Best Discounting Poems
If wealth is now your blessing,
what then was the prayer?
Avarice, its goal possessing,
yet in penury, despair.
I see them often in the store
eyes ahead, regard for none.
Against the classes, tacit war—
Modus Operandi: shun.
Vaunted compounds they do flout—
absent grasp of their chagrin—
for walls and gates that keep us out
are prisons trapping them within.
They say those vexed by paucity,
should flee to foreign air,
for wages here of poverty
would make them wealthy there.
Thus, high above the world they scan—
well hidden from our sight—
discounting what the common man
is suffering tonight.
1st Place: Sing to Me Contest
Prompted by the remark made on this topic by fashion company Nicole Miller’s
CEO Bud Konheim. Thanks to Roy Jerden for his thoughtful help on the fifth stanza, allowing for much greater impact.
With a special nod to the song Royals by Lorde, which has a very compatible message.
Categories:
discounting, poverty,
Form:
Quatrain
At the brink of my horizon dipped in destiny free
when the new sun arose in spectral color spree,
my lone languid life woke up and promised me,
someday it would sail me across the stormy sea
to the iridescent island of my dream I would be,
where I would absorb the twilight patina in glee,
and drench the soul in stardust glow of ecstasy,
but this would never happen, I couldn’t foresee,
life didn’t keep its promise discounting my plea.
I couldn’t rise from the fallen sky’s dark debris,
with the dusts of despair I find the dreams flee
beyond the last mile of journey, the path I see.
January 11, 2020
Contest : All Yours (Jan 25)
Sponsor : Brian Strand
Categories:
discounting, dream, journey, life,
Form:
Monorhyme
Recycled Wisdom Lost
by Odin Roark
How common to recycle today
bottle,
cardboard,
can,
or bubble wrap.
How rare the regard for pleas from
mind,
heart,
memory,
wishing also to amend anew.
How satisfying,
To arouse the sleeping heart,
thrusting its comfort-beat
upon new rhythms made aware,
ensuing musical notes of clarity
not yet upon the staff of boundaries,
affording dissonance where only
harmony's familiarity once reigned.
To revisit memory
offering bygone experience,
wiser tools of perception,
scrambling dog-eared indexes
cross-referencing fact and fabrication,
allowing waste to fall free,
encouraging truth to persevere.
To sort through mind's many strategies,
discounting some,
discarding others,
dismantling exhausted cogs that
advance little the unknown begging at the door.
Such is…
To complete one's desire to remain conscious,
allowing distinction for that worth rebirthing
from chaff heretofore but a friction urging resolve.
How obvious to some:
the take-to-the-curb days of consciousness.
How misunderstood by others:
the smothering effect of effort
to treat excess destined as garbage.
How aware
those who
like the winged flights on high
weave today's nest
from yesterday's exhausted remnants,
knowing well the destiny of permanence
is but to replant where burnt forests once thrived.
And yet…
We often think recycling is confined to aluminum,
plastics, glass and other fabrications of man’s intellect,
but what of...
Categories:
discounting, christmas, hyperbole,
Form:
Free verse
‘I rant until i tattle.’
An old man said to me.
With boulders brass in battle
For Country, Queen and sea.
Lest not aghast a fattie,
Good heavens or abode.
We cannot simper- EVER!
For mighty frog or toad.
My clumbus, brood and brattice
Have left and faded dim,
Yet i shall stay with Stumpy
For clopper, clop and Jim.
Discounting Morris Upskate,
A ginger by default.
He keeps us musing nicely
For peace and calm revolt.
Take up thy stripy cornflake
And all who sail within,
And use the little peabus
For losing, draw or win.
And with a hanson blackie,
We clubber what we sow,
Go barphing like a windmill,
For friends we do not know.
Categories:
discounting, funny, hilarious, humor, humorous,
Form:
Rhyme
as my pen positions itself
between my fingers and pillows itself on my hand…
…I know not why I write and still I’ve got to take this poem for a ride….
