Best Collapses Poems
Gary, you are my little soldier boy,
who died on Veteran's Day. ('83)
My sunny, golden-haired soldier boy,
that I still miss in every way.
You had just turned 13,
getting interested in girls.
When CF took you from me,
my heart, like a flag, unfurled.
You fought CF with every breath.
For 13 years you tried.
And four lung collapses later,
after each one, I said,
"Son, you will survive."
Oh, how I lied!
Now, no more hugs and kisses,
No more birthday wishes,
I watched you go
and please God know,
Heaven, receive my treasure.
Author Note: This poem was written in memory of my son, Gary,
who died of Cystic Fibrosis at 13, in 1983. I honor my soldier who so valiantly
fought his fight on the battlefield of a life threatening lung disease, which fills the lungs with sticky mucus and makes it difficult to breathe. With all CF children,
they struggle with every breath they take just to breathe! My son eventually
started to have lung collapses. He had four before the last one took his young life on Veteran's Day weekend in 1983..(Read my poem "A rainbow Glitters")
I wouldn't be a poet today, if not for my son. He was diagnoses at age three.
As I sat by his hospital bed crying, I reached into my purse for a tissue, but
instead, I pulled out a pen. I thought to myself, "Ok, God, I get the message.
You want me to write and not cry." So I wrote my first poem that night, "Not
MY Son!" Which eventually got published in Elizabeth Kubler Ross' Book "On Children and Death." Later, I wrote humorous poems to entertain my son, who
was often to sick to go to school. And I'm still writing my poems today.
Categories:
collapses, child, death, remember, boy,
Form:
Rhyme
By day she goes about
the weary business of her dreary life:
a housekeeper, bookkeeper, shopper, chef,
chauffer for two active teens, and
hostess of her husband’s dinner parties
is she.
In the middle of her day
she naps,
for in the night. . .
when her work-obsessed spouse
soundly slumbers
and the kids at last are fast asleep,
she goes into the darkness
of the woods
behind her house.
The mask of this woman
falls without a sound
to the leaf strewn ground.
She raises her face to the moon.
In its light, the stripes
of a tigress are revealed!
Her legs feel strong and limber.
That ferocious appetite
for something that she stifles
flees away
as
she
runs.
Among the pines and midst the sounds
of the woodland’s crepuscular creatures
she runs and runs and runs.
She is running after something
she cannot put a name to.
She’s a good woman.
She would never use a bar or night club
as her jungle.
Now - with her tigress face -
swift, stealthy, and strong -
but above all,
not beholden to any body
she is simply free to be.
After an hour of running,
the mask of the housewife
is restored.
Then she collapses, exhausted on her bed,
where she dreams refreshing dreams -
which are necessary -
for tomorrow
she begins again
the weary business
of her dreary life.
10/26/2014; Now used for Skat's A poem you are proud of #3 Poetry Contest
Categories:
collapses, wife,
Form:
Free verse
“Wicked Web of Woes”
Is there a reason
to rhyme when
lifeless fingers
breathe toxic agony,
whilst disgraced
quill suffocates
from wildering
riddles swerving to
the stillness
of calcified air?
As today, my heart
keeps pacing,
searching for a
symphony of serenity-
amid wayward clemency,
and when the first star
of the evening sky,
fades and shatters
upon a celestial canvas
of colorless dreams.
I feel the sweeping
wings of salvation,
resting amidst
clipped faith,
drifting swiftly towards
abandoned clarity;
exiled into
barren fields of
vast polarities,
where hope collapses
into an eternal demise,
tangled within a
wicked web
of woeful sagas,
trapped between
heavy clouds
of unshed tears,
beneath the
crisp cusp of sanity.
Yet I stand in
sweltering silence,
recollecting lost
chronicles of
who I once was,
whilst I’m drowning
in waves of
vexing numbness,
screaming into
the oblivious
spheres cloaked
in smoky
arctic haze,
questioning the
captive chains
of reality,
in dialects only
the moon
can comprehend.
Am I destined
to be caged
in sinful darkness
that the
world fed me,
with sharpened
knives at
empty tables,
with faceless
ghosts of yesterday?
Perhaps there’s
still a poem
that can unlock
the mystery
to a future that
thrives with
fruitful orchards,
where rain that
tastes succulent
wouldn’t burn
your flesh,
for even the
milky-ways would
unravel a realm where
everything should
be as it seems.
Vanquishing the
strings that bind—
daring me to breathe.
Ink Empress
Fading Star Silence
Categories:
collapses, life,
Form:
Free verse
You wake up to commotion, throw on some clothes.
Outside you see some bloody bodies piled on the street.
People are screaming, running in all directions
away from oncoming military trucks and tanks.
Your heart is pounding; your mind shouts
what should I do? Where should I go?
