Best Cardboard Poems
Verse 1
His coat is torn his
shoes are thin
The cold cuts deep beneath his
skin
Little boy coughs small
hands that shake
Winter's breath is much to hard
To hard to take.
Verse 2
Sidewalk echoes silent
prayers
People pass but no one
cares
Cardboard kingdom borrowed
time
Every step is a mount-
Mountain climbed.
Chorus
And the city turns
away
Like they never ever knew his
name
Still he holds his boy so
close
Chorus 1st Ending
Runs through streets to bring him
home. (1x repeat back to beginning of chorus)
Chorus 2nd Ending
Whispers / "Son, we're going
home."
Verse 3
Once had a home once had a
plan
Once held hope in calloused
hands
But fate’s a thief it moves much too
fast
Dreams dissolve like breath on
Stained kissed glass.
Chorus
Bridge
And he sings a lullaby
so low
Soft as the falling falling
Angel snow
A father’s love is his sheltering
Wings of warmth
Even when the nights are
Broken broken and torn.
Verse 4
"Daddy I’m tired my chest feels
tight"
His voice is weak his skin much too
white
Stars above blur in his
sight
The world fades into endless
Endless cold night.
Partial Chorus
And the city turns
away
Like they never ever knew his
name
Still he lifts his boy so
close
Runs through streets…..to bring him
home.
Final Verse
He stumbles down an empty
street
The world is ice beneath his
feet
He kneels beside the frozen
City of stone
Whispers "Son… we’re finally
Finally home."
Chorus
Chorus 2nd Ending
Whispers / "Son
we're finally
home."
Outro
The snow drifts soft the
Sunday morning gray
No one stops and no one
Left to pray
Two souls lost in winter’s
hold
Together now, for-
ever and ever
In a City Frozen cold
Discarded in yesterdays trash
Cardboard boxes never last
New things arrive in them
Old things stored in them
Rotting boxes on a voyage
Leftovers to those with out any coinage
Tom O’Seary had come down on his luck
Just couldn’t seem to make a buck
An elder at church who snuck a shot in a lurch
Now he sleeps in the rain
Cardboard box umbrellas
His home and his pain
One cold winter day
Poor old tom was dead where he lay
Inside his cardboard box
Was his last writings and will and the lot
I, Tom O’Seary of no determined address
I write these words, for they are my last will I confess
I regret all the pompous ways I was an ass
I missed the meaning of the messages, thus I was crass
Now you will lay me below the green grass
I thought I’d be looking down from heavens gates of glass
I was wrong about that too, so wrong
I am just rotting here in the green green grass
My purpose in life may not have been clear
The irony of death is now I know what’s so dear
Live this life with kindness and love
Or else on your grave will be the droppings of white doves
What colors would my life shine
if we had not moved all the time?
In every home, I felt quite sure
my bedroom walls felt me there;
as eyelids sighting proof I had lived,
they'd hold my poetry in their care.
Then would come the cardboard boxes
that unlike walls, did hold my life's causes.
Past walls of white, yellow, blue and pink
all smeared into my poem’s blood-dried ink.
If one paint coats those who belong,
whose presence is community strong,
whose roots hold, growing ever long,
then such paint has never brushed my song.
I’m a chameleon, reborn with each move,
showing colors only the lonely may choose.
I am one all may lovingly embrace
until I move and they forget my face.
My hometown is painted ‘no place.’
My paint presence does not a reunion rate,
none of my three high schools sent me dates.
I know not the paint of a lifelong friend’s face.
My paint is cardboard box true brown ..
my family moved it from town to town.
I grew up long ago, an adult raised invisible,
shaded with poetry, lifelong indispensable.
One can move paint, even revise it,
but unlike me, not all can improvise it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Four furry silhouettes, whiskers twitching, huddle around a cardboard grid~
Four acorn tokens clatter on the board.
Dew-damp grass stains the Baltic Avenue deed.
A whiskered snout nudges Community Chest~
Winter stores secured beneath oak bark.
Four paws grip the dice cup tight and shake.
Electric Avenue mortgaged for one nut.
Tail-flicks trace railroads, Park Place dreams
Shatter as a crow steals the top hat piece.
Four bushy strategists stare at Free Parking.
Rain begins its raid on Marvin Gardens.
The dice roll forgotten, they scatter skyward~
Squirrelopoly unfinished beneath gathering clouds.
I built a cardboard house
that came with four large flaps.
And when they're folded over
the roof it over-lapse.
I have to crouch inside it.
It's not made very tall.
But when I go to stand up
the roof gives way and all.
It hasn't got a window.
It's dark without a light
and nothing to be feared
when nothing is in sight.
I can't lay down inside it.
It's much too small to sleep
and if I start to nod off,
I'll hit the wall and weep.
I live alone inside it.
There isn't room for more.
And if someone came over
they'd see there is no door.
I haven't got a mailbox
and live with no address.
And if you want to find me
you'll simply have to guess.
I move around quite often.
It's not my place to brag.
But you won't say I'm rich
when I grab my house and drag.
I'm happy once inside it
and live from day to day.
And if you should come over,
I'll flip it and we'll play.
Weaving, stumbling from one job to another
His roadmap reeks of discontinuity
And that is why his home's a cardboard box
He's squandered each and every opportunity
A fancy lady passerby, mercy in her eyes
Once offered him her hand, if he could just stay sober
But that very winter's night he'd gotten drunk
Next morn the gig was over...
Now's he's living on the street again
Hoping to survive
Another round of ice and snow ~
Odds so long: He's all of twenty-five
We are all looking for the one thing to inspire
We are all on the same path, different stops waiting for the universe to conspire
embedded in our souls from the birth of our understanding
The want, the wish to be great, self-made breathing exorbitantly in our surrounding
The mistake we make is living in other people’s values
So we strain ourselves, give up our dreams and put up the same statues
Our individuality becomes transparent and we become programmed with the rest of society
Lost are the adventures so incredibly needed, packed away is our variety
We are all unique yet the same
The same yet different levels of the game
We need to climb out of the narrow minded cardboard box
Instead of being what’s expected, be the exception, don’t be the sheep choose the fox
I see my life like a black and white photograph
So much detail, it’s all about the experience instead of living by the graph
I choose the inspired path, I need to live instead of exist
I will run instead of walk, fight for the thrill and search for the experience, always I shall insist.
Stand on the edge with me and tell me the magnificence your eyes bestow
Fee the adventure and thrill sweep through your being as through your hair the wind blows
So the choice is yours, live in the box and follow the tiresome trends
Or throw away the I musts and give in to the I want to’s be the definition and decide where it ends
A paper road and car of clay,
A garden made from pencil shaves;
With fields of crayon flowers drawn,
Beyond the shoebox house and lawn;
Old wax paper forms the boat,
That sails under a cardboard moat;
A fence made out of new toothpicks,
Erasers used as driveway brick.
A crafty home in taped décor,
Now sat atop my basement floor;
A dynasty of paper trails,
Completed with a sign, “For Sale”,
Was printed in the Classifieds,
To see who’d purchase such a buy;
One hundred callers did implore --
The only place they could afford.
(Where the streets are full of pity)
Last night! I met an old boxer
in an alley of cardboard;
he seemed glad to see me,
shouted me over for a fight!
I told him!
“Hey I’m not in your league”
“Young man.” He said. “That’s alright.”
“So! I suppose you’re going to leave me,
cos the forecast is for rain, you in
your fine mansion, mine, just a
bloody pain”
“It’s not corrugated you see
it just keeps letting in the damp.”
“But then again I guess,
that’s O.K, for a foolish old tramp.”
He told me!
“What’s the price of glory if one is
shackled to the past. Even my old
woman left me, took my purse in
pursuit of another man. To think
I really loved her, gave her all that I
could, the witch hankered for the
final count, then left me where I
stood!”
He rambled on discursively!
“Take me away from this
‘Cardboard City’ Wrap me up in
sentimental pity.
Help me roam within my native
‘Devon’ Chase illusive rainbows back
into heaven.”
“Its years of abusing whisky,
Its years of abusing gin,
Its years of perpetual hoar frosts
that hones this savage grin. For
here I lay beneath this lamp, I hope
you understand, with only a
watery moon for comfort and
above me, this single amp!”
“How do you think I feel, here?
In chains of formal sorrow,
replaying each vintage year
each round like no tomorrow!”
“Each morning still, I count the
homeless, watch the van collect
the corpse, I caress each nightly
affliction to ease each delusion
that warps.”
“So! Give an old man a second chance
to come out gamely fighting,
repay life’s referee, society
the uninviting.”
His bottle ran dry,
his words began to wound.
Here! In God’s own country
left high wide and marooned.
Yet like the mortal flame
he submits to the desolate night,
the municipal van empowered
to administer the ultimate rite.
No dawn able to invigorate
leaves this empty feeling in me
the morning dew edulcorates
while a soul in hell is set free!
© Harry J Horsman 1996
Some guys along the freeway exits stand
with cardboard signs that read: Will work for food.
The sympathetic folks reach out and hand
these guys some money if they’re in the mood.
And other poor souls don’t just stand. They live
inside of cardboard shanties that they rig.
