Best Disuse Poems
*Based on Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Numb fists with bloody wrists
chained to crumbling walls.
Glazed eyes that never spy
a single truth or fault.
Dim light impairing sight
in spaces dark and shallow.
Stone walls where lies are scrawled
by murky phantom shadows.
One breaks free on frail knees
stiffened by disuse,
to leave behind the dumb and blind
who welcome this abuse.
He climbs in pain against the grain
toward a distant light.
With bloodied hands, he finally stands,
exhausting all his might.
Dazed at first, he's cursed by thirst
beneath the blazing sky.
The sun is bright and plunders sight
from eyes too dry to cry.
Lesions crust as eyes adjust
to find a foreign land
with greenest grass and sea like glass
caressing strips of sand.
He stands amazed before this maze
of truths he's never seen
and vows to save those in the cave
whose ignorance demeans.
When he returns, his words are spurned
by those chained to the wall.
They have no will to brave that hill
or risk the chance to fall.
He cannot go back to this show
of living shadowed lies.
Now that he knows the truth below,
he needs the open skies.
And so he climbs to search, to find
the knowledge that he craves.
No more a slave to the dark cave.
He's left that mindless grave.
Categories:
disuse, metaphor,
Form:
Rhyme
rusted with disuse
heavy heart hammers in pain ~
spiders build cobwebs
10th January 2023
Categories:
disuse, heart,
Form:
Senryu
Saint Tropez is a summer town.
Smaller than it ought to be, really.
Like when you realize the French quarter,
in New Orleans, is just three blocks wide and long.
In the fall, there’s a feeling of disuse in Saint Tropez.
A turquoise bike leans haggard against a tree,
and summer leaves gather in gutters like trash.
Your appearance in a bar is treated like a surprise.
The wait staff gathers, like they might take your picture
and not your order - one brings napkins another the menu.
Summer memories are indistinct now, from disuse.
You aren’t sedated by sunlight and warm ocean airs.
Was summer some French, romantic, cinematic fantasy,
like "La Belle et la Bête" or "And God Created Woman"?
Or was it deliciously bright, seductive and real.
You find yourself saying, “In the summer, when the thyme,
lavender, rosemary, citrus and jasmine bloom, the aromas
are strong, actually physical, like going into an Ulta store,
where a thousand delicate perfumes vie for attention.”
But it’s like describing ghosts or deserts under glass.
You search for the words, like a poet or an actress, unable
to remember her lines - lines that would make it real,
invoke it, precious and immediate - like a spell.
The Saint Tropez of summer.
Categories:
disuse, autumn, beauty, lost, ocean,
Form:
Free verse
Winter Cabin Reality
by Odin Roark
The storm door
Improperly closed
Bangs violently
The clapboard shedding
White paint chips
Wounds without first aid
Flecks of age
Mixing with the drifting snow
Walls shudder with the gusts
Windowpanes rattle their death threat
Should one shatter
Beware flood gates of frozen forever
When will guardians arrive
The stewards of their weary retreat
Providing solace for this place
We so willing endure
Harsh punishment
This loneliness of disuse
The fear of abandonment
Looming
Looming
Always looming
Such anxiety for...
In order...
In order to...
Appease elements restless
Unhappy
Feeling forsaken
The stove sad
Laboring for no one
The refrigerator longing
Waiting like a giant petri dish
Anxious to be opened and examined
Bed covers squirm amidst
Nature's innate seekers of shelter
Six-leggers pass four-leggers in the night
Perplexed
Wondering
Where is everyone?
Field mice
The basements fortress of faith
Anticipate the happy slogging
Of drunken feet above
The excess food celebrated not
Falling through spaces of beamed flooring
Affording reserves for future seasons of need
Thus awaits the wilderness shelter
Determined to remain creative
As temperatures drop even lower
On this little respected life-saver
Multiple-soul make-over haven
Urban's satellite arbiter for sanity
Earnestly it awaits yesterday's loyally
Its generational-visitor relay
Its reason to hold on
Its inducement
To stay whole
Just one more year
Crunching snow outside raises hope
Two mice
Three spiders
One gentle squirrel share
"Got to be more than a bear"
Categories:
disuse, absence,
Form:
Free verse
My daughter does not touch me any more.
She used to come and kiss me every night,
And sometimes she would sit on my lap for a while,
But she has not even touched me for so long now …
I know she still loves me.
She shows it in so many little ways
That make me happy,
But she does not touch me …
She seldom tells me the truth,
(And that hurts me,
Though I try not to let her see)
But I know the reason for that …
It is because she loves me.
She thinks I need to be protected
From the pain of knowing her pain.
(I, who should be her protector … )
She is mistaken:
But I understand her motive
And I love her the more for it,
But my daughter does not touch me any more …
I think sometimes she wants to,
But the years of disuse have created
An insurmountable barrier
For us both …
We want it to be
Like it is in the movies,
But it is not.
This is real life …
There is no ‘golden opportunity’
To make it right again.
Neither of us can go back,
Nor can we un-live the past …
It is done, and cannot be undone,
Even though neither of us is to blame
For whatever happened then.
(Whatever did happen then?)
There is, in me,
A certain hollow,
Which can only be filled
By my daughter’s touch …
I believe there is, in her,
(Though she may deny this)
A corresponding hollow,
Which only my touch can fill …
The problem is,
Because she does not touch me,
I am debarred from touching her,
And so both our needs remain unfulfilled …
As the time has passed,
That hollow has grown into a hole,
And the hole has grown into a deep chasm,
Because she des not touch me …
And the chasm has grown,
Until now it is a cosmic void.
A vast emptiness,
Contained within me … and her …
A vortex,
Where the howling tempest of loneliness
Scours our souls of all human comfort,
Because my daughter does not touch me …
(This was written some years ago, during the teen years.
When her own daughter was born, she came back to me!
Perhaps Hollywood's not so silly ... )
Categories:
disuse, daughter, teendaughter, me, daughter,
Form:
Free verse
I was less than the spark at the start of the flame,
When You fashioned my cage out of Truth's rules and morals.
I was fresh from the morning and sparkling with dew,
When the breath of Your kiss blew my soul into fire.
The wires around me were golden with sunlight,
A promise of safety, a paean to Love.
And the barrier was bright and grew ever stronger,
For each day I polished away the world's dirt.
By learning and following and pointing due North,
By smiling obedience and pleased acquiescence.
While You watched and encouraged, so close I could feel You,
Your arms holding me in my cage, like a cradle.
But I grew and my cage seemed to shrink and to tarnish,
The wires became fragile, my gaze wandered wide.
Beyond and between the bars and the fence posts,
I could see the green valley where butterflies beckoned.
They were free, flying gaily over rivers and forests,
Gaudy and giddy and swept up by the wind,
Which giggled and blew them where I wished to be,
Away from my cage and Your harness of Love.
So I turned and I twisted and watched all directions,
To see where those wings with their promises were lifted.
And the wires, neglected, grew rickety and rusted.
They twisted, like me, from disuse and damage.
And finally broke; bent, bowed and exhausted,
From fighting desires wrenching me from their grasp.
So I raced through the wreckage and joined in the fun,
To dance for myself and fly wild in the moonlight.
To grab every moment and clasp to my heart,
All life's pleasures and fancies and pearly delights.
But the clouds that I reached for on that first night's crazed flight
Were empty of substance, effervescently bright.
They burst and they vanished as soon as I touched them
And I fell in a haze of dizzying delusion.
I woke with a jolt on fresh green in the open,
And far in the distance a golden haze glowed.
It was the cage that I'd fled in my madness and muddle
And now it was clear the mistake that I'd made.
Yes, the cage was a prison, iron bars, a great barrier,
But the reason was not what I thought it to be.
It was built in the middle of earth's beautiful vista,
A prison housing all of life's selfish deceptions.
A cage for our demons; to cage them and not us!
Leaving us safe to explore all the paths Love could lead us.
Categories:
disuse, god,
Form:
Christmas for stolid, hermetic recluse
Recidivistic mind all sentimentality doth refuse
Token, lifeless symbols; pageantry will recuse
Pawned, second-hand trinkets now in disuse
Barnacled to limbs drooping to spindling angles obtuse
Garnishments that jilting time accrues
Hung sloppily, stunted timber's temporal dues
Strings of patchwork lights will fuse
Faded colored-cones baring every bruise
Creased garlands as tawny ropes the girth noose
Strands of tarnished ice sickles futility to infuse
Stale candy canes, last year's refuse
Dangling from needles now frayed, loose
A corrugated tin star the pinnacle to abuse
Under the tree, ribbonless, empty boxes complete the ruse
Categories:
disuse, holiday
Form:
Rhyme
I know you are here
in the stirring of tranquil air
disturbing the dust
awakening despair
why do you wander these pages
in stealth quietude
softly breathing breath
into shadowed solitude?
