Best Scabbed Poems
The golden sun of yesterday
played out in fields of gold
inside the tarping memory of father, handling LIFE
the joyful whistles that he fluted pruned alongside vines
and mothers pumping heart of song lauding in
loud and STRONG
No treason yet no aging bridge no tented hope
just morning glories,
a baby breath away from here
and all the sunlight we'd afford
inside a little yard of sweet explore,
I see,
the lonely eyes of a young girl longing for a friend
a hand held jar for fireflies or butterflies in toe
Pebbles rolled beneath unpaved paths as
dear together raw as butterflies we scabbed our knees
with swivel, in the morning breeze
Like BUTTERFLIES preluding dawn with shiant colors bold,
the summer sun of yesterday played out in fields of gold;
Inside my hiding place a youthful carefree life
still lingers in my heart's enfold,
without the memory, of growing old.
Jan 19, 2019
Sponsor: Emile Pinet
Contest: Free Verse Style Only
Categories:
scabbed, beautiful,
Form:
Free verse
A dark room with a small wooden desk, no lamp
A thick pad of paper and a typewriter, never used
Like a museum exhibit, though they aren’t allowed to gather dust
And dead flies and moths, a pack of playing cards
I never learnt to play, but still they’ve turned yellow with age
The shelves full of books, thumbed and read a million times
The pages fall out sometimes onto the slanted shelf, broken
The cascade of over-used books falling into each other
A literary car crash
The carpet burnt by years of clumsiness, dark and worn
The ceiling stained by years of nicotine, the cigarette smoker
Looking on at a world frozen, the books are the only living things
Read a million times and thumbed to death, the dirty pages blending into each other
The faces and the timeless, frozen authors and poets, trapped here forever
In the corner, a lonely television set, never used and not even plugged in
The lonesome keyboard, beaten a million times, my voice recorded
The German tongue, screamed above piano murder, the manslaughter of my violin
A cultural car crash
The curtains, white to ivory to ashen, unopened in an age
Time to let the world come in through the never-before-seen window
I sit upon the bed and watch the silhouettes gather, their vagabond army
Creeping over everything with their tired and dirty little hands
The books I’ve read to death, the literary suicide, gathering in a spot of light
Like flocking birds fleeing for the winter, their matted feathers and scabbed legs
They can’t fly anywhere, trapped here, my favourite victims, dead within the covers,
Like broken pigeons trapped within damning cages. I close the door and leave
The untouched car crash
Categories:
scabbed, car, world, books, dark,
Form:
Free verse
They say to worship to get back into church
That all I need do is fall to my knees and repent
Then all this personal pain he will prevent
To kneel and pray to “The Soveriegn God”
Well, my knees are bruised and scabbed
Where is this God of yours I ask
Guess I’m not really a fan of his work
As I walk through this existence
Sufferring is all I see
War in the desert neverending
Children dying so young
Little boys and girls raped by the clergy
Destruction Hate Crimes against humanity
Where is this God of yours I ask
They say Christianity is the way
Well, bullsh!t! That’s what I say.
Categories:
scabbed, angst, death, life, people,
Form:
Dare ye! Dare ye!
Dare ye unlock the tomb
release the musty words of fear
unleash the vitriol of anger
upon the rusted lockset
Freedom does not free one
from the mind’s dungeon
nor sweeten the stench
of clutched bitterness
Dare ye step away
deny the bindings power
to entrap us as we flee
the burden of being free
Scars are not the price we pay
only reminders of its sting
scabbed testament to a will
that would not bend
Dare ye breathe
the breath of who we are
leave behind the shadow
of what we had become
Shed tears that cleanse
blurred opaque vision
smile through the pain
of joy’s remembrance?
©John G. Lawless
4/5/2017
Categories:
scabbed, introspection,
Form:
Free verse
Born for awareness,
the mind spins stagnant
while thoughts
remain hidden
with scabbed over pain.
The soul weeps
in darkness.
Janet L Vick
Free Verse
Categories:
scabbed, life,
Form:
Free verse
T’was yesterday
dipping toes in the water,
telling tales by the campfire,
eager to walk the trails and unafraid
tasting life...
T’was yesterday
spent chasing dreams
as storms overwhelmed the future.
The painted rainbow endings vanished,
became a childish fantasy...
T’was yesterday
when the smile fled to memories.
Steps faltered in scabbed over pain,
an unhealed grief
filled with life’s doubts...
T’was yesterday,
a seventh-day meal tasted in solitude
bound hope.
