Best Shelving Poems
A little ways north of Mill Creek
the beach runs round
to a single wide arcing swath
Where the tide stems landward in shattered segments
fast against the open mouth
of sea and sand and barnacle
There is also a cliff near the free stone rising
above the under-base of a million waves
throttling a darkened face
Somewhere out of sight
from landlocked eyes
salt water still churns
And churns for a million years
oblivious to the damage
inflicted on the crumbling mass
It's as if the big bass drum
of agonies from time immemorial
strums a one note dirge
And thereby summons the shelving mist
to curtail the pitiful death
from the tired eyes of a dumbfounded poet
Who loiters in the wet hiss
like a reporter in search of tragedy
and finding none, returns to home
Categories:
shelving, beach, , memorial,
Form:
Free verse
I Wait With Bated Breath...
(slack jaw froze mine countenance
when eyes blinded with figurative
daggers asper mistakes in original draft,
hence...this flood proof, fire resistant,
and fever reducing error free version.)
(yes...yes...yes, this rhyme
resembles a recent one of mine
from a previous time,
yet appropriating wands zone writing
haint no crime -
at least not yet!)
Okay bull heave me you,
at this moment
alm completely unaware
what the a muse zing
genie of poetic
inspiration will bring
possibly shelving what Calliope
holds in store for me,
meanwhile now
with impatience it ching
visa vis to discover
what this Earthling,
(albeit modest) will be amazingly
graced with pizazz, meanwhile aye fling
haphazardly, indiscriminately,
and jocosely blitz
krieg feebly attempting
to contrive ingeniousness emits
poetic prestidigitation in fits
and starts, sans "FAKE" wits
as this humble
human imperceptibly orbitz
around mister Sun,
(which about bajillion years
from now suddenly quits)
shining foisting misery,
where Nyx knocks
(paddy whack give
my dog a bone...) divinely,
knowingly and spiritedly visits
(believe me you) this trumpeting
stupid moron loser
forever doth taint
after this moment
(no need tubby saint
lee and suppress any quaint
gut wrenching chortle)
at what aint
no farce), nor literary feint
yours truly painfully,
sorrowfully, and verily avers,
he now lacks fire and fury
(as if nettled and docked by burrs)
nonetheless, which ambition
dust hanker mink thinks furs,
and foremost (Tom
morrow i.e. purrs
sues tha owl mighty,
where fame posthumously spurs
me amidst pantheon
of great writers
which dream dashed
into a million,
(no...no...no...not
bajillion this instance,
though good guess) pieces
abysmal silence replacing
(palimpsest like),
mine over active imagination whirs.
Categories:
shelving, 12th grade, 9th grade,
Form:
Free verse
She walked into my universe
silently as her lovely smile.
Rarely such beauty is preserved
Bar, perhaps, a Grecian profile:
some alabaster sculptured head
Cold, soulless in a museum
Of a venerable Greek, long dead;
Or maybe an athenaeum
Where I have found her while reading
Looking down at me in the silence
from a vast book-laden shelving.
I overcame my ambivalence
When her face appeared before me
a visage, smiling demurely.
Categories:
shelving, beauty, universe,
Form:
Verse
A desired flavorsome taste
wanting a cure of a dried out mouth
leading to a mindlessness of waste
liquidly solving a quenching drought
Numbing a charisma of memories
longing for the hazy shades
wiping away loathed theories
a smoldering fetish that slowly fades
A quenched lurch of lust
beggars a sad lonely time
shelving the shell of trust
left only a bitter slice of lime
Muddled thoughts left dehydrated
sidelined by disgust
feelings abandoned and un-exhilarated
a film coated tasting of must.
Drenched and soaked to the bone
blurred eyed and bleary
a time not to be left alone
it's time to play for me, a memory.
Categories:
shelving, sadtime,
Form:
I’m not sure what’s happening in this country…sometimes I think it’s being overrun by fools…in some states they’re banning books…in my state, Florida, they’re banning talking about gender and sexuality in schools.
While closing up the bookstore the other night I was thinking how crazy can this be…
as I was re-shelving one of the books they’ve banned in Tennessee.
