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...

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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
    ...

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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,...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Tall men spit messianic prose
To disciples pawning choice
Their knowledge like a cancer grows
A doppelgänger's endless voice
...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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April...

I didn't know you very well April.
You were the start of spring,
The beginning of new things.
Offering a time for transition,
expressing a sweet song for broken men,
showing that what had withered away once could grow again.
April, I sit here now and think of you as me.
You...

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