Best Eggshell Poems
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Never looking up to see the sky
A "Robin's eggshell" color
Nor noticing or appreciating
The sun's golden hue
As it rose each day
Only seeing, breathing, feeling work~
Labor intensive work~
Capturing each thought
Holding bondage each breath
As each long hot day passed
Turning into years of misery
Early in the morning about the breaking of dawn
"Backed by a choir of ten thousand crickets"
Their voices mixed in with the music "reached up to touch heaven with a song"
Their heads bowed looking at the cotton crop
That held them prisoners for a lifetime
Wondering if, if there was any hope of redemption
Since they were tied to the land in bondage to scrape out a livin'
What is the rest of the story for it is unfinished 'til this day
"Closer" by Chris Aechtner
"Robin's Eggshell"
"Cotton Pickin' Paradise" by Tim Ryerson
"Backed by a choir of ten thousand crickets"
"Reaching up to touch heaven with a song"
Sponor: Debbie Guzzi
Contest: Referential
I based it somewhat on my parents telling about how they worked as children in the cotton fields, corn patches, gardens, etc. Then they left the farm and went to the cotton mills and some of the descendence from these two families rose above the poverty of both places..There was one doctor, one Lt. Colonel in the Coast Guard, and many more occupations scattered thorough out families that came from that poverty situation..
A broken mirror reflecting
all my imperfections.
A giant blade that's cutting me into
many different sections.
rip out my heart, bastard.
throw it on the floor.
destroy it on the count of three.
and i will beg for more.
for more.
Eggshell Days
We are walking on eggshells and trying not to break them
Do this, don’t do that! To wear a mask or not?
Life used to be so simple
Is it he, she, they or, none?
African American, Black, African Canadian?
Indigenous, Indian, Native?
What will it all be next week?
Confusion is setting in!
The young think the old have become stupid
The old remember a simpler time
The age of fake news
What is true and what is not?
The great sifting is happening
Impurities falling to the ground but the fine and refined remains
Like the panning for gold
We search for it madly
Beauty and value must be brought to the surface
While the rest must fall
Truth must prevail, love must conquer all!
The eggshells are breaking from the weight of these things
Choices of words, music, art
All under scrutiny
Corruption of politics
When will it end?
A virus unravels all
Like a huge tornado leaving destruction
and tossing things in new places
uprooting and replacing
Put your shoes on and walk the eggshell path
Make your choices
The best that you can
Grace Daub August 11, 2020
My heart shattered glass
My eyes twin rain clouds
My sleeves wet rag cloths
My sobs persistent freight trains
My fingers frozen ice
My surroundings a blurry dream
I make the corners of my lips curve up for the people around me
Even though I myself is a cold, cracked eggshell
Only barely held together.
I winced disenchantment whenever you fell
Through countless absurdities I held my tongue
While you courted your daydreams from hell.
I mastered the rules willing all to be well
As you blitzed career ladders splintering each rung
I winced disenchantment whenever you fell.
I laid low, so fierce your desire to excel
Your mint julep put-downs like scorpions stung
While you courted your daydreams from hell.
I wallowed in patience, don’t ask and don’t tell
I begged your repentance where hope’s crosses hung
I winced disenchantment whenever you fell.
A childishly reckless, indulged Southern Belle
Your frivolous insults so flippantly flung
While you courted your daydreams from hell.
For years poise and wit lulled me lame with their spell
I yearned for the charmed days when love’s fruits first sprung
But your mind’s locked up tight in a bright padded cell
I winced disenchantment whenever you fell
While you courted your daydreams from hell.
It’s a ballet of carefully choreographed mistakes
a tiptoe dance through a delicate maze
a sudden splinter to catch a thorn
barefoot floor where the eggshells are strewn
Playing the hide and seek of apology
the simple words of a dangerous weaponry
and bruised by any insignificance
one is conducted into the orchestra of the eggshell dance
Careful to mind the sudden tongues slip
the abrupt foot tangled awkward trip
will enhance the injury and augment the weeping
with the crunching boots of a villainous litany
bringing fragile illusions to the eggshell floors
and dragged in spiteful damnable reproachful
lest vengeful emotions on feathers are set twisting
and good intentions are always missing
The shatter patch where a foot may to disaster tread
inside the sarcophagus of things long thought dead
the curse of broken ruined painted eggs
a ghostly deportment of things once said
So walk the labyrinth ever cautiously
ubiquitous magician of so easily to hurt
foreswear not to use the tongue so dangerously
or each stomping stamping secret violation
will be crushing eggshells and their misdirection
is a trauma to demented to teardrops sent
so pause for thought or be held to blame
for one more poisoned arrow shot from a grave
Beware the warning sign which isn't there
beware the precipice when walking blinded
take care to listen as the footfalls
for the eggshell floors make no sound
And you are stepping upon the very dangerous ground
What ever I say turns into a fight
When will you ever get me right?
