Best Shafted Poems


Premium Member Truckers Shut It Down

We need to send a message for Washington to hear
We need to make a statement and make it loud and clear
Leave rigs double parked in every town
Come on truckers. Shut it down
Block the highways. Set your course.
Show our politicians a united force
Politicians! While you're kissing babies remember this
We've got something you can kiss
We wanted a leader. We got a clown.
So let's go truckers. Shut it down.

                       It is time to start sending a message to our OPEC owned and 
operated congresss. If you can't stop the oil gougiing prices, we can stop the 
entire country. What happens if the last of the American cowboys, the truck 
drivers, unite? If they double park their rigs on the interstates all over the country, 
unhook them and leave them there? These guys are getting shafted by the same 
people who subsidize airlines so the executives can milk the living hell out of it. 
Meanwhile, not only the independent, but any small trucking company can't afford 
to stay in business. It is time to shut it down

Shafted

Bobby Aiken was proud to be Scotch.
As a pole-vaulter he was top-notch.
But on one faulty try
he became a soprano guy,
having been poled crack-on in the crotch.

This Land

When I awoke this morning
The sunny scape was grand
I realized I'm squatting here 
On someone else's land

Someone who for centuries 
Had roamed this vast terrain
Mostly uninhabited
In sun and wind and rain

Who cherished all its bounty
The spirits will atest
Who gazed on all its beauty
Their friendship was the best

Owning but belonging to
In perfect harmony
Owing only to the creatures
For sustainability 

Someone now who roams no more
Confined by his oppressor 
The guest who once was welcome 
Your governing aggressor 

With water you could walk on
Just no way to strive
Total persecution  
A struggle to survive 

Residential Schools
The Highway of Tears
Murdered and Missing Women
Count them through the years

I'm pretty sure I bought it
Worked hard all my life 
To build our house upon
My children and my wife 

Maybe I was shafted 
And didn't even know
Maybe they're good at it?
I'm here to tell you so

I won't be satisfied
Til my friends are on the mend
Til we can wander far and wide
But still not even then

When we stand tall and healthy
And proud might do the trick 
When we're all looking down on them
And they're all ducking sick


Frankly

i have crafted and shafted and then re positioned
divulged and indulged to precise disposition 
yet frankly my points are most blunt at the end and my walls tend to fall at the slightest of bends
be it not such a bridge but a try at amends, with a friend who is quite hard of hearing
come step in my cauldron both women and children, these are the crimes i admit to both willinging and wildered
For i am the poet of pilgrims ,
what was left has been pillaged and raped, and only i who had managed escape
have been left to rebuild from the timbers

Which Cartoon Character Would You Be

If we could pick a cartoon character
To represent the kind of people we are
I think I'd be lightning Mcqueen
because he's my kind of car. 

Powerful and very fast
A paint job of gleaming red
Kind of says I'd be dangerous
and steaming hot in bed . 
lol

I know my girlfriend would be a lawyer
and to some that might seem strange
but when Sally and I retired each night
A lawyer would be getting shafted for a change.

Mater would be my perfect friend 
Loyal and reliable as good friends ought to be
I would always be there for him
and I know he'd be there for me.

I would listen to Doc Hudson
and the sheriff would get no trouble from me
But if you had to pick a cartoon character
What character would you be?

A Flame Once Burned

A Flame Once Burned

The new girl gathered her books as the class bell did ring
That’s when I noticed my heart’s spark began to fling
I followed her to physical Ed
I wanted to say hi but my boldness fled
Shafted by my own lack in doubting
Afraid her truth sparks would be most disheartening 
Next to the fire extinguisher the cafeteria door I did wait
Fueling flame of passion my thoughts which did innovate
I spied her and lingered the more inflamed
But the bow’s arm she tightly did clang
Sadly diminished my heart’s heaping flame
I stood at the door as she and he did pass
This flame which once burned seemingly did not last
Sadden and chard what had flamed so brightly
I bowed my head to walk away drably
But oh, I now gaze upon a most delightful redhead
Perhaps the flame again for her could instead

By Mark A. Goodson
12/3/12


Heart of Mine

A dangerous job 
Shafted as hearts collapse in
Into energy bleed
© Tim B  Create an image from this poem.

Premium Member Blue Coffee

I sipped blue coffee in the morning,
Eyes twitching against bright screens by nine.
The sound of the ocean from the basement office...
The problem is I'm lost in caves.
I try to connect the strand these days but I'm lurking
In and out of caverns of shafted light,
Marked memories.

