Home » Poems » Best » Christopher Reilley » Best Christopher Reilley Poems

Best Poems Written by Christopher Reilley

Below are the all-time best Christopher Reilley poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

The Poem I Meant To Write

I regret not writing you down,
You swam through my mind
Linking words and thoughts
With gossamer chains
That glistened with meaning,

But the kitchen can was calling my name
Using the voice of my wife.
There were skinned knees to be kissed,
Equations to be sorted out,
House rules to be followed.

Has the opportunity passed?
Have you flown, like a caged bird
Through a conveniently open window?
Are you even now winging toward
Another poet, a different writer?

I have the scraps, the fragments,
The word-pieces I had intended
To build you from.
I will try to arrange them so,
In hopes they cast the same shadow.

Like my grandmother’s smile
You linger just behind my eye,
Waiting for me,
Wanting to be released
In just the ‘write’ form.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

Where Do Frogs Go To Think

WHERE DO FROGS GO TO THINK?


Where do frogs go when they need to think?
I've often wondered where.
When they're not feeling quite in the pink
do they hide under the stairs?

Do they feel like they must follow rules
and stick to a Lilly pad?
Or can they hide in a shed full of tools
when they are feeling sad?

What if a frog felt like being alone
away from his froggy friends
Where could he go to be unknown?
Well, I guess that depends.

He couldn't go to the circus or show,
he would never be sold a seat,
he would not like a plateau of cold snow
it would be very tough on his feet.

French restaurants are not the place for him,
and he would not like to see a bait shop
but he might make some friends over at the gym
and he would be a big hit at the hop!

He could go to the library, its quiet in there
maybe catch up on some old books.
Or he could ask the beavers to share their lair,
he tried the geese and got some funny looks.

It needs to be safe, it needs to be quiet,
it needs to be worry free,
he needs to have access to his daily diet
of flies, bugs, worms, and bees.

Maybe under some roots, or the edge of a bog,
some place that might make him glad,
side of a meadow, or an old rotten log,
or even his own lilly pad.

And what would a frog think about,
when they take the time?
Do they think about flies, or avoiding trout?
That is a question for another rhyme.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

The Four Horsemen

I saw the Four Horsemen -
the famous apocalypse guys.
They rode silently past neatly folded laundry,

They approached me in silence,
their breathe a rye and meadow wind.
Each of them in turn,

gliding ghostlike past where I sat,
watching steam on the mirror
grow cold.

War had no use for me,
past my prime, bum knee.
Not even as cannon fodder.

Famine had little to work with,
I had known hunger, want, poverty,
nothing he had could scare me.

Pestilence likewise dismissed me out of turn,
for which I’ll be forever grateful,
probably too sedentary to spread the touch.

And Death, well, we all must dance,
but today is not the day, now not the hour,
Death merely bid me good day.

And then they were gone, their vacancy tangible,
while I decided to look up embolisms or strokes,
trying to close this doorway into myself.

Until I saw the tracks in the talcum powder,
heard the soft whicker of horse,
and tasted their life on my tongue.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

Christmas At the Cuckoo's Nest

CHRISTMAS AT THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Of all the holidays that come and go
Christmas is the one that we love best.
No matter how crazy, it just goes to show
we love the yuletide in the cuckoo’s nest.

We deck the halls with scat, and shirts
and wait for Santa all month long.
Cause when we catch him he is gonna get hurt
but we all love to sing Christmas songs.

Singing carols just fills up the hollow void
left by those who were able to forget me.
It does not help that they call me paranoid,
I sing “Santa Claus is Coming…to get me.”

The dark end of the year makes us feel pessimistic
so we gather to sing Yule songs round the tree.
Like all of those diagnosed narcissistic
singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing … About Me.”

We try to stay busy, doing brisk calisthenics
and writing letters home to those who are so dear
and singing along with the many schizophrenics
asking musically “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

Guys with sexual identity crisis, playing on the recorder
for pyromaniacs constantly re-lighting their cigar.
and because they have multiple personality disorder
singing “We Three Queens Disoriented Are.”

We hung Holly because we heard we were supposed to,
but she went home, so we hung her in absentia.
“I’ll be home for Christmas”, but if I’m overdue
it will be because of my senile dementia.

The patients who are manic insist on decorating the walls.
Which I guess is better than being withdrawn,
except that they are always wanting to “Deck the Halls
and the Office, and the Beds, and the Staff and the Lawn…”

Christmas is depressing, even to those on the outside,
and the long dark days don’t bring spirits any higher.
But I've had enough of the many suicides
singing “Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire.”

