Best Shopworn Poems

A Simple Story 

Little child finds upon a heap of rubbish
Favored threadbare rabbit of tawny velveteen
One eye missing
Cloth rubbed to shiny by little hands.

Beloved bunny, 
Shopworn keepsake from babyhood,
Languishing in forgotten jungles of junk,
Broken teacups and outgrown sweaters.

Heartbroken child, with faithful love,
Cradles one last time...

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Spring Beauty and the Beast 

Tenderly Spring sends harbingers of beauty,
Knights errant of crocus and snowdrops,
To warm winter’s shopworn heart
And soothe his brittle bones of barren boughs
With balms of long jonquil sunbeams
Melting the grumpy curmudgeon’s stronghold,
As pussy willows decorate his solstice doldrums
She watches snowflakes skate...

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Dust rises thick with grim, sweat drips from rims
of drug-store eyes he wears to spy. 
A parting of the slats, which dangle by twin hooks
This Moses at the sea
will look, and count, to see who's home, who's come, who's gone

Behind a brick façade, what makes...

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So let me know that you are a shopworn
Me thee rises like the sun galore but sometimes
Deflated, downplayed and torn
The surrealism of us bestowed much mold. 
So let me know if your truly a writer?
I maybe fall in love and twas never died
Your the man...

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A precious penny for your thoughts,
for five a good cigar.
Prevailing wisdom up in smoke
to regale the nearest star.

Keep abreast of Smith and friends,
but true friends we disdain.
As eager birds beat frantic wings
in sunrise search for gain.

A moron's gold soon disappears,
no noontime meal is free
Roll every...

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Four Cafes

Winter mists swirl up from puddles on the cobblestones blurring the names of the four cafes facing the narrow boulevard.  Townspeople and visitors walk briskly with their heads down, collars up, against January’s invading chill.

From my apartment window I gaze hypnotized as people...

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My eyes are platinum, an abyss
They reflect the midday sky, a blue relic
I blink back molten metal tears

These garments are loose bleeding petals
They hang like rolls of skin, peeling and shedding
Billowing and sagging a Gothic shape

Black and bright this sight of mine
Shimmering like veils of...

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Countless instances submitting poems
finds me racking
quite a hefty collection of rejections,
the responses lacking
disappointing voluminous vicious
venomous vitriolic backing
quite the contrary,
the prefabricated responses

unsuccessful at hijacking
my "FAKE" toothy gumption
(since I wear dentures) lip smacking
bite size packing
not exceptionally appetizing,
but definitely wanting
with more pungent acidity stinging
(albeit figuratively) painfully digging

into the...

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Lined face and hands of leather
   Her body punished by blazing-hot weather
She'd worked the fields for 50-plus years
   Her energy drained, along with the swamps
      ~For the kibbutz whose ideals she held so dear...

Shopworn and spent...

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Forty years shopworn yet still taut, 
the past a seamstress rare 

Her words reknitted, stitched and purled
—to dress a future bare 

    (Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2020)...

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The Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto VIII
by Pablo Neruda
translation by Michael R. Burch

Ascend with me, my American love!

Let’s kiss these mysterious stones together!

The Urubamba’s torrential silver
lures pollen to fly from its golden chalice
while above this canyon’s unbroken silence
everything soars: the climbing grapevines,
the shopworn plants, each...

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Hope forewarned
 Such was Jeremiah's call:
 Go, tell my people what I'm going to do;
 Know that they will not listen to you.

 Hope forlorn
 determining the odds on a bet:
 You choose this or that, using your brain;
 you lose sometimes, money down the...

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I remember the day
you borrowed my pain
“Take it,” I told you
no need to explain

It’s shopworn and battered
each scar duly earned
Its weight a true burden
of prophecy spurned

Then when you’ve finished
the torture complete
Find a new soul
to will it discrete

But no matter what happens
or how much you cry
This...

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Shameless shady shepherd Sherlock shushed shoeless Sherman
so surely shabby sharp-eyes Sheila shellacked sheep-headed Sherlock
Shaken shallow Sharon shadowed shapely shipwrecked Sheila
Shadow-man shilly-shallied, shifting shopworn Sharon’s sheep
Showy Sharon sharpened a shortened sheath, shaving Sherlock
Sherlock shuttled shell shocked Sherman, showing his Shenanigans
Shoddy Sheila shocked Shelly, shaking sheep into...

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Paula persnickety poppycock provided proof
Questioning quarrelsome quick-witted quail
Responsible radicals reacted, reminding raised roof
Shopworn shortbread shakes shifty ships and shale...

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