"vintages" poems
amidst Jeffersonian opulence
the Prez broke bread with his
GOP poker face friends
to solve government gridlock
and sequester predicament trends
citizens of the republic
hopeful for nonsense to cease
sat at the table asking
“would you pass
the biscuits please?”
Obama perused the wine list
boldly choosing a luscious Merlot
senators ordered the finest hors d'oeuvres
the guests were all aglow
numerous delectable dishes
were liberally splayed on the table
revelers sipped flowing vintages
wine a surefire icebreaker
sparkling crystal Lennox flutes
tinkled with convivial release
while America’s disenfranchised
voices ask
“would you pass
the biscuits please?”
chutney meat, curried hens and
sweet walnut rainbow trout
the table a horn a plenty
the guests gorged on fine cuisine
a blessed nations bounty
the feast consumed
the Senators sated
said it was some
of the finest ever served
but the taxpayers only
got a peak of the banquet
a whiff of senators nerve
and asked
“would you pass
the biscuits please?”
the dessert cart was rolled in
with custards, cakes, creme brulee
cordials, cognac and VSOP tastes
rounded out the wholesome feast
when the check was presented
for payment all guests headed
for the door with haste
they told the waiter the bill of fare
was covered
by the guy asking...
“would you pass
the biscuits please?”
Music Selection:
Andre Williams:
Pass The Biscuits Please
jbm
Oakland
3/7/13
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC
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The
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The designs that make trends
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Happy World Poetry Day#
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 8:40 AM UTC
When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,
I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.
Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.
Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?
To a saintly man
--So goes an Arab tale--
God said somewhat maliciously:
"Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They could not praise you."
"And I," answered the pious one,
"Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They would not care for you."
To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?
Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.
Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity.
2.6k
She was the finest of vintages,
and of her love, I drank deeply-
-knowing that my drunkenness
would be worth any hangover,
for a sweeter wine
I have not tasted.
Aug 30, 2019
Aug 30, 2019 at 2:35 PM UTC
all my life
wanted to write just
the way
Joni (Mitchell) sings
seesawing
rising unexpected,
write the changing temperament
in the pitch,
of now
yawing, oscillating,
speedy slow,
enunciating the whip of
love crazy
twist to fall into a
double-time
bass baritone insane
from and into a higher pitch,
switch on the
en garde,
blue ink
onto cloth napkin poetry
plain plaintive,
rendering the scene,
rendering my heart,
it's crazy high-lows,
emotion backyard
swing set
*Oh Joni!
I could drink a case of you*
that is was what I
told the single girls
when I was a wooing man
send me home,
high and crying,
thinking uneven,
creatively,
drinking you,
pounding the dashboard,
sing our palpitating poems
thinking up
the in-between
songs of
till next time
that they loved so much
they begged,
sing it again and again
I drank them all
and think now of poem love songs,
vintages that never caged,
never aging,
those songs I wrote for them,
back in the day
when Joni
taught me how to
see life in verse
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 6:17 AM UTC
Long before my father's time
this oak had reached maturity,
and, baring flame or lightening strike,
she will outlast my dying day.
her children, all about her now,
were acorns when I learned to read, and,
long before I had my words,
she gave a home to migrant birds.
Biologists say some DNA
is shared in common by man and oak
but somewhere down life's own gnarled tree
we branched off to the forms you see.
The Oak, long Lived, gives thanks to God
while standing sentinel in our yard.
Restless short lived beings like me
sip merlot and write poetry.
Her leaves of gold and red
foretell the coming of the Fall
While fine vintages of Grape give me
cause to write about a tree.
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 2:00 PM UTC
A shy, quiet girl inherits all her grandmother's vintage belongings. "Amelia," whispered the thinning, cracked lips of a loving woman. "My lovely girl. Have all my finery and jewels, for I've always known you're an old soul. Show them the other side of you. Get yourself out." Before Amelia repels, Lady's hand loosens against Amelia's grip.
This memory looms in her dreams, awake or not. She grows into an elegant woman, rich and not easy to touch, lonely and a doll. People adore her, but only her vintages and fashion.
Grandmother, she thought. I am in a trunk of old riches, but I have no one. Would I die an old soul by myself?
Maybe Lady's last words didn't mean she should've been born before 21st. Not even close. Perhaps it wasn't because of her taste of jazz and frills and laces and pearls and Audrey.
Maybe all this time, it wasn't meant as a praise. All the while her grandmother could see, even before: she would die an old soul, alone and no one to cry on her grave. A little luxury might make her feel better.
Dearest grandmother, nothing did.
Dearest Amelia, all I wanted was for you to step out.
Dearest grandmother, they only liked my facades.
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 10:24 PM UTC
Or maybe it was the wine.
They drank it like kings as if their French vintages could hide their infantile laughs.
As if they could cover up their scar stained arms.
For hangovers end but their blood stained memories will not go away with more ***** with more money, with more "friends". And they are lonely.
Their money bought them love, and their ***** brought them friends. But now the bottles empty and they’ve been told one too many times that love never lasts.
They’ve found another bottle now.
They’ve found another excuse to celebrate.
