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All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
   Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
Joshua Kirby Oct 2014
The earth is her playground beneath her feet.
Everyone around her sees that she’s sweet
And full of an innocence in her play.
She won’t stop until she’s seized the day!
Life is a fun game for her to beat.

She plays with the tadpoles that she finds neat.
For them, playing with her is such a treat.
They dream of being frogs so that someday
She’ll kiss them and make one her prince.

She traps them in a jar once filled with peat
And takes them to her home so they can meet
Her family where maybe they’ll stay.
But their dream isn’t her dream in any way.
Now it’s fools and liars who softly bleat,
“She’ll kiss them and make one her prince.”
Eleete j Muir May 2018
Health department signs litter the grass areas,
"Do not make contact with the water;
Swimming forbidden".
Less than twenty years ago I learnt to swim here
And fish too, once i even drowned!
Sometimes my friends and I would
Catch Eels then sell them
To the local Chinese restaurant.
I treasure those memories of my childhood.

This fresh water lake surrounded
By trees taller than buildings
My beautiful haven from the city, hidden
Between main roads and highways
that only the locals know.

Sitting on sandstone rocks
I see my reflection amongst the lily pads.
Beyond the depths an entanglement of
Roots, seaweed and *******.
Natural mandalas made by tadpoles
Ripple across the murky brown surface
Whilst a rather large water dragon
Sun bakes on the riverbank
And ducks glide by reminding me
Of the canoes we used to capsize
And I appreciate how simple life
Used to be.

ELEETE J MUIR
This poem was written back in September 2003
Alexis J Meighan Oct 2012
"Tadpoles and Dragons"

Scared a lil, fear full a lil, I'm telling myself to try a lil
I wouldn't know the difference if I lie a lil
But first I'll curse
Eat dinner quench my thirst
Wash my flesh then cry a lil
Walk it off
Man up and face the mirror
flex the guns then sigh a lil
Strong and steady
Game face on I'm ready
Breath in deep wave goodbye a lil
Tell ya'll I love you in case I die a lil
Hear my theme song as they chant my name time for some hope time for some change.
I'm all hyped up I'm gone though I ask why a lil The next time we meet I'm gonna fly a lil.

Alexis J. Meighan
Sarina Aug 2013
***
It made scallops on my shirt, dried like salt
in seashells —
the final appearance of our love.
I
could have mourned it
as if it were more than the possibility of life
disguised by a million tadpoles. A whole

day, it took him to get home
it may be even more
miles than my body fluids travel in a week.
His, still on my shirt. Hits my knees

(always the knees, have built oceans on them)

He thinks he left, but it was I
who cleaned sand castles from all my crevices

he thinks he left, he
the snail
I have
caught up in years of needing to be ******.

He thought he left, but white beaches
are still in my dresser —
it is what remains.
I am so tempted to say, "your *** outlived you"
but it would not be the
first time his **** did the work for him.
nivek Aug 2015
the salty taste of death
plays games across my tongue
a meal long digested
forgotten past your throat
I need water and need it bad
fluid nectar falling from the sky
collecting in puddles
where tadpoles love to evolve
My bed is a mass grave
My toilet is a mass grave
My kitchen sink is a mass grave
Stretched out in lines of chrysalis coke, choking the evanescent life that could have been. Straight into the empty Coca Cola can you go. A litany of atrocity in every bed, futon, desks, truck stop bathroom, camera lens, attempting to capture the genocide on film.
Alas, the lens is Covered with white, bioluminescent death.
Choking the unborn in the ****** drain.
Coffee mug refill, for but a single dime,
sweaty palms connected to strained veins on wrists,
connected to thrusting elbows.
Firing wrist rocket, V2, V1, buzz bomb.
Unsuspecting future citizens, blocks of thousands at a time.
Tadpoles, rotting in murky basement suits the world over.
The war is on.
Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen.
Arbeit Macht Frei.
Swim for dear life
Annie Hintsala May 2010
Spring in Kansas.
It doesn’t come in softly.
It roars in with the wind and rain beating against a steel roof, washing into the old soddies and stone,
Clearing out winter in one giant breath.
The change comes within a week,
From dry dead, brown, to startling green, an emerald landscape of winter wheat.  
The emerald isle has nothing on Kansas in the Spring.  
Then the color starts, red buds against glorious green fields
and thunderous skies, a painters dream uncaptured.
And forsythia, the first blooms, beautiful and stark.
Crocus, daffodil and dandelion crowning the ground with gold.
The trees, bare of leaves, burst forth with flowers in shades of white and pink and the magnolias burst forth, ready to fly off the tree.
Our mighty cotton wood, drooping with frills that will become light catching tufts in the early summer sun as the leaves murmur their constant song, piling like snow in the heated streets.
Thunder rolls as lightning strike turning day into night with hail filled clouds and twisters striking like Greek gods, angry and awesome.
Creeks flood and clear the way for tadpoles and crawdads in streams and pools.
Spring comes, the earth warms, we all wake and stretch and wait for the sunflowers to do the same, yearning to the summer sun.
This poem is meant for a series on life in Kansas that I'm working on.
Parsimony Antipathy or Prudent Hostility