Thoughts spew inside my head – too
fast to articulate. Too deep to defend. Ticking like a badly timed bomb
infused with a faulty timer – I reach for the pen…
words align themselves as I walk Through the clutches of Pre-validation. My mind
is appeased – my will is at ease…until the stumbler opens his mouth:
“Poetry” he whispers and I’m thrown
Into the vapors of Validation wondering, perhaps, maybe? Could it be
that without will I have created that which could be termed
as poetry? The jury is out: the naysayers and the critics;
the conservatives and realists;
friends and foes –
torturing my mind, stroking my ego, making my blood boil,
soothing my heart…
tears I cannot cry…smiles they can not see…
anger spills out; indifference sets in;
I wring my mind and
pack my poem
slowly I embark on the
Wrought past Post-validation.
Baby steps in forming words I love. Twisting the poem in forms I’ve
learnt. Dressing it in different styles, shortening it, elongating it;
Snip, snap, cut, bandage –
Rhythm no rhythm. Basking in formless form.
Counting and discounting syllables
But still it’s not enough.
What’s the use of words if they don’t effect?
Diving into The plunge I reign in the words – the leader of my chariot-
My poem succumbs to my will.
Wielding, exposing, slicing, dicing, building, destroying, encouraging,
condemning
the poem breathes – a life of its own.
And I think to myself Oh please who am I to be the wielder of such potency?
I call it back.
Taking a stroll along the beach, I reminisce of things past;
The things I’ve done; the things I’ve not done;
The rot in the world; the love
that begs to be heard…
The thoughts start swirling in my mind.
….
My steps take me back to the beginning…
as my pen positions itself
between my fingers and pillows itself on my hand…
…I know not why I write and still I’ve got to take this poem for a ride….
For: Boomerrang Contest sponsor: Michael J. Falotico
Categories:
discounting, on writing and words,
Form:
Free verse
Self-discipline whines
discounting hefty losses...
Demanding dessert
***For Nayda Ivette Negron Setback Contest
July 10, 2016
Categories:
discounting, satire,
Form:
Senryu
The permacultural professional's definition of enculturing math:
Counting and discounting,
multiplying and dividing,
nutritional seed (capital) diverse re-investment guilds
to solve problems of cooperative wealth values
and dissonant pathological disvalues.
The bicameral geo-mathematician's bilateral dilemma:
To get from 0 to 1, (nomial stasis)
one must also get from 0 to 2, (binomial diastasis)
and perhaps best back again,
to simultaneously resolve,
yet never consecutively linear-sequence
in real natural-spiritual equivalent spacetime 4-prime dimensions
of Special Case InFormational Dynamics,
to 1 median, septic and dipolar,
with 0 before and 2 implied after,
whether positive,
or double-negative,
or, co-arising nondually,
both LeftYang (+1) and Right exformatively recessive Yin (-,-)0.
Resonant BiCameral Resolutions:
Exchange Vertical-Universal deductive/inductive interdependence,
co-relation,
co-gravity,
co-arising
with co-equivalent
Horizontal-BiLateral Left-Right
both +1 blank slate, and notnot (0)-sum interdependence,
cooperative Yang/Yin ego/ecopolitical co-redeeming resonance.
Reiteratively enthymeming
cooperatively healthy creolizing
(0)-sum WinWin Communication Intent
to extend 4Prime Basic EcoTherapeutic HealthWealth Fractals,
like our oh-so-regenerative DNA,
strings of bilateral polypathic hypostatic theory
dipolar co-arising
Gaian Integral Hypothetical
co-gravitating dualdark ZeroSum
regenerating prime 4-Base
nurturing/strong reiterating root systems
of regenerating Positive/NotNotNegative
double-binding
self/other perpetuating
ego/ecosystems
echoing convex stems
of bilateral concave dipolar strings....
Categories:
discounting, culture, humor, math, philosophy,
Form:
Prose Poetry
I remember,
in the early 60s,
our thirty mile drive
from our historic family farm,
in all White rural Michigan,
not counting the Mexican migrant workers
which adults made a point of discounting,
on the first of several shopping trips to Thrifty Acres,
through vibrantly young all Black urban streets
of nearby Lansing.
Making Stevie Wonder and I,
him singing in all Black city churches
and me in all White rural and small village churches,
harmonic neighbors in my privately humming heart
yet never possible to publicly meet and greet
as this nation and this world were meant to sing
and dance our regenerations not apart.
