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Best Poems Written by James Townsend

Below are the all-time best James Townsend poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | James Townsend Poem

To My Favorite Therapist

Selling comfort for a song
Since my insurance agreed to pay.
Brightening up my dreary day.
Just a shame that I can't stay long.
Emptiness soothed and derisions challenged.
Fiction spurned and dreams managed.
Coping with the world outside
Seems it bit easier with her as my guide.
Still doubt and imagined decay
Of my soul infect my day.
As the art of getting by
Eludes me and makes me want to cry.
Another week, another visit.
My spirit buoyed with new resolve.
Times sixteen weeks of the same
Brightening my troubled mind frame.
Nothing's sure as I take my leave,
But her cheerful image, I can always retrieve
To get me through my darkest days
And to cut right through life's thickest haze.

Details | James Townsend Poem

At the Shift Break

Clock melting lowly before my eyes.
Half-empty stomach still growling, suspended in wait.
Hurried anticipation accompanies every task. 
Scanning the floor, deathly afraid someone might ask
A question that would lead me twenty minutes astray.
Such a tiny window for a break in my day.
Tumbling, euphoric, I check out for my escape.
Tunes, chocolate, and fresh air rapidly abate
The impending doom that we all must have felt
When the clock rules over us like an iron belt
Quick to strike and slow to heal,
Clocks and their foremen don't care how I feel.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Fortune Cookie

Expectations are like dolphins
Singing gleefully through the waves.
Life's lottery calls your number
As you wait there by the bay.
Purple sunset's majesty
Speaks of a celebration soon to come.
Believing's half the battle
When the paper says you've won.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Mountain Swimming Hole

Lightning through the body strikes
As the chest presses the glass
Of mountain water yet undisturbed
By the flow of thrill-seekers filing in.
"Once is not enough"
Is the cry of many youth
Who seem undisturbed
By the heights needed for the proof
That they're not afraid of nature's playground
And can swim back on command.
Parents wince in unison
As their child safely lands.

Details | James Townsend Poem

My Destination

So many interstates have I endured
South of the Mason-Dixon
Where cotton fields and swamps and Jesus saves
Upon my eyes wind up fixing.
Towns feel so familiar,
Yet I've never taken their exit.
Cities equal more time spent
Escaping the ugly edifice.
As a child, dreams filled the ride
As we made off for our destination.
Now, familiar music tags along
As I criss-cross this great nation.
In forty years, we've come a long way.
The rebel yell begins to fade,
But my destination will remain
Southward where I'll be sipping tea in the shade.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Homeless Moment

Sticks form the outline of a hobo's trail.
The distant sunset might not avail
His hope of a home soon found,
Desperately hoping there's no train bearing down
On his soul, so fragile at first glance,
But just two days ago did do a dance.
In the midst of beauty, nothing's sure.
Stop and think to drink in what's pure.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Grandma the Drugdealer

In every neighborhood and on every snow-covered street
In this great big frozen land
Resides forty grandmas
Willing to lend a hand
Filling up the bottle with rot-gut whiskey
For all the men too old to justify
Reinvention in a world turned upside down.
Staggering, barely upright in the snow.
It's only noon and no place to go.
The police don't care, and the kids just laugh
As they come home from school across that path.
The selling day's through, and the grandma puts up her still.
Soup with meat greets her at dinnertime.
Moral questions here scatter to the wind
Once you consider the shape she'd been in.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Panic

Waves crashing through children's minds.
The urgency of a flash flood speaks
To impending doom imagined
As easily as a summer's day.
The child within returns without notice
To crash the party so well-planned.
Defeat seems sure and peril likely.
Somehow, that voice won't join the band
Singing alleluia and amazing grace.
It speaks of fears that we all must face. 
Temptation hiding each bit of courage earned.
Burned a thousand times, that child may learn.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Ringing Sunshine

The emptiness of a wind-chime
Blowing in the breeze
Rings hollow with a shrill sound
Echoing the vacuous nature within.
Cut down to make room for a sun-dial
Spreading radiance and light.
Sometimes I miss the music
That lets my soul take flight.

Details | James Townsend Poem

Back To Carolina

Palmetto fronds
Just before Easter
Will stick out in my mind.
Sand dunes, sun and boiled peanuts
Will all be left behind.
Ticking clocks on the mantle
Count down my return.
Meanwhile, I miss the sea most
Bubbling up as my friends all take a turn
Riding each wave as far as it will go.
I guess it really only goes to show
That a place and its people
Will be there for you when you return.
Not looking back is the hardest of all.
Can't be in two places at the same time.
It'll be easier come fall
When the beach empties
And all goes still.
I'll still miss it terribly.
But return - I know I will.