                     Locked-up Cuspid Of the One Celled Organism

                     As the Augury tends to its Auspices oddities

                    One Weak Ordeal and your reward will be handsome

  

                     Ceteris paribus when Ockham’s blade gets dull

                     Get a loan from your Karma or come back as amoebae

                     Hearts won’t be practical until they’re unbreakable.

                     But if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

                    

              Sometime this week I’ll hang from the gallows

              Every drip of the tallow brings closer the end

              But I’ve got this imp secured in this bottle

              And you can have him for a price less than a penny



              Yeah, I’ve got a genie who’ll grant all your wishes

              Just pay for this bottle and your family gets fed

              But act fast, for soon I **** my last twitches

              By this time tomorrow I could very well be dead



                     Salivating tadpoles for Hegemony crickets

                     All imprisoned here with this repressionist peasant

                     By a singular stroke into Jove’s black booklet

                     Lucidly errant, who hasn’t been flippant?



                     Clever Arachne, my love, oh thou immodest spider

                     All I ever wanted, she picked a fine time to leave us

                     My days squandered eavesdropping Apocalypse riders

                     But if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.



              Sometime this week I’ll hang from the gallows

              Every drip of the tallow brings closer the end

              But I’ve got this imp secured in this bottle

              And you can have him for a price less than a penny



              Yeah, I’ve got a genie who’ll grant all your wishes

              Just pay for this bottle and your family gets fed

              But act fast, for soon I **** my last twitches

              By this time tomorrow I could very well be dead
Poetic T Sep 2014
And that was all another story,
Now bed my little eggs
As A Hundred And One
Little eyes shut tight,
  Night,
Night,
Eggs Sleep
Eggs Grow
Eggs we love you so
So they slept
Morning Shimmered
Like a blanket lifted
A Hundred And One
Eyes awoke
"Mum"
"Mum"
Above Bubbles frothed
With each
POP
POP
POP
Was heard faint whispers
Of a
croak
ribbit
A Hundred And One times
If didn't lose count??
Mother out of breath
Hopping,
Jumping,
"What is it my many children"
All at once
A TAIL WE DO HAVE
My little ones, that was the story
"Of which I spoke"
But I guess
A Hundred And One
Were playing spot the egg
And not listening to what
RIBBIT mother said,
You wait till tomorrow
My young
Now go out and play,
So they rushed and played
Till the glow in the heavens sank down
Beneath the ponds gaze,
Now bed my little ones
Growing up so fast,
As a hundred a one
Little eyes shut tight,
  Night,
Night,
Tadpoles Sleep
Tadpoles Grow
Tadpoles we love you so
Morning broke not as before
The racket from above
They awoke
A Hundred And One
Ran with tail between there legs
MOM,
MOM,
MOM,
All were afraid of the unknown
"Children, children"
She softly ribbited spoke,
"It is but water"
From up high and then
Drips from the clouds,
To down Below,
"Fear not my young ones"
She spoke,
And the day was noisy
And a mess did they make
But to bed early they went
An early morning
You all must wake,
As a hundred a one
Little eyes shut tight,
  Night,
Night,
Frogs Sleep
Frogs Grow
Frogs we love you so
And It was Just reached
Dawn,
She softly spoke
Time to wake
Babies no more,
You are grown up
!!Its time to go!!
"Go where mother"
"To the world beyond the pond"
Life is ever moving
And so you must move on
Be brave my little
Ribbits,
&
Ribbets,
For your life is just a
Hop,
And a
Jump,
Away,
Find your damp patch,
My Hundred And one
And then make it your home..
For you are not children ribbet any more.
michelle reicks Jun 2011
I hear water singing,
the different musical symphonies of the rivers,
lakes and the vast ocean sea;

