Best Keyholes Poems
There are so many doors
Which ones should I choose
Green, yellow, brown, purple
and many different blues
Some of them are rustic
Others modern and clean
Some lead to the future
others back where I've been
Some doors open easily
while quite a few are locked
There are some left open
and others that are blocked
A few so enticing
promise pleasure within
They are slightly hidden
so few will see me sin
I look through some keyholes
wondering if I'll be safe
I see rooms of plenty
and tables draped in lace
The doors that are daunting
they fill me with such dread
for I know there's sadness
in the land of the dead
Many doors are happy
Friends and loved ones are there
those doors are the best ones
being with people who care
Behind some there's music
Pleasured time we can share
Moments of pure magic
those times are far to rare
Doors leading to adventure
Made me glad I took the chance
The sheer exhilaration
that caused my spirit to dance
Some doorways disguised as books
Yes they caused my mind to grow
They pointed to other doors
so I knew which way to go
The doors that I left closed
In the end I don't regret
They could have brought me ruin
or led my soul into debt
Of all the doors I'll walk through
The final one is the best
For there my Saviour waits
therefore, I know I am blessed
~ Keyholes~
Are for the imaginative ones.
Some think they are just for keys?
These are the domesticated ones.
Others look though them and see sandy deserts
under brightest moonlight!
These are the imaginative ones, who write!
How about those who see lovers, long gone?
These are romantics, still hearing the call of
loves's sweetest song.
Then, come those who can pen poetry, historical.
Whilst, I can only pen things so metaphorical!
What do you see through the keyhole of life?
A future of glory or are you one, dedicated to loss
and to strife?
Hmmmmm?
3/24/2021
~3~
Liverpool
When night ends, the fog begins
Heavy as lead!
Shrouding the town:
Once grand
And home of grandeur.
The grand mansions
of old times!
Now in ruins: off white!
Harboring the ghosts of
The grandeur!
Who would have lived in a house
Like this?
My mind wanders;
The eye of my mind
Looking through the silver keyholes!
A wealthy merchant or an industrialist?
What became of the merchants and industries
Of this once mighty Town?
Perhaps the fog shrouding the town
became dense with smoke
Billowing from the ashes of
The industrious!
The Mersey River is just the excuse!
Who knows?
Liverpool: my husband’s home town
Liverpool: the origin of my beloved’s
Mellifluous tongue!
Liverpool: the TOWN of the famous four!
Why dost thou inspire such melancholy
In me?
Liverpool: Once a year, on Christmas day
We remember you: my husband and I!
Our hearts heavy with melancholy
Of the Christmases we spent
On your shores in past years!
Nothing connects us to you! No more!
All the family left your shores!
In mass Exodus!
To sunnier horizons!
Liverpool: one day we will bring our children
To your shores!
So that they will inhale your air!
Understand the roots of their father’s mellifluous
Voice! A voice so rare!
YASEMIN BALANDI
Seven cities sat* silently in the sandstorm**
Waiting as the wind whipped around wickedly**
Dun walls draped with dirt and dust**
And the darkened sun desperately seeking a dim scenery*
But as the unsecured boards were battered and broken about
Clapping clappers clipping** the next scene
The humans huddle in the hovels hiding and hidden**
From the farce of the ferocious furor, full of fear**
But then, as suddenly as it started, it subsides**
As silence settles** and the sand sifts** down
Down to the ground and gravel
And carefully eyes peek out of slits and keyholes
Seeing the first rays slice through the haze
Defining from pastel to watercolor to crisp bristle brush
Even if the voice of the cities are still hush*
There is a stirring of life
Of hope
In the end of stormy strife***
*personification
**alliteration
***metaphor
Lazy afternoons on easels
Maples giggle loud with sweetness
Blue and yellow mixed in grasses
Withered wrinkles sink in lilies
Joggers run in fear of dying
Secret trails end in abyss
As the sun stabs days in prisms
Bloody madness grabs the paintbrush
People old vanish from benches
Emptiness sits down by me
Artists mutilate self-portraits
Tempera in tubes succumbs
Painters shoot apocalypse in veins
Signatures escape through keyholes
Night becomes obsessive pitch black
Ghosts invade museum closed
...and I walk by with my suitcase
as reduced to it I am...
No one knows I carry homeless
The Portfolio of my Fate...
copyright@iolandascripca2012
Truth wraps around her finger, edges of silk to the scars at her throat.
Her skin is rigid against her own mind.
Every day breaks like glass into the sea of her experience
-unrecognizable-
Shells press to her ear. The salt of time courses down her face.
Knowledge leaves her nothing.