“I Look Like a Hippopotamus for Christmas” is a tune
that always gets sung by the anorexics,
and we hear “Tables in Boyland” every day around noon
as it gets mangled by the many dyslexics.

We may be crazy, we might be weird,
but none of us think Christmas is for fools.
In our blissful ignorance we are sometime feared,
but we still wish you all a very cool Yule!

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

Dear Santa, Let Me Explain

DEAR SANTA, LET ME EXPLAIN


Dear Santa Claus, way up in the North Pole
Please, at least give me a chance to explain!
How was I supposed to know Dad’s remote control
Would get crushed when run over by a toy train?

I am not as naughty a boy as you might think,
I’m not a bad kid, I am not as bad as all that,
Who knew paint should not be poured down the sink?
Or that you should never try to shave the cat.

No matter what stories you might have heard,
I can be pretty darn good when I give it a try.
The cat will never again be stuffed in the cage with the bird,
Or slingshot to see if he can be taught how to fly.

I eat all of mom’s cooking, no matter how bad
I do my best to clean up my plate.
Only once did I hide the car keys in the freezer on Dad
The line I walk is narrow and straight.

I am sorry about the window, it was an accident
I was just playing ball with my friends.
I will pay for the glass, one hundred percent
And do whatever I can to make amends.

I am sure that Grandma has forgotten about those plates
She has forgotten about almost every other thing.
And I never bring her frogs or the snakes she hates
I have not muddied her carpets since Spring.

And about my kid sister, her hair will grow back,
Dad said she looked cuter than cute.
I think the rug in my room looks better in black
And Grandpa already replaced his gray suit.

So give me a break, Santa, I’m trying real hard,
It’s not easy keeping grownups happy, you see.
Maybe pirates really did bury treasure in our yard,
If I had found it, they would be happy, I guarantee.

So maybe sometimes I get in trouble when I get into a fight
Maybe sometimes I have to clap erasers after school,
I’m just full of energy, holding me down is not right
So what if I don’t follow their stupid rules

That rat Benny B., he had it coming, St. Nick,
He has been giving me guff for a week
He is a bully and a punk and he just makes me sick
With his nonstop tormentor’s mean streak.

You are Santa, you know the truth, I am really OK
I’m not a bad kid all of the time,
Just please bring me Christmas, I’ll do whatever you say,
I will even stop writing in rhyme.

Just one more thing Santa, and I hope you don’t mind
I really want to spread holiday cheer,
So if your list falls a little bit behind,
Please cut me a little slack for next year.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

Evelyn Mchale

This is an elegy for a famous suicide from New York in the 1940's whose glamorous death photo was in Life Magazine. - Chris Reilley


EVELYN MCHALE

You always were a shining star
despite what you were always told
Stay just the way you are,
never ever let yourself grow old.

Though your heart was truly scarred
by what you thought they thought
Your exit choice was just too hard
to win the fight that you fought.

And how am I to simply carry on?
I am undone by your last faithless leap.
No flowers in fields, no manicured lawn
Your memorial is all that is left to keep.

You held your beauty even in death
your style was yet quite committed,
And with your final mint-sweet breath
your apologies you scarcely omitted.

How I wish I had known how to hold your heart
With the grace and the love it deserved
For now we are fated to forever be apart
as the track of your life’s ending swerved.

Would that I could undo your last deed
And walk with you under warm summer skies.
If only I was able to answer the cold need
that I still see in your death-dimmed eyes.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

On the Planting of Trees

ON THE PLANTING OF TREES

The Chinese say to keep a green tree in your heart
and perhaps a singing bird will come.
Stretching fingertips to the starry skies above,
trees are perhaps silent, but they are far from dumb.

Reaching, praying, whispering in glorious exchange
with their mobile short-sighted human kin,
Trees sweeten our air by taking in what we exhale,
rewarding us with their breath, which we breathe in.

The storms of life make trees take deeper roots,
they have answers for any question a man seeks
they are witness to every change that occurs around them,
And so are the best possible kind of antiques.

To see trees dancing with the moon, framing bursts of stars,
we are gifted with their tender, rugged celebration,
a rooted chorus line holding the power of the universe,
every human beings chance to participate in creation.

Trees are beautiful in their peace; they are wise in their silence.
They will stand here long after we are all gone on to dust.
Beauty will have been added to this corner of the world
that to our children and grandchildren we will entrust.

There is much we can learn from the trees in our lives,
they are as grounded as it is possible to be,
yet they continuously strive to to touch the heavens above,
and without effort they remain uninhibited and free.

Trees are our most intimate contact with nature,
without artifice, never guarded, never coy.
A society grows great when old men plant trees
whose shade they know they shall never enjoy.

