Best Deferred Poems

How will my household chores get done?
They're just no fun.
I'd rather write
about this plight.

Great piles of clothes and dishes hope
for cleansing soap.
Another time,
I'll banish grime.

Today a "Minute" calls my name.
This prompt's to blame
for undone work
I had to shirk!



received NA in an open-choice  contest on...

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Again I shield my eyes from ocean's spray
While lifting eyes of hope to search the sea
But seas and skies are endless, troubled grey

My hope deferred; how often must it be?
I'd give my life to see him safely home
And all once more his windswept face to...

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Dreams Deferred - Gone with the Wind


Dreams deferred:

Placed on hold
Like unwelcomed telephone calls

Relegated to being bench warmers 
Like second-rate baseball players

Put out to pasture
Like useless cattle past their prime 

Displayed on a shelf
Like tarnished antiques collecting dust

Stored in an old medicine cabinet
Like expired drugs that...

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(Apropos of Hughes’s Proverbial Question)

What happens when rotten strange fruit…
Hanging from trees of auction block wood
Become stinking pieces of black flesh…dried blood
Putrefying in murderous streets…?

When crystallized tears of remorse…Laden and loaded
With explosive grief…flow down weary faces
Wrinkled by time’s trials, tribulations…treacherousness—
And neglect of freedom, justice and...

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You entered the
room, we spoke a
while,
Your eyes spoke
volumes, a gentle
soul.
A compatriot to
spend time with,
The prospects seemed
so bright to me.
Laughed at observed
funny moments,
Smiled when our eyes
found each others'.
Then the news came
on, I gave my
opinion,
Not so you
interjected, you had
your say.
Stuck to my
rationale, years in
the making,
You got irate
stating...

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How long was I asleep like a proud bug
deep in her nest? All of my life was ease
and wealth until I became a bit smug—
and all about was hunger, dearth, and disease! 
So cozy was life that I was content,
snug, self-assured, sure, and self-satisfied
without awareness...

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The grapes are crushed and trodden,
winnowed the golden grain;
if winter comes tomorrow
my heart shall not complain.

Richer this tardy harvest
than one could ever dream
who has known the taste of famine
and drank a drought extreme.

Copyright, 7-19-2014
Faye Lanham Gibson...

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Beauty
Aesthetic grace
Is muted for a time
Weary eyes searching the darkness
New dawn..
Absence makes these eyes grow fonder
Beethoven's sonata
Comes to a close
Sunrise
...

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What happens to a broken heart?

Does it shrivel and shrink like toes under water?
Or blister and break apart—
Like sunburns getting ever hotter?
Does it feel crushed like a battered rock by the sea?
Or bleed like a wound—
That soon ceases to be?

Maybe it painfully crumbles
Like a man...

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I stare in amazement,
As you stand and scream...
My heart screams but my lips don't move in parallel...
We all flee,
All but you,
To safety they run,
To you I sprint...
I grab your hand and pull,
But you are as if cemented,
I lift, pull, and tug to my best but...

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I am not living
I am epitaph writing
The deferred reward...

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*with due apologies to the late, great Langston Hughes*


What happens to a dream deferred?
Me? Defer a dream?
Nah, I ain't that mighty a fool!
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Raisins! Mmm, I love me some raisins...
on oatmeal, on cookies, the works!

Or fester like a...

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Dreams Deferred 
My Dreams have always been to travel around the globe. 
Dreams Deferred? Perhaps 

My dream is to possibly become an author, second-guessing and duped. Dreams Deferred? Perhaps

Unguarded decisions,  false evidence appears real. Dreams
Deferred? Perhaps 

Guilty by association,  recognized toxic faces, unaccustomed...

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Muffled dialogue ennui sequestered intimacy so distant,
                                      ...

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It is night's first light — evening
The world thinks through my mind
The echoes of a bittersweet day whisper
My ears twitch, my heart pricks

A pressed edge leans forward
Shouldering the offices of the earth
A desire to just surmount the hurdles
Like an infant falls yet learns to walk

The...

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