Best Hollowly Poems

Oh, this impish ill!
this mystic flock of ever-roaming pain;
You now possess fully
my body and my life.
I am at your full attention and mercy;
Do you not rejoice?
Are you not overwhelmingly triumphant?
This very body that shamed kings into beggars,
that made cowards into martyrs,
songs to motivation,
and indisputable chaos...

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The Darkness at Noon


Taps -  echo hollowly
over the grey stones,

acrid odor of gunpowder
stings all memory,

flag, creased, folded,
presented.

A last salute.
A darkness at noon.


John G. Lawless
4/22/2014...

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after 'Berck-Plage' by Sylvia Plath

(1)

A sheet of glass, this expanse of water.
How its tranquillity mocks my unrest.

Bloated beachballs and balloons
travel the park and float from diminutive hands.

Bodiless voices call in the sun
and bounce off these sizzling surfaces.

It is not surprising I wear cool clothing
and masquerade...

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The black wall reflected my white-washed skin 
and disheveled jacket, above the chattering din...
Loosly lopsided glasses hang limply on my face,
Cold, dark, black, they somehow seemed to fit this place. 
The smooth memorial seemed to stretch on,
Longer than death itself;a banner, a chord, an unsung...

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Earthy barmy leafs scurry
Pulling rapidly in peak flurry 
Lamenting blind as mists worry 

Crude cool calm earth attacks slowly
Silly calm breeze shoo wholly
Sharp plume vanishes hollowly

Descending riveted cloud gleam 
Sputtering upon scratching stream 
Hurries vacantly in sprinkling steam

Lying oaks bewail 'n bemoan
Unobtrusively giggling delicately unknown
On...

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Although aging may not be a present thing to experience
it is a great blessing. No matter how hard he tries to understand 
old age, the youth will never be able to conceive the meaning of aging,
nor can taste the fruits of real human pathos that...

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Trails of laughter amid tears
Tales of the ancients rake pensive queers
History is but present hollowly thought
Experienced oceans of belittled naught

Swelling chest and above the eyes
That constantly gaze on high
We hear the change of the believed
Rainwater drips into the pangs of eve

Enamored upon the brink of...

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the great bard and Elizabethan play wright
begetting complete dramaturgy
     explaining fate hollowly airtight
succor starved, riddled smitten tattered

     sir real body politik blight
under whelming enthusiasm
     witnessed blank quarto copyright
more tragedy than comedy

  ...

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FALL UNTO

A smile in a mirror

Cracked!

Swallowed in shadow.

Haunted by violent secrets and fears

Fact forms from our fictions

Hollowly grow gray

Heal broken back

Silent grievance unsoothed tears

A turmoil fault – a symptom in form of an addiction

Temptation fought day after day

Turning from red to pink, orange to yellow

Blue...

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Pandora's BoX

Whom to blame?
What woman now walks, the lethal ancestress
Of the original ancestress, that one named 
Pandora, that one with the gleaming eyes that said:

   "I want; I need, to know?"

Where is she now, the new incarnation
Of the old dire mother of humanness,
That...

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8/17/12

There is nothing to these phrases
But somehow they reach the reader
They touch . . . me
Am I the only one caged in this prison?
Do you ever wish life had a better meaning?
Do you ever wish you can touch his or her heart?
The absence of meaningless...

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far beneath the steeples of cobble stoned london, 
he moves without the parting of a shadows grace.
 from morning to morning he carries no longing.

  under the heavy hymns of the luthern organs
 he breaths amongst centuries of dead and 
  thoughtful saints

...

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Tearing a poem in two, ripping a part an entire idea
insanity or ingenious, unthinkable or approved, forbidden
who knows
One important question: is traitor now the title I bear
a traitor to myself, betrayer to everything I stand up for
a traitor to the millions of poets out there,...

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Skin pulled tight over gaunt faces,
hollow eyes looking out at me,
fearful of what they see,
dreading pity,
empathy,
apathy,
wanting form me
only an ear,
an ear i’ve given  too many times
from those too many times
so tired is this ear
that it closes up, away
from the mention of
skin pulled tight over...

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Friend caution in recklessness cast 
at mercy of four elemental winds; 
marooned to rest abandoned in 
eerie thrall of empty deserts. 
Tanned into wisps of burning paper, 
dust-blown ghosts dissolving, 
coughing up a storm. 
In truth I shot the albatross, 
hangs now her windchime bones...

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