Best Cut Short Poems
My car ran out of gas. I found myself
alone and walking down an unknown road.
I looked to find a house where I might stop
to call someone and then get my car towed.
The first house I could find was very big.
It was a manor, but it was so old.
Although it looked run down, I saw a light,
and wanting help, I needed to be bold.
I went up to the door. I knocked and knocked.
Was no one home? But what about that light?
I turned the knob. The door had not been locked!
I pushed my way in with a little fright.
I called out, “Is there anybody home?”
A voice then said to me, “I’ll be your host.
Come sit and chat. There’s just one little thing.
You cannot see me, for I am a ghost!”
I saw nobody there, but my skin crawled
because the voice I could distinctly hear
was masculine . I felt as if someone
were right there whispering into my ear!
I turned around and sped right out of there.
No other house I saw. I got no tow.
Ten miles to town I ran, and you can bet
the speed I ran was anything but slow!
Jan. 15, 3019 for Tania Kitchin's One Night In a Haunted Manor Contest
What do you romanticize when there is no beauty left?
There are no ponds to sit beside
There are no trees for me to write beneath
I haven't heard a bird sing to me in what feels like a decade
The light pollution has clouded my eyes and I'm afraid that if it ever clears I'll see this place for what it is and become so
A life cut short in an instant.
Gunned down without a reason.
One lost love of a family.
One lost friend of many.
Never hated always loved.
Cheered up all she knew.
Had a big impact on so many lives.
A life cut short in an instant.
Gunned down without a reason.
Never to live out her dream.
There is a large void in so many lives.
A school in total shock.
Will never be the same.
A life cut short in an instant.
Gunned down without a reason.
So many lives touched by her kindness.
A life filled with hope and love.
Loved by all who knew her.
She wanted to help others.
A life cut short in an instant.
Gunned down without a reason.
It is time to grieve the loss of someone special.
It is time to come to terms with what has happened.
A life cut short in an instant.
Gunned down without a reason.
It is time to say "good-bye for now."
Knowing we will see her again.
So, Azyia, good-bye for now.
I will see you soon.
Wandering upon the Sandy shores of the ocean,
Deeply in thoughts and anticipating a bright horizon,
I think of my love.
She molds my heart with peace,
She adorns my face with smiles,
That I can only glide,
The waves tossed and turn,
On my skin the sun burns,
But all I feel is her love.
Her love is a magic carpet,
Whose ride takes me beyond the moon,
Gently as she holds my hand,
My heart throbs beneath my ribs like an antelope
that's running to a Brook for a drink,
My Endocrine system becomes more active, releasing oxytocin,
Our hearts are locked in the dawn of real love,
Tender and kinder,
Purer and brighter.
The sand can't write our stories,
The moon can't capture our moment,
No camera man can either,
For our love goes deeper in the inner most part of our bones,
From the enamel in our mouths,
To the villi in our intestines,
To the marrows in our bones,
Our love goes down.
Forever and ever and always.
A Love story cut short.
© Gabriel T. Saah (The Marvelous Inker)
The clock gnaws marrow from the bone,
Its hands are wolves in a quiet room.
I pace the halls of books like a penitent,
Collecting alphabets, equations, broken hymns—
Each one a splinter of fire to brand my palms.
Learning is a lantern, I tell myself,
But it burns both the pupil and the page.
Still, I drink the poison of knowledge,
Measure each drop with trembling fingers,
Because power without mercy is a blade in the dark.
Let the evil ones be caught in their own traps,
Sealed in jars, their whispers locked
Like moths in a museum drawer.
The good should hammer the lid shut—
And yet the shadows leak, they stain the air.
I scavenge disciplines the way crows hoard silver:
Philosophy, astronomy, anatomy,
A perpetual ladder built skyward, rung by rung.
The body sours, but the mind must not sleep,
Not while questions are hissing in the grass.
Don’t hate the players, hate the game—
But I see the board stained with red squares,
Pawns split open, queens reduced to ash.
Still, I move my piece forward.
Still, I mouth the rules until they cut my tongue.
Why are our lives so short?
Because the brain is a storm,
And storms cannot be persuaded to last.
Autumn sky glows yellow against blue hue sky;
turns windy, rainy a long languorous day.
Swirls of fresh intoxicating aria.
midmorning showers
rootless lingering rainbow~
scent of petrichor
Outdoors allure afresh, stunning once again.
Sun kissed fragrant richer fruitful harvest fields.
Woods once rich with leaves fall round and round with wings.
quenching nature's thirst
harmonious double arch~
whole world auspicious
An evening walk to the pond a calming sense;
near the bank we saw large bear paws sunk deeply
into the mud, quietly cutting our walk short.
black bear foraging
spawning fish bantering play~
heart beats in slumber
9/7/2020
Let the Pens Flow - Haibun Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Jenish Somadas
Has one saved me
From the past pollution
A slight ingrate in a complicated world
The spell still lingers
But is it so potent,
The summer I was formed into my being,
So now come hear
What I have here to say
Conform Death as king and he will grant you
One single wish
Quick and painless fall to
Or slow to suffer the pain you have cuased you
Come and see
me without you:
A series of unfortunate events
stand by me
for better or worse.
Four weddings and a funeral
snatch
the neverending story,
where the wild things are
enchanted.
The vanishing,
living in oblivion,
scream
into the wild
field of dreams.
Racing stripes,
dressed to kill
the departed
return to Neverland,
dazed and confused,
missing
stardust.
(Each separate line is a movie title.)
darn it~ I cut the grass too short
Life is a silly thought sometimes,
Leading you on a leash,
proding you with jokes and teases,
Some worse than others.
Its funny how we don't take in mind how thin the leash is,
How worn the tethers are,
How quickly it could all come to end.
Life is like an eternal mountain range,
Something you have heard before,
But for some,
Its shorter than they could ever see.
It taunts with a peak,
But the ground is unstable,
The shaking unfelt by any toes.
Until,
It cracks,
Sending the unfortunate soul down,
Down into a sinkhole unknown,
Deeper than any pond can go.
This dark abyss,
This consuming hole,
Is known as one thing, and one thing only.
Something even the most hopeful can't escape from.
Death,
The leash undone,
The light far gone,
The final step in a twisted process.
A thing no one can predict,
Something so unmerciful,
It scares us.
For when the ones die young,
When a small light is effortlessly squished,
We cry in anguish at our weakness,
Our helplessness.
Though this message is not to weave fear or sadness,
For all things come to an end.
Even if falling feels like time has stopped,
You will find the bottom of the sinkhole.
It has to be dark before it can be bright,
Enveloped by a bed of feathers,
Drifting into the beyond,
Welcomed by a thousand hugs,
All familiar to the bone.
On a coffin a single rose
All in all no one knows
How much she hurt
How far he went
Why she was forever bent
Why her wrists were always red
Until the day she was finally dead
Riddled with guilt, riddled with bullets
For crimes committed, societal crimes
The fate of the unwashed masses grasped
The Oliver Twisted twist of the sullied poor
The man who never became a man but a boy
The guilt of being born in the first place
Weighs heavier than the bullets in their case
Filth caked on flesh along the desperate mile
All roads lead to one direction for the dirty
Chance favors the objectivity in these matters
Guns open fire on the ridiculous moment
On the snatched body from the womb
Rain comes to wash away the doomed
To cover the mistake of birth in the first place
A mistake, a person of less interest now
Can rest at last below the willow tree
What is left to sort out is the howling wind
All actions have consequences
All lead to an end without a friend
To the haunted grave at castle town
Below a tree that cries for no one
A child without a name but reputation
Alone with soil as his company for sure
Sullied as it is and not much more