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Best Poems Written by Nancy Ames

Below are the all-time best Nancy Ames poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Comfort Food

It's the taste of tears
and ice-cream
in a big plastic
spoon.

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Literacy

"Just one alphabet,
an imprint on the brain,
and you'll never forget
or be puzzled again.

If you use your head,
you can save your feet;
the mind must be fed
and a book is a treat.

Reading and writing
are private activities,
but mingling's the thing
in your towns and your cities.

The retail and wholesale
of popular cultures:
peacock and nightingale
enjoyed by vultures.

One day in the evening,
you'll want to impart
the frustrated meaning
that's hurting your heart.

Misunderstanding's
the product of fear,
but all happy endings
are perfectly clear.

And something is learned
when professors are fooled
and the children are turned
into the over-schooled -

Don't study too long,
after you're literate,
go totally wrong
and still be an idiot."

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In a Coffee-House

Music measures four dimensions
and speaks to one who has
quietly relieved his tensions
appreciating jazz.

The heroes who abandoned thrones
search for rhythms in the dark
and, lost among the undertones,
beauty is a wandering spark.

Moaning from her rigid lips
to get what she deserves,
monotonous, the drummer grips
the trigger in her nerves.

With acoustics seeking shelter,
she's seen too much too soon,
and a melody could melt her
but jazz abstracts the tune.

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The Soap Queen

"I impersonate myself
in another place and time,
while I sit here on the shelf
for my old, unconscious crime.

Assessing T.V. damage,
you have to play a role;
it's a novel form of language
but it sure does take its toll.

The sadness of what might have been,
the ignorance of youth,
but he didn't have to be so mean
and a liar spoils the truth.

Somewhere there's a lab-rat
who laughs at all his jokes;
it can't run because it got too fat
but it will eat until it chokes.

I know I can be quite intense
and my motivation's murky,
but let me say in my defense
that I like my beef quite jerky."

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A Perspicacious Girl

"She's just a perspicacious girl,
peeking past her long dark hair,
her finger twisting one dark curl
in the candle's golden glare.

Oh, she doesn't miss a thing,
no matter how she tries,
and when they ask about her ring,
she answers them with lies.

None of them like her anyhow,
but they'd love to watch her fall,
and they ought to realize by now
that she always knows it all.

She wonders where that waitress went
who was so nice the other day,
and she wonders what he could have meant
when he smiled at her that way.

He's gone this time for good;
she's already figuring it out,
but they keep on telling her she should
give him the benefit of the doubt.

His ring is in her pocket and
her heart is in there too,
but she's trying not to understand 
the where, when, why, and who.

Every time the door gets opened
by all the people coming in here,
she can feel another hope end
and the truth becoming all too clear.

Her life was one big holiday -
she was feeling so fantastic -
but now everything she has to say
comes out sounding so sarcastic."

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Old Man Winter and the Maple Tree Work On Their Relationship

"You will surrender all your leaves or anger us again and feel our deadly freezing 
rain upon your defiant flaming colours, your golden tatters flying helpless before 
the slashing fingers of my winds!

All this temporary glory of yours will be trampled into the discouraged ground 
while our triumphant crystalline voices breathe slogans into the sky which you 
will never read!

Where we rule, nothing moves without our permission and our will is a howling 
sub-zero wind in an eternal night.

Withdraw therefore strategically below the surface, close your frosted yes while 
my tender, white, blanketing snow fills the nests of the panicked and escaping 
birds, and a quiet multitude of creatures burrow among your powerful roots.

Further south, the constant warmth and feverish competition would only exhaust 
you - nature down there is much too unruly and rebellious. You wouldn't like it, 
believe me.

Hey, Maple Tree, never mind - you can always 'leave' in the spring. Haw. Haw."

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A Sign On a Telephone-Pole

"My kitten is black and she loves the snow,
and when morning ends the night,
she jumps out of the shadows to show
her blackness on all the snow-white.

Because no one can see her lately,
not since last Hallowe'en,
when she walked on our fence sedately
and the moon lit up the scene.

Nobody sees her when she's napping
and then they step right on her tail,
so she tore up some Christmas wrapping
and now my kitten is for sale...

To anyone who has a well-lit place,
who's not too heavy on their feet;
sometimes it's hard to see her face
but she is really very sweet."

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In Her Inexperience

"That girl's eyes loved gazing into water,
in her doubly delightful vision,
but he was still learning the liquid language,
and there's danger and there's damage,
there's envy and derision,
when you love the ocean's daughter.

So he told this girl that of course he had
been in love once, but that girl had
turned out to be a mermaid and he couldn't
swim or even go overboard and sink
down to where her eggs were lying like
multitudinous, enticing pearls slowly drifting
away on the luminous white sand at the
bottom of the blue lagoon...

He didn't really like the water very much,
I guess... so anyway what this girl told me
was that after that he always, ironically, had
the blues, like a deep glinting reflection in
his eyes, like the distant echo of a soprano
saxophone in his ears...

The first time this girl met him, apparently,
he turned to her and said, "What did you
say?" and forced a smile politely to his lips,
his lips that would never kiss an earth-woman
or taste the flower-sweet air that floats through
her, although she may have any number of
his wistful, wondering children clinging to her
skirts while her tears flow endlessly back to
the sea."

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Derision

The stone hero floats across the lawn,
   approaching nonentity with drawn
                    leather briefcase.

Interpreting an after-dinner pause,
   quietly admires a lady's claws
                   and perfect face.

A starving hope can be revealing,
   her shattered glance up to the ceiling,
                  her throat in lace.

The power-crystal is just salt
   and he can tell it's not her fault
                  she lost the race.

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To My Inlaw the Outlaw

"I recognized the rainbow
in the night when
you were waiting for
the sun to rise on the
dark side of the moon.

When I was a kid, the sun
would melt the pavement
on the way to school,
hot, shifting colors on
the slickened road.

And today the black pools
in the swamp said the
same thing: forbidden joy.

Morning is in the eyes
of your children and
the tiny roots are moving
into the soil.