
she means that I will eat her food well
and buy spring clothes with her
but machine learning algorithms aren't
perfect
not my mom
so how would I really know
I wish language could be copy-pasted into English in my mind
so that I didn't have to go through this
bland, unwilling, frugal third-party
that knows nothing about my culture
I am a copy-paste of my parents' DNA
in flesh and blood
so why is it that physically
I am connected
but mentally, intangibly,
I've lost connection
to the internet, and some features of Google Translate may be lost. Try again?
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 5:45 AM UTC
(sonnet #MMMMMCCCLXVIII)
Lo, poor man's tea in dawn's first light, whose pale
Eye shifts vague shadows 'cross dead houses thence,
Ere twinkling with an orange splash' warming sense
Upon that silence, and no coffee's bail
In morning's fog as rosy lee's detail.
Snow's bitter whiteness waits sans aught suspense
While sparrows gaily answer for two pence,
And I wash up the dishes on that scale.
We fix a mean cup of ole joe as twere,
Yet where the Brits swear by tea's mincing cue
I oddly know what tis to waken, poor
As such assertions oer the second brew.
Discuss caffeine, and I sleep well nor stir
'Til ah, forget it. What I need is you.
05Jan16d
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 10:46 PM UTC
Sword brashly drawn from scabbard
Gilded blade with a lucent polish lathered
Burnished to reflect the availing light on each side gathered
Conversely deflecting the pious streams pharisaically blathered
Weapon-grade mind steeled to cut through the broad discourse
Sharp point piercing each tangled, silken strand; puncturing each uncorroborated source
Serrated edges slashing through the syntactical pulp so coarse
Double-edged blade mincing then scoring lexicon that generational divide did divorce
Vaunted crest advertising noble intentions
Brittle helmet to repel callous, vain repetitions
Dense breast plate to ensnare all heartless pretensions
Luminescent shield to deflect all trite inventions
Aug 6, 2011
Aug 6, 2011 at 2:42 PM UTC
So full of life and laughter
The things of which I am sorely deprived
Are you a demon sent to torture me
Or an angel to show me my faults
If I believed in either it should be a lark
As I know both to be in existence
Indeed I am quite mad
There are infite creatures
Of which you know not
Do not doubt that which you have not seen
Just because you haven't
Doesn't mean its never been
Who is to say
That a Unicorn never grazed
A Phoenix never flew
Lycanthropes have not roamed
Maenads are simple handservants
Quetzalcoatl was merely a serpent
Ney, Not I
Nor can you I dare say
For if you could
By now you would
With clear and direct evidence
Solid as granite
Seeing as you do not come forth
I will assume you have not
Without mincing words
Go crawl back into the hole from whence you came
Feb 8, 2012
Feb 8, 2012 at 1:16 PM UTC
The anger's in my cheeks
The words aren't in my mouth
I know like I have for weeks
Everything's only going south
If I stay to hear you say
Another word of your fanatic way
You cannot be wrong, sir
Your stance is on fleek
Your shoulders are strong, sir
But your logic is weak
And I know the ins and the outs and the world
And I'm sitting and spitting with my fists curled
Oh yes, oh yes, you have got the answer
But haven't you heard, you're not the new cancer?
I'm mincing my tongue, you're not mincing yours
And I know that my knowledge is worth just two straws
Wise men ask the fool
And they all sit and drool
But I burn in my anger
At how you don't know hunger.
Feb 16, 2023
Feb 16, 2023 at 6:43 AM UTC
I see all the pale faced hipsters
Staring through windows losing hours
And days
And evenings
And memories
In this unlived time of ****** incarnate.
Suffering cotton mendacity of the soul
Cursing the wind coiled clouds
Rushing past
Missing their own minds
Losing their own souls
Inch by torrid inch
And gracing us all with their plastic complexions
And soft minded delusions
Mincing words with fashion
On paper from a burnt out Bible
I see all the pale faced hipsters;
They see the mirror reflecting hollow.
Chosen by the inky hands of
Moses
Allah
Elvis
God.
But not Jesus.
He's too real for these cats.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 10:52 PM UTC
roll up! roll up!!
you fine hearted boy.
time now to put down,
the store made toys.
time to make magic...
with the inside,
of your mind
roll up! roll up!!
to the dream circus
let's see what we find....
melamine monkeys
mimic monstrousity's
mangling, minor majorities
in musical mayhem
symphonies, sublime
playing mozart in part on
a shiny yellow kazooo
meanwhile marshmallow
crocodiles smile with
mincing beguile
at ****** moo cows
meandering miles
in crooked zig-zag lines
making milkshakes
all the while...
mouses and mices
are avoiding becoming
itty bitty pieces of
rodent and crabapple pie
by milling mindlessly
around the mound
of milliners, by the by.
now to
meet and greet at the
zoo
mrs hippopotomus
has ginger biscuits and
mango milk ready for you
while you watch the fleet of zebras and their plataypi crew,
sail in the xebec regatta
twice around the isle of goo.
before saying
huzzah and hooroo
they won the championship
whoohoo!!!!
it's all a happenin,
at the bing **** bingle zoo
but for all these
amazing thing to occur
my lad
you have to pay your dues
so close your eyes,
and sleep .....
and you will see
a wonderful dream or two....
