Best Touchstones Poems
There's no set list of motivational things I can name
because my inspirational impetus is never the same.
Often, I'm encouraged to pick up my pen and write
by celestial bodies glimmering upon me in the night.
What moves me to choose canvas and brush to paint
can be induced by flower, a child, there's no restraint
when it comes to what triggers my mind as inspirations.
It can be reading works of a Master Poet's compilations.
There are no bounds that hold back my impulses to act.
I'm easily prone to create from song lyrics. That's a fact.
I'm prodded to cook after coming across a good recipe,
maybe tweaking it with a bit of this or that to satisfy me.
I'm an artist at heart, finding inspiration in everything...
sunrise, butterflies, my senses honed by birds that sing.
I'm stirred by many touchstones that spur my imagination.
Remaining open-minded is a great source of stimulation.
I've been inspired by compliments and even disrespect.
They serve as catalysts, like an inspirational architect
that lead me to find new provocation; a spark to ignite
the fire of creativity within me to rise up and take flight.
Categories:
touchstones, inspiration,
Form:
Rhyme
The corner store across the street
Was known for all its cuts of meat
But also it sold milk and bread
And other things you’d need instead.
On Friday mornings folks would flock
To sit on chairs among the stock
To hear the music on guitar
Of Uncle Junior (TV star).
The owner’s lived at my address
For more than forty years, I’d guess.
As neighbors we would nod and chat
Of Yankee games and this and that.
Today, in shock, while walking by,
An empty storefront met my eye.
I’d heard the rent went through the roof
And there before me was the proof.
Though times must change, it makes me sad
When touchstones that we’ve always had
Just disappear and are no more;
Farewell, my friendly corner store!
Categories:
touchstones, change,
Form:
Rhyme
the best
and worst
of times
haunt experience,
hypnotise
thought
processes
day &night:
almost
incessant
ebb ,flow and recedes-
sleepers
of sentiment
once so
isolated
arise
awake
in small
fragments
to become
phrases
in the anthology
of the creative
being
Categories:
touchstones, inspiration, life, words,
Form:
Verse
i read indulgence mid scripted words
breaking all the rules and then some,
what be greater than gutting & swallowing
uttermost concentration of language
critically consummated or otherwise,
communing within written ideologies
something profoundly reverent or
perhaps deliberate liberating nonsense,
nonetheless commonsensical compunction to
the discerning foresightedness of poets
& enduring escape artists 'tween psyche's
hallucinations & declarations
about analytically anomalous analgesics
and mellisonant melancholy metonymy,
rising above the fray of brutally alliterated
annotations fragmenting & fracturing dimensions,
steel blades sharpening anthologies' imperfect isms
inferring resoluteness 'tween deductive reasoning,
willing exposure imparting quintessential bollocks
literally grasping mercilessly melded metaphors
courageous enough to virtually be aptly bled,
plunged beneath swords' inky touchstones
Categories:
touchstones, hyperbole, metaphor, muse, poems,
Form:
Alliteration
To Commemorate My 300th Poem Here On The Soup
300 Solomons
300 Beacons
300 Spartans
300 Martyrs
300 Tales Done
300 Threads Spun
300 Heartsongs
300 Touchstones
300 Scheherazade
Only 700 More, GOD
and Wherever YOU Beam Me
10,000 More, Gleam Me
- - - - - - - - - -
… I Have Lost 200 Poems
But Here Are 300
Because I Open My Arms
To Inspiration Undaunted …
“ Pancakes, Preserves, Poached-Egg & Pork
Maple-Syrup, Milk and Sun-Motes In The Morn
Calling My Name, Just Like Flapjacks To A Fork
Psyche Is Picking Up Poems, Like Babies Just Born “
- - - - - - - - - -
A Childhood Poem Remembered …
I See The Moon
and The Moon Sees Me
GOD Bless The Moon
and GOD Bless Me
… and Long Live, The Love Of Poetry …
The MoonBee
Categories:
touchstones, allegory, devotion, faith, friendship,
Form:
Light Verse
Deborah: the name I’ve grown into.
I am also called seeker, dreamer, believer, ever hopeful;
For I am all these things.
Helen and John, grandparents extraordinaire,
Their imprint strong upon me as though they truly were my parents.
Deborah: lover of words, of ideals, of the beautiful and the profound.
Truth, honor and integrity - these are my touchstones.
Cowardice, dishonor and mendacity - these are my fears.
Someday you may see standing in the bow of a boat,
Facing Kalvoy, Norway, island of my ancestors.
Someday you may see me walking a beach in Greece,
Barefoot, bare face turned up to the sky, daring the sun.
Someday you may see me striding the moors,
Unpretentiously holding a walking stick and wearing English wool.
Deborah: resident of St. Paul, Minnesota,
Land of 10,000 lakes, northern lights, frozen winters, hot summer nights.
Radke: the name I chose.
Categories:
touchstones, introspectionme, may, me, integrity,
Form:
Bio
Corridors, power, call it what you like
When shadows fall, on this hot June night
These walls, this place, I'm absorbed I wonder why
They, the inflicted, their embers, we now throw them to the sky
Sleeping giants of Auschwitz, in mass production die
Good boy psycho killers, into their new world they tread
To look for new horizons and leave behind their dread
Behind half moon meadow, now decaying in ancestral creep
Amidst discarded gates and ditches, this, the city sleeps
Their corridors of Epiphany, whilst Christianity weeps
Written using the track titles to the Touchstones album
The City Sleeps
Categories:
touchstones, history, life, loss, political,
Form:
Quatrain
time standing stlll
arrested
moments revealed
in stimulations
of the mind
revealed lluminations
of the past yesterdays
becoming today
tomorrow's postponed
memory
past pictures live again
momento mori in hypereality
as monuments
to past existence
from shadows of transience
sentient touchstones
in memorials of perception
aesthetic sublimations
of immersive
spontaneity
fascinating expectations
in a visual genesis
of suspended animation
still distant
now living again
February 5, 2023 / 2022 Poetry Marathon Qualifiers' FINAL Placement Poetry Contest / Sponsor: Mark Toney
Categories:
touchstones, nostalgia,
Form:
Free verse
I live in the land of the free
Free to get fat,
free to get poor
Free to be a cable zombie
Don't mind the electronic lobotomy
Don't mind you squeezing my wallet empty,
as long as I'm liking
how you sell it to me
Market my soul,
put it in a pretty package
What comes in that bottle, you say,
will keep me from feeling old
$19.99
is all it cost
to own a bottle of Eternal Sunshine
I live in the home of the brave
Go spend that money,
I don't have to save
They give me credit
to splurge coins I don't have
Give it to me with low interest
Always urging me to buy,
to keep me in debt
til the day I die
Don't mind being pimped electronically
Don't mind you squeezing my purse empty,
as long as I like
what you're selling to me
Market my soul,
send it by special delivery
What comes in that bottle, you say,
will keep me looking younger
$19.99
is all it cost
to own a bottle of Beauty Divine
Marketing souls,
paid for on the dotted line
Their commercials won't stop calling you,
til they have your very last dime
Market the soul,
profit is the bottom line
Their commercials will enslave you,
work you until you pay every last dime
This poem was inspired by the works of the talented Phil Capitano.
His two poems "Tags and "Lets Talk About Your Bums" were the
touchstones for my muse. Thank you, Phil for your always inspiring
creative genius.
Categories:
touchstones, allegory, money, perspective, truth,
Form:
Free verse
You left behind touchstones
when I was inventing another zero.
Black and white, sobering transparency
was reclaiming the mandate of dust.
Barefoot lambs were clamouring for ethics
in forbidden land. The sun shrinks the
clouds to distribute equally, the landscape in
a vibrant consolidation. The small mouths
start resembling you. Something
unimaginable was happening in a diaspora
of maniacs. Interactive and dauntless,
I put my neck on guillotine, unfevered,
for the beheading of truth, in times
of false hopes and unturned stones.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
touchstones, art
Form:
POINTS of REFERENCE
reinventing
tradition
on display
undeniably
arresting
at
making waves
defined
in
the contemporary
&epitomises
in
bedecked settings
deliberately
elongated
unresolved
& unravelled
happening
prominence
of
the
touchstones
the
of
the
explicit
both
intense
&passionate
with flashes
of
fixating
on
the
fascinating
composition
of the bespoke
that intersect
astonishingly diverse
& paradoxically
sense
of
the
cool aesthetic
simultaneously
painterly
offsets
the conceptual
elaborate
&
equivalent
NOTE:THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE using spaces&breaks without grammatical symbols ,the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and responds thus making this enigmatic form a two way interplay & interpretatIon unique to the moment& changing according to mood is inherently variable.