You can't head back home because now
soldiers have headed there,
collecting folks and dividing them into groups:
Men separated from women,
the elderly from the young, boys from girls.
Trucks are filling fast with the different groups of people.
You look all around and see only confused and mortified faces.
The fact that all these others share your emotions
is your only comfort.
A woman breaks loose from a line crying out for her son.
A shot rings out; she collapses to the ground.
You can see one small group of people have escaped -
perhaps unnoticed - beyond a fence in the near distance.
Another group have all scattered, and easily seen,
they scramble toward a store.
They fall randomly when intermittent shots from the soldiers' guns fire out.
You stand motionless, knowing soon you will be tagged
by soldiers herding people into trucks.
Will you try to sneak toward the fence or will you remain as you are
to face your frighteningly unknown fate?
Are there more tanks beyond the fence of which everyone is unaware?
Won't those racing for their freedom eventually be caught?
you must make the decision while no one seems to have noticed you yet:
Freeze or flee?
April 2, 2019 for Laura Loo's
'Favorite Poem From Last Week (March 31-April 6, 2019)' Poetry Contest
March 21, 2022 for
A Brian Strand 1094 Poetry Contest
Categories:
collapses, freedom,
Form:
Free verse
When my world collapses
And I'm feeling blue
When the chips are down
Can I count on you
Will you stand by me
And help ease my pain
Will you walk with me
Through fire and rain
Will you stay with me
When the world turns away
And hold my hand
Help me find my way
When the dark clouds come
And the sun don't shine
When the rain starts falling
Will you still be mine
If I lose it all
That I can no longer cope
Will you smile at me
And bring me hope
If I find my dreams
Have all turned out wrong
So that I must leave
Will you come along
When the tide arrives
As I stand in harm's way
Will you be my support
That I do not sway
We will walk through this world
With our heads held high
While our hearts reach out
And touch the sky
We will stand as one
With a love sublime
We will love forever
Until the end of time.
Categories:
collapses, life, love, me, world,
Form:
Classicism
This will be the last stanza
The last stanza
The final syllable
I commemorate these wounds
to my Agnostic dreams
Because God kept telling me to believe in her
He kept saying,
“Son, be her tissue when she collapses”
“Son, wipe away her sins with this blank slate I’ve given to you”
“Be that man for the woman she may never accept herself to be”
“Be the wings of that angel”
Until, one night, I said a prayer
I said to Him,
“She must go”
“I won’t give up on her, but I must let her go.”
“I leave it to You to save the pariah.”
I, can no longer be that man.
Because I exhaled insipid banter
from misery hollow
Borrowed happiness
whisked me away to coalescent landscapes
under eclipsed moonshine,
sipping unto artificially incipient sunrises
Tasting drops, sour
Wiping them dry, with this flower
my sanctum holds close
And on this day,
this new day,
this last stanza,
soon, I will
no longer finish you with question marks and exclamation points
Soon, I will
complete you,
withdraw from you,
with punctuated silence
I will walk while you crawl
I will smile while you cry
I will see while you’re blind
I will shout while you mumble
I will pray while you deny
I will climb while you trip
I will love while you hesitate
…
This will be my final kiss to you
No longer will we
be
endless
For I now complete you,
you,
my end poem
©Drake J. Eszes
Categories:
collapses, life, people, me,
Form:
Free verse
Come and gone like small twister
like the cloud of debris he’s left.
Echoes of Charlie Brown’s buddy Pigpen
blow through the cobwebs in memory.
Left over coffee cups replacing
Transformers still dumped in the attic.
Reams of knarley skateboards, wheel-less,
lay in piles like so much unburnable refuse.
The obligatory hugs and peck, over and done
the never paid chauffeur collapses…
Ah, to have him always near,
So, each kiss was not quite so dear.
The last fair maid on parade has wandered across
the home front, wondering about her predecessor,
still tacked with magnets to the fridge,
still part of my heart and his…
Sons…they say, do not cause such angst.
Couldn’t prove it by this mother.
This maternal blimp of unused helium
was not permitted a girl child.
One did come and fleetingly leave before formed.
We’ll never know the sweetness of her.
Let the image of his manly self disperse, this son..
into the mist as his Father’s has…
to be remembered again, only in times of need, his need,
for to do anything else, would be to rub salt
in an open wound.
Poet: D. Guzzi
*the day after Christmas
Categories:
collapses, caregiving, childhood, depression, devotion,
Form:
Free verse
Multi-channel stream meanders in the carved valley,
concert of murmur cascades melody on sculpted rock.
I place my ears on the flow of the whistling air,
but the sound of music flies past me unheard.
Summer rains fall in torrent on parched tree,
the rhythm of aria ripples on dancing leaves.
I keep my subtle senses alert in the scene,
but the symphony fades away unperceived.