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 4:32 PM UTC
tippity tippity tap
tap tap tippity tap
tippity tap tap tap
And
stop.
This is not it.
This is not art,
this is no way for me to start.
This glowing screen
this cold machine
can never catalyze my dreams into
communication
conversation
or fire my
imagination (nor can
The mincing of a pen
across neat lines). Writing only hurts my hand.
And so,
I stand.
Re-align the ol’ synapses
Click my fingers and my HOUSE collapses!
And THERE,
Planet Earth, with a grin, says,
“I dare you! Throw form to the winds!” And I,
I want to blast my words from the sky
with a big, black blunderbuss,
scatter the survivors to the four corners of heaven!
I want to ****** my fingers, scraping in the grit,
Frantically digging in the glaur and the grime for runaway rhyme
I want to haul my metaphors in, thrashing, from the sea
Hold them, know them, set them free!
I want my similes to flatten me
Like rhinos on the rampage
Tell me your stories, in everything you do
Make a bonfire of biros, a pixel pyre
And dance your poems as the flames leap higher!
I want to write with my FEET across a Scotland-shaped sheet!
I do not want to be neat.
To tether in letters,
To file for forgetters.
Words on a page are birds in a cage,
Poetry unspoken
Life, unwoken.
Nov 24, 2010
Nov 24, 2010 at 1:40 AM UTC
Now that I’m growing young / into my second childhood
I’ve decided to forsake / brooding brows and swinging mood
All things that I tell now / and all stuff that I read
All thoughts I jot on paper / must be understood by a kid.
Now that I’m growing young / turning green once more
I have decided to think simple / leave behind the abstract’s door
All things that I do now / all thoughts that I seed
All words I shoot from mouth / must be understood by a kid.
Now that I’m growing young / I must not find it hard
To not beat about the bush / speak straight not mincing word
All words that I speak or write / all words the others read
All my penning on the paper / must be understood by a kid.
Now that I’m growing young / I must break each old rule
Make clarity my hallmark / lucid expressions my tool
Whatever price I have to pay / would not pay the abstruse a heed
All my outpouring on the canvas / must be understood by a kid.
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 7:13 AM UTC
His diction
Fictitious
Mincing
Spit and ****
In ridiculous
Versus
Versionless
In vicious
Dispersions
Of his bluffs
Staining rugs
Enough
To know
What hes
Made of
Through the
Fluff
And he was
A weak hearted
Blabber mouth
Sporting
A verbal blouse
With a gerbil
Where his intellect
Was housed
And he is
Without
A doubt
A *******
Clown
Lying down
At the first
Shot
And hes not a poet
Without flow
To show it
And he knows it
But its rough
To huff
And puff
Before a smarter
Man
With harder
Hands
And solid tramps
Trampling
The dropping pants
With open mouths
As they fall down
To their knees
Pleasing
The release
Of a king
He
Kisses
The key rings
And sings
Of sheep
Dreaming
The dream
Was a dream
But still sees me
Even after
Stopping
Breathing
From floor
To ceiling
Revealing
The butchered
Meat
Secreting
The feelings
Fading away
And he looses
But nothing new is
Brewing there
He can glare
From down there
But aware
I'm better
More clever
And severed
His vendettas
beheaded him
Before the sedatives
Could wear off
The kids
The wife
The dog
Just *** socks now
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 4:40 AM UTC
And then she was a chasm,
A cavity of weakness;
Void of throat shredding screams,
Drowning in mind mincing whispers.
She is now hollow of all
But a single reverberating beat
Clawing at the Heaven she yearns for.
But she is now a chasm,
A cavity of sorrow;
She found the space behind her ears
Home to hundred-legged creatures;
Her mouth's roof now scarred
From the family of nesting bats;
The glow worms that once illuminated her dark eyes
Sleep.
That is all she will ever be:
A Chasm.
Her bones broke when she joined the mountain side.
Muscles turned to moss, skin to crumbling stone.
Her lashes are now the stalagmites and stalactites
And although she did not open her eyes to this,
She is no neophyte to the mountain's arms.
She simply allows herself to forget for a time.
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 10:00 PM UTC
I write under my own name
A crushing weight of fear and shame
To remind myself
During times when I needed reminding
I'm good with alphabet soup
Words flow almost easy
Pulling your own teeth form your gums
A piece of spinach clings to my left incision
So that when I open my mouth
Just long enough to crack a smile
The spinach is a flat blackgreen
In dark environments
I may have scared a lot of people
Children in general
Without mincing words
My tooth is falling of of its own accord
I dare you to put in your mouth
I'm here to run off the John Mellencamps
To take the tops of the female hippies
Toss them into the air and stand back
They are going to crime like mommas
Missing their daddies
And daddies missing their sons
Melodrama don't care
He's got a 2/@@©aS
He's outta he-hurt
Making appointments with a guy sell small tortilla chips
But he expects that from melodrama
Nobody expects her to fall asleep in a large silk bed
But she does, and the only thing she should be concerned
about.
