Best Ivory Tower Poems
Existing, so removed, in your ivory tower
From high in your loft you wield your power
You weave your emotions like Rupunzel’s hair
dangling enticingly waiting to snare
Keeping your feelings locked behind bars
elusive and untouchable distant as the stars
Seemingly honest and raw and true
easy to trust what you say and do
Woven with steel emotions impenetrable
your victim will feel completely irreparable
You are always right, you never bleed
everything you do plants a calculated seed
Little by little the insecurities grow
eating away at what we think we know
Dare we not question our reality
thinking we know what’s apparent to see
You know what to say how to speak to a heart
your ego unchecked you execute your part
Perfectly played you’ve planted the guilt
how dare we believe what we think we have felt
Go away and come back do not let go
paralyzed with doubt insecurity will grow
Finally the escape before our soul is gone
entombed as it becomes in a deadly catacomb
The climb from this well is steep and so hard
but we leave this hell with emotions chard
The light will be warm and stinging at times
bright days grow longer we know we’ll be fine
Escaping the world of a narcissist
Is full of traps and emotional twists
Be strong and true to yourself and your goal
never again allowing that emotional control.
DISCLAIMER: This is a tongue-in-cheek, sardonic critique
of my own poetry from the perspective of a fictitious non poetry lover. This is not aimed at any of you wonderful Soup poets... please do not be offended!
Tell me who has the time for a poem?
If there's facts to know, I want to know 'em.
You enjoy sounding Ivory Tower-y
But I don't care for words super flowery.
Your analogies and your hyperbole
Like intense gnats annoy me disturbally
I will catch all your facts as you throw 'em
But I just don't have time for your poem.
All astonishing alliterations
Will arouse in me no titillations
Your undue fascination with meter
Is not shared by this philistine reader.
Your iambic pentameter’s boring
And induces in me rhythmic snoring
You may claim it’s Shakespearean rhythm;
But perhaps we should bury it with him!
Your obtuse meta narrative's yet a bore
Please remind again, what's your meta for?
Your insipid attempts to use simile
Are like choking on smoke from my chimile.
Your pursuit of profound allegory
Should be saved for your purple prose story
But as I've said before, I've no time
To be reading your 4-stanza rhyme.
Should you give me a gift of a sonnet
I’ll be scanning for pawn shops to pawn it
Though you say if I tried hard, I'd love it
What I'd love most is if you'd just shove it!
Reading poetry takes too much work
And I'm only a mid-level clerk.
Your quatrains? I suggest you forego 'em
'Cause I just don't have time for your poem.
Atheists work on the breaker box,
as Creationists source the power
Rewiring a changing system that’s flawed
—their lights flicker in an ivory tower
(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2019)
Teleological
hypotheses bore me
Tautological phraseology
snores me
A beer and a burger ~
I adore thee
(draft ii)
A rivulet of light appeared,
-- the denouement of night was near.
The birds began to wake the years
-- for fools, and knaves, and cavaliers.
The denouement of night was near.
-- With feathered songs they hid their fears.
For fools, and knaves, and cavaliers
-- their fortunes, yet, were still unclear.
With feathered songs they hid their fears,
-- as stars began to disappear.
Their fortunes, yet, were still unclear,
-- and wise men taught their lessons q ueer.
As stars began to disappear
-- rivulets of light appeared,
while wise men taught their lessons q ueer
-- the birds were gone into the years.
This hearth and home, my ivory tower,
where in complete and thoughtful solitude
I daily think, then ponder and often brood
reflectively with creative power:
in the place where I fear not or cower,
where I, here dignified, feel understood;
where I sometimes am seized by raptured moods
that alter my loneliest, and darkest, hours;
and where, waves of pure bliss can clarify
and wash my confusion and gloom away,
filling me with an overpowering high,
a feeling of elation every day,
that only thoughts on God can magnify
and make perfect in the springtime of May.
How do we go through life with degrees?
And always, always blame someone for our needs!
Sad, Ivory Tower midgets are we!
Living in outreageous arrogance, but always blaming thee!
Big heads, but no hearts.
Blame, blame, are our poison darts.
Who, we? We are perfect you see?
Ineffective, irresponsible, intellectuality!
What have you done for the earth?
Besides quipping, off the cuff, ineffective mirth?
10-10-2021
A rhyming poet
whose stories denote pure facts
is rare and awesome
Each poet dreams of a secret retreat,
an ivory tower in which to go.
