Best Kafkaesque Poems
Tinnitus tinnitus, innocuous by name,
invisible tasteless, sounds pretty lame,
Ears hissing, snakes inside my head,
Growing louder, causing turmoil in bed,
Room’s spinning, feel like getting sick,
Banging kicks off, rhythmically quick.
Tinnitus tinnitus, pneumatic drillers,
incessant maniacal machine gun killers,
Thumping smashing, trash metal band,
Like rock music, but this I cannot stand,
Eyes are bloodshot, severe lack of sleep,
cacophonous noise, then marching feet.
Tinnitus tinnitus, chainsaws a cutting,
No trees or lumberjacks, I see nothing,
Put on the radio, try drown out noise,
overwhelmed, lose rationale and poise,
Church bells peeling, ringing perhaps,
overloaded, mind spirals into collapse.
Tinnitus tinnitus, curse this living hell,
hammering my face, eyes begin to swell,
Delirious sweating, sheets soaking wet,
overcome in confusion, desperate upset,
Pray to god make the torment go away
release me from this Kafkaesque array.
Tinnitus tinnitus, eardrums explode,
Brain is shattered, as decibels grow,
Can’t take anymore, at my wits end,
On slugs of whiskey, sanity depends,
One after the other, knock them back,
Throbbing numbing starting to relax.
Tinnitus tinnitus, drink myself unconscious,
Wake up next day, agonizingly nauseous,
My ear is on the pillow, bottle’s in pieces,
covered with blood, trembling increases,
Look in the mirror, No no this cannot be,
Vincent Van Gough’s, staring back at me.
By
David Kavanagh
Categories:
kafkaesque, abuse, anxiety, confusion, depression,
Form:
Rhyme
In Sandy on a Sund’y
Can’t even buy a pie
The High Street is a ghost town
From some Kafkaesque sci-fi.
Not a single caf is open
No point in asking ‘Why?’
So I’ll just go down
To the Rose and Crown
And give their roast a try.
The film set has now altered
To a Sergio Leone
The barman with the hang-dog look
Is sitting all alone.
I enquire after Sunday Lunch
His reply comes Brummily spoken.
‘No food today,
I’m afraid to say.
The chef’s right arm is broken.’
So homeward I trudge
To a can of stodge
That I’d been keeping handy
And I curse the day
I decided to stay
In this Sabbath-subserving Sandy.
Categories:
kafkaesque, humor,
Form:
Rhyme
Hunger Artist - A Kafkaesque Moment
By: Earl Schumacker
(influenced by “A Hunger Artist”- short story by: Franz Kafka)
Food is foreign and mysterious to me now
Tolerance for such things is vile
My art once held the masses
In a mesmerizing enchanted grip
These days nothing matters
Death by hunger is dismissed
No one comes by my cage
To keep me faithful to my pain, as it really is
Starvation has lost its style
Or flavor should I say
Such enlightenment and with it fame
Once came quick
The children gathered by the thousands
To prove that nothing happened
Watching frantically; morning noon and night
To see no food had passed the artists lips
And death would take them nicely without tricks
I can’t remember ever being free
My cage and I came together mysteriously
We seem to be the same thing
Starving came instinctively
As last hunger artist I can’t resign
I have to see enlightenment one time
With or without people to observe
Even if I should die before my time alone
Categories:
kafkaesque, addiction, change, dark, death,
Form:
Didactic
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy,
approximately 800 redundant pages
of Kafkaesque scoffing
at relentless banalities of economic and political elitists.
Rather like transcribing often inebriated conversations
within all-night insider celebrations
of a ProPlutocracy Party Convention
Or, sadly, a depressed weed-rant
at the end of a long defensive policy debate
among inter-religiously woke Democrats
longing for a win/win DanceParty Convention,
like in the good-old liberally bipartisan ballroom days
Only maybe about 400 condensed
impacted pages shorter
with the remainder quite unliterally
and anti-climatically inscrutable
as planned anti-ecological obsolescence
through mutually partisan assured destruction
Drinking and smoking
through organic Earth's rabidly dark night
denying and/or distracted
from synergetically addressing
our unwell-disorganizing Anthropocene
of epically AnthroNarcissistic
autocratic-monopolistic chaos
Adding nothing more useful
or healthy
or sacred
to Kafkaesque scoffing
at relentlessly drunk banalities
of economic and political elitists.
