Get Your Premium Membership

Best Byline Poems


Premium Member More Secret Selves
I've been wondering about our secret selves...

The vegetarian smoker
The introverted joker

The soldier with the peace sign
The anonymous byline

The accountant with unfinished sums
The deaf musician's steel drums

The blue collar millionaires
The conservative who dares

The scientist who prays
The vagabond who stays

The man who kneels to take a stand
The...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, conflict, identity,
Form:
Currents
Currents
by Michael R. Burch

How can I write and not be true
to the rhythm that wells within?
How can the ocean not be blue,
not buck with the clapboard slap of tide,
the clockwork shock of wave on rock,
the motion creation stirs within?

Originally published by The Lyric. Keywords/Tags: poetry,...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, assonance, extended metaphor, language,
Form: Verse
Disenchanted Muse
My muse did her fealty recuse
My honor she did stealthily reconnoiter
My discourse was grounds for divorce
Finding my writing no longer enlightening
My blithe parlance no longer my mistress did entrance
With my prose she did forthrightly dispose
Each short she did subsequently abort
Each regaling verse did prudently disburse
Each...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, funny, metaphor,
Form: Light Verse

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry



Island Girl In the Big City
There was a moment 
in time and space no distance 
can erase when she was standing 
on an island in the middle 
of Times Square, cars whirling around 
from all directions, their Technicolor
taillights additive to Big Apple 
illuminations, and she, 
the conductor of this current...

Continue reading...
© Nola Perez  Create an image from this poem.
Categories: byline, city,
Form: Bio
The Guilt of An Innocent Poet
It was my own thought
My own poem with a novel quote
I smiled with a poet’s pride 
I let my pen bleed and slide
I wrote it down
Framed it for my wall

Familiar words caught my eye
A strangers name in the byline
The poem was many years older than...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, how i feel, poems,
Form: Free verse
Freelancing, Miserable Mime
Words that echo the sublime
Each syllable resounds a doleful chime
Accentuated by a bleak, monotonous rhyme
That skews the cadence and scuttles the time
Words that filter through, then prime
Heart's engine to slowly pine
Fueled by structural anomalies; sick, semantical serpentine
Break lines that throttle, then realign
Soul's transmission shifts in...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, allegory
Form: Rhyme



Premium Member Tale of Two Lines
When the byline was my line, I soared past the skyline
    
    When my line was the bye-line, I boarded the Sioux Line ... 




   _______________________________________________
   Note: The 'Sioux Line' was a railroad line that...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, goodbye, word play, writing,
Form: Epigram
Sanmati Jain a Source, Part Ii
Sanmati, my source, is completely mine
As she never missed going to shrine.
Nor does she move slowly like a bovine.
Much was done to munch through byline
Against me or her to bypass or to confine.
Thanks to expedition that made her whine
Inner talents, flairs, bents and gifts fine.
Jain...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, daughter,
Form: Monorhyme
Hourglass Vase
micro-fine is the line
time by line, byline
-
grain by grain by grain 
it passes discrete with
total indiscretion of desire

slow down, speed up, 
turn around and float
up the venturi to come
again so that I may BE
there again with you

the gravity of sand 
grain by grain by grain...

Continue reading...
© Goode Guy  Create an image from this poem.
Categories: byline, art, time, visionary,
Form: Ekphrasis
Premium Member Man From the Moon
Said a man returned from the moon
“I fear I have come back too soon,
For I left about seven
On my journey to heaven
And here it is now only noon.”


written, Winter 1972
edited June 29, 2021
[first published in The Hoosier Challenger, 1972;
republished in ByLine, Summer, 1989]...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, earth, moon, space, travel,
Form: Limerick
Premium Member Uncorking Bottled Man
.
Palpable 
fear lurks
a mystery
in the Air
a certain 
eerie feel
suspects
an killers
can come
anywhere
The strike
is invisible 
no tools or
weapon no
no trace no
fngerprints 
It’s in thin air
creeps ..
shudder... horror
Now everyone wears masks
All are Suspects All are Culpable
Three new cases in the neighborhood 
Death comes slow. is inevitable. No cure
Norms...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, analogy, angst, anxiety,
Form: Concrete
Buzzfeed
here comes the buzz
here comes the feed
don't bother with facts
there's really no need

if you're looking for stories
to sensationalize
if you need entertainment
just fill it with lies

and where we are going
is anyone's guess 
as we fill in the byline
with anonymous

saying we heard it from sources 
we can...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, character, fantasy, life,
Form: Rhyme
Premium Member Just Mosquitos and Squirrels
“Nature Lover” my byline,
Hell, I even like girls
But where I draw the line
Is mosquitos and squirrels.

Love how bug zapper spark fries,
Pellet gun is so nice,
Squirrel’s carcass on ice,
Tiny smoke clouds from trap rise.

With the clean sent of ozone
Starting off each new morn,
Longer lasting than ****,
Hanging...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, journey, life,
Form: Rhyme
Noel Neill
Noel Neill passed away,
No Superman to save the day.
If unfamiliar with her name,
Then you're too young to know her fame.

But those of us of certain age
Can see her byline on the page -
"The Daily Planet," where she worked
And Superman, she gathered, lurked.

For Noel Neill was...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, death,
Form: Rhyme
Leafing Through Love's Primordial Book
Heart's cover sealed in burgeoning prime
Fading leaves folded in the book of time
Follicles of love blanched on the pages sublime
Billowy blades dulled with eroding sands that modulate and slime
Bleached, seamless threads spliced in the deep recesses of my mind
Glossy words overgrown, strangled with thistle and...

Continue reading...
Categories: byline, allegory, lost love,
Form: Rhyme

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry