Demise
Old stone pine under stress
sags on fused backbone,
Pale needled, threadbare dress
tattered bark unsewn,
bald skeletal egress.
All savings withdrawn, spent
and lavishly thrown
with prolific intent,
Profuse burnished cones,
a profligate descent.
Three years in the making,
these cones are slow grown,
Brittle limbs forsaking
bud to overblown,
fecund undertaking.
Flaunt open oil-rich prize,
willingly condone
the azure-winged magpies
collectively flown,
procreation's allies.
Generous, reckless, brash
extravagance prone,
Defiant seeding flash
botanically known
as passing with panache.
poem by Diane Hine
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Laburnums
OVER old walls the Laburnums
hang cones of fire;
Laburnums that grow out of old
mould in old gardens:
Old maids and old men who have savings or pensions have
Shuttered themselves in the pales of old gardens.
The gardens grow wild; out of their mould the Laburnums
Draw cones of fire.
And we, who've no lindens, no palms, no cedars of Lebanon,
Rejoice you have gardens with mould, old men and old maids:
The bare and the dusty streets have now the Laburnums,
Have now cones of fire!
poem by Padraic Colum
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The Rolling Cones
You hear their siren song in the air,
before you ever see the truck.
If it is “The Rolling Cones”
then my friend, you are in luck.
Where Mister Softee use to be
an old bald man down on his luck,
“The Rolling Cones” have sweet young things
Make sexy sundaes in a cup.
These ice cream ladies sell the wares
while wearing frilly bustiers.
Men of a certain age all troupe
to wave their dollars for two scoops.
Curves and ice cream swirls can be
Sexy, yes, but not obscene,
It’s a profitable duopoly.
They use hot babes to sell ice cream.
To differentiate their trucks
From the topless coffee vendor “Cups”
They needed a name all their own
That’s why they’re called “The Rolling Cones”
poem by John F. McCullagh
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My grandfather taught me generosity. He sold snow cones in Harlem. I went with him at 5 and he let me hand out the change and snow cones. I learned a lot in the couple of years that we did that.
quote by Erik Estrada
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Flash
The opportunity's takin' me over
I'm gonna put on a mask
I've got to be outrageous for my fans
I am not gonna waste this moment
Because these moments don't last
So tonight I will shake it and show my ass
Flash
Makes me feel good
Feel like a queen
And it gives me all the panache
That I want
That I need
And it'll all be over in a flash
Roll out the carpet give me some exposure
'Cause soon I'll be the past
But anyway I came here to tell you 'bout my plans
Well
Let's keep this moving while people still notice
'Cause my time's going fast
And when it's over, it's over
'Cause I've got no class
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Flash
Makes me feel good
Make me feel like a queen
And it gives me all the panache
That I want
And baby that I need
And it'll all be over in a flash
Flash
Makes me feel good
Make me feel like a queen
And it gives me all the panache
That I want
And baby that I need
And it'll all be over in a flash
Flash
Makes me feel good
Make me feel like a queen
And it gives me all the panache
That I want
And baby that I need
And it'll all be over in a flash
Flash
Makes me feel good
Make me feel like a queen
And it gives me all the panache
That I want
And baby that I need
And it'll all be over in a flash
song performed by by Lenny Kravitz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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C Is For Conifers
Most with cones for seeds, most with needles for leaves
C is for conifers, my kind of trees
Large junipers and fir, spruce, cedars and pines
C is for conifers, more then five hundred kinds
If you see a Christmas tree or a stack of newspapers or a 2x4 frame of a house
It's probably made from pine trees and pine trees are conifers, that's what this song is about
Or if you see a plant in the shape of an elephant, or in the shape of a dog
It's probably a shrub, a conifer shrub pruned into that shape by someone
Most with cones for seeds, most with needles for leaves
C is for conifers, my kind of trees
Large junipers and fir, spruce, cedars and pines
C is for conifers, more then five hundred kinds
Spoken: There are so many different kinds of conifer trees.