The silhouette of depression’s hunger
dissolved by light.
T’was yesterday
the trust of a child
deemed the heart worthy.
Love blossomed from healing touches
into new growth.
Janet Vick
Free Verse
Categories:
scabbed, life, loss, love,
Form:
Free verse
The air on board was foul and putrid.
Chained together at the ankle in
coffles, evil dragged me and others
with scabbed lips on board.
Humiliated under the sun, we were
stripped naked and examined from
head to toe and put in quarters to
be raped.
My senses dulled from abuse, bouts
of hunger with nausea, constipation
and headaches made me sick.
The hallucinations from the forlorn
distance sent shivers down my spine
as lulling whispers of shackles
tormented me.
The anchor was set up, huge sails
caused the ship to fly amidst ominous
looming dark clouds.
Thunder rumbled like a hungry monster.
Cold breeze swept across the ship as i
lay numb from the pain for months.
Heavy cowhide descended on my
shrinking flesh and manacled limbs.
I grieved yesterday’s anguish as the
sacred zeal in my bosom glowed
preceding with my woes.
A raised wooden stage welcomed
me ashore.
Naked, exposed to the sun’s piercing
beam, bids were tallied carefully.
Negotiations were made, i now
belonged to “massa”.
Working the heat in the plantations
under harsh conditions, my back ached
and wounds from the whipping from the
overseer hurt – my fingers bled from
picking cotton.
Mentally subdued, i hid behind religion’s
soothing balm.
My mind was no longer my own, this body
belonged to “massa”.
I constantly pranced in the hallowed night,
lamenting a hopeless future for my child-
humming a languid song in hope that my
ancestors might hear my plight.
I raised my head to the sky, and envisioned
freedom’s caress under a constellation.
Categories:
scabbed, black african american, slavery,
Form:
Ode
Wales 980 BC, Sierra Leone, Congo,Niger, Peru, India, Pakistan, Russia, China & Philippines
Chapped scabbed skin, dirt encrusted, blue-pallid in the moonlight;
stars glow radiant light, wolf howl midnight.
Insects stir, skin scratch, tangled hair amass
naked ,as born, rise; the bore hole calls, days task.
Cracked like a seagulls eggs, the cave’s opening calls.
The gold-red-green copper metal's worth all,
child moles, mother moles, dwarfs small, crawl;
between the crevasse in the knocker's wall.
Three hand spans wide, a mere two foot tall;
oil burns in claywells, soot coats on dirty faces,
through rankness they squirm, hands on bone awls;
naked children, and women mine in these places
for raw metal to make the weapons of man.
In before dawn, baskets full, haul, out at dusk, no sun at all....
melt the metal, make, maul,
for the warriors, our defense, hunger gnaws, this makes no sense….
Grease fills the air beyond despair, stench fills each venous vein;
contorted forms, of those small, helpless, born, fills the shunt with continual pain.
From the dawn of time, this drama's had play,
one hundred and fifty eight million children; slaves today.
Women and children sacrificed so men can get paid.
*sorry topic deserves more than 16 lines
Categories:
scabbed, child,
Form:
Verse
Who’s on top?
Really,
You didn’t know that it’s a contest?
After all,
There can only be one
Poet Laureate can’t there?
Both’s fingernails are bleeding,
Both’s knees are scraped and scabbed,
Both sweating profusely from the strain
Of climbing the sheer rocky face of passion,
Their injuries mostly self-inflicted.
(All poets are born stinkers!)
Poetry is not a day at the beach
Where the only hazards
Are forgotten suntan lotion,
Or that your Mai Tai is low
Because service is not up to par.
Or a day on the golf course
Where your only gain is
A lighter wallet, which cannot really serve you
At your next Weight-Watchers weigh-in.
Apoplexy coloring your future
As yet another ball lands in the drink.
And certainly not a game of tennis
Where service is de rigueur, isn’t it?
Though I swear,
There is more Physics in women’s outfits,
(Action/Reaction - You know!
Do women ever play fair?)
Than in any momentum, spin, or angle
A man can even contemplate.
So who’s on top?
Ask the woman!
Does ‘top’ even matter?
She’s where she wants to be.
A man can only dream! Ha!
