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Best Poems Written by Harry W. Holloway

Below are the all-time best Harry W. Holloway poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Harry W. Holloway Poem

It's a Really Obscure Poem, You Probably Haven'T Heard of It

Oh, you’re cool. Deck.
With your battered copy of Naked Lunch
tucked away in your thrift-store
		-satchel, it’s definitely a satchel-
that holds your cigarettes,
the ones you bummed last Wednesday,
and the extra scarf you keep with you
	at all times
just in case your neck gets cold,
which it seems to often,
even though its brother is always
wrapped loosely around your neck.
That iPod in your hand
with the huge headphones
		-for better acoustics-
is playing that band you like,
the one with the synth player
who can also play both
the didgeridoo and keytar
at the same time,
but I don’t think that’s the reason
that they only have five fans
or that that’s why you like them.
It’s okay,
I won’t tell your friends that
you pay your rent with a trust fund. 
		-Isn’t that ironic?-
I’ll keep your secret
the way you keep quoting Kerouac,
who you only know of
because of high school English class.
And no,
I won’t tell them either
that you hate the taste of coffee,
and miss eating bacon,
and actually think that tattoo
of a Palahniuk quote
		-“Your heart is my piñata”-
translated into Finnish
is not as clever as it was
the first time you tried cocaine.
But don’t worry. 
I won’t call you a hipster.
That way you don’t have to
pretend to hate it.

Details | Harry W. Holloway Poem

Remember Us As Smoke

It’s a highway nightmare, or it should be,
but no one’s afraid (too much)
and the road just thunders and hummmms
on and on and on and on
under that greedy summer sun.

All of their guns are cocked and loaded
but we’re still wondering:
	Water or bullets?
	Joke or truth?
	Which is which?
I’m starting to like that you can never be sure
if that’s water or mortality dripping
from their barrels,
from their thumb-tacked smiles.

Then there’s us.
We live in the realm of
nonsense and secrets and
pure dangerlust.
I think it’s the hint
of the war zone in you
that keeps me in this.

You see,
I was born on a battlefield,
in the gunsmoke and sulfur
and dirt and lead;
I was raised in a war zone,
where I scrabbled for a wisp of meaning
among scores of hardened soldiers
(but mostly,
among the ones who had
no choice, 	no love, no fight).

I was forged in violence.

I belong in your
dark,whirling,unforgettable,deep
madness.
You’re a manifestation of trenches and dust,
of rubble and the cold thrill of martyrdom,
and I fit as a toy soldier
(too much truth there)
on the board of a child’s game.

Maybe real people
don’t fit together quite like we do,
but I’d rather be the
blistered pig iron ideal of a vagabond
than some shadow still hopelessly searching
for something that’s not there.

At the end is a firefight of old Hollywood proportions,
but I’m combat-ready and you’re battle-eager,
so let’s stop pretending that we don’t love this anymore.
(because I do I do I love it more than you)
We’ll keep writhing in the dark
until our time is up, but let’s see if
before we fizzle out, maybe we can
take a few of them down with us.

Fight me and love me,
don’t you ever settle
for an armistice, a cowardly end;
not if you want to go out as binary stars
or conjoined twins,
held together not by gravity or skin
but by the struggle to be
the triumphant,
the blood-soaked and victory-stained
godskingsheroesgenerals
of this whole affair.

So I won’t listen when they
say that this is all just something we’ve created
in our heads.
(If war is the opposite of creation,
how could we create one?
When matter and anti-matter
collide,
the only output is mutual annihilation.
Does that make us
n o t h i n g?)

We’re pushing 120 in this
high-octane pipe-dream set on the stage
of the bitterly hopeful Midwest. I’ll play
Bonnie if you’ll be Clyde,
but really, 
I think we’re a second Genesis
that’s been penned as a high-speed chase. 

We will never be hit.
We will never be caught.
We will only win. 
win. 
win.

Details | Harry W. Holloway Poem

Spread

Your love is like cold butter; 
									I am the knife.

It will not spread 

	will not move 

it’s hopelessly stuck.

Obviously, as a knife,
I have no need of butter.
		But look! 		Just over there!
			A hunk of bread!
I’m quite sure that bread
			        would go really, really well 
							       with some butter.
		It looks positively lonely, 
		just sitting there 
on the cutting board.
					Can’t you see it?

I’m one for sharing, you see,
	especially when it comes
		to things of which I have no want.

So please. 

For the love of that baguette,
				just go make nice.
								I’ll even help, smooth things over.
									After all, that’s what knives do.
						Besides cut.
(But I’d really rather not introduce you
			to the sharpness and serration.) 

						So: 
						butter, meet bread.
						Bread, meet butter.

And maybe we’ll 
leave the utensils out of it.

Details | Harry W. Holloway Poem

Consider Us To Be Dolls

I’ve been made.
Not the way most people are made, with either a fateful mistake or long-lived intent. I
was not born the way people are born, or grown the way they were grown.
I am not real.
This needs saying. You have to understand that this is my reason. I am not a creature of
habit, or education, or coincidence. I am one of design. 
They did not make in a factory or on an assembly line, but that doesn’t matter. I am no
more real than your average toaster. 

I have thoughts. I have words. I have actions. None of them are mine. 

I was made this way. I was made to think how I think, and do what I do, and see how I see. 
	I do not think they meant me to know.
I was not meant to see beyond the veil, to see the strings being pulled. But even so, I
hate who I was meant to hate and love who I was meant to love, and only sometimes do I
confuse the two. I love my maker and hate my maker. I thank the one who gave me life and
curse them for it. 

	It is something strange to live a paradox.

Details | Harry W. Holloway Poem

Eternal Requiem

For the last hopes,
for the lost promises,
for the times you found a lie,
for when you wished for truth,
for insisting on a dream,
for knowing it to be false,
I will salute you. 

In the empty chambers of a heart,
in the caverns of your soul,
in the moments you never found,
in the hollowed sounds in your skull,
in the middle of someone else’s battle,
in the clearing in the downpour,
I will condemn you.

From the dark corners of our biosphere,
from the furthest reaches of your mind,
from the hidden spaces between your intentions,
from your idea of universal design,
from the dots of far-away stars, 
from ache of honesty,
I will save you.

I will salute you,
I will condemn you,
I will save you,
but mostly, I will contain you
in this idea of perfect love.
And inside of everything we know, 
we will build a monument to an ideal,
keep it safe and sound,
for it is within my body that 
I will keep you.
forever