Categories:
kafkaesque, books, humor, political,
Form:
Political Verse
This is nothing similar to a fairytale
Grossly not the packaging of an unwanted mail
Nothing close to a Kafkaesque display
It is FACT!!! On the head I hit the nail
If you're looking for heroes, don't go that far
You might wonder where in the world they are
We are the gratified ones, we've made the par
Look around, you got the super-duper star
Could superman overpower the masters on poetry side
Nor flash run extraordinarily fast in his mind
Ben 10 transform his feelings into written lines
And hulk evolve as poetry's mastermind?
You know the answers if you're not gazing for 'amateur'
We are supersonic... We are not caricatures
We are superiority... We re not immatures
We are superheroes... The best among living creatures
Go back and resurrect that dead pen of yours
Open your book and ink down your elevated thoughts
Speak your mind, Open your heart, don't give up
We were born to do this, We were born to rule the WORLD
Go and reclaim Glory!!!
WE ARE THE SUPERHEROES THEY AINT SEEN YET
Categories:
kafkaesque, devotion, hope, inspirational, love,
Form:
Free verse
Now stand still and take the oath
define your choices by their trace
as this is the one and final case.
Fears are melting with confusion
a Kafkaesque pursuit for redemption
finding the end will be the exception.
''Guilty as charged''! Voices crawl
a door is thumped and people brawl
a Kafkaesque sharing of fortunes.
Lost consciences are passing the gates
where flaming light still awaits
to divide the Kafkaesque instincts of freedom.
Categories:
kafkaesque,
Form:
Lost consciences are passing the gates to divide the Kafkaesque instincts of freedom.
Valeria Iliadou
"One Amazing Line"
Categories:
kafkaesque, life
Form:
Monoku
Rolling there on the ground
petrol soaked a burning man
I could not whisper a sound
him suffering a youtube death
Sitting here quietly writing at my desk
what possible help could I give but Kafkaesque
Category : Tragic,Ironic,Funny,
Categories:
kafkaesque, sad,
Form:
Enclosed Rhyme
Do the leaves of our cups also turn yellow ?
The rooms of green grass collect cobwebs
From the Kafkaesque vermin, fly away cuckoos
Questions galore in the river's tide and ebb
____________________
September 5, 2025
Categories:
kafkaesque, image, imagery, philosophy, symbolism,
Form:
Quatrain
There’s a charge against you
Though we can’t say what it is
In time, your list of crimes will be released
Pardon our procedures –
We consider grievances
We’ll clear your good name after you’re deceased
A labyrinth of halls and secret tunnels
In a bureaucratic lair
The ambiguity of nightmares
Is the only business there
This deviant behavior
Must be addressed at once
Our agents will turn up who you really are
The whole investigation
Could take a couple months
Please be on-call, and don’t wander too far
A labyrinth of halls and secret tunnels
In a bureaucratic lair
The ambiguity of nightmares
Is the only business there
Nothing makes sense
When it’s Kafkaesque
In a language spewing jargon,
Behind coercing eyes,
Our Grand Inquisitor will take his turn
One half-expects a pardon
When one’s past is scrutinized
Lest one is subjected to public shame and then burned
Nothing makes sense
When it’s Kafkaesque
Categories:
kafkaesque, anxiety, business, corruption, work,
Form:
Lyric
Oh, now and then I lose my way, could this be true for you as well?
Though dreams suggest a brand-new day, there's something left to tell,
It's not that I put blinders on, forgot old debts or new, I mean,
I’d love to live, a help not harm, and never, ever, cause a scene.
