Best Sideways Poems
You look sideways at me
I look straight on at you
You glance towards me
I stare at you
memorize the stiches of your coat
they are uneven
it must have been handmade
You look up at the sky
I look at your shoes
They are slim and obviously Italian
You've been traveling in Europe
I look at your cheekbones
You stare off at a tree
It is a beautiful tree
though I cant see why it has captured you
I' look at your hands
they're nice hands
expressive hands
strong enough
big enough but not too big
kind hands
You turn to the left to look out over the gray blank sea
I know we're not going to see each other again
Even the stark greyness of the Cape in late November is more compelling to you in this moment than I am
I am dancing colors
I am a fragrance
of clean smells
I am sauce and sassiness and ideas and concepts
and wants
God how I want you
But you would rather look at greyness
I will never see you again
Thank you for the kiss on the dock
Thank you for the dinner and the dance
Thank you for the moment in the library when you looked into my eyes for one very long minute and I felt alive
Just before you asked me to the dinner dance
But you seem to have lost your moorings
You are like a boat
A buoy
or a wooden raft
floating
you don't know North from South
East from West
Now your sails are not catching the wind
You are sort of flapping
carelessly
aimlessly
I watch you like watching a crab scuttle up the beach
Fascinated
I will never lose my way
( That's a lie)
Tonight
You were simply a dock
that I pulled up to ...tied off
Tomorrow the sun will rise
and I will feel full and excited
I'll move on fast
throw off your bow
You were like the wild north wind for me tonight
for about 5 minutes
The wind is fickle
When the wind changes I tact
While you were in my sails I did love you
Like any sailor is impassioned by the beautiful wind
that suddenly drives him forward
the exquisite unbelievable .... unspeakable
tarp full sail pulling hard
I will miss you
But only like I always miss the wind when it dies
No more and no less
my sails will be full and my beautiful ship will be headed out to God knows where
But you my questioning friend will not know enough to follow
You will be still looking left and seeing only the gray of Cape Cod in Winter and
Categories:
sideways, love,
Form:
Free verse
it was just …
a look
one …
it was my reaction you saw -
a recoil
emotional … untethered
it wilted, blue
in louvered columns of moonlite
long before it bloomed
but you plucked it anyway
one petal at a time
a wish on each
for my annihilation and doom …
but my ruin was long ago
your eyes
whispering me
a breeze through the cedars -
gravity to a sparrow -
first gaze and on
I was done …
now
for sake of my fool’s song
and a glance
we’ll never know …
what might’ve been.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, March 7, 2023
Categories:
sideways, break up, imagery, love
Form:
Free verse
I took an unexpected trip to Accidental city,
bruised ribs, torn ligaments, a state most
would pity..
Yesterday I experienced a trip and a fall on
uneven asphalt outside a local mall..
There weren't any witnesses to observe
my little feat.
I focused on getting back up and safely
from the street.
My left hip's been iffy for quite awhile so
I pulled myself up in a downward dog style..
If it were only a few bruises I would just
say tsk tsk but once up I realized my pelvis
I had twist..
After reporting it to security I went directly home.
A night with heat and arnica and several mournful moans..
I could bear weight on my right leg so I hobbled thru the day,
until I discovered if I walk my left foot side ways, it keeps the pain at bay..
The author of this poem is still hobbling and hurting so
would some one out there kindly get up and close my curtain?
Categories:
sideways, health,
Form:
Rhyme
Sideways people living out on the plain
I think they've been dying for a change
sent some men up to try and make a trade
sadly we got nothin they want in exchange
Ethnocentric yankee joe
tryin to find out where people go
when they're done being part of the show
but he can't find what we won't ever know, so
Go out on the water tonight
make yourself pretty, make yourself tight
I never understood what's so good about the light
but that doesn't mean I'm gonna give up the fight
All the country girls they dance and swoon
when mr. money bags comes promisin the moon
always fails to mention that he's leaving soon
that's how it goes when you're riding the boom
They tell you money makes the world go round'
spent a few years just sleepin on the ground
when the bodies turned up, they sent the hounds
hopped the next train on the way outta town, so
Go out on the water tonight
make yourself pretty, make yourself tight
I never understood what's so good about the light
but that doesn't mean I'm gonna give up the fight
Categories:
sideways, lifepeople, water, money, people,
Form:
small particle
of light in the
free and infinite space
what is knowledge
what is karma
she seems perturbed
white sand spreading beyond
an injured crab walking backwards
we are
our whole nature is freedom
we curb it we listen to false
teachings and get entangled
and we are in bondage
you are the horizon
where earth meets the space
no gravity in space
you are
free and floating
the weight of our habits
are old and heavy
darkness is traditional embrace
the light just realise it
she is embracing me now and
the crabs are walking sideways
Categories:
sideways, allusion,
Form:
Dear
single guys,
open a pet shop
that just sells kittens,
and let the single
ladies come
to you
Categories:
sideways, funny, relationship,
Form:
Shape
salmon swim sideways
while nature does take its course
to start of each branch
Categories:
sideways, allegory, analogy,
Form:
Haiku
The Egyptians walked sideways I figure
to conceal the fine points of their figure.
In a desperate scrimmage
with their own body image
diet mania they would prefigure.
Categories:
sideways, body, humor, humorous,
Form:
Limerick
OVER UNDER INSIDE OUT
(It still doesn’t fit)
The hospital gown
Makes Greek statues frown
You can see it in their sculpted faces
And they say in disgust
That they always will trust
The fig leaf that the gown replaces
Categories:
sideways, fun,
Form:
Rhyme
Staring out at the world i see
my eyes reflected in those eyes
in those eyes where colors combine
in those eyes where I see you reflected in me.
