Best Pawning Poems
Spring tide
pounding against
a rocky relationship
between the
new moon and
earth’s pie in the sky.
On an island
of one’s own making
in the mind —
like a whirlpool
when imagination
slips away
on a one-way
ticket to disaster —
no peace to find.
Stonewalling
rest with stress
and anxiety.
No sleep
on a tidal bore
without soporifics
in a
midnight typhoon
pawning fantasy.
by Berteena
Harmony of the Soul
February 3, 2019
What Rusts In The Rain
(For The Memory Of William S. Burroughs
& Typewriters)
It is Lawrence, Kansas and the sky opens
up as if a doppelganger of all mothers and
wombs
Leaving out rain as milk from its breasts
onto
all things fertile
Rangas of storm
A writer adores their typewriter.
They name it and ache in its lack of health
and death.
Brother, the decades faded and the Beats
and the Hippies
their dawns edges burning off in the
sunlight of time
took flight on dusky dirges and are gone.
Generations come and go and that none
of us can turn in protest against, too busy
in our living and then our leaving.
Opiate, apt fruition.
There is no lover like a typewriter.
Stroke its keys.
Know its response.
Kansas, Dorothy's head all turned around
and paisley.
You died and they left your typewriter in
the backyard
of your last home, grass growing up into
its spine.
No more pawning for what the soul was
too terrified to
go without.
Maybe it is better here.
Waiting for the return of some living, freed
dignity.
An ability to grow creative legs, talk again.
The scent of English Ovals on its skin
A governess, a guardian of the young, so known and dear as to be called “Mother” and a noblewoman, just barely 12 by age, named Portia, sit talking as the sun sets the stage for a cool, cloudless night.
“Mother, who invented candlelight and the slow, delicate brush of lips?”
“Some rakish boy, pawning his experience for present pleasure, no doubt.”
“Say true, Mother. If you were a man, would you find this common body worthy of love?”
“You show no blemish child, and display a certain bony voluptuousness - I should think.”
The governess begins to comb and braid Portia’s hair for sleep.
“I saw Portincio this morning, in the courtyard.”
“The boy from Padua?”
“He’s a man Mother, and his cast portents a passion so sweet - it shakes my very frame.”
Mother chuckles, “Even hopeless birds sing in cages.”
“I am not hopeless!” Portia writhes angrily, like a snake about to strike but mother calms her.
“Shoo, shoo, now,” Mother purrs, brushing all the more gently, “I meant nothing of it.” After a moment, she continues, “Love is more than coquetry, little one, and it soon passes - like a parade, or a rash. For now, be happy, you are like the chaste stars - unreachable.”
Look at them, tangled in insignificant conversation
about politics or stereotypes of blacks, whites and Asians,
lack of youth education, weather ruined vacations, how inflation squeezing their arm like “yo, I got you taken,
and how fuel became a bill from the money that we are making.
They sacrifice the savings to keep a standard of living.
I hear then talking about their lovers lack of love that they are giving
I say communicate or leave because time is steady ticking
Look at them
Buying expensive rims, and high fashion clothes with sneakers, lugz, and tims. Inside I soul spy like
magnified mri’s an imaginary field force of selfishness and pride.
Careless if they fetus die, cry internal cause maternal really means giving up a lot.
They sacrifice the club shot for shot life and dreams and the scene of kings and queens all decken together…
and their business is each others infused for forever playing tether with the ball of a pendulum. Uncovered
are their memories of covers and words they’ve past uttered…it is just another case of lack of patience
Like gimme good but hold the impregnation. Bright futures still there steady waitin
Look at them
Thinking they can plan their lives, brake the rules of the beehive that ran their lives, make a little honey to
expand their lives, then forget they folk turn around forget they wives.
See she lost her heart and he aint got no eyes but in such a dark world that man is king.’
Look at her flaunting that ring then pawning that ring because all that mattered was a shiny thing. Not the
signs
Look at them tryna rewind. Relight the spark that wouldn’t stay the last 20 times
It should be a crime to try to live back there. Yo people do change but change is rare
They put it all on retail so it can be re-teared
All the hurt made them cold so they don’t care
Blinded by the glare, and the lights and such
Look at them! Don’t they know they done sold too much?
In for a short time touch instead of long term goals
People drive through they souls without no tolls
All control each other’s minds fueled hearts by coal
So hard, so swoll, so invincible is external
Look at them bout to blow so internal
Would you look at them actually living
My observations vicarious as information I’m giving
Look at me all input but no answer
All I am is input but not the answer
Propping up their drooping
Posture on dizzy stools,
Parched lips overly pleased,
Pockets drained of money,
Prisoners of excess
Pander to last resort:
Phew! Pop goes the weasel.*
[*An expression describing the spending of all your money on drink
in the pub and subsequently pawning your suit to raise some more.]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A Pleiades ‘P’ Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Kim Merryman
Placed 1st
© 11th April 2021
Philippines is the country where we Filipinos live
Compose of about 7,107 scattered islands
A beautiful and a peaceful destination
My archipelago, my home, my little world
Yet your people have chosen to leave
Pawning and selling to others their own lands
Dragging down our economy and the whole nation
My archipelago, my home, my little world
Full of diverse resources to offer and to give
Like extraordinary fine white sands
An abode for the future generation
My archipelago, my home, my little world
Lack of food and help to provide
To our countrymen and our sides
A disappointment to our legion
My archipelago, my home, my little world
The land where everybody wears a smile
Living with faith to each of our religions
Saving our own mother land to damnation
My archipelago, my home, my little world
A country where good lads have to suffer and to die
An unconquerable virus and a nationwide trends
Obviously happiness and peacefulness are on its
dawn
My archipelago, my home, my little world
This is what the Philippines is today and was before
An ideal island, a dangerous haven,
A shelter for the masses, an opportunity for aliens
The place where we have grown, the place that we
do not own
My archipelago, my home, my little world
You didn't and you couldn't, listen unto the wisdom in ancient told ?
Selling exchanging your birth right but questions arise amid your mingling
With secular eyes a pagans lies your choice but light speaks as this within that
Your manifest destiny has yet presented itself to the world; a thousand years as a
Day and it's all back wash you say ? So I spit into this tangled cup poured myself another
Glass of cheap Caribbean Rum a shot of coke laughed while I choked back your dirty joke; your
Truth revealed amid times self fulfilling prophecy a revelation in distains dreams; pawning your children.
Poor Prince Hal, just wanted a pal, a friend
Someone to drink and laugh with til the end
Pawning all his hopes on white lies so far
Spending all his coins at Quickly's bar
Playing pranks on Falstaff to pass the time
Jolly as the youth, but well past his prime
Wagered then lost in the field, all bets found
Til death do they part and in friendship bound
But a king has no need for washed up knights
Against his own will, the young prince now fights
And Hal then forsakes his friend John the Clown
As King Henry, he now takes up the crown
--
My ode to Henry IV by Shakespeare
Tall men spit messianic prose
To disciples pawning choice
Their knowledge like a cancer grows
A doppelgänger's endless voice
the man is dead,
words that moan like north-wind over sea mounts,
swirling through stunted grass,
over the warped threshold,
around discarded shrouds,
piled around a rough bier,
holding once a rougher man,
this dead man,
this no-man,
unsung but for briny ocean song,
brackish and cold
misted on ashen mourners,
kneading sullen dough,
leavened for this once man,
an erstwhile man's corpse bread,
laid out on pewter,
arranged close to his head,
pinch of salt,
a tarnished groat,
bitter draught of ale,
offered by rote,
for his peace beyond,
the pawning soul,
quiescent duty of an elder son,
then the sin eater,
now to run,
king of no kingdom,
scion of none,
the man now lives.
Ahead, a bear in sudden motion stands
Moves alone in the snow covered meadow
And searched with darting eyes as each commands
Pawning and bellowing on the plateau
Beyond the rise a hunter stands, silent
Already pulled his arrow from quiver
Hickory bow hand made is reliant
To target an arrow it delivers
As piercing the chest was a shot of luck
Collasping its lungs as life is expelled
His journey ends when the stiff arrow struck
Fresh food to the hunter whose aim excelled
Predator and prey to one another
Gives life to one and death to the other
for the contest Hunt for a Sonnet Gems & Seven Stones in the Crown
sponsored by Debbie Guzzi
That’s not my daughter,
that’s a monster.
Growing older, breathing harder,
Finding comfort in the fury
of his fists upon her body.
The drunken hits, her bloody lip,
The lies the morning after.
That’s not my daughter,
that’s a monster.
The bad grammar, all the drama--
Crying phone calls to her Momma.
Texting poison to her father.
“I swear this isn’t how we raised her,
She knows better.
She knew better.”
That’s not my daughter,
that’s a monster.
A shard of glass among the flowers.
Pawning us against them,
Her against him
In game that has no victors.
when all is lost
it hurts depending on family and friends
stuck starting over from the bottom
trying to work back up again
...
with all my past experience
and for a man of my age
being forced to work a kids position
and must settle for miminal wage
i've worked all over the country
done almost everything
high positions--high salaries
now i must live below my means
now im out here hustling
doing all types of odd jobs
pawning everything-hauling straps
whatever it takes not to rob
you would think with all my talent
my resume would speak for itself
but now i realize how relevant
that i must take whatever job that left
and everyone i seen going up
was still movin up on my way down
did'nt think i'd ever be down on my luck
that's why it;s so hard to get off the ground
humm all those so called friends
that i thought had my back
could'nt be found no-where when
i need them to take up some slack
but i geuss the inflation hit everyone
so i really cant get mad
just need to stop sitting here pondering
bout all the good jobs i had
for none of that really matters now
what i'd gathered at the end
is im stuck starting over at the bottom
trying to work my way back up again
I met the dear man I would marry
Quite by some lucky chance
At big neighborhood dance.
He attended with my cousin Harry.
Harry left with a girl name of Kitty,
Pawning me off on him
The dear friend he called Jim,
Who stayed with me, I feared, out of pity.
Jim asked me if I cared to dance.
The dance music had charms,
And floating there in his arms
Was the start of a lifelong romance.
WHY IS IT?
Why is it that I cannot run?
Why is it that every corner I turn?
Why is it that he still stands there?
Why is it that I remember him?
Remember him when I lie awake?
Why can I still taste her lips?
Why should I,
I be tormented with the memory?
The memory of yet another?
Never has one been above the other?
How could it be, that I see him?
So fit and trim?
And there she is with him…
Happy as can be?
But do I see that?
No…
I see hate,
I see anger,
I see pain.
How can I move on,
When all I feel is disgust?
What is this disgusting behavior?
It brings me to my knees at night
Calls me out as a monster.
And still I loathe her
I can remember the way she tasted
Still I cannot forget…
The light at night…
It has grown dim, and the moving on,
the moving on has begun,
Time has passed
Time has dawned.
There she stands, pawning her heart
Dealing with all the same emotions
Where am I?
Where am I?
Am I still there?
Am I still here?!
Where is she?
moved on, like the wind
It brings change,
it hands over another.
A memory of a lover.
yet, not one was above the other?
How could I?
Could I be pretentious?
Could I be the dead?
OR am I the rising?
Fighting my way to the top?
To the top?
Only to realize?
Realize that the ground,
The ground is so,
So far below me.
The higher I get, the harder…
The harder it is to breathe
The more painful my mistakes become.
So then when yet another comes to me?
Will I pass her up?
Will I try too hard?
Or try not enough?
Or
Or will I be the end of my own demise?
Sweating red,
breathing blood?
bringing curses from my lips for a memory
A memory of the past?
Will I take what I know?
Will I take it to burn it?
OR can I take it to help another?
How is it that it screams so much?
That it screams so much at me?
Could it be, that she feels it to?
That which she is of yet another?
Not yet better than another?
How much will it hurt her?
Will it hurt her if I fail to be more?
More than less of my past?
My past that is forever in me?
Or will it cause me to be the victim?
The casualty?
The culprit of it all?
Will I drag her down with me?
How can it be?
Should I flee the feeling?
The feeling?
Oh the feeling…
It makes my skin crawl,
It makes it peel.
Will what is underneath,