Best Expendable Poems
Okay we've all cracked the funnies
Joked about what's gone and what's still there.
How everything sags or wilts
Doesn' t work or is in a state of disrepair.
How we're crumbling or fumbling.
Who's deaf? you're mumbling.
How we're gummy or losing our hair-
So what !
Inside we're young and attractive still very active,
Lively, energetic though bent and arthritic-
So what !
Inside we're lustful and exciting,warm and inviting,
Charming, alluring though wrinkles are occuring-
So what !
Inside we're strong and dependable not expendable
Though memory's not reliable and body not so pliable-
So what !
Inside we're funny and witty don't need anyone's pity,
Treat life playfully and are growing old ' disgracefully '
And yes
WE'RE ENTITLED, so why should we care
Because inside we're the person we always were....
Old who's old? Age is only going on out there
Categories:
expendable, funny
Form:
Rhyme
I remember that Sunday night
When I got the call from my Mom
She called to let us know
My brother was wounded in Vietnam
I went to my car
Sat in my Chevy and cried
I almost lost my brother
And remembered two friends who had died
I had served my time in the Navy
But believed the war was insane
So I took off my dog tags
On my neck I put a peace chain
Too many friends had been wounded
Serving a country that didn't care
Troops mistreated when they came home
They should have never been sent there
Troops served with courage and honor
And deserved a better fate
No one should have sacrificed so much
Only to come home to anger and hate
The average age of the dying
In that jungle was nineteen
An unjust war that split our nation
In a way it had never seen
I stopped an old friend's mother
On Broad Street one Friday night
Asked if his wounds were healing
And was he doing all right
She said there's a lot of damage
From that God forsaken war
When he goes to sleep each evening
He's back in that combat zone once more
Vietnam will never end for many of those who served
Wounds that never heal and no freedom was preserved
Our young were all expendable
To the government elite
War brought soaring profits
Neither victory nor defeat
I visited a grave site
Of a friend I'd known for years
One night he took his own life
I held back my tears
For him it was all over
The nightmares from the war
He left a wife and child
But he could fight this war no more
Just another statistic, no justice we demand
Disrespected and forgotten in his native land
When do we stop and say no more
When it's for someone's bottom line that we fight a war
Ran into an old friend and listened to what he said
I go to church on Sundays but sometimes I wish I was dead
I keep seeing all that blood and I still smell napalm
If I fall asleep at night, I'm back in Vietnam
This country still fights unjust wars not trying to make amends
For the soldier covered in dirt and blood, the suffering never ends
In our nation's defense we should fight a war
For any other reasons we should say no more.
For my brother, classmates and friends who served in Vietnam.
Categories:
expendable, memory, war,
Form:
Bio
Inhaled at the age of innocence,
with a breath that lies between stars,
with immortal depths that have no
ending as my lungs forever expand,
Exhalation has become unachievable,
due to the obstruction of faith
of a boy for his very first dream,
Chest heaving as a heart aches,
Is love a tree or the deepest ocean?
My breath or my reason for holding?
The questions unanswered since the
dawn of man and emotion alike,
Thus the bittersweet conclusion
appears that love equals the two,
Yet how does such beauty create
a pain that suffers from insomnia?
Expendable only to a few torn souls
who have breathed the sweet intoxication
of love, and caressed the linger of its enticing
aroma, and suffered the sting of its departure,
Leaving hearts which cannot withstand the
agony, to exhale affection for everything in
its entirety, crushing the hope of such youths,
yet this warning takes nothing from its appeal,
For to breathe love, is to touch enchantment,
As romance itself in but a breathe shared
between two spirits rewarded for persistence,
With the risk of being proven fallible,
which leads to tears and pain entwined,
Must we not embrace the risk as reward?