They may well lying on their stomach
Laying their heads on the ground so they could
Hear what's going on down there.
Wouldn't you like to know.
No! I do not want to watch her
Oct 23, 2015
Oct 23, 2015 at 12:56 AM UTC
Oh, the critics,
When you use,
Your fleshy and sticky tongues,
Or,
When,
You scrawl your sharp pens,
To peel the skin,
Of your alleged offenders,
Then,
You look like a butcher,
Chopping and mincing the meat and bones,
Or you like a vulture,
Sipping the blood of a half-dead cattle,
Come shed your literary arrogance,
And wrap your forked tongue,
In a cozy shawl of praise,
And prove that,
To correct the torn skin,
A pair of surgeon’s scissors is needed,
And not a butcher’s knife,
For sure…….
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018 at 3:11 PM UTC
the road gathers itself like a drained old woman,
hunched over rags, beneath the gloomy crag,
sintering as it nears the beach,
worn out through time, impoverished
it has become reflective in the chittering half-light.
Eviscerated by the pawing waves,
contradictory cracks like entrails, hanging out
crushed into solitude , it redefines its continuous retreat.
In the reductive shade
it circumvents the cove, its tarmac withered,
a battered host to foreign weeds.
Sunrise chides the posturing sky, the sulking universal remnants
vanishing in the fenestrated glare. In the near distance, air unravels,
the moving storm exhaling slips of cloud
rapidly swarming like furious flecks of phlegm-sneezed out in perpetuity
between heat and cold.
The road lies entombed beneath a scree, tumbledown stones and dust.
Ramblers and cars have sought and found
an alternative route. The moistened rubble creaks
as liquid gathers in its shifting heart, crawling out in rivulets-the rain
descending like spit,
emolliating the countryside, shifting dollops of fetid mud,
enveloping like a furious aneurysm.
Sea and land entrenched in conflict,
a war of attrition always won by seas, unleashing energy
of mindful apocalypse in the manner of a gentle sigh.
The gaping abscess of scarred promontories tottering
like feverish drunks. The mouthed obscenities of carnivorous
birds radiates throughout the cove pinpointing local
drownings encrusted with salt. Sea upon sea impose themselves
enviously on rampant shorelines feasting on sand and rock. Never ending!
Plunging ever forward like a barren plough, receding, only to
re-site its casual fury-implosion upon explosion.
The road in its sullen retreat
stumbles through narrow valleys speckled
with gloom; trees with yellow flowers
blooming in crinkled shadows,
deer leaping through high-standing grass, mincing
between tall thin trees. Loping down
into the cities, it becomes a tousled high street full
of immigrants, all yearning for the sea.
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 12:59 PM UTC
the scent of him
blossoms like opening
petals in early morning dew
dripping upon curves;
covering me within his scent
as each drop trickles down,
accepting curves declivity
and tender mounds
eliciting soft moans
each curl of fingers
entwines themselves
in ebony tresses
enwrapping limbs
about waist
tasting wetness of my
entirety mincing sweet
breathy whispers against
dampness of skin
leaving me with breathless sighs,
longing in languid beckoning
lips touch upon me
grazing taut nips;
biting lips in hunger,
eyes beg to be taken;
rhythmically in tune
with one another
sighing as thighs
open, quivering
lips draw him
in; to sip from
its dark damp
cavern of his
want
teasing him,
tonguing
mushroomed
throb; as he
suckles
burying nose in
dewed rose
of dark ebony
skin
drinking, tasting
of our nectar in
sync
electrifying ********
moans of pleasure.
erupts in unison
satiated in one
another
love complete
as we sipped
morning's
sweetest dew
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 12:58 AM UTC
I don't know how to say this,
What mincing words to write
I wish that I could write it,
And it wouldn't sound so trite.
I wish it all made sense again,
Like so long it used to do.
I could have kept my happy thoughts,
And you could have them, too.
There are mortal wounds appearing
In the love that we professed,
And a heart that's barely beating
All alone within my chest.
I locked the door so softly,
So you wouldn't hear it click.
And I know the clock is counting,
Though I cannot hear it tick.
My muse is pain, she writes my song,
I'm so firmly in her grasp,
You've fallen for a poets love...
A slowly closing trap.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 8:40 PM UTC
There's something I need to say
in resolved alliance with communicable insanity
Particulars are of no interest to me
Neither are excuses
What's worried me are your uses
and aloofness to them
"How is it," you say, "are the bonds between us
that give us sanctity?"
I say, "No no, mincing words with the poet
will do you more harm than
you already believe you suffered"
So, please
find yourself at ease
and suffer no longer
You are free to go
Aug 10, 2017
Aug 10, 2017 at 2:42 PM UTC