Best Nineteen Poems

They are poor…they’re removed, they struggle through life,
Every day is a burden on the edge of a knife,
They’re stuck in the circle, that’s all that they know,
And there’s not work around, and nowhere to go.
 
But a man full of promise says he does understand,
‘My...

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I was newly thirteen when the seventies took me underwing,
then married and grown when they creased inside time’s fold.

I was not attracted to those scholastic or athletic,
but to those lacking labels and considered rebels.
Moving yearly filled my army-brat life with sad good-byes
that swerved my teenage...

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no longer virgin
Rocky Horror Picture Show
saw it at midnight...

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Harriet Tubman was free; finally. Free to do what she wanted.
Free to stay out of the south, and free to not ever be a slave again.
But was she satisfied with her own freedom? No. She was not.
She gave up her own peace of mind and...

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“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” 
Rumi

It was the summer of 1967 and the sun was almost bran new 
me and Tony L. skipped to the corner to raid the candy store 
sometimes we bought a paper bag full of small...

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[Wrote this during Covid in a ‘Ring a ring a roses’ frame
of mind. Wasn’t sure what archaic rules were in place around
the world, so sat on it. Basically… in England, ‘other people’
were ‘death on legs’. This may or may not sound amusing
but it’s pretty much...

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Anyone who has lived through them as I have,
Knows the Forties were the most memorial of all
Of the decades of the Twentieth Century
And surely the most vivid in recall.

Personally, they were the greatest of my life.
I was married in the year of Forty-One.
Then in March...

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It’s a Nineteen-Twenties tune—forgive me, I was born too soon,
Going to fake it anyway, and bring back yesterday.
Inka-dinka-do, that old soft shoe—and I danced with Georgia Brown.
Muskrat rag—“can you spare me a ***?”—
And the stock market came dow-w-w-w-w-w-n!

It’s A Nineteen-Twenties song, the decade didn’t last...

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The Summer of Nineteen Sixty

Lying on a blanket by the loch side on a summer’s day
I close my eyes and listen to the quiet.
I hear the slap, slap of the small wavelets lapping on the pebbles and
The plop of some brave fish as he twists...

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NINETEEN FORTY TWO
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS


As a young man in Jersey I wanted to be a cop
One sunday morning that dream came to a stop
Our nation had been a victim of a vicious attack
By an aggressive enemy , we had to fight back
The guys on my...

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The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Nineteen

“Not that I had not spied your tulip-lipped doting jasmine airs
Nor the way your wraith-like form take me back to sumptuous fairs
Of Samarkand yore whence I dallied with dulcet-toned damsels
Just that my incognito pursuit here had little need...

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May nine nineteen eighty was great, 
Being the day of his calling; 
Brother Eduardo Manalo
Had received the noblest blessing.

The day of his ordination
Signaled his rise in his duty; 
His exceptional performance
Was seen inside the ministry.

He became an assistant dean
For Evangelical Studies; 
Doing all his divine...

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Nineteen Eighty, tell me,
Where are you? 
What are you trying to be?
This week, you're 1963
And there's even
Talk of a rebirth of '67
But that's next week.
Nineteen Eighty, tell me,

When will you be mine?
A little bit '59,
I'll not share you with a Beatnik,
Take a rest after the...

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The nineteen 80's




Early eighties was my sweet teens,
as I could see every thing in greens,
College canteen and vegetable patties,
Oh my youthful eighties !

Remember those days of bunking classes,
late night parties and clinking of glasses,
Old movies and handsome heroes,
Exam days and highly probable zeroes,

Writing letters was...

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Way too easy, when you look at
 me
 like you can see
words wade in slow
draw in breath, like a magic
 key 
two eyes
and all the wonders they show 

For me it doesn't come so easy
the specter of nineteen
dealin' in failure wins
and winds my tongue 

Never...

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