This is just a few of them: Spruce,
Hemlocks, larch, cyprus, juniper,
Fir, Douglas fir, cedar, yew,
Pine, the dwarf conifer,
And the great California sequoia redwood.
Most with cones for seeds, most with needles for leaves
C is for conifers, my kind of trees
Large junipers and fir, spruce, cedars and pines
C is for conifers, more then five hundred kinds
song performed by by They Might Be Giants
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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On This The Third Day Of Winter
On this the third day of Winter the sun it brightly shine
And the yellow tailed black cockatoos on the monterey pine
Grasp the pine cones with their powerful claws and shred them for the seed
And dropp the shredded cones to earth when they have had their feed.
On this the third day of Winter the white backed magpie sing
From branch high on the stringybark his flute like music ring
And on the lush grasses by the pond the dappled wood duck graze
Whilst others of their kin their feathers preen and in the sunshine laze.
On this the third day of Winter the butcherbird's song I hear
And did I not know what time of year it was I'd swear that Spring was here
Two days back the chilly gales blew fierce and the rain came lashing down
And now the sun is shining bright on the paddocks by the Town.
On this the third day of Winter the sun shines in clear sky
And myna with the scratchy song is singing as he fly
And a few days back it rained all day and the gums soughed in the wind
But as Shakespeare once wrote 'If Winter comes can Spring be far behind'
poem by Francis Duggan
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Under the pine tree
The pine cones dropped from the tree
A pauper picked one and murmured,
'This dry scaly fruit birds don't like.
We have some similarities but you are cone shaped
And I am a shapeless schmuck.'
poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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In A Northern Wood
FRAGRANT are the cedar-boughs stretching green and level,
Feasting-halls where waxwings flit at their spicy revel,
But O the pine, the questing pine, that flings its arms on high
To search the secret of the sun and escalade the sky!
Rueful hemlocks, gaunt and old, with boughs a-droop, despairing,
Clutch for touch of mother-earth; the while the pine is daring
To rock the stars amid its cones and lull them with its croon,
And snare the silver eagle that is nested in the moon.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Snow On The Eyelids Of The Pinecones
Snow on the eyelids of the pine-cones.
Zen pagodas, meditating. Snow
on the withered stars of the wild rose hips
attaining the unattainable like Buddha
enlightened by what's become of Venus in the dawn.
Beauty in the truth of abject desolation.
There's a war going on somewhere
to judge from the number of amputations
the fingers, legs, arms, toes, hands,
the limbs of the dead trees
lying all over the ground as if the woods
were the collapsed tent
of an army field hospital in the Civil War.
The Fort Delaware Death Pen
if I were to take a wild guess,
or maybe Andersonville, who knows,
but I feel I'm walking more like a warden
doing his rounds through the woods at night
than a visitor among these who lie here
in this graveyard of wounded swans
glazed and broken like the handles
of old china shop teacups
butting their empty skulls
against the horns of a bull.
Not like mine. Pure crystal
from glassblowers in medieval Germany.
At least these get to thaw.
And you can see in the withered eyelids
of the leaves whose chlorophyll vision
was once poetically green,
now laced with strychnine and arsenic
when they burned like solar flares in the fall,
and the curtains caught fire
like the veils of an open window
with no one's face in it
to reveal the mystery of who she is
behind the northern lights,
the works of an entire lifetime
clacking like abandoned fortune-cookies,
the hollow carapaces of crabs across
the silver pates of the blunted snowdrifts
ground down like the Appalachian Mountains,
older than the Rockies, worn down
like molars and glaciers
grinding their teeth in their sleep
but infinitely more habitable
than the nose-bleeding heights of renown.
And yet the leaves are not wasted.
The word was spoken.
The fortune foretold
of better things to come
like pears and apples and plums.
The slow autumn dawns of poems
ripened by rising stars and falling flowers.
Snow on the eyelids of the pine-cones.
poem by Patrick White
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The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel
A poem moves forward,
Like the passages and percussions of trains in progress
A pattern of recurrence, a hammer of repetetiveoccurrence
a slow less and less heard
low thunder under all passengers
Steel sounds tripping and tripled and
Grinding, revolving, gripping, turning, and returning
as the flung carpet of the wide countryside spreads out on
each side in billows
And in isolation, rolled out, white house, red barn, squat silo,
Pasture, hill, meadow and woodland pasture
And the striped poles step fast past the train windows
Second after second takes snapshots, clicking,
Into the dangled boxes of glinting windows
Snapshots and selections, rejections, at angles, of shadows
A small town: a shop's sign - GARAGE, and then white gates
Where waiting cars wait with the unrest of trembling
Breathing hard and idling, until the slow~descent
Of the red cones of sunset: a dead march: a slow tread and heavy
Of the slowed horses of Apollo
- Until the slowed horses of Apollo go over the horizon
And all things are parked, slowly or willingly,
into the customary or at random places.
poem by Delmore Schwartz
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A Brother In Need
NOW, rallying once if ne'er again,
With flag at half-mast flown,
A people in dire need and strain
Mans Tyra's bastion.
Betrayed in danger's hour, betrayed
Before the stress of strife!
Was this the meaning that it had--
That clasp of hands at Axelstad
Which gave the North new life?
The words that seemed as if they rushed
From deepest heart-springs out
Were phrases, then! -- the freshet gushed,
And now is fall'n the drought.
The tree, that promised rich in bloom
Mid festal sun and shower,
Stands wind-stript in the louring gloom,
A cross to mark young Norway's tomb,
The first dark testing-hour.
They were but Judas kisses, lies
In fatal wreaths enwound,
The cheers of Norway's sons, and cries
Towards the beach of Sound.
What passed that time we watched them meet,
'Twixt Norse and Danish lord?
Oh! nothing! only to repeat
King Gustav's play at Stockholm's seat
With the Twelfth Charles' sword.
'A people doomed, whose knell is rung,
Betrayed by every friend!' --
Is the book closed and the song sung?
Is this our Denmark's end?
Who set the craven colophon,
While Germans seized the hold,
And o'er the last Dane lying prone
Old Denmark's tattered flag was thrown
With doubly crimsoned fold?
But thou, my brother Norsemen, set
Beyond the war-storm's power
Because thou knewest to forget
Fair words in danger's hour:
Flee from thy homes of ancient fame--
Go chase a new sunrise--
Pursue oblivion, and for shame
Disguise thee in a stranger's name
To hide from thine own eyes!
Each wind that sighs from Danish waves
Through Norway's woods of pine,
Of thy pale lips an answer craves:
Where wast thou, brother mine?
I fought for both a deadly fight;
In vain to spy thy prow
O'er belt and fiord I strained my sight:
My fatherland with graves grew white:
My brother, where wast thou?
It was a dream! Arise, awake
To do a nation's deed!
Each to his post, swift counsel take;
A brother is in need!
A nobler song may yet be sung--
Danes, Danes, keep Tyra's hold--
And o'er a Northern era, young
And rich in hope, be proudly flung
The red flag's tattered fold.
poem by Henrik Johan Ibsen
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Better than Candy
'No candy today.'
I had to tell her
as every day I told her
while passing melted
snow cones that stained
the sidewalk I could not
by her better shoes to
walk on. Not today.
Today we barely have
what we really needed
yesterday. Today is
months behind and
four years old.
'No candy.', I told
her as I kissed her.
'Better than candy.'
she said of my kiss.
Better than candy.
poem by Isabel Kestner
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The Escapade
Escapade of love making
Is worth undertaking,
That gives much thrilling
Removing stress and strain.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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These Days're Fast in Their Passing
These days are fast in their passing!
And unforgiving.
Time spent in scheduling events,
To decide which ones...
Should be given more attention,
Is something done that has had its welcome.
But today,
Winds come to blow...
Do not slow to bestow,
Consideration given.
These days are fast in their passing!
And unforgiving.
Finding time to procrastinate,
Is like hoping what is felt...
Is not an Earthquake that shakes.
Or a tornado that doesn't sweep,
Everything away...
With a flash before surprised eyes.
These days are fast in their passing!