Some beg for anything that we might give
and some, too proud to beg, through dumpsters dig.
But there’s one cardboard man dressed like a clown
(who, if he shows his real face, I sure pity),
He waves a sign while jumping up and down
along a busy block of my fair city.
He gets no cash, just strange looks or some yuks.
The sign says: Get our pizza. Just five bucks!
(I know this was supposed to be more serious, but when I
asked hubbie what cardboard man made him think of, he said
that pizza guy on the corner, and I just had to do it this way!!)
For Paula Swanson's Do You Know The Cardboard Man? Poetry Contest
My mother truly was a most creative creature,
And our backyard was just a child’s dream place to play in,
From swing set whose design could access high tree branches
Ensconced in sandy playground, purposed child’s own welfare
Protecting kids from what one could call ‘swinging error’.
A huge elm tree that shaded our backyard completely,
A swing with ladder, chin up bar, and pole for sliding,
Its twelve foot peak was just below a branch quite sturdy
That access gave to higher limbs beyond controlling,
And dirt-clod fort sixty feet up well worth extolling
A wooden perch and orange crate box became a refuge,
By holding ammo and what treasures I put up there,
My dirt-clod weapons hauled aloft by rope and bucket,
With little fear of trespass by my younger sister,
And news and music courtesy of new transistor.
But pinnacle of backyard gifts was mom’s creation,
Of children’s houses built of wood framed card board panels
When I brought such a box from work for us to play in
By breaking down appliance boxes for new uses
Constructing what looked more like homes with no excuses.
A kitchen knife could easily carve door or window
With different boxes shape a home of many pieces
And like a crossword puzzle nail a home together.
A world of possibility was what she showed us
And fun will surely come to those who find accomplice
Brian Johnston
February 10, 2015
To raw, outstretched hands,
austere in benevolence,
the homeless beseech.
HIM
I didn't ask to be born
neither did you.
And of all the shoes I've worn
you've walked very few.
My first job was to gather eggs
I was four then.
The welts on my legs
were for bringin' in
less was expected.
Five, eight, twelve
eighteen came uninspected
beatings delivered by unintrospective
role model.
Family values passed down
through saloons and brothels
and Sunday School dress-up to drown
screams of innocence
no voice to tell them with.
THEM
Little boy, this don't make sense.
Suck it up, embrace myth
eology please. It will ease you
and us who've worked very hard
protestantly ethicking virtue.
Son, we can quote bard.
You weren't blessed by our god might
you want work to make enough
to live and perhaps breed? Well, alright
then the non-negotiable answer tough
as it seems to liberal
scumbags is this deal:
Sign up your visceral
instincts to kill.
HIM
So I did
The children come to visit
once or twice a week
and they are fine, I'm sure,
but not the ones I seek.
Though tall and fair and handsome,
not who I'd choose to meet:
those grubby-kneed and tousled,
the freshly apple-cheeked!
Oh, what I'd give to see them
running in the door,
coats and hats and mittens,
footprints on the floor.
Cardboard forts and castles
and the day they tried to take
sand buckets full of water
to make a bedroom lake!
Another trip to the E.R.
Superman has tried
(with a towel for a cape)
to fly above the concrete drive.
My daughter's arm is up around
a Great Dane's hulking dome.
He's all alone, she said
and declined to take him home.
The toaster that they took apart
to see how it was sprung,
signal beeps from bedrooms
where a net of wires was strung
In hope of snaring messages
from Tokyo or some Hong Kong,
lipstick on the bathroom tiles
when guests were due to come.
I play my games with memory toys,
pretend they're real again,
but something of it's gone;
It's time, time is the stealer of children.
Trapped in a cardboard box for many years. Heartfelt tears of remorse and sorrow began to take its toll. What was your sorrow about? Why sis… You glowed with regret and hung yourself out to dry.
You needed me. I needed you. We needed each other.
Pondering on your final days I knew you’d be gone soon. There was that one time I sat in the hospital chair staring at you while you were asleep. Too many hospital trips. Too many wards. None of it helped. You were helpless and I was hopeless and together we were a mess. Cleaning up our mess was not easy.
Unbound to reality you fell asleep under a pine. Trickled little memories flash me back to the yesterdays of constant hope and liveliness. No more hope, and no more life. No more “hello’s” and way too many “goodbyes”.
I stood on the ledge you jumped off of. I cried the same salty tears you wept in sorrow. I ran the same distance until I felt no more pain. Your pain was gone in an instant. Your remorse died with you. Your death broke my faith and shredded my steadiness.
Trapped in a cardboard box for many years. Lies swallowed along with many empty tears.
Written By: Laura Loo
Date Written: April 22, 2016M