Brian Johnston
October 21, 2014
Categories:
scabbed, funny, gender, poets,
Form:
Blank verse
I wish I could untie my tongue --
find courage, strength to shine
light upon those least illumined
recesses still hidden from public
view, shielded and scabbed over
like festering raw wounds...must I
accept that there will never be a time
when, freely, I can express my "me"--
that one among those other "me"s
I've not displayed? Depending upon
circumstances-- places and the hour --
perhaps I may set out at least a tiny
kernel of myself -- but I will never
ever tell, and can never be expected
to expose to this world's cold
unwelcoming climate my failing,
fragile, damaged -- pitiful -- but
still barely beating bloody heart.
.
Categories:
scabbed, 9th grade, absence, age,
Form:
Free verse
Prayer to the Stone of Sobriety
Under a purple flannel-like sheet, but not as soft;
As warm as flannel-but hotter,
I am sweating.
The flannel shroud soaks up my sweat like my liver soaks up venom
I see angry tigers approaching from the ceiling above where I lay;
Tigers coming to rip the walls of my mortal gut.
Oh, Bacchus, send your vengeful tigers away
What did I ever do to you?
The sheet protects me from sunlight, but not from myself;
Nor am I shielded from Bacchus’ tigers; and not from my sweat.
Beads of toxic perspiration roll across swollen eyelids.
I press my cracked lips firmly together as if to scream silently to scare the tigers.
A poison tiger in my body torments my heart,
Pressing its scabbed paw firmly against my veins
Each pulse of the baneful blood pushes against my forehead as the tiger roars
And Bacchus begins to laugh.
Oh, wine, Oh drink, Oh smoke and pill
Who put you in my shriveled stomach?
Who breathed you into my cancerous lung?
What did I ever do to you?
A heave of tepid vomit snaps like a leather whip through my throat!
Tigers hate the taste of vomit.
Bacchus’ hatred is repulsed by its smell.
The tigers stop with one last press upon my forehead.
The sweat-soaked purple cloth is flung back from my shaking body by an unknown woman.
The wet pile of purple sheet crystallizes on the corner of my pyre.
It solidifies, as does my resolve, to keep Bacchus and the tigers at bay.
The mound of purple quartz is tethered to my body by a cord of desperation.
Oh wine, Oh drink. You too, smoke and pill,
The blue of hope and red of blood join forces to guard me from your tiger claws.
My sobriety hangs in the balance.
It hangs around my neck like a stone
That has the weight of three large hogs.
It hangs around my neck like a young woman, not yet a noose.
Like the woman who was commissioned by ancient Greeks to keep me sober.
Oh, sober Amethyst
Like ancient Bacchus, I cry
Tears of sweat over my drunkenness
Ashamed enough to die; but I cannot
Your generous gift of recovery is free.
What did I ever do to deserve your sober generosity?
Be my stone of sobriety;
You are my receptacle of thought and habit.
Heal me, oh purple goddess.
Protect this mortal from my internal tigress
Guard me with the weight of purple stone.
Oh, stone of sobriety, heal this mortal fool.
Categories:
scabbed, addiction, prayer, recovery from,
Form:
Free verse
Scrawny Kid
Part one
Do you remember that Scrawny kid?
What’s his name in Class 4D,
Constantly holding on to himself,
Running out of class, desperate for a pee.
Never had a Handkerchief,
Always wore Green sleeves.
Spiky hair and worn out shoes,
That smell that made us heave.
Talked with a nervous stutter,
and didn’t have a special friend.
Kept forgetting his homework,
Lame excuses he couldn’t defend.
Remember when it came to Sports,
My God he got some stick,
Absolutely useless at everything,
Always the last to get picked.
His Jumper had massive holes in it,
Knees bloodied, scabbed and cut,
Couldn’t answer any questions,
Empty head, brain closed tight shut.
We knew he was going nowhere,
Just another life, under achiever.
Then my jaw dropped to the floor,
I’m no longer a disbeliever.
Part Two
Yes, that’s it, now I recall his name,
Scrawny Luke Took, from Class 4D.
Well, not so Scrawny anymore,
Torso carved like, a great Oak tree.
Not the sort you’d push around,
Runs a Gym down Knightsbridge way.
Tailor made suits, slick black hair,
and a motivational speaker, they say.
Married to a Hollywood Actress,
Drives a flashy Ferrari Car.
Has his own range of fragrance,
One thing is true, he’s definately gone far.
His handkerchiefs are made of silk,
Sleeves of finest Green Kashmir,
No longer that nervous stutter,
Oozing confidence for all to hear.
Never did his homework, way back then,
But clearly didn’t do him no harm.
The perfect city gentleman,
With a wealth of talent and charm.
