Fly BMI, to land in time
There is no time to waste
Stroll down along the Serpentine
The morning air to taste
Across the park to Albert Hall
To Kensington High Street
And further on, towards the Mall
Where you can rest your feet
It’s got to be the Living Room
Their Dover sole is great
Pale sun, and even paler moon
Fall down on your plate
Two people here, three people there
Dull people talk and turn
I like the fuss they make, don’t care
To be liked in return
On Charing Cross I’m quick to toss
Some CDs at the Foyles
A truly searching lad I was
To find my kind of noise
End of the day, the hotel bar
I’m looking at the floor
There is no more Thistle Hyde Park
And Living Room’s no more
The times have changed, but I remain
About the same today
Although it’s quite a different game
I imitate to play
Those were the days, my darling dear
Those were the nights as well
Fly BMI, to disappear
No one would care to tell.
Buddhists don’t talk of original sin
The way Christians do,
But they both talk about the same thing;
That in the beginning there was light
And the Word, and the missing of the mark.
For Buddhists this “sin” is basic ignorance,
The ignoring of who and what we are.
For Buddhists experience is divided
Into two basic categories;
Enlightened, or Nirvana, and
Deluded, or Samsara.
Nirvana is peace.
Samsara is suffering.
The experience of each are thus polar opposites,
But the simple original sin,
The fundamental deviance,
Is that Samsara arose from the desire
To improve Nirvana, our original nature.
So Samsara is Nirvana plus desire,
The desire to personalize it,
Put our mark of identity on what was
Already always perfect.
To extend the cross cultural metaphor
You could say we wanted to give it
The mark of the beast.
And that’s how we lost the light.
(8/16/26)
Sorry to have worried anyone unnecessarily. To me, Crystol was missing since she hasn't been active in PoetrySoup for some time but was probably doing fine. In fact, after posting this, a reliable source tells me that Crystol is Alive and Well!
"Lift open to hear The tinkling sound
Of a music box dancer going round and around"
~ from Music Box Dancer by Crystol Woods
Do you recall our poet, Crystol Woods?
I haven't seen her work in quite a while.
If you haven't read her, she deals the goods -
tears, laughter, sincerity and a smile.
About the same time, on Soup we started.
Her presence, known soon after she'd begun,
shined humanity. She was big-hearted.
Her creative contests were always fun.
She writes a good poem and a good song.
Will, one fine day, we be happy to find
that she has come back? And will it be long?
What kind of questions might come to her mind?
What color is the sky? Crystol, it's blue!
Your poems and words - Crystol, they're so true!
I always seem to fantasize about the same thing.
Every night when my head hits the pillow.
I'm older, more confident. Taller even.
I bump into you in town, just mooching around. Probably window shopping cause I can never make rent on time.
We bump shoulders. I turn and apologize politely and you recognize me. You'll have to remind me your name because you remember I'm bad with faces but I need no reminder.
Those eyes, the direct mirror to my own soul.
You'll say, "oh my God, how have you been?" And I'll smile and say, "I've been doing good. It's good to see you" and we exchange new numbers.
A week goes by and you reach out wanting to catch up over coffee.
I'll go.
Pretending I'm not searching your hands for a ring.
You catch me doing so but you don't mention it.
We hug goodbye.
I'd like to sit and think that it would progress.
Two kids in a farm house. The whole picket white fence. The real American dream. But even my dreams are realistic these days.
They know it'll fizzle out, the same way it did before.
Different poems about the same topic, but all in a different perspective. Poem writers see things in their own eyes and write them down on a computer or a phone. They may write their poems in a notebook or a journal. But we all have different points of views from life that we experience or see everyday. Whether they’re sad, happy, peaceful, frightening or amazing poems, we write them down. We almost write relate able poems, though. We share our feelings to readers who pick up those poem books in libraries, bookstores or from book sales. We all learn lessons and write about them in poems and we even help others.
50 years
Where did it all go
What lessons have I learned
Not young anymore
To old to care
What a freedom
What a relief
50 years to the day
I've changed in so many ways
My world no longer dark
I no longer bleed regret
50 years gone by
I still look about the same
But the mindset has diffently changed
It ain't about impressing you
It ain't about making you see
It's about this journey my destination
It's about less pity more envigoration
It's time to make something of this life
I invite you to come along
Take it all in
Share what it all should be about
I'll take your hand if you let me
I will hold you close
Till my last breath
my mother keeps asking why Dad is taking so long
The speaker is my friend Belinda, who is about sixty-two
I see Mom every Sunday, she tells me.
She seems about the same each week.
Not better, not worse.
Her mother has dementia.
“What is he buying there?” Mom asks me.
“Why is he taking so long?”
I used to tell her that Dad died months ago.
But then she had to grieve each time.
Now I wonder along with her.
Sometimes I guess what he might be buying.
It seems more kind somehow.
(“Mind’s Eye Merit Badge”, 2020, original oil)
Can you see the real me? Can you? Can you?
If so you’re doing better than me
As I see only the effects, the ripples
And detritus that hangs up along the edges.
The real me, or should I say the mind I call me,
Is nothing if not a vortex
whirlpooling down and out of sight
Sucking in everything it possibly can
Conscious, unconscious, it matters not.
I can hear the sucking sound, ringing in my ears,
And roaring out when I open my lips,
But I can’t see where it all goes.
All I can see is the flotsam
Spinning on the way down
And the jetsam, backed up, held up
Momentarily along the way.
But eventually as sure as day follows dawn,
And yet as right as rain,
It all goes down the open drain of our core
Leaving us about the same as we’ve always been.
Feeling like a fool
Trying to catch a glimpse
Listening to that sucking sound
Wondering where it’s all heading
Down, down, ever flowing down.
(9/30/25)
As we live on this earth
day by day.
As we think about tomorrow
and experiencing that tomorrow the next day,
You realize yourself being in the future
at that very moment,
You realize you were thinking about the same day
that you’re in right now
that you were thinking about yesterday.
The present is the past
regardless of today
and as we think of the past,
as we are currently in the future.
Every day is the future
except the other days
that happened before today.
People who live in the present
will always have a hard time
trying to escape the past,
but if you think ahead into the future,
you will be unstoppable.
The evening comes, I recognize
The same old evening’s here
A blurry line across the skies
The sounds of cars I hear
Quite as distinguished as they were
From the embankment side
The motorbikes are also there
Their engines never die
They fade into the background soon
And silence chills the breeze
It fills the gap between my room
And crowns of the trees
And everything looks as before
In this old evening blue
Except I’m seeing you no more
To hear your I love you
Except that everything we are
Has turned to ash again
Except my dearest love's gone far
It’s all about the same.
dear readers
let me be an invitee to read these files
about the same place where you live but
chose to live in complete denial
don't be a traitor, don't ignore the cries
this place gave you oxygen, water, air and
every source meant for your survival
even in the adversity of times
dear readers
our house is on fire, the ice is melting
you're breathing smoke, and million species at risk
and each day a new revelation in these files
the man who drink champagne after
signing deals that harm your land
he lives in a palace built by his greed
while the future generations search for their place
I used to just paint and not worry about my dogs
Who were running crazily up and down our road
Because I thought it was a slow country lane
I had no idea until one of them dug under the neighbor’s fence
That this road is used by approximately nineteen trucks an hour.
Where are they going? This road leads to two dead ends.
I have no idea, but now that I know, my work is just beginning.
I have to figure out how to keep my dogs in a pen.
Two dogs who have been running loose all of their lives.
This has been a really difficult week for me.
Today it rained, and I thought maybe things would get worse.
They are about the same. How to keep them in?
It would help if the neighbors had spayed their female dog
She is over there wailing for her demon lover, and my dogs want to help.
Right out of the gate
the world grows eyes on the inside of time.
A banana tree as tall as an eyelash
bears bunches of fat yellow legs,
clusters of pendular legs are called hands.
Contradictions serve to jog you out of your mind.
Try not to think of babies kicking their own toes,
or ponder too much
on tarantulas and small venomous snakes.
Lifting the rusting machinery of a primal brain
can be hard work if you’re not used to it.
nevertheless,
raise a blink that takes a snapshot of a life.
After much rehabilitation and recover
feel free to postulate
that life seems much longer than it really is.
Most mature bananas are about the same length,
this simple observation alone
will make you unrecyclable forever.
The sun or earth and the moon resembles a kind of love
for instance
now, do they share air or water or sticks or something
or some stuffs or woods?.
For it seems the bond is getting tighter and tighter
each an everyday -
if for instance the sun will shine in a day tonight the
moon will take over, behold somehow about the same
glee and glass?.
Even later the family Beautiful, blossoming, en cheer?.
Every morning the town drunk would walk past the general store where all the farmers gathered to have their coffee. Day after day, the same farmers complained about the weather, the high price of fuel, politics, and how bad their wives always treated them. One day the drunk told a joke and everybody laughed and chucked a coin into his beggar’s box. The next day the drunk told the same joke. This time only a few people laughed and tossed a coin. On the following day, the old drunk came by and told the same joke again and nobody laughed. The old farmers told him that he’d never get anywhere by telling the same joke over and over again. The old drunk smiled and said, “Neither will complaining about the same old things.
When making changes
Complaining will never work
Actions are better
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.