This is a waterfall that cascades into each day,
Like those Dutch windmills
That carry buckets of water round and round
And then suddenly it's the evening and you're terrified
Of being found.
Though that's what you wanted the whole time.
And at the onset of the night fog you walk soldier-like 
Through hush colors while half-closing doors,
Too alert to go to sleep.

Shine

Light moves, incessantly
Incessantly still, upon observation
Upon observation, the observer is drawn lightly upon the background

Who is the observer, or the observed

Its path is straight and narrow, but fills all
Dark space it does not penetrate, would not exist without it
Dark space it does not penetrate, will someday see its shafted faces, peering, through

The cracks of time

Pure potential
Lacking will, it achieves all
Achieving all, it needs no will

Man, the slow light
With a quick heartbeat
When light and man

Meet
It is the contrast of ourselves
Shines

Premium Member Mind the Mines

Mind The Mines

Deep in the pits he digs with no miner’s lamp in hand to lighten the grime
                     ‘alight’ whisper diminishing grips from the edge of bored winzes whence
the shafted canary slowly progresses towards breathless suffocation

                   Fists in anger palms and realms blistered oozing from purulent scratches
surface subdued in labyrinth’s mazes wretched wrenched and perplexed

               An ossuary with bones and fragmented ember of mental contention crushed
seduced by toxic waters confronting the essence and one final leap for the void

                  Then buried yet glimmering a candle flickers to shine and gold dust blows
 the canary and the miner a kiss of life so that Orpheus finds solace in realisation
              that shadows and light must be married for a way in and way out to emerge

26th November 2016

Snow-Globe 2

Invisible to the eye
he sat
visible to the sky
he sat
the stars opened up
and there was no light
and he felt empty
he felt so empty

Mute to the ear
she sat
slave to her fear
she sat
the stars opened up
and there was no light
and she felt whole again
she felt so whole

Against their will
they met
upon the window-sill
they met
the stars opened up 
and there was no light
with each other to lean on
they felt so shafted

Premium Member An Old Shovel

I'm just an old shovel, who loved spooning around
    Scooping up and over again, the same old ground
    I’ve handled jobs, few others would call profound
    Always piling high, and patting down a big mound
    Some folks leaned on me, if no seats to be found 
    Then gave me a shoulder, when homeward bound
    When on the scrap heap, I never made one sound
    Got shafted damn good... but, I’m on the rebound

Exstinktion Smells

The scencelessness 
Of unscentered 
Aromatic sounds
Sussurational smoke
Key ness obfuskates
Obvious lee unsanitized
Thoughts – fill blank your
Self less lee shellfish
A float buzzes buy
Bye dove egg sun
Shy lull a buyer 
Was here, lost
What plot there wasn’t
A thing she couldn’t 
Undo festooned 
Out go the unlit
Lights in side in
Tell a gentle man
Up the down 
And outside spout
Gushed gobble 
Dee me a racist?
Indiscriminal
Maybe, for sure
Screw me up
More, good unlucky
You won’t unsee
I ever showed
A neutrino stank
Elevator shafted
Son, turn back
Bee’s foretold
Exstinktion smells.

29th May, 2016

Into Your Eyes

INTO YOUR EYES

To look into your eyes                                                                     
is to see passions unfolding...unspoken
but felt                                                
like gossamer clouds,
sensed                                                                                    
like transparent breezes,
thought                                                                                    
like golden shafted arrows flying
from your heart into my soul.               


Thoughts                                                                                
deep...penetrating.


Forever thoughts of love
unspoken...but revealed                                                                  
with every look into your eyes.

Colores Primarios: Amarillo

the very tip of the flame, the

color of shite journalism, “stars

of spectral classes f & g,” a ripe

banana peel, piss full of vitamins

being flushed out, ring around the

collar, chats n’ shafted flickers n’

hammers n’ warblers, emma stone’s

locks prior to her better known dye-

jobs, charlize’s natural locks known

to all moviegoers, lemons, ducks

when portrayed in rubber form at a

county fair, a pedestrian-crossing

street sign, lilium, yellow

chrysanthemums, oenothera,

this color cake is one step in making

a nuke, for the maya it meant

southward, donovan made a killing

with his mellow song addressing it,

a single lamp glowing in a dark room

& echoing visually on the wall,

internationally n’ maritimely this color

flag means the letter “q,” these color

pages used to dominate ones’ ability to

give someone a ring, goldenrod, ½ of a

bumble bee’s color in total, the sun rising

in a clear sky’s early morn.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace