Wednesday, I folded to the supermarket floor,beneath the bright lights,between bread and milk,where strangers became witnesses to the private language of pain.
Both legs turned against me,as though they belongedto some older grief that had waited years to remember my name.
Now Friday evening has gathered around the bed,and I lie listeningto my own body argues with itself.
It feels as though two great horses,one harnessed to each leg,have lowered their heads and begun to pull,patiently,without mercy.
Inside the muscles,fire keeps its promise.
Not the brief flamethat warms a winter hand,but the ancient furnace that shapes us from dust,burning long after the hammer has fallen silent.
This is my living death—to remain awake inside a body that remembers how to stand but cannot.
Still,beneath the ash,a single breath refuses to surrender.
It rises,quiet as dawn,carrying my name through another night,waiting for morning to decide whether hope has one more step to give.
This is an ode to John and his iconic bucolic pub "the Golden Smog" up in Stockton on Tees..
What makes a proper pub?
Unity in a community hub
Immunity from the hubbub
With others shoulders rub
Opportunity you can’t snub
Our own homegrown club
Bubbling banter from the bar
In the cellar need a stellar star
Other views & hues don’t scar
Ales & tales so far above par
No-one argues or does spar
Clinking & sinking another jar
John a helluva fella just say ta
No bigotry is all he does ask
No hate lurking behind a mask
A sisyphean or herculean task
In the company of others bask
No sip from a hidden hip flask
Cheers to beers from the cask
Where the weekend will begin
Delaying within escape the din
Time to spend with ken and kin
Getting you through thick & thin
Whetting our whistles.. chin chin
A third place where a grin will win
To miss this bliss is a cardinal sin
A home from home just staying in!
Delighted to magnify his wolf spider sixty-two-fold
Magic for this warlock truly never gets old
He can take him to banks and demand solid gold
No one argues with him, the tale is told
I will tell the truth:
love is not always kind,
and it is rarely fair.
It does not arrive on cue
with music swelling behind it.
Sometimes it comes limping,
late, unsure, smelling faintly of regret.
Love does not fix you.
It finds you mid-sentence,
mid-failure,
mid-life—
and listens anyway.
I tell the truth:
love is not the absence of loneliness.
It is loneliness
sitting beside another loneliness,
agreeing not to leave first.
Love forgets anniversaries
and remembers the sound of your cough
at three in the morning.
It argues about nothing
and forgives something enormous
without ever naming it.
Here is the hardest truth:
love does not promise forever.
It promises now—
this cup of tea going cold,
this hand still reaching
even when it knows how easily
hands let go.
And yet—
I swear this too:
when love is real,
it teaches the heart
how to stand in the witness box
and still say,
without rehearsing,
“Yes.
I was afraid.
Yes.
I stayed.”
POTD 02/10/2026
that might be her I think as the car door opens
her left foot comes out
that’s her shoe, I surmise
uh-oh
a little old man gets out
maybe not
I pick up my pen and begin to write
that’s nothing, muse A says, we can forget about this.
Everything is something, argues muse B
Muses C and D are giggling, but silent
I do not wait for their input
continuing to write
Is a moment
when nothing inside argues
with the way it is, it's as is.
It opens softly—
a breath easing from a grip,
a hushed gush the mouth trusts.
Pale misty early morning light,
water smoothing over stones,
space wide enough to let in and receive.
It arrives unannounced,
while walking besides trees or shorelines—
and stays, if we stop chasing it.
I decided to stop writing poems in long hand
Trixie my muse kept running away with my pen
I knew it was her, because the thoughts were assertive
She is the only one here more determined than me
She laughed at my efforts and began interfering with my typing
I would think I had typed one thing, but had typed another
I knew it was her; she thinks she is the leader of the band
It’s not like she argues with me in a civilized manner
It is as if she grabs the ideas out of my brain and tosses them
Replacing them with her own missives, songs and poems
Some days I do not recognize anything I have written
Because they were not written by me. Trixie is snickering.
Wind argues with leaves—
I walk past the noise of men,
Listening to rain.
Just ‘jealous’ doesn’t do her justice, since
unless you factor-in her womanhood,
no vestige of the passion in her blood
or motivation comes across: her prince
conceived real circumspection. He’d convince
alumni, friends and allies that they should
placate her: Juno wasn’t wholly good,
in Miller’s words, a phrase which wins the quince,
the prize for sweetness, but wholly herself.
Our modern model argues men are strong –
look at his biceps! Somehow, all along,
I’ve known the Ghibelline to be a Guelph:
no question, Juno would approve my song:
as ingrained as the view is, it’s still wrong.
I need a new oven I say
Mine takes a week to get to four hundred
You only bake pizza and cookies, argues my only husband
Never will I bake again, until I get a new oven I retort
This one is fine, he argues
If we had to sell this house, we would have to buy a new one
This would pass inspection, he says
That night he had to wait fifteen minutes
For the slowest oven in the Midwest to go from 360 to 425
I think you are right, he agreed
Hawaii fireworks
still deadly and maim for life
like annual debates
Hawaiian language council
argues o'er Kona coffee
Dad, do you know,
How much pain am I in?
I don't like mother's words anymore,
Cursing you daily, again and again!
Everyone else has a father.
Why can't I see you dad?
Why don't they let me see you?
The black-coat uncles are so bad.
I know how good you are.
So it feels like a big pain.
Everyday mom argues so much,
For you, she has such scorn, disdain.
So I sent this today,
Don't know if you'll get my letter.
Answer in secret if you do,
I also wrote how you can reply to it better.
prosecutor is pushing for a guilty verdict.
defense lawyer argues there is no crime, for there is no body.
forensic expert says she must have been killed, due to the amount of blood.
her parents are conflicted.
they want her to be alive.
they do not want her murdered.
they do not want to blame their son-in-law
he has been like a son for twenty-two years.
and he has custody of their five grandchildren.
they feign their support.
keeping their accusatory feelings under wraps.
holding their breath in the courtroom.
waiting to see where this show is taking them
His scrunch snout looks me in the eye
His deathly ritual is nigh
They wait and wait for the prey
And I am his, today
As walk with him
Down the path, so dim
He stops before it can end
And says hello to his friend
The melancholy Crow sits away
On a tree branch, to stay
She watches and watches
And the earth, it has notches
The Jackal wants me
The Jackal can’t have me
He wants to lead me
He can’t lead me
The Crow says it’s not time
The distance up comes daytime
The Jackal argues with the light:
“She should be in the night!”
And in the end,
That’s when I met the Jackal and his friend
Take the Step and Believe
Kingdom Faith acts on God’s WORD
The KING has DECREED and we can enforce it
Kingdom Faith is a relief, not a risk
Kingdom Faith is a gift in time to take us to our prime
The Kingdom of God is a Present Reality
Kingdom Faith pleads but never argues, therefore
It is a privilege to be a CITIZEN of the Kingdom of God
It is a privilege to know Jesus of Nazareth
It is a privilege to partner with the Kingdom of God
Kingdom Faith ADVANCES, Kingdom Faith SAVES
Kingdom Faith destroys the concept of religion!
As Kingdom citizens, we place our FAITH in GOD the FATHER
God the FATHER is UNSTOPPABLE; His Plan Moves Forward
His Kingdom is unshakeable; kingdom faith is inevitable
Kingdom Faith is a relief, not a risk
The FATHER sent ANOTHER KINGDOM
He sent ANOTHER GOVERNMENT for our lives.
“I am watching over My Word to Perform it” (Jer. 1:12)
Mark Frank
Copyright 2024
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.