Once you have a certain perception
It changes the idea of your conception
And when I stay it bluntly as I do
You take it wrong because the insecurity lies in YOU!
I can admit my mistakes and more
Just remember I m older and I know more for sure
I try and look out for you when you wave to strangers who drive by
Outside I smile but inside I cry
If I told you to stop it
You’ll run out in a hysterical fit
I need you to support me in things I do
But I have to play a game to please you
If I was my self you would leave and never look back
Having said that the eggs will soon crack
1996
Form:
See this heart
fragile like an eggshell
it’s been to Hell and back
and is slowly fusing back together
handle it with care
because she never did
she was never there
See this heart
fragile like an eggshell
Treat it well
like she never could
like she never wanted to
See this heart
fragile like an eggshell
please don’t bid it farewell
as easily as she did
This world, this existence, this reality, remains so shaky
That living here seems to be like a stay inside an eggshell!
Why, from the uncertainty of the actual moment
To the dramatic shadows looming above the future
Living in the mundane plane remains so fragile!
Lives get lost within a flick of the eyelids
Empires crumble within seconds
Seas turn into swirling whirlwinds without our consent
And disaster strikes as it wills!
Pray, like a poet holding on to her inspirational pen
I cling on to faith and the promises of it
So as to be able to muster up enough strength
To play the game of life as it has been set out for me!
Why, if only the programmer of this game
Would have shown himself to me
If only he would have awarded bonus points to me
Allowing me to cross the levels of life through secret passages
And reach the end of it safely, I would have been serene
Knowing that, that which lies after remains soothing!
But then, I can't help it,
Alive am I, having been birthed in this plane
Alive, surely, for a cause, a more selfless one
Apart from my own ego feeding one!
While I do live, out of compulsion, I do choose wisely
While I do live, I do choose to forgive, to love
To smile, to share, to heal, to accept, to swallow my pride
To pretend even and of course, to give
Yes, to give, to give everything that I can to those who need it!
Pray, our existence remains so shatterable
Lines and cracks can appear on our life monitors without any notice
While playing our games, virus and malware can attack us
As the power lines allowing us to be can easily be cut off!
Pray, in such a brittle environment, it remains useless
To walk around, with ego and resentment weighing on us
As, eggshells cannot be re-assembled after they fall from their shelves!
A room's whites cry loud
Still sound fills it with endless echo
No thought, no audible breath, no
Perspective
This view too is
Outside perceivable depth
Only a snowy canvas
Full of emptiness to reveal
The plan
Grab a roller
Pour the can, and
Paint myself eggshell
Now I am the blank slate
Man
There was a girl with eggshell skin
Who never could let sunlight in.
For if she did, the skin must crack
And with it leak a yellow sack
Of beating yolk that longed to be
With others, where they took their seed.
They paid no mind. They did not know
The sorrowed song began to grow.
Until one day, she took a fall
From way up high atop the wall.
If given time, she’d one day fly,
But earl,y she soared through the sky
Until she landed on the ground,
Her eggshell skin strewn all around.
And in the yolk there lay a bird,
Not flightless as she’d always heard.
But one with wings not feathered yet,
That one day would’ve learned to let
Herself be seen for who she was.
If only she had stayed because
She was so close upon the wall
Before Humpty Dumpty took her fall.
The light was just behind the brick.
Where’d she built her nest up, stick for stick.
When she forced herself to early flight.
The shell cracked anyway despite
The secret tears to hold it together.
It was never meant to last forever,
But only until she was ready to let go
Of her skin, of her nest, of the wall she loved so.
It’s important for some to stay in their shell.
It doesn’t always mean weakness, the way that she fell.
But nature and nurture working one as a team
Until little souls are ready to sing.
There was a girl with eggshell skin.