Your echoes are all meaningless, she tells herself, and her screams are molten.
If the stars could find her, she wouldn't be empty -
So she burns for the quenching of her thirst. Loneliness roots her to sand.
Faith isn't tangible like this sorrow, like the wings dragging from her shoulders,
All the beauty she folds inside her because mirrors won't reflect
Lyrics like the ones she has branded across her face.
Lies slip so easily like honey through her senses. They bruise her heels,
-refusing to run-
In desperation, she raises her fists through the keyholes of the storm -
Nothing hurts more than her own past, so she takes it in hand and lets it burn.
God traces his fingertips across her wounds and his lips across her forehead.
-She is loved because she loves freely and
she is strong because she has held herself upright on her own-
The rain fills her mouth and sets her tears free.
*For Molly, one of the strongest people I know. I love you, babe.*
I started at an early age
Just six years old and I can’t sleep
I need to my boredom assuage
So through mommy’s keyhole I peep.
And what a glorious event
Dad and mom wrestling on the bed
Odd how mommy’s body is bent
And how they collapse like they’re dead.
Thus my keyhole addiction starts
With the innocence of a child
And sometimes I’d see nasty parts
A bedroom circus that’s gone wild.
Finally I’m caught in my teens
I lie about my contact lens
But I knew, of course, what it means
I moved on to peeping at friends.
Excuses to spend time away
“Studying” nightly with a friend
The risk making better the pay
Keyholes — obsession and sick trend.
But it couldn’t last forever
And when stopped at a stranger’s hole
Though I am really quite clever
My habit had taken a toll.
There are no keyholes in prison
Where I’m sentenced to life times three
Questions have no doubt arisen
Why so long for a looky-see?
Well, I know well the circus act
Bouncing, bending then short of breath
Most people forget the impact
Of a finale crowned by death.
Many pairs I choreographed
With death the ultimate climax
Alas, God stared down and just laughed
No keyholes in jail level max.
January 8, 2919
***A Parenting Tale***
He must’ve been
Just barely fourteen, but still off as
A ninja filling a pillowcase
with chocolate on Halloween.
Although through all other days
his ken was an avocado green,
That is actually a deep
nubby, buttery green.
The older teens, always girls,
Stood leaning on the fenders of their parent’s cars,
Twirling their lemon curls around
Still child-small index fingers
While foot tapping to some unknown
Time until night cloaked our court.
Then, with a wave of the girl’s arms,
our son collapsed to fit out through
Keyholes or go with the autumn mice
Under the garage door, to slink
From one girl’s car to three, where
Not one pair of pink lips cou answer
me if her parents knew her where?
Hardly a surprise then one night
near ten p.m.,
When authority alarmed, fist-knocking
on our front door. Police?
What is the, aaa, problem, sirs?”
“You’ve a son we’ve gotten word of.
Is he home?” Yes. Well, yes.
Certainly, yes. It’s bedtime…
He comes down, cool from his room to
Join us in the hall, looking face to face,
so sliced-olive green.
The officers, wasted not a second.
“We’ve a warrant for a missing girl,
A friend of yours said you knew.
Have you seen Anna Joe today?” No.
“Have you had company tonight?” No.
“Have friends up there with you?” No.
Then to us, “We’d like to go up to look.”
I was mother-so-proud assuring, “He
doesn’t lie. I’d’ve heard company.”
Within a minute, the parade came down
The stairs: handcuffed girl, officers
with son between them and coming to
Stand by me, supposing it was safe.
I screamed, “You lied! To the police!
To us!” Then, I swung my arm back
And forward again with force from
Knowing how he’d dealt us into danger.
I smacked him hard and loud
in front of the police in that
Scrapbook moment of parenting the idiot
Events of a bean-green teen, which also
ended musical car nights on our
court.