For those as myself, who answered "no"
are condemned to the most fragile breathing,
For each breath hurts like the last
One love, one lost, one breath in all,
Breathing her in as if she has become
the last breath of oxygen in my life,
For she has, she has become my only,
due to a choice made for the perfect love,
Yet my painful irony has become, breathing
and loving, with each one, keeping
the agony of the other alive forever
Categories:
expendable, girlfriend-boyfriend, introspection, loss, lost
Form:
Free verse
expendable lives
our elderly, sick and poor
benefits denied
D.C. may call the shots now
God is the equalizer
*Written in honor of John Freeman
for his contest "Sayings of Wisdom"
Categories:
expendable, angst, faith,
Form:
Tanka
A young man carrying a green duffel bag
over his shoulder shifts when he walks.
Off to war for our country and flag.
No military knowledge with little talk.
Enemy troops marched across the bridge,
with tanks, and hundreds of machine guns led.
As he sat dug in along and across the ridge,
bullets were zipping right over his head.
The dawn of the morning across the glen;
a plan was thought, bargain it was, the loss
of two companies to stop a million men
and ten thousand vehicles from getting across
Pop, pop pop, of distant sounds and then more,
trading volleys of gunfire with blood and gore
A friend gets killed and he dies to the core,
trembling with raging fire. A Casualty of war
5/24/2017
Categories:
expendable, bereavement, soldier, war,
Form:
Quatrain
Ants are known to be industrious,
Bustling about the anthill
In lines and arcs and freeform patterns,
Intent on some important insect mission,
Minding their own business, thank you.
Of course, sometimes ants have to be exterminated
If they’re likely to bite a small child,
Or interrupting the flow of one’s flower bed,
Or just plain in the way.
After all, they’re only bugs,
Small and inconsequential and expendable.
Occasionally, small rough and tumble boys,
Full of bravado and challenging each other,
Will desecrate an anthill recklessly
Just for sport…
And to see the ants run frantically
In response to the destruction of their entire world
At the whim of a dirty-sneakered foot.
They look so small from up above
Scurrying about like ants
Tiny and insignificant from the height
Of a skyscraper, or a ski lift,
Or the windshield of a fighter pilot’s plane.
Tiny, and in the way
Because, as we all know,
Sometimes ants have to be exterminated.
Categories:
expendable, allegory, death, loss, peace,
Form:
Free verse
From the moment we met you took care of me
You made sure I had all I might need
You bought me drinks and you bought me flowers
You were trying so hard to succeed
First you won my heart, and then you won my body
I presented them gladly to you
You told me you loved me, that I was your world
So of course I thought I'd won you too
But then you moved in and the changing began
All though it was subtle at first
Yet still, we were married and now after eight years
I think this is you at your worst
Some women are guilty of trying to change
Their men into something they're not
But I would be happy if you'd just change back
I dont think that's asking a lot
You no longer defend me or make me feel special
I'm most likely expendable too
And I guess my thought process
doesn't work like yours does
I'd have taken that bullet for you.
Categories:
expendable, husband, me, me,
Form:
Lyric
Rain falls like the tears of some unseen god.
Tapping against my window like the persistent fingers of a pianist.
The music is out of tune, and the wind provides the groaning song.
I'm so used to it but I'm tired of starting over.
This emptiness eclipses the memories of feeling whole.
My life is a book full of pages falling out.
My tears race down my cheeks eager to escape my ugly face.
Sifting through discordant thoughts not sure which are real.
Mind trapped in a haze forever damned by fear.
This buzz in my ear is all too familiar.
Ringing out like church bells but also like an alarm.
If bliss cannot be found I'll drink until I find the abyss.
We're born to die, to be expendable.
The life of man is unceasing agony.
A wall once full of friends and loved ones is devoid of life now.
And all I have to show for my experiences is hate and crippling anxiety.
Every shadow becomes sinister.
Every noise is a nuke dropping on my mind.
I have been forsaken by reason.
And as the rain washes over my face I close my eyes.
With these tears I regurgitate the lies.
I'm a loser and sooner or later you know I'll be dead.
Sooner or later...I'll be dead.
Categories:
expendable, angst, anxiety, dark, depression,
Form:
Free verse
An arthritic flesh
Hesitant wipes off deteriorated lens
Every exhale,
Another tragic sulk unto morrow’s pit
Flaunting suicidal fallacies
Off-white flag motions
Signaling mercy under liar’s duress
Muted pride
Cracking dusty knuckles
Penetration’s decrepit vowel
Slipping in between faulty, stamped licenses
Just to belong
Another back-handed waltz
Bordering beggar dialects
Untrue
Towards paradoxical epiphanies
A faceless identity
Converging amongst unwelcomed hymns
Tainting hallelujahs with discolored spit
Worming their decapitated fingertips
With equilibrium massages
Back to a barricaded oasis
Deciphers from a slanderous heretic
Proclamation of syllabic want
As arthritic flesh
Scribbles out expendable nickname
Manipulating good intentions to be sadistically validated
From their rendered nether
Nameless never inscribed a verse to call their own
Struggling to swim
In the rivers they cried
©Drake J. Eszes
Categories:
expendable, life, sad, society,
Form:
Free verse
Mortal Man…
I’ve awakened all my demons
…And it suddenly appears
The death of all my dreams
And the re-birth of all of my fears
Times I know I’m not alone
Other times, like now I know I am
Sinking down just like a stone
No strength for my last stand
See me…breaking down
See me…a mere mortal man
There’s certain sadness
That courses through my veins
A delicate and fine line
To manage all my pain
Some of it imagined, how much of it is real
The only gauge I have is the way that I now feel
See me…breaking down
King without his crown
A mere mortal man
Whose life slipped through his hands
See me…breaking down
Blood spilled on the ground
A mere mortal man
This is not what he had planned
Our world a tainted paradise
In which everyone must live
Always for the chosen few
The rest of us must give
No reciprocation as good intent declines
Even outcast by our families
For those we did provide
Expendable, disposable…
Yes, each of us must die
But how many of us have truly lived
And not been forced to live a lie
See me…breaking down
Never a king that wore a crown
A mere mortal man
Whose life slipped through his hands
See me…breaking down
Blood spilled on the ground
A mere mortal man
And this is not what he had planned
Categories:
expendable, fear, how i feel,
Form:
Lyric
The Jewish brothers in Defiance were definitely tough.
One wanted to kill many Germans, the other to save many Jews.
The German soldiers were expendable, unmarried, unremarkable.
Each little death was very little, a little spittle in a big wind.
Fast forward to my friend's son's bar mitzvah or daughter's
coming of age ceremony. Food is abundant, the music frenetic,
the rabbi paid. Gifts generous but not obvious.
Wealth does not obviate death and we know it.
Here too we have natural leaders. Youth basketball coaches,
school principals and, again, interpreters of prayers. When
violence comes to the neighborhood they are who we'll first look to
for governance and guns. Unless have you read The Admirable
Crichton?
Boredom, boredom conflated with loneliness, may be a sign
of good luck. To live a good length or light year away from man's
bad breath, allergenic perfumes, sickening flatulence and shed hair.
But you are drawn back into the debate about perfection by your own
********.
While teaching at the old city jail I have learned this: only meditation
upon the periodic table can save your soul. From itself.
Imagining the world without the self will make you whole.
What else is there to say. Do less until one thing's done well.
After the war the brothers started a small trucking company
in the Bronx. Grateful for such peace, the accounting
was relaxing. They thought back to how they met their wives, naked
before the bombs and bullets. How they lost and found themselves in
what happened.
Categories:
expendable, basketball, brother, jewish, lost,
Form:
Verse
“... The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate,
added to the number in the ship which was so crowded
that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost
suffocated us."
Olaudah Equiano, freed slave, abolitionist, merchant (1745-1797)
We were taken in by roundup-
legends of freedom, sold
heirlooms to pay for the privilege of being
crammed into a tractor-trailer like green-
ware into a kiln. The youngest
faithfully lifted her chin, Quinceañera
memories still fresh enough to almost keep
her balanced within that shifty,
blistering dark until she felt
another sharp shaft of air, a searing blast
of a bone-dry wheeze from the next pilgrim to hit
hot metal like he’d been shot in the head.
The chant began again, Santa María,
Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros
pecadores. Sweat stung our opened eyes,
clarified visions of diaspora, of coldblooded
coyotes packing cargo holds with cornered chattel.
We, the many, shackled by migrant irons. We,
a crop of people, survive only to swelter later
in tobacco rows, on countless estates, behind thick shop doors,
but each Day of the Dead, we will recount:
Mexicans lost to a hardened
geography where even breath is branded,
an absence of just one half-mast flag, anywhere, their star-
crossed national anthem, our costly escape
into undocumented slavery, how long-
suffering dreams either suffocate or hide
scars, why wheeled sloops blaze down border
highways with short-lived payloads, scammed commodities
as expendable as a shipment of spring lambs ...
Categories:
expendable, change, death, immigration, people,
Form:
Free verse
We the old and broken, have become the pawns
in the grand game of politics. We are as in the game
of chess of the lowest esteem, expendable
if not worse unwanted, a barganing chip.
For three years we haven't even received
a cost of living increasee
while their income they have
increased handsomely.
They have as they so often do broken
their promise to us. Social security was a
promise made by them, that we paid
for when we were able to work,
extracted from every pay check we earned.
Those revenues where to be put in a trust
for us to draw from when the time came
that we had need of them. However our
government for decades have used those
funds as they pleased, for things other than
what they were intended for. Why am I not surprised?
because our so called public servants have
broken countless promises and in the process
lined their pockets from the spoils of their deceptions.
The Bill of Rights and the Constitution
they have shredded and the first casulity
was the truth, now we are the second.
Most of our fatrhers fought and many died to
defend the rights that they have cast into the
the trash heap. Our national debt is now beyond
any hope of us ever repaying, robbing the young of
any hope of a future or even a job, taxes they will have
to pay tremendous to pay for there folly. China Told
President Obama, We're not going to lend you any more,
sure can't say I blame them, probably never pay back what
we already borrowed form them. England is burning because
of the same folly of the politicians, won't be surprised
if the same thing takes place here. People with no hope
and no future what do they expect. They'll go on filling their
pockets with the taxes we all pay, the don't care it's all
well and fine for them. Will give themselves another big
pay increse next year, you just wait and see. Like mother
Hubbard everyone elses cubbard is bare, no bone for
the doggies anymore. They have destroyed everything
Along with, "One nation under God". This once upon a time
good nation has quite literally gone to the "Dogs". The only
Thing that I can say is that I wouldn't have said before,
I'm ashamed of what this nation has became.
Categories:
expendable, angst, future, hope, rights,
Form:
Prose Poetry
The Mets figured they already had a pitching ace.
They badly needed a competent man to play third base.
A righty and a lefty were considered better than dependable.
The management considered another right-handed pitcher expendable.
The Amazin’ Mets felt they had minor league talent galore.
After the win in ‘69, they were gunning for one more.
For this expendable right-hander, a converted shortstop the Mets would get.
This was a deal the front office and fans would regret.
The outcome of this done deal proved to be a shame.
That expendable right-hander went on to the Hall of Fame.
Categories:
expendable, baseball, history,
Form:
Rhyme
You never meant anything to me anyway.
If I twist my wrist and thrust it down,
I flick my hips and slip away.
If I smash my forearm into your grill,
this is how I get my thrill.
You never meant anything to me anyway.
I am just a player, playing for fun.
But when I begin to play for money,
I flick my hips and slip away.
Sometimes, brutality and reality collide.
Brothers and players stand side by side.
You never meant anything to me anyway.
Well-off fans and super-rich owners,
to the players, are nothing but donors.
I flick my hips and slip away.
The players always give their all,
but always are expendable.
You never meant anything to me anyway.
I flick my hips and slip away.
Categories:
expendable, football, perspective, sports, word
Form:
Villanelle