This path to self quite often missed, the horse I ride makes turns for worse,
Demonic unseen snake has hissed or rattled out a curse,
A buck or two, horse straightens out, but all my plans could be at risk!
I look compass, for I've doubts; to know the future’s Kafkaesque!
You count on me to do my best; I pray to Heaven you stay near!
I lose my way; I fail each test, and yet you hold me, dear?
I sometimes feel like I’m from Mars, so much I lack in earthy charms,
The path to self may live in stars, but fallen man lives in your arms.
Brian Johnston
May 19, 2018
Categories:
kafkaesque, life, love, magic,
Form:
Rhyme
DO NOT MISS THE MOON, WHILE COUNTING THE STARS
Do not be carried away by the deceit,
Of an oozing chant of a back palm’s stew;
For the meat that source and house it,
Will slip and off it will drift like dew;
So, do not miss the sun,
While counting the smiles of the stars,
Kafkaesque!
Most magic moments oblique,
The conscientiousness to tame,
And the illusionary shadow’s of blame.
Sometimes, I don’t want,
You to know what I think,
That’s why I hide it in a plant,
A tarred bowdlerize wink;
So, do not stay too long....
Looking at the sun, especially her eclipse.
Alas! The jaded aglet corpse!
I have wringed wet maelstroms,
What you have in your palm,
Is bigger than the shadow storms,
So, do not waste hours counting,
Those deceitful stars__
When all you need is the moon!
For this is an overweening;
Err that mar many: a raconteur.
~ Tile
Categories:
kafkaesque, africa, anxiety, caregiving, day,
Form:
Blank verse
“I need you
and dream of you
while I try to
drink you away”
I almost wrote a poem
that began like this
(many years ago)
to express my
unrequited infatuation
for a certain
beguiling & baffling
woman.
I almost wrote a poem
that rambled on
unpoetically about
all the tormented
feelings & dark ideas
that poisoned
my already warped mind.
But instead—
I drowned my sorrows
and dragged my
sorrowful sardonic self
through lowly jobs & lofty ideas
like a Kafkaesque Sisyphus
--and eructed corrosive prose
parodying frenemies
as friends became enemies
and I found myself
submerged in a private
cold war with the world
(during the Cold War)
in the torrid, torpid
River City where
the alienated artisans
ate their own.
Maybe someday
in the distant future (2020s?)
if I’m still around
if the world is still around…
I’ll actually write
this forgettable poem
and wish I hadn’t.
Categories:
kafkaesque, addiction, humor, loneliness, love
Form:
Prose Poetry
I slowly come to
as light creeps across the floor
and dissolves what I thought
had fallen through
the torn sides of a dream.
Nothing is there but
the scuff marks left
by fleeing ghosts.
Unalterable facts assemble
and lock shut around
a narrowing space housing all
that I think I am.
Faces appear and find
their place in the gallery
of portraits, some smiling
others wearing a haunting
sadness. Love attaches
and takes up the tension
as thoughts move and stretch,
each nerve linking
to a loved one. I hold on
and hope it's enough.
Then fear rummages through
its wardrobe of masks, trying on
each to see what best fits
the day. It likes to look ahead.
Morning begins its rituals
to hold back a harm
that hangs over me
or stop the countdown
ticking towards some
menacing, undisclosed
catastrophe.
Categories:
kafkaesque, anxiety, fear,
Form:
Free verse
Creepy crawlies and heebie-jeebies
raw ripples on your skin kafkaesque;
You peek at that dark monstrosity,
cannot tell if it’s a trick or treat;
Nerves taunt with chimerical spectres;
Weepy eyes are stung by angry bees,
‘Pshaw!’ escapes a story so grotesque;
Flew through your mouth unable to flee,
caught swelled saliva starts to secrete;
Serves well scripts of macabre directors.
Categories:
kafkaesque, emotions, feelings, horror, writing,
Form:
Rhyme