I didn't know apartheid by default yet
but I do remember
seeing nearly black as ink skin for the very first time
on a smiling brown-eyed boy
on a chipped white painted bicycle without rims,
and longing to talk and listen with him
and laugh with him about the fresh green smell of freedom from training wheels,
freedom to create our own fast pedaling breeze
across our summer-hot black and white faces and arms,
and knowing that I would touch his dark warm skin
with loving wonder
about what it could be like to become with him,
to grow together,
to smell and feel and fly our satisfying diverse integrity
on a tandem red in-your-face bike,
bright shining all the way back
from Black-streets Lansing
through little White Woodland,
spreading across all Black with White Capital Cities
on out to woodland farmers,
to peddle fly while singing our glad hosanna wonders.
As I reweave
this first drive by encounter with racial diversity
and humane ecstatic curiosity,
I imagine asking Mom to stop,
pull our metallic gold Ford over
so I could ask his thick black-framed glasses name,
which would be Stevie,
and take his hand
to walk his bike back to his home and family
where we would live together
happily and most prosperously ever after.
This was my moment,
too quickly passed,
to know passion's love at first sight,
these sublime sounds and dark satin skin smells
of Stevie's Wonder.
Categories:
discounting, culture, humanity, love, music,
Form:
Political Verse
Sitting here alone again:
watching Mash!!
I know, but what the heck.
It’s still a smash,
just as it was then.
The highlight of my day;
discounting watching
the cats at play.
So free–
they seem to be.
But then, who am I to say?
My big concern
sadly to learn
in my present state of demise.
Is how to crease
this solo piece
and have some left
to wipe my eyes.
Categories:
discounting, blue,
Form:
Rhyme
In our ever changing world it becomes more difficult
for women to flourish in business, because men view
them as misfits,
They try to deplete their power and
pride with familiarity, treating them as they would their
spouses, acting as if they are insignificant caretakers
of their houses and spawns,
Objects of their desires to be lured and discarded,
for entertainment purposes only,
Women's business accumen is rarely lauded,
The mens' behavior makes women feel inconsequential
and forlorn, causing them to doubt themselves and feel torn,
Intelligence and wisdom are never appreciated,
it threatens the male ego, so cleverness becomes
understated,
The men in corporate America would gladly
bury intelligent women beneath papers,
while they take all the credit and pursue
their capers,
God bless the women who have their own minds
and run interference in the nick of time,
for their deceitful counterparts would have them
looking like hysterical, flirtatious chicks,
discounting their talents and treating them
as if they were uncivilized Hicks.
Categories:
discounting, businesswomen, men, women,
Form:
Light Verse
from antiquity of the Peruvian Inca mountains
'til today's unsheathed bladed Java buttons clicking
the numbers add up to incessant discounting counting
to sacrifice our own graven image sown sickening
if she floats - she's a witch and frankly must die
if she sinks, well, obviously she's sufficiently pious
when down on the bottom, we can't hear her cries
of sacrifice, still, very little can get by us
filed and defiled is all the better all the while
as the former digits click off of our palms
fingers and toes, complete legs fall away, as do
whole heads mounting kill count without qualms
virgin girls, citizen children, soldiers of play
their sacrifice is for civilization after all
us, uh, i mean the gods, won't have it any other way
they must have their place on our wailing wall
the altar so sacred, so blood red royal
C-4 strapped around plain white-robed torso
from handlers who assure they have the will of God
sending heavenward, pink clouded supplication - more so
for the sacrifice of the body than of the soul
robed theocratic surgeons who cut off our noses
in a perceived attempt to maintain their control
of those around them that might be opposed to
notions that they need not explain themselves,
or that God demands carnage for reasons unknown,
that their actions should beget peace in our time
that they shan't pick up, to cast, the first stone
that we all could be better humans I suppose
if we sacrificed our pride, instead of our fear
if we worked hard not to be taken for a ride by
admitting things aren't what they might first appear
dunno, but if there is a god for us to pray to
then maybe we could pray to not be preyed upon
and sacrificed for that bloody old world view
time to cook up some whorled peas - and move on
© Goode Guy 2012-08-02
Categories:
discounting, brother, faith, fear, history,
Form:
Quatrain
In our ever changing world it becomes more difficult
for women to flourish in business, because men view
them as misfits,
They try to deplete their power and
pride with familiarity, treating them as they would their
spouses, acting as if they are insignificant caretakers
of their houses and spawns,
Objects of their desires to be lured and discarded,
for entertainment purposes only,
Women's business accumen is rarely lauded,
The mens' behavior makes women feel inconsequential
and forlorn, causing them to doubt themselves and feel torn,
Intelligence and wisdom are never appreciated,
it threatens the male ego, so cleverness becomes
understated,
The men in corporate America would gladly
bury intelligent women beneath papers,
while they take all the credit and pursue
their capers,
God bless the women who have their own minds
and run interference in the nick of time,
for their deceitful counterparts would have them
looking like hysterical, flirtatious chicks,
discounting their talents and treating them
as if they were uncivilized Hicks.