I know you are here
in these halls of disuse
that clatter and chatter
with long absent muse
why have you come
after years of dead days
to measure my bones
survey the decay?
~~~
I know you have gone now
and left me to be
for the dust settles 'round this
tome of misery
Categories:
disuse, lost love, sad,
Form:
Free verse
Eclipse
without sun
I am etiolated,
enfeebled, bereft
my backbone heavy
and limp,
muscles stale and indurate
from disuse
I try to lift my face,
feel the light,
even the dawn or dusk,
even when fog would cloud my vision
but I cannot move, for
my neck is fixed,
vertebrae seized, locked,
eyes that can do no more
than stare ahead
at this monolith, this
menhir, present since
I can remember
that ages me, leaves me
threadbare and faded,
as a moth-eaten blanket
fails to sustain a warm embrace
so I shiver in the shadow,
ensnared in this eclipse,
this dark moon
that will not detach me
from its bleak orbit
Categories:
disuse, abuse, depression, how i
Form:
Free verse
Neap tide rising by minutes
swirls me in upset sand
gritty
irritating
chaffing
catches in creases
of furrowed brow.
Washed up fodder
gifted from the sea
adds to my heap
of disuse.
Backtracks undent the
sand
unmarking my passage.
Categories:
disuse, introspection, life, loss, sad,
Form:
Free verse
soft sunflower breath
days of lingering beauty -
hot shines heaven's eye
in shimmering grace
cheerful chirping of crickets -
silver coin disuse
Categories:
disuse, beauty, summer, sun,
Form:
Haiku
A concept assumed unattainable,
pushed away in effort without notice.
How unfortunate our views of an answer.
How sad our lack of faith.
Forgiveness, viewed upon by man
to be seen instead as cowardice,
when all along its strength alone
waits as the key to victory.
How long must it lie in disuse,
to remember its former command?
The rescue of life from an ending,
now traded for quicker destruction.
Though left in unbound isolation,
alone we cannot say it slept.
Together it waits with solution.
The remembrance of the divine to forget.
Forgetting, seen by the many,
as ignorance put in its stead.
How sorry I feel for the people,
blind with revenge, bound to they're hate,
teaching others to waste they're care.
And though they share this total contempt,
its history has had a ceasing.
Once, the formula was given to grow.
And how could we have thrown this lesson away?
Can we again see its answer?
To forgive and forget.
A plan reserved not only for the few,
those above, those in power, those with wisdom,
but residing within us all.
Waiting patiently to be used again,
to heal this broken existence,
and once again bring peace and understanding
to a once peacefully understood world.
Categories:
disuse, forgiveness
Form:
Free verse
Waking, realizing dawn was past
Hearing a background noise
Some what like a wet tin whistle
Child blown in a futile attempt at a note
“What kind of bird is that?”
“A red winged blackbird”
She rose and left me lying abed
Wondering what else she lived
That I missed so easily so busily
So lazily dependent on her living
So easily a part of it
As she is so much of mine
The smell of grinding coffee
Led me down the stairs
Some where there’s a poem
To pen on this awakening
To mild frustrated fear
What powers of observation am I
Losing to disuse
Habits help to pass the time before
The coffee kicks life up a bit
Amusing to the muse
Categories:
disuse, life, love, me,
Form:
As I fly away through broken dreams
The reins pull fiercly at my grip
For everything is not what it seems
As these words pass by mothers lip
She gives me all her words of wise
promises me them I must use
As my journey takes me to the skies
All I have learnt I must now disuse
For all those broken dreams
Were only waiting to be chased
I open my mind to my supreme
Life must not be lived in haste
Categories:
disuse, lifewords, me, me,
Form:
All the colors swirl and mix
Becoming something grey that i can not fix
All colorless and shapeless and beyond definition
I wonder how it got in this helpless condition
The music stopped playing and children stopped smiling
And now its all office work and senseless filing
The grey offices with all the grey people inside
They all just want to provide
The blanket of grey clouds covers the light
And below them people move out of sight
The streets lie in waste and disuse
And people live in houses of self abuse
Towers of videos and junk food are on the floor
You can't seem to reach the door
Its all seem so grey
All i can do is pray
That we can find some color
Categories:
disuse, introspection, life, sad, people,
Form: