Best Indent Poems
I look to the couch where he used to sit
There is an empty place there
No one else would fill it
There was his lair
His indent
Prayer
Prayer is the answer
Prayer
Frees me
When I let it all go
Tell God whatever my plea
How much I have to give and grow
I know that He will answer me and agree
I dream that tonight I am a raccoon
And it is here in this body that I store the notion
That my sadness will last forever,
In the treasury of unclaimed awareness,
Where pits of the peaches could never re-sprout...
I dig deep into the indent of a Denver ravine,
Gnaw knee-high into the hollow ridges of hominids and their homelands,
Belly-wade in bottomless mud waters west of wherever they don’t go, though
Lurid in my languor now, I laminate my slick turf onto Continental limestone slabs
And, then, all-at-once, at noon, just like that,
I call it a day.
A tired little raccoon
Can’t bear without a rest
Through the midday...
I arise as the coon falls under.
Reclaiming Human Sorrow, my Wrong-Headed Brother,
Waxing thunderously, now, in the mind’s cluttered cage
In this day of coffee and chit-chat and left-turns,
I’ll dream tonight I am a raccoon.
So that we may both get out and roam.
The Girl with the Brand New Toothbrush
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For the girl with the brand new toothbrush
Waiting on a one night stand
We didn’t have to tell the Truth much
Didn’t make many plans
Got right down to the good stuff
Fulfilled exchanged demands
Till the next day at constant play of bouncing batter ram
For the girl with the Colgate toothbrush
The one I’ll never use again
No one had to introduce us
I never had to meet your friends
Never got ugly and ruthless
Never threw you out again
One time one day wonderful lay
So glad I’ve been your man
#in away at her newness
Working a wiggle in
Willy was well made to do this
willing do it again
Wasn’t constrained by rudeness
wasn’t ever worried bout them
But like a werewolf Willy went wild with the moon just whaling at a womb till ten
This song goes out to the toothbrush
A hard body put in her bin
Only an angel’d do thus
serendipity sin
Rampant replicant, Rembrant
Pant participant now
Insignificant remnant
of magnificent meow
(Well spent sycophant content
“What a wonderful! WOW”
Wham went impotent, wham went
Whamin through that some how)
Dawn sent immigrant intent
Brushing our teeth and chow
Last philanderant indent
On MAGNIFICENT MEeeeeOW
Not for the contest
No more do I despair
writing for contests with an off the wall theme
Those that want me to create a nightmare
from what was once a beautiful dream.
No more do I care
about Marvel characters who fight and kill
I'd rather spend my time writing silly limericks
for fun and honing a particular poetry skill
than worrying about meter and syllable tricks.
No more do I write
for contests where a sponsor forbids me to choose
how many spaces I indent each middle line
by someone who thinks they're a bard. No, I refuse
to write for a yobo whose rules constrict and confine.
No more contests
do I enter for judges who hold grudges and spite
or who offer friendship placements with a wink.
It's not fair to good poets who get N/A'd as a backbite
I've no more interest in participation with pen and ink
No longer care
to write for judges who give novel length instruction
Yes, rules should be followed, but not to such extreme.
It negates poetic license, serving as a poetic obstruction
making that contest sponsor, head of his or her regime.
No more writing
for those who prohibit adjectives and adverbs be used
or if the sponsor has never written in the specified form.
The power that some feel as a judge can be abused
while preaching about dos and don'ts from a platform.
Oh, spare me
from those who don't know the use of literary devices,
metaphors, proper grammar, and over doing alliteration.
To anyone who wants to enter contests, my advice is...
"Don't take a crown seriously. It will lead to abdication."
No more issues
to deal with sponsors who change their minds midway
through contests because no entries for the theme... bizarre,
and decide, without warning they have the right to say,
"I can do what I want." Who made them the contest czar?"
No blight is this
on judges who sincerely host, giving up their leisure time
to make PS a place where everyone can take an active part.
Those who appreciate good fun in free verse or with rhyme.
I applaud the fair-minded sponsors who have a good heart.
A few weeks ago, I decided to not enter PS contests any longer.
It is always there,
never quite within range
where the mind can snare
some shadowy form, or shape
an outline and hold it long enough
to name.
It waits for the sun to go down
and the evening to draw in
like a taken breath when it comes
closer and nestles into what warmth
lingers there under the folds
of a gathered dark.
Sometimes when I am off
elsewhere and far away in thought,
I am sure it slips inside my head
and enters where memories are,
trying on a face, posing
in some familiar scene,
rummaging through what a child
left there long ago as if
it was searching for itself.
And there are mornings
when waking I sense its presence
in the dissolving residue of a dream,
a small footprint left on that
shore between awareness and sleep,
an indent, a scooped out hole
where something broken
took refuge and sought comfort
in being near.
There are dark times
when it almost becomes
a plumbed in part of me,
each bunkered in our own
adjoining rooms, held apart
by a wall neither of us
want to breach. We have spent
a good part of our lives here,
holding onto what should be set free,
fearing that if we did, one of us
would cease to be.
Non descript brown wallet
Slightly bent at the edges
Indent of cards on leather
Inside is a Driver’s license
Credit card
Debit card
Building pass
Right hand side
Photos of children
Train pass
Metro card
Retail card from a drug store chain
Six singles in front
Larger denominations in rear
Five, tens and one twenty
Tucked behind the photos
Is an extra twenty dollar bill.
Thumbing through the wallet
Nothing else is found
Contents spilled out onto a formica desk
A life for all to see
Scrutinized under bright fluorescent light
Nothing extraordinary
Just everyday ordinary.
How do we tell the family?
Speak to me with kisses, whispers she
Awaiting her towards me, I'm now prowled
Temptress this tigress now visions thee
Naked to bare, touching skins, toweled
Quenched lips adorned in kissing spree
Limbs like ivy never creep amidst love
Such caressing engulfs torso's aplomb
Upon me she resides bodies now thrive
Nails like claws embedded, indent deep
Synchronicity thrown towards thirsts drive
Internally they kiss, so wondrous in seep
Resonating sighs now carved, their strive
Ivy like limbs retire, silenced torso's rest
Speak to me with kisses, whispered she
.
No Sweat Revisions (Booze Helps)
Poet speaks:
“To write a poem you can easily revise
it’s best to use free verse,
for it requires so little thinking and
besides with thought could come content
revisions just might lose.
Why take any chances?”
Reader speaks:
"Whatever does he mean?
My God this guy is deep!
Most modern stuff is so opaque,
but here the words are clear. Though
purpose perhaps is over my head,
I feel like I’m really hearing it!”
Poet speaks:
"Why write at all," I hear you say,
"If folks can't understand? Well,
because it makes revision work
a snap for any poetry class
where content can be subordinate
to breaking writer’s block.
Why sweat the big stuff?
Free verse must be free!”
The Muse breaks in:
"Why you could spend your life on one poem
and ignore your experience completely,
just writing stuff in stanza form,
an indent here, enjambment there,
here an indent, there enjambment,
everywhere a piggy, piggy, piggy piggy!
Old MacDonald wrote a poem
E-I-E-I-O”
Poet Speaks:
“I’m confused! Without content
what makes the poem mine?
Is my writing it enough?
Though I’ll confess that scanning
published literature seems unlikely
to reveal any plagiarism.
Can writing without content
ever be copyrighted I wonder?”
The Muse muses, ponders philosophical possibilities:
“Well if you have revised the poem
and the new version is clearly no worse
than the original, who cares
if it is no better?
You really tried after all.
You followed instructions.
What’s in a grade?
And no new title needed.”
Brian Johnston
May 26, 2015
Restless river winds.
winnowing valley farmland.
In Father's garden chickens squawk, squabble.
Silver sunlight dances.
Hens spurn gardens bounty,
for girl in dusty pants,
rattling evenings grain bowl.
Prancing single file behind
fowl feet indent narrow path.
Wind rustles treetops.
I know what a poem
looks like.
I know how to make
my prose look like verse.
A little tuck here,
an indent there,
et voila! It’s verse!
or worse ...
a pale imitation of seem.
(can I have some ice cream?)
FIRST FALL SNOW
Frigid winds
Indent the once silken
Radiance of a bygone,
Sun struck summer
Terrain . It’s
Fall, and
All that
Lingers is
Lightly coated with
Snow, a
Now troubling harbinger
Of surely approaching
Winter
Consider yourself on the tip of my tongue
Daring to be told and toxic to taste
To swallow the words and account as waste
Would injure my mouth until it grew numb
Notice me residing under your thumb
Violently push and crush me into paste
Scrape the remains to colour me effaced
Thriving under fingernails among scum
I mill with edges to form an indent
And fashion your flesh so I can sprawl
Dismiss me when your pressed palms repent
In spite of deep seeping cuts that I crawl
Richly I’ll recall this as time well spent
To be caressing your bare skin at all
While I may never be remembered as a trail maker,
I most assuredly mark the trails I follow.
Even when void of conscious effort,
As footprints indent wetted ground,
I leave tell tale signs of having been there.
The innocent may follow me because I'm trusted,
Some may follow out of love or respect,
Others, like gulls following a trawler,
Await some tidbit that I might cast aside.
But whatever the reason,
It behooves me to acknowledge,
That many are the eyes that scrutinize my every move
And perhaps, even though uninvited,
Unfamiliar names and faces,
Have taken temporary refuge in my shadow?
Yes I want to be creative, I really want to make my mark,
I need to leave my indent like the bite of a great white shark.
I'm sick not being noticed, fed up with going unseen,
just one more of all of those who never, ever have been.
There must be more to my being here, the reason I breathe and think,
it can't all be down to waiting for the next time we have a drink.
No this life should not be wasted, you only get one shot,
and you should use oh so carefully, the ammunition that you've got.
I know that when I was young I had a natural bent,
for creating things artistically, but that would not pay the rent.
So I did what I did not want to do and joined the rats at play,
and jumped on to their treadmill for eight hours every day.
And now so many years have passed, and my treading carries on,
but I've never found my Shangri La and soon I will be gone.
Without having felt the joy of making the life for which I yearned,
too late to take advantage of a lesson cruelly learned.
So be brave and strong you youngsters if you're nurturing a skill,
don't let the pressure to pay the rent drive you on to that mill,
open up your mind, and open wide your eyes,
develop those talents, and reach for the skies,
soar like an eagle, and find your own way,
and don't eat the crumbs from the trap they call pay.
Left
Left
Left
to the tap of the rim
one step,
curl the toes,
The drum major swings her hands
we step like she tells us
five-four time,
then four-four,
three-four,
back to four-four,
my fingers are like icicles,
the thin little white cloves cut at the finger tips,
it's a woodwind thing,
the heavy rain soaks through my blue pants,
drips from my visor into my eyes'
I fell it pooling on the indent of my big hat,
I nearly miss a step,
stumbling in the mud,
pasted to my preppy black shoes,
my nose runs from the cold,
so does everyone else's,
I look forward to a fifty-cent cup of hot chocolate,
my poncho sticks to my leg,
the drum major halts us,
I breath heavily,
watching mist float away into the clouds,
the audience cheers,
we march of the field,
my clarinet warm and steaming,
still
Left
Left
Left
Left