The sweet sorrowful song of the whale--the same song as when I first heard it,
off the edge of a boat in a yellow rain jacket when I was less than nine years old,

The children laughing as tadpoles swarm gaily around their tiny toes--the cream colored foam swallows their legs up to their knees in the orange midday sun,

The chirping of a dolphin, kissing the deep blue waves each time it leaps,

The seahorses galloping and neighing in the salt sea and the catfish purring and licking their paws in the lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota,

The seagulls calling to the fish to leap out of the water to become breakfast,

The sobbing of the naked woman in her bathtub at home, the suds up to her pink neck--toes turning to raisins,

The deep bellowing of a cruise ship, filled with all of the people laughing inside its belly,

The ocean whispering against the sand as the moon is gazing into the largest mirror in the universe,

The sun singing loudly in the morning time, peeking above the horizon and pulling back the curtains of the night, greeting all of her lovely friends; bold, sweet, and strange.
undesxred Nov 2015
yellow cars
bumble bees
and flag poles

longboards
a chain-linked fence
and tadpoles

you are
the nacelle on an airplane
that is, a separate engine that has been attached for support
to keep me going

yellow cars
bumble bees
and flag poles

longboards
a chain-linked fence
and tadpoles

navigating me out of the forest fire
saving me from my death
should I thank you or resent you
should I attempt or resign

yellow cars
bumble bees
and flagpoles

longboards
a chain-linked fence
and tadpoles

time with you is time well spent
although leaving you stings worse than a bee
you support me no matter what