Topics not allowed to be discussed…books not allowed to be read…I don’t have the words to express my sadness and dismay…so I walked around our bookstore and listened to what the voices around me had to say.
Kurt Vonnegut was first to speak…at how banning book displeases:
“I hate”, he said, “that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas, as though they were diseases”.
Mart Twain was next on banning speech and books…he doesn’t want to see us do it:
“Censorship”, he said, “is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby cannot chew it”.
Next stood Benjamin Franklin…with his willingness to teach
“Whoever wold overthrow the liberty of a nation,” he said, “must begin by subduing the freeness of its speech”.
Stephen Chbosky waited his turn in the bookstore to be heard that night:
He said, “banning books gives us silence when we need speech…
it closes our ears when we need to listen
and it makes us blind when we need sight”.
Isaac Asimov weighted in next…he was succinct in what he was conceding:
“Any book worth banning," he’s said, “is a book that is worth reading.”
Up and down the bookstore I walked listening to a multitude of authors from the present and past…and fortunately for me…I saved the best for last..
It was Maya Angelou whose words are always inspiring, thought provoking and wise…She said, “You may kill me with your hatefulness but still, like air…I rise”.
I thanked Maya and all the other authors for their insights as I turned off all the lights
Then wished them a calm and peaceful sleep as I locked up for the night
Filled with hope that for those who want to ban books and speech…there will come a day when they will take a walk through a bookstore or a library and listen to what the voices have to say,
Categories:
shelving, freedom,
Form:
Rhyme
A pair pulling their weight
sandwiching the meat of my literary treasure
~ shelving their showstopping good looks
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Categories:
shelving, word play,
Form:
Other
Here's another straight off the bat,
some people will construde this as rap.
but its much more than that...
Its a window of opportunity,
my own little immunity.
From the disease which is community.
The conformity is overwhelming,
catagorised like shelving.
We can be bought, I'm just delving...
Deeper into the conditioning,
Cos i heard!! ya wasn't listening.
even tho your just visiting.
Its a day to remember, this star is glistening.
you've been waiting for a supernova.
The death of me, its never over.
Here is where I leave my legacy.
Fear not my recipe,
If followed correctly ya won't worry about the mess that we...
have made.
Categories:
shelving, life,
Form:
Rhyme
cravings, like niggling whispers,
flit on covered tables
skitter on the floorboards
shiver nerves like humming cables
racing up my backbone
trembling spinal pathways
as I dive for pantry's knob
in a glucose fired craze
tearing through the shelving
jumping for the flour
cracking eggs like gunshots
batter stacked like sugar'd towers
but wait! oh, no! there's something wrong
a final crucial piece!
recipe's cruel words laugh off the page
will this torture never cease?!
"...paraffin for stable rounds
synthesize the compound well
melted into pyrex mixing bowls..."
I swear I fell another level in Hell
slashing through the shelving,
(broke the icebox's fragile handle)
finally, with fevered eye,
spot her stash of scented candles
by now I'd reached a fever'd pitch
impatient I just tossed the batter in
staring at the brutish countdown
nervous capered guilty sin
at last my tortured moments
over with these steaming treats
cackling like a madman
at this half-baked pastry feat
but flaccidly they fell off
spatula and spoon
crumbled burnt and formless
I swear I cried out like a loon!
but no set back could stop me
as I snatched up those candle stacks
biting crumbled chocolate pieces
while gnawing chunky scented wax
sated, I sit gluttonous
sprawled out on the floor
burbled aromatic belches
gob of wax sat at my core!
when she came down looking
for a fruity sconce to put next to bed
I shrug and counsel guiltily
we could just touch a match right to my head...
Categories:
shelving, humor,
Form:
She came in for some groceries
With cane and darkened glasses
Slow the pace and smiling
A Saturday event
Others rushed not knowing
Her need for human comfort
Simple talk and flesh-press
Would keep her smiling yet.
Apartment was a still place
With photos of the loves gone
Figurines of Doulton
Those treasures obsolete
Maidens bright on hilltop
And windswept their long dresses
Eyes that flashed a future
And oh so tiny feet.