But soon enough, they will bee drinking alone.
Nov 16, 2012
Nov 16, 2012 at 9:00 AM UTC
Martial Epigrams
You ask me why I've sent you no new verses?
There might be reverses.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask me to recite my poems to you?
I know how you'll "recite" them, if I do.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask me why I choose to live elsewhere?
You're not there.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You ask me why I love fresh country air?
You're not befouling it there.
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
You never wrote a poem,
yet criticize mine?
Stop abusing me or write something fine
of your own!
—Martial, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
He starts everything but finishes nothing;
thus I suspect there's no end to his *******
—Martial, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
You alone own prime land, dandy!
Gold, money, the finest porcelain—you alone!
The best wines of the most famous vintages—you alone!
Discrimination and wit—you alone!
You have it all—who can deny that you alone are set for life?
But everyone has had your wife—
she is never alone!
—Martial, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
You dine in great magnificence
while offering guests a pittance.
Sextus, did you invite
friends to dinner tonight
to impress us with your enormous appetite?
—Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Coq au vin
by Martial, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
1.
Hosts always invite you to dinner, Phoebe,
but are you merely an éclair to the greedy?
2.
Hosts always invite you to dinner, Phoebe,
but are you **** Amaro to the greedy?
Amaro is an after-dinner liqueur thought to aid the digestion after a large meal.
3.
Hosts always invite you to dinner, Phoebe,
but are you an aperitif to the greedy?
4.
Hosts always invite you to dinner, Phoebe,
but they’re pimps to the seedy.
Ad cenam invitant omnes te, Phoebe, cinaedi.
mentula quem pascit, non, **** purus **** est.
Keywords/Tags: Martial, translation, Latin, epigram, verse, recite, wit, discrimination, country, air, dandy, wine, wife, dinner, appetite
Apr 1, 2020
Apr 1, 2020 at 1:02 AM UTC
Drown in sweetness, my end of days
To rest the restless
Sobriety assuage,
For when the chalice is all but full
And I have crushed,
Erotically and made dull,
The grapes beneath my palate wall.
The Rush! The Calm!
Serenity!
She cries her tears along the edge
And becks me find no other,
Since I wail when clear as glass
She bids me fill another.
And I do, for I love you so,
For every moment is calm like
Ebbing tides,
As musical as the crashing surf,
And only made better with time
Oh, my vintage Divine.
With my darling on our repast
We sup on forgetting my sober past
And with it humor abounds.
My broken heart wet with kisses
Losing count of imbibed vintages
We invite the presence of my Spirit’d friends
Make light the wrongs by night’s end.
So why think at length of misty futures,
When all I need are distilled, blush sutures
Or of a past, beyond control,
When the light of day it thusly stole?
I do not drink with infinite hers
I drink them all away.
Now, with me, I call us we
Is my vintage Divine.
We drink, we laugh,
But she departs,
I was yours and you were mine
(everything is turning and meshed with time!)
Now I’m befouled with poisonous past
And on my tongue is left a stain
Which drugs my better faculties
In the hated day,
The infinite hers,
This lack of drunken clarity.
Since sobriety proper is fruit of the vine
And all this terror in my sober mind
Can only be healed
By Spirit
By Wine,
Leave me lusting for the flight
In eua de vie: the water of life.
Mar 3, 2014
Mar 3, 2014 at 8:55 PM UTC
Of those things that glamour for clarity
Of those roads that sipped dead calls
Of those shadows that retrieved retributions panache of the smoke that chased blunt images,
We are here for the death of our dead ones,
We are here to breeze out bodies from the ghost of our forefathers giving out beggars of spirits.
We are here for the sake of humanism and individualism found among the seasoned weather.
We are here to head home from the figures of fingers crossed in the blossoming crossroads.
We are just here for your sake &your future.
We are this spiced pumpkin skin driving impunity,
Driving the heavens of our lunatic fringe benefits.
When these spirits visited our forebearers,
We called them runners of evil in the night,
In the morning, we called them cats of love,
But the white brought a foreign god to us
We sold our shrine of mystic miseries to them
Now, they took our miseries to make names
And we transport their stupidity back to them
Thinking that they will accept it back from us.
This celestial aboundment is foregone fire
Forging the spirit of the world into our curriculum.
We are the timeless wrong that the villagers sing of along the Abiriba-Nkporo road.
Black Butler of generational curse we brought
Intentionally trying to visit the future vintages.
We are the cause of our own blood spilling through the thin walls of our shadows and spirits.