Reflections are glimmering on the surface
of this ship, friendship, relationship
tugging at memories long forgotten
things i shouldn’t have said
I have said all that I should have forgotten
things i have forgotten never really gone.
Gone are the days when we would
flirt endlessly, endlessly swirling
whisking our words in fireflies and hummingbirds.
I long to release those caged wings
let them fly, let them fly, high away, fly away
away into the land of those lost, forgotten days.
Picking strings with you I weave
a love story, a lust story, a flirt story, a ship story
out to sea floating through physicalities
thrown like watches in the afternoon
afternoons are all we have, I have
I have only this string, this weave,
the only memory I’ve made
these memories I’ve made are impossible
for you and I, eye to eye, lip to lip, to save.
Dropping down beneath the surface
I struggle to free my mind, my body, my me
from the clutches that are pulling me
dragging me, stroking me under
under the ocean’s rolling waves
rolling sighs, rolling touch
as I lean into the body dropping down
dropping down beneath this surface
surface tensions breaking out at the reflection
of those eyes reflected in mine
and feel a hunger rising
rising above all I need to do
this is all I need to do
and yet the doing is not the wanting
and the wanting is all that seems important
on this ship, our ship, relationship, friendship
rolling, words rolling like touches
touches rolling like waves
carrying us out into a world
we can only really see
when reflected in the eyes of a body
body dropping into my ship, my sea.
Categories:
sideways, girlfriend-boyfriend, lost love, sad,
Form:
Lyric
While walking I saw
something move in the corner of my eye.
When I gazed straight at it,
it was gone.
But, on second glance, askance,
there it was, again.
To and fro, direct and peripheral,
it appeared and disappeared on cue.
Head down, focused, tunnel-eyed:
I missed the cherry blossom burst.
I missed the fledgling bird's first flight.
I missed seeing clouds both sides now.
I missed the birth of mirth in common in crowds.
I missed the context of milieu's view wide-angled
With eyes binocular.
Head down, glued to the viewfinder, set to myopic focus,
I had no inkling of what I missed
as I walked.
Night fell.
I back-tracked the path in the dark,
under the gaze of the crescent moon.
But, the path was vague in darkness.
The harder I looked,
the more I focused straight-ahead,
the less I could see the path.
It disappeared from view.
I stumbled into side-walk bushes.
I tripped over a log.
Weirdly, the path loomed up clear,
outta the gloom, in every sideways glace I made,
Clearly spelled-out in peripheral.
Whenever I picked myself up from a fall.
or glanced back askew from the side-walk,
the path was clear as a bell,
in sideways view peripheral.
But, if I looked back directly dead-ahead,
to see the path clearly defined, in twenty-twenty,
it was gone.
The only way to track the path
was to flick the eyes
to and fro in glances,
into and out of the corners.
Like a boxer in three minute rounds.
I struggled ahead along the path dark and gloomy.
Weaving like a wayward drunkard
pledged to be sober as a judge.
Plying the wobbly peripheral path
with view finder
set to landscape,
lens set to fish-eye.
-----------------------------
21 July 2021
Central vision is weak in the dark. Peripheral vision can detect faint light sources at night hidden from central focused gaze. Peripheral vision is better for detecting motion, especially flickers. Perchance ponder the implications if you will.
----------------------------
Categories:
sideways, visionary,
Form:
Free verse
LOPSIDED and SIDEWAYS
Severe blindness and handicapness
Of double mindedness
I can't stand
It pierce under my skin
Ever so deeply to leave no room for open discussion
Only confusion that leaves me with nothing
But lies to myself and unsafe untread waters
that fails miserably to quench the thirst of my true understanding of what is me
What is real
And what is trusted
Which ever so leads me
Unbalanced and confused
Categories:
sideways, destiny, inspirational,
Form:
ABC
Sideways Travel
Tiny crevices, they take shelter and make their home in,
wandering around to scavage on garbage brought up from the ocean's floor to eat.
Brightly painted red by their original maker,
they work their way home on their tiny, spindly legs
that together walk sideways,
as their beady little eyes face forward.
You surely squint with pain,
when you get pinched with their tiny little claws,
they will cause your aching skin to severely bleed.
They leave their homes in groups,
and prefer to travel as a comedy troupe with their sideways act
rather roam along the shores alone.
Life would be so drab,
without our side walking red crab.
Categories:
sideways, animals, children, nature, seahome,
Form:
Free verse
She only looks sideways
Tattooed evil, Blood red rose
Smoke comes from her eyes.
(January 22, 2011 Wausau, Wisconsin)
(c) Copyright 2011 by Christine A Kysely, All Rights Reserved,
Categories:
sideways, lost love, people, philosophy,
Form:
Senryu
Oh soooo pretty
So wonderful to watch
My heartrate kept increasing
You kicked it up a notch
Stealing little glances
When you turned your back
Beauty in abundance
None of it you lack
Turning 'round you caught me
Quickly I looked down
Too late to not be noticed
Your blue eyes caught my brown
But I was not embarrassed
I wanted you to see
That I was looking at you
You've captivated me
Your attributes I study
To me you're just the best
So far ahead of others
Much better than the rest
I picture us together
A duo and a team
Making some great music
Loving out a dream
Categories:
sideways, dream, for her, i
Form:
Rhyme