Best Prickly Poems

The gifted house and the ghost of his Grandmother trapped him. Her presence clung with the leftover nicotine to the walls of every room. A childless marriage and a rancid divorce left its bile in the scum atop the kitchen counters—rust-rings on the bathroom’s porcelain....

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Clustered cactus trees sprawling, reclining in the summer heat
where agile pollinators dart among gorgeous silky blooms.
Day by day the prickly pear fruit swell and mature.
Already the mind conjures visions of red,
magenta, pink, yellow and white.

thriving on spring rain
deep-rooted fantasy
mellifluent desires

Experience has shown that the best...

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Prickly pear cactus
Beautiful yellow blooms, sticks
Thorns, gives food somehow...

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I recall when my son went to grow his first mustache.
After the manly thrill, of shaving once a week had passed.

He'd spend an hour in the bath, gelling hair so straight up it would stick.
Then he'd come down to breakfast, strutting his upper lip.

I tried...

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impaled am I
want as pierced as need…
thorns of your soul...

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nine rare **** lickers
In Kim’s windows
Sitting on thorns


Ah.....Sew! poem by Deborah Guzzi (Contest)...

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There was a rumor that I heared ‘bout Pete
Goin’ and committin’ matrimony—
But that’s likely as ol’ Scratch getting’ beat,
And who said it is full of baloney!

But John-Bob done says he was the best man
And shore nuff Prickly went and tied the knot—
But I cain’t see...

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Tie a knot and find the spot. Stick it in and soon the fun will begin.

It’s a synch, a tiny pinch, a little cough, and whoosh you’re off.

Just stick with me I’ll take away your misery. Old young used and new there’s 
nothing I can’t...

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Your love, like cactus fruit
its tiny teeth sharp and taunting,
needling the flesh of my soul

you hide behind bold hues
and a spiny point of view,
failing your tenderness

but there's nothing sweeter in nature,
I've tasted its core,
my tongue dribbling succulent sips
of slipped slurs and
sappy sentiments

so I will gather...

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Ol’ Prickly was dead, shot down with hot lead, and all of his friends did grieve—
But so it now seems, they fell for his schemes – he owned money before he did leave.
“In that dern cuss, I put all my trust,” said Rod, “but he...

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If anyone supposes
That life should be a bed of roses
How boring this would be
With no diversity
Roses have prickles the blossom exposes...

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The prickly pear cactus is frozen
And the plant has toppled over
As the temperature rises, clouds cover
And the plant thaws will it spring approval
In the spring will it be a trooper
With the instinct for survival all over



(This was the morning that Cody had phone calls at...

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I glimpsed a funny sight the other day;
A cactus with a mindset of its own,
Which seeking out a horizontal path
With comic singularity had grown.

The poet,with a self-reflective eye
Considered this quite unexpected course
At times she too had wandered from the path
And deviated from the true light...

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He ain’t prickly, he’s my brother I said.
Full of quills though, right? Asked my neighbor Fred
Not awful, tolerable actually, cushy even,
This was thrown in by my best friend Steven.

You mean you ride on his back? A little one queried.
Yes I said, and I am not...

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Ol’ Pete he had a new gal friend that he wanted to prank—
His idear was to shoot her silhouette like Buckskin Frank!

It was Frank Leslie that first shot holes all around his girl—
So Pete thought he’d do it too or at least give it a...

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