Best Parlor Poems

Like open arms
These broken gates reach out to me
And lead me to the lonely house
That overlooks the sea

Her door once proud and stately
Now splintered hangs...

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Blades of grass, wet under foot, insect eyes  
Dusk, offset by the cricket orchestra 
Muted and receding into the trees and bushes,
Tickled by the...

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Once upon a weedy lawn
At Cedar Oaks Retirement Home
There sat my mother, weak and old
On an afghan knit to block the cold.

It was summer, but...

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She can't blame the season for her tears
Aloneness was not loneliness in December
When the season passed so quickly in disguise
Of twinkling lights and toasts remembered

As...

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It's styles of a nameless brand pristine day
an exclusive star-sheathed shadow after 
overwhelming luminous glare fainted
a somewhat true-to-life footpath in
a back of structured quaintness

Encountering myself...

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Parted curtains
puff of smoke.
Parlor trick
or cruel joke?

First a bat,
then human form—
eyes aglow,
fangs enorm.

And in the mirror,
no image there;
it stilled my heart
and stifled prayer.

But Drac was...

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A Child’s View of Death

People say now that Grandpa was thin
But he had plump cheeks; cancer had set in 

Each Sunday penny candy in my...

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There’s scarlet within the warm sky tonight
A crimson feel that envelopes alright
I love the sight of every form of red
Yellow seeps in with orange that...

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Holiday dinners coming
Time to sit and feast
Moms afraid of infection
She worries about the yeast

Uncle Bobby wants some Turkey
He's picked out the wishing bone
If he is...

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A deserted old house stood off the county road a little way.
To keep apace of living I rushed by it almost every day.
For years I'd...

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I wrote a great book, part memoir, part novel
Shopped it around, I ain’t too proud to grovel
Got kicked upstairs to a big publishing head
He invited...

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Death Comes

All arguments and denials were fruitless;
The deceased fell prey to the Master Thief.

The “One” whose icy-cold touch is . . .
Just Too Cold to...

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On one bright and sunny morning, verses a dark and stormy night, of course!
Dragon stood at ‘The Dragon and Sheriff Statue’, in the Mayhem Falls...

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 Cold the winter night as snow fell,
it drifted-  collected on streets;
where a meandering lost girl struggled to walk,
weary and tired; 
she ran away...

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I shall daily visit the beauty parlor
And make myself beautiful for you.
I shall never clean the house
So that my skin is not tarred.
I shall ever...

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