we cruise along wherever things take us
locked together with the same mindset
yet we’re growing in different directions
Eileen Prunster Jul 2012
land of no responsibility
except to give in to that burning urge
that prickles up the back of your neck on waking
to be off out running under sun
barefoot as soon as out of sight
adventures wait and time belongs to you
you fish for sticklebacks in a field of golden corn
where farmers wave in anger at the trail to the pond
and take home tadpoles in glass jars on string
breathless at the sight of legs emerging
pick bluebells in the wood for mother
but then arrange them in old tins
in tumbledown cottage the gangs den
scrumping crab apples in overgrown gardens  
never getting that stomach ache all Adults warned of
roaming hedgerows looking for hedgehogs
hoping for signs of any living thing
all long fled at the collective noise you make
catching butterflies to look at their wings
putting crysillis in greaseproof papered jars
to watch them emerge for flight on glistening wings
when you return them to the wild
lifting up old drain pipes to look for slugs to race
not forgetting to put them back at races end so they dont shrivel
basking in hot sun after watching trails of catapillars
whose prickles mother later tweezers out
amidst a small flood of tears because they flame red
having a bath with bubbles then tucking up in bed
drowzy but anticipating  tomorrow is waiting
haven't done this before   just written down a few reminiscences on childhood occupations
haven't arranged anything just flicked it up as it came so im feeling unsure about it
I dispelled arduous watches tick on laborious appareled macrocosms scatter spitting patter, teeming paved labyrinths searching for something to own orbiting the bench I sit on, envisaging celestial bodies slinging transonic ripples. Ether colliding into clouds masking infinite galaxies from a suffering and crawling universe destined for a hole in the wall, where the rats live; nibble, scratch, deconstruct, and reconstruct, cannibalize, ****, and die.
         Does silence exist amongst the deucedly hot and dense state that incrementally dilutes vociferous dissonance illuming dynamic hurricanes, merciful gases, and asteroidal moats guarding engraved anthropomorphic landscapes?
Probably not; fauna whisper, tear down, and settle, birth exigent infants and zealous appraisals, ***** towers and castles; consciousness capitulates, inundates prisons, cemeteries, and landfills. Silence, in precipitous day dreaming, auspiciously reverberating webs espying arpeggios tomb the suburbs as one navigates in and out of trepidation to avoid being caught like a gnat, a quiet ******* bug with no cigarettes to burn.
The impact flung me from the bench in the commons toward dusk disguising 16 acres with streetlights and homeless asking for squares on the roads to spurs and oaks, scattered acorns crepitating under my soles. Each  compressing sound pulling like gravity, transporting down roads with bouncing winds, subtle aglow, guides from defiant contours of Gods in the clouds, dandelions erupting side walks like tectonic plates seismically tear apart earth, the fog’s mist like ships floating into suns swimming like tadpoles; air undulates as I wave my hands against the wind, molding the space as clay.
This city is mine, I tumultuously grow with it, and I mercurially oscillate with it as a memory inevitably plays. The past as a dream, is mine. The abstract present is mine, and the infinite future is not, yet they are given away for possession.
Inept graffiti cartographically stain bricks providing a simpler search for portals made perfect for laying like a crescent moon near their opening edge, watching dawn lift dust and my eyelids, glaring off windows building and kissing the satellite towers on roofs, waking the mountains in the horizon, painting the sky, one could give a **** about the past, present, and future, the beginning is just as imminent as venturing any further.
Embryonic sun rays mixing fluids and this coffee I nabbed to wake the day, having it enlighten the conversations one has with oneself; consisting of bellicose thoughts filtered, taboos accompanying bleating people, ubiquitous t-shirts, satirical newspapers, and indecorous magazines perpetually feeding me preliminarily eldritch reconnaissance as they dress into strangers.
It could be time for another cup of coffee and cigarette? Or am I just floating off into enigma over the road becoming a sea?
Gypsies contort into seagulls, shingles moving like tsunamis smashing down on metropolitan brick cities, Atlantis generation XYZ resting in an underwater valley, mountains sew gardens on the ocean’s bottom, signs buried, and I’m simply lifting back off into space.
Complaints will suffocate; I’ll be out of town, however, I will miss those whom drowned.
Good riddance.
“Hello,” a soft resonation shaking the atmosphere.
Resuscitation; back to reality…
“Hello”, the voice repeated, “Are you going to be alright?”
“Pardon, what happened?” I slurred.
“You just fell several stories and your head is missing. This is astonishing how you can hear me, how I can hear you, are you in any pain?”
“Um, I apologize, but I’m not really certain of what you are saying. My head is missing?”
“Yup, it detached from your atlas, when you hit the asphalt, what is the last thing you remember?”
“Having my head…well sort of, I remember staring at people on a bench in the commons it was kind of turning my stomach, making my head feel heavy, so I got up and walked. Explains the headaches and visuals, Where am I?”
“You’re in my basement. I could hear your voice when I found you, even with your head, well, skull missing.”
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”
“I would have called an ambulance, but you told me not too, you wanted me to hear you, you kept insisting I hear your stories, so, I listened to your stories as I basically dragged you here. You would go in and out, talking then silent the next, and now you seem like you’re in at this moment; without a skull, your heads there.”
“Well…I can’t see you… or the basement… and I am not in any pain… How long has this been going on, why did you listen to my stories, and what did I say?”
“You know what you said.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the only one who listened.”
ollie Aug 2018
a bluejay recently passed away
outside on my front lawn
i tried to help him best I could
but now he is long gone

i have a pool of tadpoles
sitting right out back
the tiny little froglets
making me an insomniac

a new cat showed up last week
with a short shiny black coat
along with his appearance
my mother left a note