Categories:
discounting, business, on work and
Form:
Light Verse
Hope
Hope is a seed
that once it is sown,
holds fast in its angst
for a chance to be grown.
It hides in our heart
like a secret to bear
and gathers more strength
each time that we share.
It wanders through wishes
and pours in our prayers,
dwells in our daydreams
caressing our cares.
Like a compass it guides us
each step of the way,
giving us strength
to hold on one more day.
Life's many hardships
leave many in need,
hope helps us through
if we'll just plant the seed.
The world can be dark
and a cold lonely place,
paths made of light
is how hope leaves it's trace.
Some say that hope
leaves us deep in despair,
a loss felt so deep
it's not worth it to care.
They do the work
of the thief in the night,
discounting faith
as they walk with their sight.
When given the chance
of a lifetime to choose,
our hope is the treasure
our hearts cannot lose.
The last place to turn
when we're desperate to cope.
What will become
of a life without hope?
- Jeannie Minor
Categories:
discounting, deep, depression, hope, humanity,
Form:
Rhyme
Society has held us captive
Discounting our own perspectives
Our individuality’s defined
Our personalities – entwined
We strive for power and control
And wealth and riches are our goal
We scrape and struggle to succeed
To the collective, we concede
We look to others for direction
Accept their words without direction
Our lives are wrapped up in our titles
And our identity is stifled
But what would happen if it’s finished
Are our triumphs more diminished?
When we’re stripped of our old roles
What will our destiny behold?
Our lives are more than we believe
And that our senses could perceive
Our posts are brief, but our purpose’s huge
While we submit to subterfuge
So we defer to deeper plans
And see life through a wider lens
Embracing growth as more diverse
Our novel conclusions, we’ll disperse
Categories:
discounting, angst, anxiety, society,
Form:
Lyric
Incredible Candidates
They say that a candidate named Fiorini
Happens to think that she is a Houdini
But what she is liable to pull out of a hat
Is destined to led us into mortal combat.
Then there is Trump thinking he can be
Quite entertaining and piece of curiosity
With eloquent ego thinking it is elegant
Wearing a big head wherever he went.
Have been trying to predict a perfect excuse
For Cruz but gave up and said what's the use
With a nose longing lone and that narrow
Would look rather odd wearing a sombrero.
Hilliary successfully along has been humming
Over towards anyone's way may be coming
With many rights that have been declarant
As well as apparent and also inherent.
Carson is an issue which may be mounting
Fact of being brain surgeon am discounting
No great experience but being a nice guy
On him would we really be able to rely?
After O'Malley in south named a maul
Not only do come one but also you'll
Buy up things to your heart's content
Handsome guy who from heaven was sent.
What I like best about Bernie Sanders
Looks like things he never, ever launders
Maybe ray of hope could be a pinnacle
Even could be rabbinical and is not cynical.
Is Jeb Bush really a jubilant jabberwocky
Who makes his home now in Milwaukee
Favorite beer he drinks is Benevolent Bavarian
Through campaign supporters hope's he is carrying.
If who I either have left out are all or any
That is because Republicans have so many
And when they want to succeed at the finish
Stop chewing on each other and only spinach.
James Thesarious Hilarious Horn
Retired Veteran and Poet
Categories:
discounting, humorous,
Form:
Couplet