And unforgiving.
And if one is not proactive...
Any delayed action at all,
May be cause for one's quick demise.
These days are fast in their passing!
And unforgiving.
Satisfying those with their eyes open.
And not those with their eyes half closed.
If one needs to ask just how fast...
These days already here to experience and live,
Have begun to slip from their grasp!
With a speed that has blurred their vision.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Rocks And Skulls
It was like spidural
dry crumbs of silence descending,
a still born sun popped out
through a raw hoematoma:
mountain was guilty of something,
it changed its mood and started
talking to clouds until the sky
turned crimson. The fountains had
a question for the bald owls, who under
the lidless eyes, always carried a massage
of colossal waste after the unholy
dinner. I know your glory was beckoning
to unflesh the bones in mass grave
of winged seeds who died in unsewn
pods of violence. I have still not come to
terms with the neck high milkless gaze.
poem by Satish Verma
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Autumn Falls
Autumn falls,
Before Indian Summer begins.
And in New England...
Temperatures cool,
To warm again.
Autumn falls!
And so do Chestnuts and Pine cones,
As well as leaves blown swiftly...
From an assortment of Oak and Maple trees.
And those that remain to cling...
Bring astonishing colors,
Of Orange, Red and mixtures of hues...
Yellow and Brown to them bring.
Autumn falls...
Dramatically!
To leave barren the trees,
Except for the Pine...
Mysteriously,
Just before the first snow of Winter...
Covers with a bright white majesticness.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Astray
and times move so fast, and now there does not seem to be any
and once it felt that there was more than plenty
I do believe that something somewhere sent me
To you, astray, and the bald raging flame of your heart is making me stay.
and I admit, that I have spent some time in confusion
Not knowing what is or is not illusion
Riddled with myself and destruction
Astray, and the bald raging flame of your heart is making me stay.
and flux, we move, crawl across the sky like the weather
To think that she once thought that I was clever
But I was do or die not now or never
Astray, still the bald raging flame of your heart is making me stay.
song performed by by I Am Kloot
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Grampa's Grampa
something about the ancient poetry
of the classic age
something calls to mind an isolated cemetary
brittle sparks of snow crystallized over the surface
cheek-chapping cold cones breath in visible steam
a lone raven looks over the lost yet
meticulously landscaped disaster.
this is lost on our pallets of now, and always have been.
even Percy Shelly drew these images of beauty and luster
as relics of a past, traditions of wordsmiths of fantasy of another age
that never existed.
poem by Barry Donegan
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The Solitary
My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
I have less need now than when I was young
To share myself with every comer
Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.
It is one to me that they come or go
If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.
Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone;
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me
Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone.
poem by Sara Teasdale
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Beating The Heat With Sweet Willows Creamery Ice Cream At The Fairie Festival For Me And My Friends
At the Fairie Festival
The sun beats down on many of us
from above
It's enjoying it's time in the sky of blue
As the minutes go by
The humidity of this day continues to
ratchet up
It may be the beginning of May
But it surely feels like Summer
The nature spirits that I'm friend with
We look for some way to cool off
My friends being a fairy, water nymph,
and goddess
Walking around the Fairie Festival
Water seems to be flying off the shelves
But ice cream from Sweet Willows Creamery
certainly isn't
And so, feeling like we are and considering
the situation
We make the best decision for ourselves
We stand in line for ice cream
Ice cream from Sweet Willows Creamery
We talk with each other and deal with the heat
and humidity the best we can
For the time being right now
Soon it's our turn
And we order and pay for 4 ice cream cones
I have the Fairy Dust Cotton Candy
My friend, the water nymph has Fairy Berry Banana
Strawberry Swirl
My friend, the fairy has Maraschino Cherry mixed with
Tollhouse Cookie Dough
My friend, the goddess has Strawfairy Toadstool
We enjoy our ice cream cones
Loving the flavors we picked
And we're sure that many others who'll get ice cream
will get a similar kick
As my friends and I walk along
Enjoying our ice cream cones
The Fairie Festival commences and continues on
poem by Justin Gildow
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