Copyright © Brian Strand
Categories:
touchstones, poetry,
Form:
Other
SEARCH FOR SELF
in anecdote
&discourse
a miracle of illusion
noticeable trends
with
an
emotional outcome
both paramount
& immediate
featured instantly
for the
sake of remembrance
a memoriae in
transient naturalism
with
emotion mirrored
by empathy
this distortion
or connotation
so subjective
clustered
then crystallized
in
distinctive
measures
touchstones
to circle
this imagined
inner life
to
rival
former
occasions
&situations
a
devoted
exegesis
inspired
by familiarity
into
an elevated
synthesis
THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE without grammatical symbols the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and respond thus making the form a two way interplay and often a unique interpretation by the enigma so derived
Categories:
touchstones, poetry,
Form:
Other
WASTELAND
possessed
by words
yet
discourse-less
implicit
intuition
meandering
in a
web of language
a whirling
vortex of
silent words
strangely
laconic
a tapestry
the plaintive
&oblique
intertwined
the detritus
of yesterdays
scattered over
the stutter
of time
happenings
high points
of drams
self-enlarging
onto
contrived
corridors
symbolism
touchstones
of childhood
&death
abstracts
in mode&tone
clusters
of repeated
thought
of the
vernacular
themes
juxtaposed
in imagery
confessions
of decay
&despair
fables
of meaning
orchestrated
organised
in ballads
of personages
issues
elucidated
declaimed
the constant
delusion
of the soul
in explicit
contrasts
echoes
of feeling
in conversations
back&forth
the minutiae
of the
domestic day
direct
expressions
of the
intuitive
philosophical
spectating
crowding
the mind
modulating
the present
of an alien
world
a truth
beyond
beyond
our
remit
Categories:
touchstones, poetry,
Form:
Free verse
possessed
by words
yet
discourse-less
implicit
intuition
meandering
in a
web of language
a whirling
vortex of
silent words
strangely
laconic
a tapestry
the plaintive
&oblique
intertwined
the detritus
of yesterdays
scattered over
the stutter
of time
happenings
high points
of drams
self-enlarging
onto
contrived
corridors
symbolism
touchstones
of childhood
&death
abstracts
in mode&tone
clusters
of repeated
thought
of the
vernacular
themes
juxtaposed
in imagery
confessions
of decay
&despair
fables
of meaning
orchestrated
organised
in ballads
of personages
issues
elucidated
declaimed
the constant
delusion
of the soul
in explicit
contrasts
echoes
of feeling
in conversations
back&forth
the minutiae
of the
domestic day
direct
expressions
of the
intuitive
philosophical
spectating
crowding
the mind
modulating
the present
of an alien
world
a truth
beyond
beyond
our
remit
Categories:
touchstones, literature, poetry, tribute,
Form:
Ekphrasis
EVOCATIONS a still life ekphrasis
time standing
stlll
arrested
moments
revealed
in
stimulations
of
the mind
revealed
illuminations
of
the
past
yesterdays
becoming
today
tomorrow's
postponed
memory
past pictures
live
again
momento
mori
in hypereality
as
monuments
to past
existence
from
shadows
of
transience
sentient
touchstones
in
memorials
of perception
aesthetic
sublimations
of
immersive
spontaneity
with
fascinating
expectations
a visual
of genesis
in
suspended
animation
still distant
now
living
again
NOTE:THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE using spaces&breaks without grammatical symbols ,the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and responds thus making this enigmatic form a two way interplay & interpretatIon unique to the moment& changing according to mood is inherently variable.
Checkout this unique still life (on a grand scale)by Jorge Diezma 'Bodegon del Limon'
Categories:
touchstones, art,
Form:
Ekphrasis