————————————————————————————————-
(c) sally young Eslinger 2/6/22
Breaks an egg and out comes the sun
Begging for forgiveness
For lighting
Ducks sailing on the spikes
Women watching them trough keyholes,
Light diffracted into Meduses-
My happy face
Circularly deformed-
The brave man behind lens
Is the sunset’s zipper
Of the blue eye spot-
Her face – mechanic eyes
Lied on the floor, naked-
A pomegranate breaks beside her-
Lucky charm, said someone –
(originally written in modern Greek and released in February 2006 from Nocturnal
Publications – translated here by the author)
By Mark Miller 03/26/2018
We hold our personal abyss
Of nothingness sent caress
Tying the formless substance
Dancing naked existence
Where meetings forwell
Struggle the forest void reach
Skeletons scratch from blood
Fighting wayward darkness
Hiding behind forests breeze
Waiting for clearing screams
Of hopes pretense scene
Children displace loss cause
Never reaching home’s soul
Of worlds locked doors
Behold ghost spy keyholes
Echos howl man’s maiden wolf
Grooming feelings for bedomma
Paving cornfields lonely paths
Of practice poison malevolence
To deny the strain passion purpose
We hide in suburban castles
behind plaster walls cracked by caged voices
as sleepless nights lay siege to slumbering secrets
guarded by iron gates and wooden doors
weathered by unwelcome whims
We stare through rusted keyholes
only to crawl through locked windows
into a warring world of cloaked eyes
sneaking past discerning ears and puritan noses
ever suspicious of living life
We search for traces of love
indelible lines of beauty
recited by rhythmic ballerinas
graced with long legs and smooth backs
guarded by moral mothers and firm fathers
who smother our secrets with their own
We walk in yesterday’s shadow
in fear of tomorrow’s echoing footsteps
portending signs of ponderous hearts
which lead us back to the safety of obscurity
before we mistakenly conquer ourselves
I watched you slowly disappear
pacing restlessly back and forth
warbling off-key through the
woozy blackness of a day
I watched you glide upwards
through the slender keyholes
quivering and sun-cloaked
towards the edgeless seasons
I watched you unfurl with rapture
rummaging the vast firmament
ill-famed for your cinder face
corralled and vaulted
I watched you smile in epoxy
at every wake and burial
you made weather off your skin
mostly smooth and neon-colored
I watched you sink in every rivulet
amidst the mountain ridges
and your incandescent eyelashes
creeping upon the timid animals
I watched you blast off to nowhere
becoming a zero, a ransacked town
only a replica of your blank self
a free sacrifice to destroyers
I watched you eat your cotton candy
heading home to fictive horizons
your limbs so flabby and tired
your eyes full of dismissal
I float
in breathless transience
of heartbeats
as the moon's feral pupil peers
through keyholes
in the clouds
The Orpheus kiss
is a crap shoot
elevens showering sterling whispers
of soft Tiffany roses
from gentle arbors
or twelves
of black sky thundering
bastard answers
to unspoken prayers
I may toss
in subconscious unrest
but deep in pulsing ether
the pristine artery
to salvation sweetly beseeches
like an incandescent porthole
the siren lure of morning
from lips of nightmare
7/21/19
She was afraid of silence. Not the quiet, peaceful kind.
The waiting kind.
The wanting kind. The silence that seeps under doorways and through keyholes.
The silence that floats through hospital corridors. The void one steps into, when the beeping heart monitor quiets.
The lull after a catch in her voice and everyone in the room glances at each other to share the same message:
She is not okay.
For she fears the quiet. Because silence is violent and it makes her think.
It makes her remember. Remember the night the moon turned purple, and everything froze and the ocean sand at her feet turned the color of blood.
And she tries to forget. But she can only forget when she hides in noise.
Drapes herself in her surroundings and wears the chatter like a feather boa.
Only feathers don’t hurt.
She would gladly take the pain, rather than the silence.
It was her form of cutting. The noise grasped at her ears and wouldn’t let go.
But it was better like that. Better than the silence.
Better than when he quit living and the silence became unbearable.
Everything froze when he left.
She couldn’t go to the coast without seeing the waves still, or glimpsing the sand red, or remembering the glint of silver splashed with molten ruby.
Or the note she drowned out with the noise.
Written in beautifully crafted cursive,
It described a shared day full of noise.
And the noise joined with her
To fight the memories and the sadness and the regret
And the silence.
Their house was damp and drafty and the furnishings unique
I guess you'd say the decor was eclectic and antique
There was an old piano that was often out of tune
And as a child I'd tap the keys till others left the room
The scuttle by the fireplace was always filled with coal
And on the parlor table apples filled a crystal bowl
The rooms were very tiny and the rugs hid worn out floors
And large keyholes were common place on all interior doors
A painted creaky stair case closely hugged the front hall wall
With twelve steps to the second floor; one wouldn't want to fall
Small heaters in the bedrooms took the chill away at night
And for cold feet hot water bottles warmed them up just right
My Nanna made us Ovaltine and bought us bags of sweets
And Grandpa sometimes baked fresh bread which was a special treat
The kitchen had a small gas stove where a whistling kettle sat
And the teapot had a cosy which I once thought was a hat
The fragrance of a fresh brewed tea would fill the kitchen air
And Nanna with her apron on was often busy there
These memories are decades old and whispers from the past
And the photos that I cherish now, I hope will always last