So, he didn’t have an empty head,
And knew where is destiny lay,
Don’t be fooled by the Scrawny kid,
He’ll be better than us all one day.
Categories:
scabbed, career, character, childhood, courage,
Form:
Rhyme
Scarlet woman rides the Beast,
whose star ariseth in the east;
thou wilt make a man thy feast.
Smeared with lies, thy pan is greased;
that first is most and last is least.
You stretch your sagging withered arms,
and draw the dead with deathly charms.
O' thou wretched boney hag,
whose garment is a filthy rag.
Corrupt within and all without.
Thy legs are full of gruesome gout.
Thy skin is scabbed, and open sores.
Thy make-up cakes upon thy pores.
Thy mouth, in smile, is nought but rot.
Upon thy hands, the leper's spot.
The stench of carcass in thy bowels.
Thy refuse clings upon thy towels.
You stretch your sagging withered arms,
And draw the dead with deathly charms.
They come to you, their mother dear,
and let you whisper in their ear.
You tell them what they want to hear.
You never caused a soul to fear,
that Christ may very soon appear.
Categories:
scabbed, allegory, christian, dark, evil,
Form:
Rhyme
the blood is pounding in my ears,
The sounds of the cafeteria are utterly drowned out.
Her round, pink lips, mouthing obscenities at me
As her fists rain down on my face and chest,
Legs straddle me, scabbed knees on broken tile.
I should be in pain,
But I am elated, finally, she touches me.
Her short red and brown hair is matted against
Her face. Salty sweat and tears trickle onto my shirt.
The blood from my broken nose and busted lips
Cover her blouse.
I am at home with her pain-other students, not
Understanding, gather around our scene. Hateful,
Piercing blue eyes hidden behind a sheen of tears.
I have long since let her vent, shaking
She falls forward, her arms around my neck.
Carrots and Grilled cheese scattered
Around the dodge ball line, where our
Bodies lay still. She sobs.
My eyes swell, a reddish pink that will darken
To lavender, a mouth full of copper blood is what
I deserve. Hot, sticky fluids soaked clothes
Like a feverish dream, our bodies convulse;
Memories like a highlight reel flash as a custodians
Calloused hands bring a mop and bucket.
Blood pools around, a thick aroma wafts into hearts.
I didn’t mean to hurt her, I shouldn’t
Have said what I said. He was a fool,
He never loved you.
He was our best friend
Her Ode to Joy, my partner in crime,
A hero to me, her first crush.
There’s a surprise in all flesh
And I hope one day she finds it.
Categories:
scabbed, confusion, girlfriend-boyfriend, loss, lost
Form:
Light Verse
We have lived a false life, you and I,
Chasing halcyon dreams through chaos and despair;
We have ventured beyond the brink,
And only just returned – with weakened knees
And tremulous smiles, our hearts bruised anew
In clandestine partnership we defied the gods,
Breached life’s stony contract, and delved,
Greedily, into Pandora’s box…
Like happy-go-lucky children together we forded the Styx,
Splashing like toddlers in a paddling pool,
Swallowing mouthfuls of strychnine like cough syrup
And at the charred gates we paid our sovereign dues,
So that we might be allowed in,
To that candy store of the damned and deviant,
Where at last we tasted it, the crumbled sugar dust of death;
Laced with a vaporous tang of bittersweet destruction –
What an addictive delight it was, what a charmer,
And yet such a fickle mistress…
Yet blithe as fools we ate it like air,
And belched our ruin into the grim abyss
But no surprise perhaps, perverted souls that we are,
We gloried in our self destruction,
For masochism runs in our veins like blood,
Leading us a merry marionette jig
Down all the pathways of Hell,
Through the Seven accursed Seals
And at last to the feet of the Devil himself
Where we kneel on scabbed knees and kiss his blackened feet
For us it is a party trick, a dance on burning embers,
With our demise hanging over our heads like a bleak piñata
Just waiting to be crushed between Satan’s obsidian thumbs
Oh fools you might call us, and you’d be right
Common sense we lack, a gaping hole between our liver and heart,
Yet daring we have a-plenty, bursting through our pores;
A mad light shines in our pin-needle eyes, we cackle like rooks,
And feast on death as vultures gorge themselves on reeking carrion
For in the end it all tastes the same, and the out come is always,
Unconditionally and irrevocably -
Death
Categories:
scabbed, angst, death, girlfriend-boyfriend
Form:
Free verse