"please do not feed him, darling
for he is but a stray
and you've taken in three new cats
already yesterday!"
i found a nest of baby bunnies the other day and nearly cried
Valsa George May 2016
In my garden is a clean little pond
Fructified by tadpoles besides tiny fish
Where water lilies bloom by day
White and violet, a lovely sight

Over it hover pairs of dragonflies
They come in plenty on summer days
When the day is bright, soon after morn
To lay their eggs on lily pads
Like helicopters, they skim up and down
With their tiny propellers coming down
Sometimes like surfers over the aqua blue,
Perform rare feats, with brisk movements
Their filmy gossamer wings glistening in sunlight
And their bulging eyes reflecting iridescent shades

If ever we try to catch one…., sensing danger
They would rocket up, as fleeting flashes of light,
Into the air…. gliding and spiraling

Even in my sixties, whenever I spot a dragonfly
My mind catches up with those memories
When as children we chased them- ‘hush hush’
Trying to trap them while they perched on a fence or pole

How delighted we were holding them between our fingers
As they helplessly shivered thrumming their filmy wings!
Making them lift small stones double their weight
In their quivering thread like hands, a huge task for them,
Had been our greatest thrill then…!
Were we sadists……??
I still wonder!
I was fond of frogspawn pond and the games that we played,with names I can hardly recall
walking tall,we as boys were so full of the joys as the light skipped on gaily through those games we played daily,
and the tadpoles played catch if you can.
As a man full of doubt and sad how we turned out
I go back now and then,remembering when it was simple to be,
so free without care,
and I often find there
some of my old boyhood friends,memory lends these gifts to me and once again I can be,
young, by the pond of which I was so fond where the tadpoles played catch if
you can.
Birds came and pecked through the silver top,
popping their beaks in
for a dribble of milk,
it was cold then,
back in the old days
not so anymore.

And the slow light of the glow worm that could turn a bird in mid flight would send sparse light, but enough light as if enough light was a feast.

The snowmen in the garden that stood under the clothes line looked perfect with two buttons sewed into their eyes until the thaw came and they melted like our hearts did when they went away and the days grew even longer after that.

The frogspawn burst into tadpoles became black comma's in the pond and the herons flew like spitfire aircraft,
how daft we laughed and gaily played as if the season would last forever and tomorrow would never come.

Mr's Brown is Bobby coming out to play today?

Then Bobby went away,
taken by leukemia that crept in silently and took him quietly and still we squandered the fading sunlight.

On the dullest of days when the bagpiper plays and a darkness comes into my heart,
I stand there, out on the foreshore, waiting for emptiness
and wanting no more.
Austin Cundiff Mar 2014
Mud
Beaten-in-dirt-roads led us to
a foggy marsh you called the place to be.
Our heads kept still as we watched
eggs hatch beneath the algae.
Our bodies swaying like the limbs
of a willow we almost forgot about.

Preoccupied with catching tadpoles,
we never noticed temptation
creeping up behind tomorrow.
Aggravated, he whispered:
I'm waiting.
Kari Apr 2014
White crane fishing trackside for
Vestiges of nourishment from
Newark muck and Secaucus slush:
            Be aware;
Three-eyed tadpoles live in these waters,
Breeding alongside rotting corpses--
Mob jobs gone wrong and various
Plastic garbage.
We need to clean up Jersey.
Stanley Arumugam Mar 2014
Treading on toothpicks
thinking about tomorrow
time teases
tired tadpoles
trying to transform
trains transporting
transparent  travellers
to tall tin trees

typed at Teatime
ty Tismee T
Tetit?
Time: To-o-to TM
Stanley Arumugam
8.01.90. Durban
Keeping my sanity in a management meeting  - my first job

— The End —