Best Discomfiture Poems
One of my boyhood dreams was to become a successful functionary,
With an office with a view, a fine oak desk and a pretty secretary!
To wear a suit and tie (to me) would be the pinnacle of success.
I was sick of wearin' brogans and overalls - I'd settle for nothin' less!
I suppose to a certain degree my youthful dreams came true.
For thirty years I wore a tie with the Air Force suit of blue.
Anon, the wearin' of a suit and tie had lost much of its appeal.
My discomfiture at wearin' a stranglin' tie became hard to conceal!
My spouse attributes my disdain for suits and ties as a lack of cultivation.
To not wear a suit and tie to church she considers an abomination!
I'll deign to wear such garb for a weddin' or funeral to be a tad more couth,
But I suffer thro' each excruciatin' minute of the ordeal to tell the truth!
Here in the wild west, a well-dressed dude wears scruffy boots and jeans.
Shucks, the feller could be a prosperous rancher and a man of means!
I'm in heavenly bliss wearin' my jeans sans a constrictin' suit and tie.
I feel as free as a golden eagle soarin' in the pristine Colorado sky!
I reckon that when I cease to function and bid my friends adieu,
That they'll insist on displayin' my mortal shell for everyone to view.
But if they dress me out in a daggone suit and especially a throttlin' tie,
There ain't no delicate way to express it - I'll just up and die!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
Categories:
discomfiture, funny,
Form:
Rhyme
Waking up with the demon digging your bowels
Imagining other marvels, your mind on a different level
Hit the streets with a system in discomfiture
Nose in the air as to flatter any future
People look around without seeing, eaten into by sins, remorse or even longing for a better being.
People got sores they can't heal, come across each other and can't feel.
I walk, ma mind away, and feel nothing
Nor the fresh air that I breathe, nor the fresh breezes from the beach,
I am digging a gap between my life and I, not even hearing the honking.
For I am dating with a siren
She’s sucking blood, killing my soul and drying my heart up
She extends my agony in silence
Depression is getting our life sucked up
Survival trauma,
Hatred, cost of living, pressure, consistency of need, incertitude, ignorance in all its bliss
Our life, a daily drama.......
Categories:
discomfiture, angst,
Form:
Rhyme
The many faces scattered here-
the sense of misery had
swollen, not unexpectedly. Sound
“louder,” suddenly
at the end, dreadful movements
then till the end.
The clear red-hot, mass of fire
blue, full of discomfiture-
forgotten for the almost
unrecognizable fear.
Pieces, trembling limbs,
burning eyes, feeling faint,
fumbled and slurred.
The thumping began again,
set-off, hoping to be able
to discover the secret at last.
Too miserable, and in a way
astonished.
The air, the day.
Categories:
discomfiture, anxiety, music,
Form:
Free verse
Vexation seeps through sighs
As the pen finds comfort
Sharing the same story
Nonsensical pretty boys
With smoke cloud habits
And bloodshot ponderings
Vaunting on their
Newsworthy delinquency
With incessant metal bar consequences
Promulgating in the same breath
they’re gaining
New ground
Breaking the cleanse
Of poisoning
Their liver
And feeling the linear
Coldness of a countertop
On their nose
With a half glass of water
In a ring of loneliness
On their nightstand
The gulp of insomnia
Rudely digs its hook of candidness
In your empathic being
Melodramatic memories
Of empty dinner table
Upbringings
Spending school nights
Placing cigarettes
In plastic bottles
With front porch
Heart to hearts
With their second self
Pulling the sleeves
Of sweatshirts once borrowed
Over tattooed knuckles
Shivering against the disbelief
That loyalty in this town
Is only face to face
Rehashing
first heartbreaks
With the outlook
That mistrust follows
Demons
That look just like you
The way you
Introduce yourself
With skintight beliefs
Low cut distractions
Met with
Amorous disposition
Abrade their thoughts
Of you from tantalizing
To discomfiture
And their ears
Can’t handle
Opprobrium especially from their friends
When you would
Put fingers
In yours like an obstinate child
Just to keep
Looking at them
With oblivious blissful daydreams
Even if you were
Stumbling drunk
Out of their broken front door the night before
After learning
They sent flowers to someone else
Like a man with his paramour
Leaving your existence
In a blighted state
Surrounded by empty walls
For
They
Took it all
But don’t worry
The guilt of breaking your heart
Is easier for them to swallow
Than the nausea
Traveling up their throat
With the spew of your adoration
Categories:
discomfiture, break up, emo, growth,
Form:
Free verse
It was no longer a vague errand,
She was determined to accost him
She had overcome at last the dread
Of having to face her painful dilemma
With a vigorous jerk of her head
She shook off many a great doubt.
Never before had she undertaken
A task more intense or more onerous
But rather than await his conversion
(Which could take an eternity
In view of his embellished ego)
She plunged headlong to the challenge
She thought she had reconciled all things
Moral, intellectual and even romantic
And could now concentrate on the absorbing desire
Nay! On her instinctive consummate goal
Of finally casting off the deferential silence
And facing off with this idiot of a lover
Why would he not come out of the woods
Take her hand and tell her he loved her so?
She had coaxed her mind to cogitate an answer
And caused her brain to ex-cogitate a solution
This she had done with the dullest comprehension
For it was eminently unworthy of her classic grace.
But now at last it was done
Her errand was now a solemn mission
Out with the blundering alacrity!
Out with all the mysterious reticence!
She had come to take away her prize
His implacable stance notwithstanding!
But as she approached her destination
And rose to advance to the exit
She espied a figure, nay- the idiot lover
Seated many rows in front of her
He, too, was about to rise to alert the driver
Stung, she slumped back on her seat
And buried her head in her hands
Till the object of her love and dreams
Disembarked ... and hurried down the footpath
With shame and pangs of discomfiture
She waved the driver on... to some other place.
Categories:
discomfiture, first love,
Form:
Free verse
Wind is that wonderful element replenished at each breath,
Interrupting this rhythm even for a moment results in a discomfiture.
Wild wind rustling through the leaves of the tree,
Carrying with it the fresh fragrances of life,
That make me feel alive and free.
Wind makes it's powerful presence felt at all latitude,
And you dare not miss it at a high altitude.
Wind in a mean, mad mood can be monstrous,
And cause damage at a massive magnitude.
Wind is the medium in which sound moves,
It is the cause for the tall trees to sway,
And the science behind causing the spray,
When it kisses the ocean's surface in a passionate play.
Wind the wandering minstrel
continually plays the magic
of that mystical, musical note called life
Categories:
discomfiture, life,
Form:
Rhyme
© Ben Burton 6/18/2016
It's difficult to feel good
When you see
A long lost loved one
The meeting predicated
On the death of another
You both loved
But, at least one of you
Barely saw at all
Once those early years were gone
So you hug
And you grieve
And you talk
With an air of discomfiture
Merely making conversation
While wondering how it happened
For excuses are just that
If you seize the time and own it
With the will to make it happen
One more good, back home reunion
But... the kids had things to do
Then, their kids had more to do
Though there is no right or wrong
In decisions of the heart
Always intended to
Somehow life got in the way
And the time had moved along
Was life bursting? Bustling
With imperatives
Far more important
Than spending time
Some of that precious, little time
With those who knew you well
Back then
Inside your photo album
Is the proof of all that once was
Those memories still linger
Fondly, sometimes, tearfully
Of your dear relatives
Those who share your blood
But as you've gotten older
It's like you barely know
The one behind the face
Who was a centerpiece
In your long-ago life
For whom you still feel love
But it's hard to love a stranger
As deeply as your family
Yet...that is who they are
Your béloved family
Whom you see occasionally
In that photo album
But infrequently face-to-face
Until another death
In your dying family
But you swear to stay in touch
And you mean it
And they mean it
Then, time melts even more
And yet another dies
The funeral reunites
Repetition draped in heartache
For what you could have done
But did not do
But, hey!
Neither did they
So you shake your head and say
"Why is life that way?"
Yet and still
You've got tomorrow
But so little time to waste
For soon comes that reunion
Where the late, béloved centerpiece
Is you
Categories:
discomfiture, death, feelings, remember,
Form:
Free verse
Conceited clericalism is encroaching scientific study and educational exploration, obdurate obscurantism engulfing people's normal mentality and judgment, ramrod racism routing ethnic equality and melting harmony~~~~~~
After 4 years of punk-sunk domestic complexion and skunk-drunk diplomatic stance under that frustrating and even facetious leadership, nothing meritorious had been left except for an unprecedentedly nationwide antagonistic atmosphere, an utterly disaffected alliance climate, a half-botched eyesore slouchy at the southern border flaunting its segregating strength on a derisorily slipshod base and a Covid death toll higher than that caused by world war 2.
Whatever disorder, discomfiture, disgrace and disruption he had brought, it was up to none other than the belated ballot to bring him down for want of any other alternatives effectual enough to invoke. It had certainly been shameful enough to etch the annals to have that pus-grubber holding a full 4-year term who had been out-and-out treasonable, unscrupulous, narcissistic and almost every moment fixated on a peculiar sense of holding court rather than holding duty. But even as he was about to step down perforce, the mind-boggling moxie of his moribund melodrama was still stepping up. Seeing an election result rolling out against him, he started to roar, roll and rattle all around together with his minions, inundating quite some states' litigation offices with dozens of sloppy suits only to be drained up by one identical whitewash from go to whoa in their totally failed attempts to turn the table. After the electoral college's confirmation in Dec.14, his nearest followers gradually got to rest disheartened, that doom-diver still remained restless in his mug's game, without the least care or concern over state affaires, day and night phoning and wiring to different executive departments, law enforcements and gubernatorial offices his pissing and moaning about so-called his opponent's cheating evidences and his stolen scores as if nothing but an immediate reversal of the result could meet the real justice. As the whole world stopped to watch how the dead cat bounce during his remnant continuance, a big deal did be bounced out.
Categories:
discomfiture, america, international, introspection, political,
Form:
Prose
Tell me, Casanova, how long you’ll pine
On sodden sleeves your heart you’ve worn
Reputation on the line in decline
Sterile standing in society shorn
Of its aura of charm and calm
Reduced to tatters
With no love balm
In sight, your maneuver no longer flatters
As you once boasted it could
At your beck and call
Methinks you’re knocking on wood
Hastening your free fall
From grace as your pedestal
Driven to its knees
Slumps horizontal
With pitiful pleas
For release from the grip
The siren on you
Seems to rip
Anew
Threads of last ditch
Hope on which bits and slits of your heart hang
Primed to switch
Off the clang
In the intensive care unit
In which between Charybdis and Scylla
Where the last throes of your discomfiture knit
In the power Priscilla
Yields to snuff out
In rapid fire
The doubt
On hire that can longer respire
Gives up its ghost
In shame and odium
To a tortuous toast
On your Waterloo podium
Where spectators fed up with your pitiful pleas
Demand the coup de grace
Sleaze
To terminate your winless race to save your face.
Categories:
discomfiture, poems,
Form:
Free verse
How can human deal with all the other animals with a sense of indisputable superiority? What makes them keep mollycoddling the mean motive of extracting from other animals as much as possible while paying little love or care?
In their eyes, our husbandry only meets their needs for fur, yet our holocaust serves perfectly to decelerate the covid's spread. What a horrible horde of "hypochondriac" hotspurs! Hence nothing but the humanistic & humanitarian outrage's outstretch has sped!
Mauling in flagrant air, they're unscrupulous in self-warranted villainies as the ruling species. Moaning in despair, we're in no position to defend ourselves as cheaply disposable herds. Sweeping and speeding, they have a crash compensation for covid curse coming their way by commencing a cruel culling campaign over pro-peace populations. Weeping and bleeding, we're creating poignant literatures which will snivel sanguinary historicity for later generations.
Does their ferocity really mitigate their discomfiture? Let's take a glimpse at the present picture------which can't be more self-evident------ As a series of crackdowns of necessity get under way:
Large-scale lockdown, shutdown, quotidian curfew, social contact constrictions, manifold travel and transport bans continually and constantly upset human's regular hours and cadences, all walks of life lapsing into doldrums or even standstills and every sector wading strenuously in the swamp of slump, covid sets out an exclusive trip at great ease, staging a worldwide itinerant show in extravagant style, pestering human being all around the globe, tossing them into a vicious circle of "everywhere they've fled, nowhere for them to flee", taunting their knock-off caliber in comparison to a veritable calamity of public hygiene and smashing their transgressive turgidity and turpitude inexorably and mercilessly. But ironically, the more toughly the real corona of covid gets human pinched, the more tightly human gets their imaginary corona clinched, of which the title presumes to be the universe's sole supreme, in which the content, however, contributes to sciosophist's sloppy ream.