©John Chizoba Vincent
From_A_Pen_Refusing_frustrations
Apr 21, 2018
Apr 21, 2018 at 4:54 PM UTC
Into a deep sleep
My consciousness starts to peep
Into a twilight zone
Where the deepest thoughts are meet
Projected images
Showing me past time vintages
Hidden in a village
Was a small figure faceless
But had a shadow and a major plateau
Seen the figure walk right in front of me
It frighten me so that I thought the
Angel of death was coming for me
But felt i Was in comfortability
My soul was felt triggered by an interrupted scenery
My past family enticed me with much scorn and agony suddenly
I awoke and the figure spoke
Another language I couldn't understand
But by the looks of his shadow
I seen a waving hand
It was like an extraterrestrial being
A spiritual sighting for my intellectual seeing
Spirits geared towards me for a natural healing
**** what a feeling shooken and feeling
Normal but somehow I felt like I was dealing
With something that could'nt be explained
In the physical in the format of a spiritual
It happens to any individual who's third eye opened a portal so
Don't be scared it's just ancestors
Trying to reconnect
To ya mental from all the **** that mankind rejects
Only a few are chosen and awoken
To see a indication of Armageddon
Wars heard light years ahead
So many Trying to get ahead
But ain't watching their own heads
Prayers said for daily bread
Pastors can't save you thats why when they talk the scriptures are dead
Just recited philosophy red
But if you reinstate what they red
Interpret their message
They look at you like your dead
As Jesus said and bleed
The theft comes out in the midst of the darkest hour
When your sound asleep and resting power
This poem will shiver to apoint
That'll make moutains quake
But you won't see the rumble
But you'll hear the rumble
Gods voice is talking while lost folks walking
Around with their heads toward the ground
Wake Wake up Its the first of the month
With the cumulus clouds forming for the storming
Its just the Angel swarming
Horse and chariots flaming
So take heed watch and don't hold your breath
Cuz your brains skin blood cells will begins to lock and shock
Til your your proceeding death
With your black eyes dilated
{The Watcher}
Dec 17, 2017
Dec 17, 2017 at 12:33 PM UTC
We’d make the journey, Hannibal-esque in nature,
Either on foot (even on the most dogged of the dog days
When the antidiluvian tar on our side street would bubble up,
Causing our sneakers to make a rhythmic flik-wump
Until we reached those byways deemed worthy of asphalt)
Or in ones and twos on our bicycles,
Our locks, assuming we were not the wards of parents
Who were devotees of the shorn-to-the-skull “summer cut”,
Flying unencumbered in the breeze
As we paid occasional fealty to the rules of the road,
Our destination being the “variety store”
Shoe-horned into one of the narrow storefronts
On our unprepossessing main drag,
A cacophony of canned goods
And candy bars of uncertain vintages,
Novelty pens and girlie mags two-thirds obscured
In jerry-built wooden shelves toggled together
By some former paramour of the frowzy divorcee
Serving as empress of this nickel-and-dime principality.
We coughed up our dimes, hoarded and guarded
With the feigned nonchalance of royal Beefeaters,
In the procurement of Cokes, handfuls of Bazooka,
And always but always trim foil packs of baseball cards,
Which we’d unwrap breathlessly, greedily, hungrily,
Hoping our efforts would unearth an Aaron, a Mays, a Clemente,
But usually our reward would be some utility infielder,
Some second-tier relief pitcher or third-string catcher
Cards perniciously reeking of stale gum,
And one particular summer it seemed every pack
Contained the card of Larry ******* Burchart,
Clad in his full Indians uniform,
Smiling at some untarnished future
Just this side of the horizon, fully visible and all but realized.
At some point, we moved beyond banana bikes and baseball cards
(Our attention turning to pursuits more expansive and expensive)
Giving up children’s things and boys’ games and fanciful dreams)
And looking back, it seems that the smile on that baseball card,
(Ubiquitous as cockroaches at the time,
Now mourned for its absence)
Was more than a touch on the wan side,
That apparition in the distance undefined and indeterminate
Malignant in its very uncertainty.
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 2:41 PM UTC
These days are for the daisies, accented with juniper and babies breath
A gazebo beneath a tree like shade on a cloudy afternoon
With our glasses more vertical than not; I drink you in and swear away the day
She smiles, because I stare off for long periods of time
Reasoning, that I don't want her to catch me gazing at what I have no right to love
A gardener's guilt
Plucking the ripe and ready
It's the time of season for cessation
The paradoxical harvest
An event of sustenance and death
A consumer has no sensation other than taste
A carnivore only taste one flavor
Your flesh on the vine
A rare and coveted commodity
Past vintages become quartets of meaningless digits, like discarded combinations on a constantly changing tumbler
The fortuitous ones will eventually get their chance, but only after the
horticulturist has gotten his fill
For I have forced breath into you
Developing your unique character
With subtle augmentations to your composition; and experience above all else
Only the most bitterly tortured fruit becomes wine of notoriety
A sadistic vintner periodically sampling the evolution of his wares
Very often the inflictions are bored by both master and slave
I feel it in you
It's the only time I do
Feel
Misery is contingent upon company
A fool's philosopher
With flawless adages and quips
He is no different
Eventually we all will be met with the contradictions of our exasperated convolutions
Then where will you be?
Why, you have been made golden!
A hopewell beacon amongst the treacherous and ******
You are now nebulous and immaculate
Like the figure encased with in the marble
Does the sculpture recall the stripping sensation induced by the artisanal hands of the craftsman?
Or is it's ears filled with the clamoring?
Ingrates and dolts who only appreciate the product rather than the steadfast passions of it's means
Amongst the gawking gazers I am indistinguishable; as you are now to me
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 2:14 PM UTC