24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
I feel as tall
as a skyscraper
Reaching out my hands
Toward the cloud
Periwinkle hues
Across the sky
I spread my wings
So I can fly high
Forest ranger Sam
A spy from down below
Eyes wide open
As I descend
Ever so slow
The faint smell of sourdough
Fills the air
A scent so warm and sweet
My stomach doesn’t miss a beat
I can’t wait to eat
I gotta hurry up and
Touch the ground with my feet.
Rebelí
storefront
I did not see, I did not see the cloud you carried
upon your head covered by the vines
or the Periwinkle twinkling against your dark curls
as you followed the beat of the drummer
that asked to be fed.
I failed you, I failed you, my friend,
I could not keep you safe
from the needle that spread its poison
deep within your veins as you followed
that drummer in your head.
If I could, if I could turn back time
I would wait by the storefront
where we first met and smile into your eyes
and mute the drumbeats of the drummer
that has left you for dead.
I platter paint on the canvas, every color, every line, every shape I could think of
I must create something, an image, if words elude me
When it’s quiet inside and my thoughts are unsure,
My canvas makes sure my art lives
I feel like the snake
ready to shed my skin
Away
I feel like the caterpillar
ready to leave my cocoon
Too soon
I smell the change of my vibrations
Changes, lifes marvelous donations
I smell my lifes regulations
Trapped and free to a universally
Stream
I stand still
Under the Moonbeam
(Inspired by my painting, REFLECTION)
As my kitchen window reflects my neighbour’s home
so, I see myself in you.
What I like and love about you, I like and love about myself.
What I judge about you, I judge about myself.
If I’m angered by your words or actions,
I’m angered by my own
I see in you what I criticize in myself –
what makes me frustrated, frightened,
annoyed, sad.
You show me all of who I am;
my flaws and my beauty marks.
Recognizing our differences
and how we are the same
is how we learn acceptance,
how we come together.
To grow, to reconcile, to heal, to build community,
to become whole.
One Spring
she planted periwinkles in the front yard…
spread them over two clouds of dirt
she herself forest rangered up
wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow
from the backyard
southern grit barefoot
inside her old faded gray gumboots
silently rising to her own occasion.
She was the needle
in our suburban
neighborhood haystack
of wives and mothers.
She was our skyscraper.
She was our Sears and Roebuck
Christmas storefront window
every single day.
Forest Ranger – Poem 11
The Forest Ranger sees through the painting
On the wooden floor of the patio fainting
Music denotes his heart beat as he listens
Headphones a sign of his glisten
On the wooden floor of the patio fainting
Painted in white wash painting
Headphones a sign of his glisten
Paint brushes align the clouds of the skies
Painted in white wash painting
Strokes of perfection meet the skyscapers
Paint brushes align the clouds of the skies
Pale colours finding his fine scraper
Strokes of perfection meet the skyscapers
As he cycles with his gumboots
Pale colours finding his scraper
He beats the night with his foot
As he cycles with his gumboots
Potted plants array his spread
He beats the night with his foot
Forest Ranger is ready for his bread
@SabinahAdewole 26/06/2021
Pantoum Poem – Repeating lines throughout the poem series of quatrains
Second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as first and third.
Laying on the mossy cool
I watch the living skyscrapers
Green and drooping with their
Burdens of leafy bowers
Scented cedars spreading their
Carpet of soft needles
The incense of the cool forest
Delightfully assaulting my every sense
As clouds sail through the periwinkle sky
They seem close enough to spread themselves
Over the tops of the everlasting sentinel Forest Rangers
Who sway in the gusting breezes
To the beat of the music of the wild world
Long ago I abandoned gumboots and socks
To sink my toes into the fragrant moss
Losing myself in the sound of a small trickling
Waterfall
Pouring all of its tears of wonder
Into a talking creek that wanders past rocks
Under the fingers of trees
Dripping with lichen
A bird trills high notes of euphoria
I long to express
This wonder, of a little slice of the undisturbed world
“Am I getting better, daddy?” she asks me.
tubes and needles everywhere
poking, intruding, drawing, taking,
all without a moment’s respite.
“Yes, you are, my little angel”, I lie to her with false alacrity.
“Am I getting better, daddy?” she asks me.
chemicals that bleach her into pallor
drugs that take away her crowning glory of soft, golden curls
foreign bodies that they pump to defile her.
“Yes, you are, my little angel”, I convince her, and me, with base cruelty.
“Am I getting better, daddy?” she asks me.
smiling bravely through tears of pain
sensing an inevitability
with every tortured breath, she slips away.
“Yes, you are, my little angel”, I whisper with accepted finality.
© 2021 S Phua
Don’t ask me how my trip went
Don’t ask me what I bought
Instead, let me tell you what I saw.
While walking on the main street
The heart of the city
Behold, there stood a storefront
With bold sign in the big gigantic letter
P-E-R-I-W-I-N-K-L-E
But a symbol of a flower represented the I
Beside it was a gumboot skyscraper
Its needle peak is seen among the cloud
The store though different
Stood magnificent
Showing an alluring art
Of the unseen and the unthinkable
Though unexpected but amazing
The myriad flowers were arranged in a periwinkle shell
A shell colored in haste but stylishly beautiful
Gone were the slimy slime
Or the snail host
For the shell preferred the flowers
To the snails.