Categories:
discomfiture, animal, anti bullying, cry,
Form:
Burlesque
I skitter cross time's restless bones in search of sleep's access,
Discomfiture not fate or man but "restless legs" (1) confess.
An accidental drug (2) does treat if I do not forget,
It calms legs down that trouble sleep, of course, desired and yet,
It can't put out the flame that fries one's goal of no duress.
A curious thing sleep is, 'REM' when we dream we're awake,
And not shut down, though sensory, the input all is fake,
Perhaps derived from memories that trouble us it seems,
The repetition seems to help to quiet down our dreams,
We wake to loss, real pain, and joy, expecting the earthquake
Of death may someday end it all. Trust me! Does peace appall?
The older grow to see old age as just another fall,
And winter too suggests to some that spring will come and soon,
One door may close, but what's unseen? Feel free to curse the moon,
But nothing will forestall, I'd guess, the end of large and small!
Brian Johnston
10th of September 2018
Poet's Notes:
(1) Restless leg syndrome is a recently named condition that causes feelings of discomfort in one's legs that make you move your legs in an attempt to get more comfortable. It is like how you might feel if ants were crawling on your legs.
(2) A drug that got developed for other reasons was accidentally discovered to give relief to people suffering from this problem.
Categories:
discomfiture, death, life,
Form:
Rhyme
Love in its majesty and spendour
Visits hearts kind and unkind
Waxing her odour and ardour
To help the love-lost to find
Little spaces, loving faces
Enamoured enough
To rise from surfaces
Where disappointment tough and rough
Lampoons discomfiture
Inflicted in the name
Of a culture whose stricture
Makes the lost lame
With heartbreaks
Torrents of tears
Ruing mistakes
Made as fears
Sprang on the lost the illusion
Baked in their soft centre
In reaction to the disaffection and delusion
That feelings may never enter
Into contests
Where the ruthless inflict maximum pain
Under pretexts
A go at love in the main
Signifies a journey on the back of futility
Backed up by contrary advice
Veering towards the volatility
Love tags along in every slice
Love snaps on suitors
Mad
Enough to pose as imitators
Of sad
Hearts that cried
Once smitten
To the core when they tried
To tame love forgotten
Into the dustbin of history
Replete with burnt fingers
Whose mixed blessing story
Singe many Cupid singers.
Categories:
discomfiture, poems,
Form:
Free verse
Narrow escapes- thrice threatening
Came and went
Despite succor abstaining
My soul under no circumstances meant
Harm to my person
Stolid as I sometimes dreamt to claim
Not heeding, not learning warnings a salutary lesson
That on me poured blame
Sucked from narrow escapes
Felt deep within my clones, bones, tones and zones
As fortune on my side with sour grapes
From goring horns and thorns
Gunning and turning in earnestness
Towards the weaker flank
Carelessness on my part gifted wanton wistfulness
Grown from dating devices I couldn’t spank
As on my knees I slumped
Begging feet of defeat to spare me
When false charges I slapped
On the sooth-sayer I could hardly see or foresee
In the vicinity of the battlefield
Where blood gushed
From a weal shield
That blows from all directions hushed
Weak on melting knees I slumped
The writing on the wailing wall
Dawned near and clear as bludgeon blows together clamped and lumped
I was undone! Slow and certain sounded the clarion call
Fate and its mates
Discomfiture and discomfort couldn’t obviate
From doom and gloom gates
Fortune could no longer deviate
From gurgling and giggling gates of Hell
Open so wide
To spell and tell
The demise my pride
Touted on the snout of the clout pout and spout
Tinted by the ubris crease whose fleece
Made up of diseased doubt
That no retreat could delete from a missed kiss
Swollen and stolen
In a last step ditch effort
All of a sudden- sullen
As crude collapse conquered my fort.
Categories:
discomfiture, poems,
Form:
Free verse