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Best Poems Written by Jacob Reinhardt

Below are the all-time best Jacob Reinhardt poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Color Missing

The Color Missing
Red, black, and blue are the colors of our work pens. Red is the color of the blood we spill on other people’s mistakes.  Blue is the color of the songs we sing on tax forms or pay stubs- every page has a secret melody. Black is the color of the streets we fear most. Black is the color of our signature of approval. Black is the color of our death.

‘But what about the Green pens?’ I ask. They say ‘the ink is too hard to see.’

Details | Jacob Reinhardt Poem

Just Be

Sometimes I admire the littlest things
A simple rock. A blade of grass. 
They need no future goals, no tax exemptions
They don’t need to go anywhere or be anything
They just are. 

Sometimes, especially when I’m reading life insurance policies,
I envy the rocks and the grass
And try to be like them for a moment. 
I sit perfectly still and give myself to the wind-
And it whispers in my ear:
Just be.
And for that moment I don’t need to go anywhere or be anything.
And at the snap of my fingers, 
All the complex widgets and gizmos that make up my life
Fold into paper airplanes and fly off in the wind.

Jacob Reinhardt
10/07/13

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Who Am I

A new photograph floats to the surface
Playfully dressing up as the world around me
Hat, striped socks and all
Tiptoeing at the top for one last sweet moment 
Before sinking back into my ocean mind.

One after another they arrive
Single file,
Steeping my eyes in the world 
As the minds shutter, ever fluttering 
Strings together this conscious stream I play in.

My photographs fade in time’s wrinkled arms.
Joining their brothers and sisters at the ocean floor,
They hold hands and try to answer the question that is always asking itself:
Who am I?

Jacob Reinhardt
10/3/2013

Details | Jacob Reinhardt Poem

Clock

Clock!
You sculpt the clay of my life
With your rigid hands,
Shouting your high commands through morning alarms. 
Accusations fly
As you collect your daily payment of attention.

When I find myself savoring life’s sweetness,
You sprint behind my back.
And when pain drops my heart from my chest,
You linger, rubbernecking from the wall.

You enclose the whole of my life
In that circular frame,
Ever spinning in your infinite math,
Drunk with power!

Clock!
I can take no more of your tyranny!
I can afford no more of your triple A battery lunches-
I am afraid you’ve run out of time.
So keep your hands out of my business, I’m sleeping in today.

Jacob Reinhardt							09/05/2013

Details | Jacob Reinhardt Poem

Life In Cubicle

The Noose is tightening.
The 5’s and 10’s yanked from our hands and aching backs 
Are spent on band-aids:
A last stand effort to plug the holes in our hearts
When the price of drowning is only getting higher
So we turn to tiny acts of thievery
Taxes prettied up, cashiers uncorrected,
Stealing at the edges because we’re backed into corners, 
Corners
Glittering with promises corners
Dripping with possibility,
With Island resort wallpaper
Sold in bulk at Wal-Mart for
Profit: A trail of crumbs called America-
Which has curdled our souls and we love it!
And hate it and gossip about it and think obsessively about it and then
We find the most expensive friends our looks can afford,
Shopping for substance (50% off)
Staring through the eye of a screen 
Light speed in pursuit of heaven on earth (Ignore the plastic)-
Until pop!
We die of ADHD. 
Never having had the chance to smell the genetically modified roses.
Never having had the chance to see through this kingdom of ideas
As we served out our sentence to life in cubicle.

Jacob Reinhardt
10/24/2013

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Dance In the Dust

I am drifting into memories.
Wasting away like a million photographs fading in the sun-
In ceaseless renewal,
Staining the depths of my eyes with images
In the minds shutter ever fluttering to infinity,
Stringing together this conscious stream I play in.
My stupendous world made of dust and space
Tightrope walking existence!
Chance so scarcely gracing our atoms with a single touch
In a place so lonely when counted, 
Yet so abounding when felt!
So dance in the dust
Poised miles above the earth
Prance on your stilts, 
And peek into the great valleys beneath her skin.
Because any moment we could vanish
Into


Jacob Reinhardt	
9/19/2013

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Dance In the Colors

All around me
Great cities made of sand.
Green sky scrapers poke through the ground 
To thrive in life’s strict conditions
And melt away with the tide…

Great houses made of cards
Form lines and tightrope walk existence,
Knowing that any moment, the wrong brick may fall
And buckle our world to its knees
As Mother Earth shouts Jenga from the sidelines.

So while were here
Dance in the colors
Poised miles above reality,
Leap over the heavens on domino stilts

Floor it in the sky
Living death in the fast lane,
Flourish in faith and 
Seize the day in light speed,
Because any moment 
We could disappear 
Into



Jacob Reinhardt	
10/15/2013

Details | Jacob Reinhardt Poem

How I Met You

First, a sequence of footsteps disguised as coincidence.
A smile to hook at eleven, a line to sink at twelve
A style, all the while, caught leaning in the background.
Words, flowing like they’ve been there all along
Dropping us, down another level in their elevator 
Further down the rabbit hole.
I become your mechanism
Heeding your every nerve,
Every tiny rhythmic stir. 
You sing as I tune you.

At last, the bottom falls out and we’re flying, passing
Between each open idea, dipping
Inside your emotional crevices, tracing
Each curve in your wings- 
Color spiraling outward,
Out of control

We crash land by the ocean
Peeking from the rubble. 

Though our eyes are all that is left- seeds
Aligned and blooming toward the sun.
Time stops.

And the clock waits outside
As our sandcastle, balanced perfectly on this single fleeting moment
Breaks against the morning tide.
And the night disappears back into footsteps
Just to age in a museum of art never captured.

Details | Jacob Reinhardt Poem

A Departing Soldier

I know you.
Candles lit, incense fuming,
You like it when I bite your neck, just hard enough.
Blankets thrown about the room
So recklessly, they refold themselves.

And we roll down a hill together,
Kissing the leaves, tickling with our eyes,
Laughing with our hearts.
"Once you get on that plane, you're not coming back, are you?"
"No," I say. Because only
Nothing
Lasts forever.
And it spills through the cracks in your hands
The moment you grasp it.
Like water from a stone.
She bites my neck
Drawing lines of ecstasy down my back with her fingernails
Spilling into me, fighting my words.
"I leave when the sun sets."

Details | Jacob Reinhardt Poem

The Soul Shatters

The soul shatters upon death. Sentience fractures into a million variables that swirl chaotically into piercing eyes that melt into the color sadness, spinning into galaxies that shrink to the size of ants and you twirl in a blender of being for eternities until finally, at long last, something sticks. Perhaps it may be as simple as a strand of hair, nonetheless all possibility spins around it, flashing contradictions of rainbow transparencies, empty solids and polka dotted space, continuing until a second hair joins the first, clutching to the nothingness and refusing to move. Soon thousands of hairs arrive and synchronize above a scalp unto a face, torso, limbs… materializing ever faster… and at once you are born. And just as the memory of your trial and error experimentation and prior life evaporate, you embrace the arms of a stranger, gazing into her eyes, hung between this world and the next… sobbing in a fit of omniscience, in awe of your hard earned shape.

Jacob Reinhardt
10/15/2013