Refuge from the turmoil of life,
isolated from the crazy world below.
A solitary place in which to write,
to enclose oneself in bliss and peace.
Perhaps a castle beside the sea,
where waves crash on rocks soothingly.
But this tower already exist within,
each time a poet takes up paper and pen.
_______________________
August 23, 2012
Poetry/Verse/The Ivory Tower Within
Copyright Protected, ID 08-415-614-23
All Rights Reserved, 2012, Constance La France
Written for the Standard contest, No.199
sponsor, Brian Strand, NA, Judged 8/25/2012
Featured Poem the Week of July 23, 2017
My Lies are true, I swear to you!
Access to excess, and quite unexpected
Question God and my beliefs
(Around the query, His Angels protected)
Enigmatic, and problematic,
Naked Souls remain undressed
Lo! The Answers I have found
(Touch my hand, for it is Blessed)
The crash of shedding a solitaire tear,
A little change in Fated plans
My Ivory Tower, resting on the Edge of Eternity-
Cold, and lonely it stands
*Loneliness Contest Entry
~JustThatArchaicPoet
Hey Academic,
throw me some facts
Explain to me clearly
each thought you attack
Dear Intellectual,
restate and rephrase
Your version of truth,
empty words in the fray
Hello Professor,
is the poison pill done
Refilled with your venom
to spread to the young
And lastly the Critic
who stands by the wall,
Humpty Dumpty awaiting
your push to then fall
While open minds sit
in the cold and the rain,
Your cowardly torrents
bring nothing but pain
To all those so cloistered,
divorced from what’s real
Perdition your tenure
—inflamed to repeal
(Beaupre: November, 2020)
Write have you the Spirit,
Mend have you the thread.
Reach what aches to hear it, and
Fear no unmade bread.
A culture is a chimney
that smokes a sordid soul.
Bleached and soaked,
cut and battered to hovel off
the edges knoll,
but Time past and Time future
say Eliot, are night alone;
are only so far a phantom
as no light inside ones home.
You are light inside a fortress,
a candle in a flame.
A bud amoungst a forest,
a bee amidst a hive.
Your sting is sharp and fatal,
more deadly than the rest.
Your meals are more than honey;
than canopy blessed.
Your Spirit is a tempest
that has no fear of flight; and
the dawn knows no horizon
burning red this endless night.
This Time it is a phantom.
The lights have left the home,
but still,
we are bees and flowers,
and honey.
and light.
Soft ivory pages, crisp and new.
Insulated from the world's harsh truths,
Snuggled in the comfort of rote learning, it waits.
Protected from challenging ideas,
Camouflaged as a bastion of knowledge,
Ignoring sounds of a changing world outside.
Each lesson absorbed, concepts released,
The slightest spark of curiosity dimmed,
Minds anchored to standardised forms.
Slow to evolve, the system creaks.
Returning to the safety of metrics,
Covered in a shroud of false contentment.
Coal-dark ink scans the ledger,
Nourished by the currency of test scores,
Effortless, true learning slips into the abyss.
A place where wisdom once flourished,
Embraced by the essence of inquiry,
Now mechanical, measured, misguided.
We too must remember,
The embrace of knowledge's true essence,
Living beyond the melting ivory tower.
While he sits there alone
in the silence of his room
does he have compassion
excuse me for asking
I know he wrote a book in all
The Art Of The Deal
got is at his seminar
but that didn't go far
now he's the man on the throne
yet he appears so alone
like a dog without its bone
still he'll push one roller
as he works on his comb over
still we have many questions that aren't answered
stay off the pedal of the gas cause he's moving to fast
we got a no it all for a president but is it any wonder
he's got to much time on his hands
the world is turning and beds are burning
going to build us a great wall
for that you claim many will stand ten feet tall
still were being stuck in the fiddle playing second fiddle
when will he deliver or am I to late for dinner
only Trump knows what he's really doing
inside he might be fighting those hidden demons
the lust for greed for power
time to take a cold shower
in Trump's ivory tower
Do not depend on synthetic power, it will not stand.
Only God's will endure, across our land.
Examine, and convert your humanity.
Trust in God, and embrace Christianity.
Don't waste your days, on what might have been.
Keep your eye, on man's one true gem.
Embrace his word, extract his power.
Recognize his sacrifice, and his last final hour.
Look in your heart, and think of what you see.
We are not so different, you and me.
Be mindful, of how you spend your human hour.
It will one day fall, man's Ivory Tower.