But the feet now pained her
And memories came up sketchy
Products in this market
Confusing as of late
Then she saw me shelving
For dairy and for frozen
Felt that here was someone
To listen and relate.
Categories:
shelving, beautiful, good morning, old,
Form:
Rhyme
Dangling edges
sharpening remarks
spewing anger
seething kettle
whistling tunes
chiming remorse
overflowing bath
steaming kettle
whining brewing
coffees aromatherapy
sweetening words
silencing librarys
cataloging books
shelving memories
reoccurring nightmares
unfolding pages
turning lies
waiting patiently
sitting under
currents churning
butter spreading
distasteful rumors
floating boats
sinking emotions
erupting fights
unsettling anger
surfacing tears
dropping arms
dealing cards
reading palm
trees rustling
breeze blowing
bubbles forming
habits repeating
cycles abusing
boundaries encircling
egos clashing
symbols ringing
meaningful sounds
exploding tempers
flaring igniting
fires burning
Categories:
shelving, confusion, courage, destiny, fire,
Form:
Free verse
I hear their idle chatter and wish that sound was optional.
A box checked in a menu, a simple click and forget.
The rapid dilation of my pupils brings me back.
Back to hypnotic aisles of temptation and necessity. A selection of the finest they say.
Right there see, on the cardboard, next to charts and columns of calories and strange
numbers I’d sooner forget.
But buy one get one free still gets me every time.
I stare intently at the dancing numbers until the man with the tie moves away.
Glossy pages shine brighter than the fruit racks they mirror,
Competing for importance in my wallet and my life
The magpie wins and the bananas will wait.
Half the magazines hawk five a day in rounded sans serif, bold against the background of a
chef’s haircut.
Maxims of bizarre cosmopolitan playboys and hustlers marked up at 3.99. Landscapes of
polished flesh glow beneath the loving airbrush of the paycheck. Competing for nuts at the
zoo.
A vanity fair for the hollow, shining in the fading light of a red top sunset.
Paraphrased blogs and condensed morsels of crude celebrity nudes for the I-Generation and
the remnants of New Labour and Thatcher’s Britain.
Anglers, caravans and 50 cent, half the demographic, half the price. Count me out.
I finger a few and find no real desire. The Internet offers this bilge up for free.
They’d all be nude and crapping on each other.
The great silicon toilet of humanity
Past freezers of long dead prisoners, pulped to perfection. Pigs in tubes and flat cow
concoctions.
Pancakes of vomit and fish dishes I won’t ever try. No time for it.
Frankenstein's monster behind glass slides.
Packets of sugar in various disguises. Cereal and chocolate, soft drinks and sauce dips.
Lattes and ladles, loofahs and loaves. The prattle returns through the shelving
I turn around the curries and there is the tie. Talking sport and hard drinking, women and
the weather. Looks me in the eye.
I turn before any interaction and feign interest in something, a scouring pad. Intricately
woven metal coils waste major concentration and he’s gone. Box checked, minimize and move on.
Everything shines in this weird three-quarter light, hypnotic. Confusing. Conscious of the
bottles ahead that I can’t ever touch. Seedy and appealing, puerile and appalling.
Something for everyone.
And nothing for me.
Categories:
shelving, computer-internet, funny, life, people,
Form:
Prose Poetry
Santa was fast asleep in the workshop
When a prankster caused a balloon to POP
It was that naughty elf
Who now sits on a shelf
But can't cause trouble cuz he's just a prop
No others liked that creepy little troll
Shelving him would keep him under control
Mrs. Claus said to me,
"That one's such a bully!
He doesn't belong here at the North Pole!"
Somehow, he got loaded on Santa's sleigh
And after the reindeer had flown away
He tried to take the reins
Santa put him in chains
'Ho, ho, ho." He dropped him on the freeway
Categories:
shelving, abuse, bullying, christmas,
Form:
Limerick
It could never contain these things inside,
they amass so high –mountains of them
Whispers from the many who have ventured in,
now silent echoes heard till its rhythm stops
Weakness pays a visit now and then to interrupt
the day to day pulse, adding things to make it drip-drop…
I can see pain whenever I want, just peer through its scrapbook,
edge worn pictures of the many who still whisper litter the pages
Some days I have no use for it; it gets beaten so badly, unrecognizable...
I excuse it from function, I shelf it, it can serve its purpose some other day
One day soon maybe I’ll lock the doors, shut all out and purge the halls,
seek the dark corners where voices still whisper and relieve the books of its photographs
Reward those who took liberty with it with an onslaught of my own,
riding on the wings of vengeance as I send pain in search for a new home
I guess this won’t change my vital organ of flesh,
still unable to hold what it produces, none for the better I suppose
Doomed by its addiction to the matters of its namesake,
no ride of retribution can cure it, nor rash recourse redress it…
Since the Sculptor’s last bit of clay produced it –it has been strong in its beat
and pinned to the sleeve of my life, where like many it will remain precariously exposed
Shielding it will only reduce its splendor, a sun masked behind an overcast of guarded feelings….
Sealing its doors, hardens it; shelving it lends to atrophy; sending indiscriminate flames throughout its contours will cleanse love and pain alike
Let whispering voices echo its halls, and allow its library of annals to provide a refuge for pictures,
Love will have a place in it to live and to die and with both provide aging testimony of immortal words…
Written 10 December 2013 at North KAIA -Kabul, Afghanistan (North Kabul International Airport)
Categories:
shelving, heart, heartbreak, heartbroken, love,
Form:
Free verse
This last day of February two thousand nineteen
Southeastern Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
unlikely to be inundated with heavy snowy scene
methinks buds will burst early issuing royal green
carpeting landscape, sans expert architects queen
"Mother Nature" commences to baptize spilling
purity, sans cerulean bajillion year celestial tureen
while refulgent solar beams massage tender shoots
thawing frozen earth, where frigid cold icy sheen
hermetically sealed, asper horizontal frozen wall,
when skaters waltzed stealing lovers kisses unseen
soon melted pools of water all a buzz with feeding
Gabriel trumpeting "NON FAKE" arrival herculean
powers unleashed since time immemorial worship,
and/or sacrifices made to deities of webbed skein
viz, animal and/or plant wide world rejoicing when
harvest yielded cornucopia primitive, yet overkeen
superstitious scattered bands of hominids plentitude
linkedin to sugar daddy's favorite colored jellybean
benediction rituals also included pagan dispensing
prayers believing obeisance necessitated cyclopean
appeasement lest death and destruction would rain
purple pearl drop monsoon, traced to angry spirits
subsequently drowning helpless prehistoric hygiene
cleansed *****sapiens ancestors possessing gene
and chromosomes latent within dormant flora lean
fauna coming alive with the scent of fragrant bouquet
while the hills burst with creativity healthy panacean
liberating tentative "cabin fever" wrought by polar
vortex, the spell of warm weather, a respite sunscreen
applied to ward off deadly ultraviolet solar radiations
something in magnitude bajillion extinctions obscene
spate of lost species as seasons greetings witness hot
untenable global warming affecting every calm serene
nook and cranny incumbent to relish approximately
twelve weeks of cold temperatures sipping my ovaltine
recollected from boyhood, when snowfall covered roofs
tops inconveniencing Rudolph, and his deer friends a teen
nee bit, and school cancellation required state requirement
resulting summer vacation shelving reading Pygmalion
for Shaw!
Categories:
shelving, 12th grade, beauty, earth,
Form:
Pastoral
i love that these keys still speak to me
i love that you still speak to me
in dreams
as to
where and when
did i lay my head on manure
and kept doing it
over and under
leaving once and for all
as a last resort to
the familiar stink
that i've grown to love
it always flows new energy into my soul
while
i see that
the world is fluegeeying
down your throat
and i can't see that love was part
of that
the big stamp in history is trampling love
into some twisted creation
that is as useless
as a
a personal tax return
attached on the lapel of a corpse
dog meat!
corraled people
feel either extremely
agitated
or flowing towards
walmart
thereby
challenging the origin of their own
thoughts
or buying brand new
plastic shelving for the dog house
Categories:
shelving, fantasy, parody, love,
Form:
Free verse