Out of sync sounds I can’t relate to, dissipate
in the depth of silence.
From the cacophony of unnerving distraught clamor
voices return unlistened to where they came from,
for the stark reality remains hidden unsaid
in unreachable abyss of marooned minds.
On the winter path tracing infinite distance
feelings freeze like sleet on trail unwalked.
Buds of emotion withers away unbloomed
in the forlorn frigid shore of arctic hearts.
I want to reach out to all these cold people,
but their faces drift away like formless cloud
beyond the sea of silence.
On the tranquil shore of life waves of tempest break,
the palace of fantasy I build with the sands of time,
no one comes in, collapses in water grave,
for people disappear in engulfing noise
of wind-swept trees and surging waves.
Detached, I hear the primordial tune within
where slice of universal soul in me resonates
with the sound of silence.
July 28, 2019
Categories:
collapses, imagery, music, people, silence,
Form:
Free verse
I’ll write of roses never touched
that fade in wilt, then praise their hue.
And though their rot perfumes my metaphors,
I’ll never stoop to caress their blooms.
And as rivers choke on oil and bone,
with caustic ink, I’ll hail their shimmer,
ignoring the discarded gluttony lining their shores,
scribing only the poetic cadence of their flow.
And when cities burn, I’ll describe their walls descending.
And as ash clings to their children, I’ll write of their silhouettes,
believing war can be explained in words - but it can’t.
Though still, I’ll sing of them in sonnets.
And as kings and demigods devour what’s left of us,
I’ll praise their suits - their appetites.
As they torch the ground with golden tongues,
I’ll quote their grandiose while whispering curses in rhyme.
And as a woman weeps in foreign dust,
I’ll call her symbolic, emotive, for misery
makes a lovely metaphor when properly penned.
I’ll write of it, then move on before I feel.
And I’ll use God like I use gold,
thin leafed and brandished, though not to be touched.
I will not pray and I will not flinch,
for holiness reads well.
And as the sky collapses, black with smoke,
I’ll call it dusk, pretending…
breathing through filters to scrub the wind,
keeping my voice clear and my hands clean.
And above it all I will sip and scribble
as the world burns - then call it art.
I will have saved nothing, I will have served no one,
but with words, I will have described it beautifully.
Categories:
collapses, angst, anxiety, art,
Form:
Free verse
My mother starts moaning, with another one due.
She won't live to see, as she struggles to wheeze.
I never knew famine would produce skies so blue.
But no need for toilets, I forget how to squeeze.
Searing sun inflates skulls into baroque balloons.
One whining dog, dying , from a surfeit of fleas.
I squint as my sister beats a roach with a spoon.
She's holding out hope, with a morsel to tease.
My eyes can still water from the feces and trash,
tossed up by vultures to release fresh disease.
I dig up what moist dirt I can pound into mash.
An old man collapses, not a single one grieves.
What passes for corpses- baking black as they pop.
Now the flies feel the heat and retreat to the trees.
My brother keeps wailing and I wish he would stop.
My breathing grows shallow in the oven fed breeze.
If it helps each of you,
I am down on my knees.
I beg you.
Hand me one piece of bread.
Would you, please?
Categories:
collapses, death, health, introspection, life,
Form:
Quatrain
A toddlers Crayola masterpiece marks the box
Where the story of our days now tarry
Passages tilting the axis of a bittersweet equinox
As photographs eclipse yesterday and today unvaried
The plans we made for a life
After years of work and worry
Useless installments when your partner dies
The crumbling of everything you once held firmly
Riveted, uprooted with every slide
Scenes of "our time" bring you back to life
I step from earth, you from the sun, for yet another goodbye
And the dam finally collapses behind brave hazel eyes
But not the brokenness your death left behind
Still, though no more than ashes it resides
Like faded photographs etched in the mind
Fanning the embers... one picture at a time
Rage rises, for you left me alone
Without refuge for all life's trials
And our sons fatherless before they were grown
Every step feeling more like a mile
I've grieved so long
And tried to move on
Like river water never looking back
But it's motion sings the the words to our song
Leaving me afraid I'll never belong
Or live out the plan we devised
For all my days my efforts give way
Blundering, burdened and blind
How does one truly recover
When the mate of their soul is no more
Or pass from one realm to yet another
When the walls of your heart no longer have a door?
Frustration builds like Lego towers
toppling to the floor under the weight of the world
Is it grief or something disguised by cowards
When a heart gets stuck from the pain that it's learned?
This ode to a man
Who in covenant took my hand
The marriage equator engraved a permanent mark...
For his death left a total eclipse of my heart
Crazy as a loon
But my God... how I loved you
My eyes fixed upon our favored moon
And I wonder... Do you miss me too?
Anniversaries used to be a joyous accomplishment
Marking years of selfless love made
Now it serves only an acknowledgement
Of a life interrupted by a cruel twist of fate
Of ill trusted hopes
And a future unmade
For us left behind to cope
With memories and photographs fading away
On this the 2nd anniversary...
Of your passing away
In memory of my husband of 25 years
Charley Romani
(My Beloved)
Categories:
collapses, death, grief, husband, loss,
Form:
Quatrain
In those younger years
I made a friend of the sun
And allowed her to bathe me
In brown creamy skin
In those younger years
I ran across a beach
And played with the sun
Let her sprinkle freckles
Upon my healthy golden cheeks
In those younger years
I had my way
With the sun
Took her in so many
Different positions
Under the burn of her sultry touch
In those younger years
I traveled to exotic climes
Just to enter my sunshine heaven
And soak up her glow
But the cave I now inhabit
Shuts out all the warming rays
The cave in which I hide
Repels all her sunny ways
The cave I made from earth and
Resignation
Never lets her kiss within
The cave I excavated
Collapses upon my daily sins
In those younger years
I once loved the sun
Categories:
collapses, angst, depression, introspection, lost
Form:
Free verse
One dark night takes me on a ride to an isolated hill where I inhale unpleasantness ..
Wide gleamy monstrous gate opens as the mighty wind blows,
creepy ferns crawl all over the floor.
Eerie garden awaits the lost lover's presence;
There stands a haunted home with a grubby porch at the entrance.
The magnanimous door welcomes me unwaveringly;
To the right there's slaughter hall polished with blood stains.
On the wall, hung portrait of a lady wearing a long red gown with a silver hat and a golden rosette stapled;
Beside protruded, a yearning window decorated by cob webs;
To the left led staircase ,as I step on railing, it crackles like hatching eggs; Carefully I manage to reach the first floor and confronted a quiet room occupied by constant whispers & spine-chilling whimpers...I slowly move inside and envision nothing strange,but I feel something moist dripping on my cheeks from the roof above.
When I look up, the entire strong ceiling collapses,
disembodied spirit arises,floating on air,observes the decaying house from a distance.
14-7-2020
~Deepa. V~
First place in the contest:-)
Note: Decaying house Poetry Contest.
Sponsored by A Dear Heart(Constance)
Categories:
collapses, adventure, dark, horror, house,
Form:
Free verse
The table's bounty is piled high
Family's poised to dig in and try
Mama's turkey, special stuffing
And sweet potato pumpkin pie
When a knock at the door freezes us all
Who can it be who's come to call
The wind is howling; let him in fast
There's room for one more at our repast
He enters shivering and shaking
His bony frame twitching and quaking
He opens his mouth as if to speak
Then collapses to the floor in a heap...
The ambulance summoned, we wait aghast
Silent and anxious, when at last
The ambulance arrives, but it's well past too late
The poor fellow's soul has fled to its fate
The Thanksgiving meal sits now uneaten
As our tears reflect the depth of man's plight
These sad tidings fortune cannot sweeten
~ Death has extinguished a light
Categories:
collapses, food, sad, thanksgiving day,
Form:
Narrative
Little sweet Lucy..four years..so small.
Her pink teddy bear.. and her Barbie doll.
Pushed strollers of fun. ..in traipse of malls.
Then a Topsy turvy evil.. stifles her a thrall.
She cries, " Where are my dolls? "
Crawls a cruel connive...arrives a sudden sinister.
Wrangles her hard destiny. .lurks a doomed disaster.
Poor Child, ...Leukemia is now her master.
She collapses into the arms.. of a malevolent monster.
She cries, " Where are my dolls? "
Wasn't Blood red. .that flowed in our veins?
Her's was a translucent black. ..
only strains..and those pains.
With her curly hair shaved. .the ugly doll sustains.
Syringe of thorns prick. .a rose.. to sick bed detains.
She cries, " Where are my dolls? "
Crummy " Chemo" of the 'Crab '. .
creeps on the little dummy.
There's yucky throw of food...
from her aching tummy.
Fear stricken Dad.. and a tear streaked Mummy. .
Her outstretched arms.. say..
"I know you both love me"
She cries, " Where are my dolls? "
The helpless girl.. gets weaker and thinner.
She longs for the table...sit together for dinner.
Forlorn she quirks.. in the MRI shiver.
Fighting with Cancer. .her spleen and liver.
She cries, " Where are my dolls? "
Painkillers help ..seeing windows and walls.
Doctors are elves... and Fairy nurses call.
To live without dying. .she daily sprawls. ..
She cries, " Where are my dolls? "
A desolate girl..she dreams. .playing with dolls.
PLACED THIRD IN SCREWED POETRY CONTEST by Rob Carnack
7th October 2018
A Poem of Reaction Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Julia Ward.
Categories:
collapses, child, death, destiny, emotions,
Form:
Rhyme