Blistering acts of making new life are often held in reserve
for gods in heavens above, or lowly poets in their hovel,
But today we can all partake in the creation of life
With little more than light, love, and a shovel.

So we travel through time when we plant a tree,
Regardless of the why, the where and the how.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
And yet the next best time is right now.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

Neo Nativity

NEO NATIVITY


Metal ghosts of Detroit's best
held together by rust and secrets,
stacked five high, squashed and bent
each holds memories-
good times in their back seats
family trips to the shore,
drive-in movies,
kids sleeping in the back
on the ride home from Christmas.

They may not be pretty
but they do provide shelter.
They cut the wind
and block the rain,
so she cowered beneath a wall of them.
Face illuminated by lightning
and pain
she pulled him close;
this man, Jose, who agreed,
she clutches at him 
and wears his strength.

No scratch for a motel,
no rooms to be had anyway,
and the Mustang died
a couple of miles outside of town.
The walk here in the rain
was the least fun she could recall,
until her water broke,
joining the squalor at her feet
and the labor began in earnest.

The moment is real
and as near as her next breath
the pain that grips her
steals that breath
then gives it back in a rushing whoosh.
She births, as women have done
for millenia
but she does it
in this mechanical graveyard.

A few moments of agony later
Maria was a mother
and her life had now taken a new direction.
When the sky finally cleared
she rocked her new son,
wrapped in a vinyl tarp,
and watched a single brilliant star
flare to life over her head.

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

Of the Magical and the Mundane

She is not only the pragmatist,
she is the enchantress.

From the organizing of paperwork,
taxes, forms and receipts,
to reminding me when a birthday is due,
grounding flights of fancy
that have no hope of touching sky,
or reminding me what really matters to me
with half a glance
and that chuckle that only she can do,
her good sense is a benefit
worth my own weight in gold.

Yet even as she props me up,
making certain I am buckled in,
and poking the flashlight of her curiosity
into every corner before letting me ride,
she manages to fire off in my core a set of fireworks,
strobes, shotflingers, cascades and star-bursts,
which I feel as bursts of heat,
warm rockets arcing through me.

How she can make a conversation
about mundane drivel
into a captivating dazzle
that leaves me trying to memorize her?

How is it possible
that her interest in me
is the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen?

What liquid magic exists
in those soft brown eyes
that grasps my throat and squeezes?

And please, for the love of my sanity,
how can this one soul’s approval
hold my entire being
in a thousand clutching grips?

Details | Christopher Reilley Poem

A Christmas Arraignment

A CHRISTMAS ARRAIGNMENT

Late one December evening
A sound woke me from my bed,
I grabbed a baseball bat for safety
And crept downstairs full of dread.

I must admit I was not fit
For foiling midnight burglaries.
My cousin had kept pouring eggnog,
I kept on saying, “Yes, please.”

I slunk down the stairs, bat in hand,
Jumping at yet another sound.
But never in my wildest dreams
Did I realize what I had found.

Someone was in my living room!
I could hear them moving around.
So I jumped into the darkened room
And bonked him upon his crown!

He fell face first upon my rug
As you maybe have suspected,
But when I turned on the table lamp
What I saw was quite unexpected.

Santa Claus himself lay unconscious,
My heart filled with a child’s worst fear.
I had gone ahead and clobbered
The source of all Christmas Cheer!

I had to hide the evidence
Or suffer a Christmas curse!
I could not guess how my holidays
Could possibly get any worse.

I dragged that fat elf out into the snow
And began to dig a hole.
I hoped to hide the evidence
Lest I be doomed to a lifetime of coal.

But then he awoke, and began to yell
And my neighbors began prying
To spy the source of all the noise,
The screaming, yelling and crying.

The cops showed up, and saved St. Nick
Before hauling me off to the station.
They said they hoped the judge threw the book
Like I was some inhuman abomination.

Not long after I stood up in court
While the victim showed his bruises.
I tried to tell of eggnog-induced haze
But the judge was hearing no excuses.

I hung my head in utmost shame
While the verdict was entered and read.
I got twenty long years in a state prison cell
For cold-cocking the man in red.

Then Santa’s elvish lawyers worked,
And a fireplace was magically erected,
Santa winked and vanished with a finger on his nose
Although not the one I expected.

Now when Christmas time rolls around this year
And you all have fun with your celebrations,
I sit in my gray ten-by-ten room
Fulfilling my legal obligations.

So take my advice this holiday season
As you fire up the traditional Yule log,
If your cousin is anything at all like mine
Say “No thanks” to a sixth eggnog.