Best Lassitude Poems
Sometimes for fun men worship a gun
To shoot a recruit, to vanquish a victim
Whose only fault lies in a bun
The poor nibble in a starving team
Barrels and muzzles dominate
In thoughts, actions, deeds and priorities
Held high in fake media to disseminate
Philosophies and heresies propagated in sororities
With convoluted creeds
Infants decry when refugees die
In droves as their faith pleads
On its knees for the dissolution of the lie
Shouted aloud by a boisterous crowd
Gathered despite a genocide
Perpetrated by the mighty and the proud
Who pronounce their side innocent of fratricide
In the DRC, South Sudan and Syria
Where Christians suffer untold humiliation
Malaria, starvation, indignity and diarrhea
And unprecedented persecution and the violation
Of human rights
While the UN watches inept
In the face of blatant veto fights
Pursued with vigour kept
High on an agenda of futility
Arguing a fruitless case
Resting on the volatility and motility
Of the talk shop whose base
Inspires revulsion
At the incompetence and pretence
To take action on the expulsion
Of sanity and competence
Hitherto worshipped as holy grail
By the General Assembly
Whose voice and choice are shot off the rail
By the mighty and bubbly
Who appoint themselves arbiters
To determine nothing gone wrong in Yemen
Despite the death of powerless characters
When the Security Council in unison shouts amen.
apathy grows, dread heavy in the heart
laziness lingers on the spirit’s light
sluggishness gestures - cloudy, dimming hope
idleness, lethargy, dark shadow’s plight
Sin of Sloth Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Margarita Lillico
July 9, 2022
The sound of morning
mizzles,
brings laziness in my
half closed eyes,
the car engine whirs in
the garage that
awakens my senses,
while drones of the bees
and birds push me to stand up.
The hoots of the monkeys
in the woods,
with flying brilliant colors
of butterflies,
those mild touch of the
waft waves on the beach,
bring spectacular radiance
in the middle of my
emptiness.
A little paradise
that dumps the agitation;
and gives my body
a composure from lassitude.
Avoiding the girl-scouts
with their cookies.
I hasten out of the store.
I am too soft now to wait
for a bus
in the dead of winter.
It's a fragility, it is a lassitude,
it’s a small uncertain privilege.
Shoes laced together,
hang from power lines.
I drive by,
car windows locked.
Walking with a full shopping bag
in the dark and cold
- an old woman.
I would probably frighten her
if I offered a lift.
I drive on by.
Avoiding the girl-scouts
I hasten out of the store
trying hard not to see the people
huddled in their thin coats
as they wait for an infrequent bus.
This ice-chilled evening
with its stark revelations
is like the nag of an irregular heartbeat
sheathed like a thorn in my shoe.
Later, by a warm fire
sitting in an upholstered armchair,
a despondency chews at my breastbone,
it is a reaction hard to pin down,
to objectify,
a lingering presence.
My mind shifts through a symbolic iconography
effigies depicting:
a lost and hungry dog,
an ill-treated child,
a stranger I refuse to call brother,
places long deserted,
places found far too late.
A love unpicked from a now withering vine.
That same presence
sets a table and chair before me
that I may write, try to explain
this tumbleweed of unnamable sorrows,
a phantom, that even in happier times,
I recognize it as a coarse impression
akin to a grating scar
beneath a tender tongue.
Tomorrow may emerge as a frail old lady,
struggling with full shopping bags,
head bent to a cold uncaring wind.
Many might offer her a lift
but in my present brittle mood
I probably would frighten her,
so,
I don’t.