Best Undernourished Poems
Another hungry, homeless child will die
Parents have no job, no food, no insurance
Undernourished pregnant woman cry,
The Feds give only lip-service assurance.
Most people think it can’t happen here
That welfare supports these pitiful cases,
But, folks, I tell you many live daily in fear
Here in America … in the forgotten places.
In the backwoods no hospitals even exist
Medical help is a long-drive-by-car away,
If they don’t show up, they’re off the list
Forgotten until a tragedy comes their way.
We think everyone has it as easy as we do
Taking little notice of those in abject poverty
Seldom worrying about making it through,
Neglecting to think about life’s other reality.
Written August 12, 2022
POEM OF THE DAY
Poetry Soup
August 13, 2022
#52 on Best New Poems List
Poetry Soup
October 1, 2022
Categories:
undernourished, fear, perspective, places, poverty,
Form:
Quatrain
In the breathing forest came memories of my youth,
Nothing more than happiness shadowed by the truth.
The rising sun pulchritudinous like the smile on her face,
Let me think of her once more of pure and simple grace.
In the center of the wood lived a solemn rose,
Surrounded by a cruel weed which prohibited it to grow.
The weed was not considerate only thinking of itself,
Hurt the little rose not caring of how it felt.
Now the rose has grown up and overtowers the weed,
Making it undernourished and causing it to bleed.
Through tolerance and patience the rose has been well fed,
And for the spiteful weed, he gained a brand new bed.
Glancing to the falling moon, I've realized what I've done,
I've killed my inner self by following the sun.
I only hope that things will change far before the end,
So that the enemy I have gained will turn to be my friend.
1989
Seventh Place
2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 15 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Mark Toney
Third Place
YOUR PERSONAL FAVORITE, NO. 2
Sponsored by: L MILTON HANKINS
Categories:
undernourished, 5th grade, love,
Form:
Quatrain
“Arms Full of Linnet Wings”
In the garden
that afternoon
she planted seeds
in their ripe minds
their eyes looking
up to hers their
irises dazzling
in the late afternoon
sunshine wide open
as if waiting hungrily
for more food
she dropped words into
their mouths which
they swollowed whole
jewels like memories
nebulous little darlings to grow
perhaps too young
but maybe one old enough
for the story to stitch
and in time graft
and re-sow
all her little goslings
in a row, eventually
swans, black or white
she could not tell
would never know
she held tight
to the moment
that Summer all a glimmer
and noon a purple glow
arms full of linnet's wings
she never ever wanted to let go
too soon
she would leave
the nest
long before them
she wondered
ceaselessly
about the three fates
and how they’d
grow
the seeds
she’d planted
in their minds
bloomed an entire
wild garden
undernourished
yet overgrown
(LadyLabyrinth)
for Lynette, with Love
“The linnet and the drush say
I love, I love” (PJ Harvey)
“To see a world in a grain of sand
and a Heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and Eternity in an hour
A Robin Redbreast in a cage
puts all Heaven in a rage
A Dove house filled
with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thr’ all its regions”
(William Blake)
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
(William Butler Yeats)
Categories:
undernourished, love, mother daughter, muse,
Form:
Narrative
We forced her into menopause well ahead of her time.
Mother Nature’s prematurely changing and we’ll regret our crime.
We cut off her tresses that once bushed across her land,
polluted her oceans and soiled her golden sand.
Moody and unpredictable her volcanic eruptions flows,
fed a daily diet of plastics, pesticides and GMO’s.
We sweated out her edges and turned her temples gray,
while her hot flashes melt the glaciers that dissolve more each day.
Her skin is dry and arid as she blazes across her earth,
destroying crops and animal life, unyielding, no longer giving birth.
We ravaged her Amazon where green algae and flora once flourished,
only two days shipping while populations starve and many undernourished.
Waken with a splitting headache as earthquakes and tornados roar,
we have become her burden with our excessive cries for more.
Gas emissions have choked her and left her in a daze.
The damage is done, too late before we change our ways.
She is like a bridge as our weight has caused her back to bend
with greed, corruption and the unconscionable conscience of men.
How will humanity survive when Mother Nature has no more to give,
what will become of our children, where will they have to live?
This is a time of urgency, but we have been fore warned.
Her end is rapidly approaching, for “hell has no fury like a woman scorned”.
Categories:
undernourished, earth, earth day, environment,
Form:
Rhyme
Not too long ago, back about 1929
Was conceived a boy, name of Danny Fine
Born on a Thursday, 24th of October
A day the stock market turned stone-cold sober
When the crash was over, five days later
The Fine family fortune had totally cratered
They'd lost all their wealth; Mr. Fine lost his job
Mrs. Fine had a breakdown; she wept and sobbed
Little Danny grew up in so horribly destitute
His only clothing for weeks was his birthday suit
His mother's milk dried up all-too-quickly
Poor Danny became anemic and sickly...
He struggled at home; he struggled at school
He was undernourished; life was so cruel
At age 15, he ran away from home
Determined to turn things around, all alone
He joined the Armed Forces, lied about his age
Helped liberate Dachau and Auschwitz, turning a page
Came to believe in himself in those heady days
Danny had learned, "Where there's a will, there's a way."
You may well guess Danny's now rich and/or famous
And sure he's succeeded and is no ignoramus
He's a regular guy with a wife and four kids
Who just can't move past something he long ago did --
After leaving home, he did not return again
A decision that's haunted him ever since then
For no matter the good deeds he's done for others
Danny Fine did not honor his father or mother
So the lucky among you, whose parents are still living
Honor them every moment; keep on giving and giving
Because once they have both breathed their very last
It has all been recorded; you can't change the past
Categories:
undernourished, father, mother, relationship, son,
Form:
Ballad
All avenues are amphibious arenas
Bubbles belch-burst, bitter Bacchanalian bombs
Clouds' cast-iron crescendo creates cold cantankerous caricatures
Drenched - darkness descending, daylight dying, disappearing duskwards
Every eye echoing every eye, emotional evidence enveloped
Fake furs, fashionable fools, firm friends fleeing flowing firmament
Garrulous girls giggle, grizzled gangsters get going, gravity gyroscopes - ginormous gloomy grey gusts!
Hapless Harry's hairpiece hovers, hesitates, hovers higher, hurriedly he hopes he has his hat,
Intimate iciness infiltrates irrepressibly inside,
Jaunty Jack's japery, just jaded January jokes - jigsaw justice
Kilted killers, kleptomaniac kangaroos...
Lame laughs, low lamplight, laser liquid lines lash lustfully
Mercurial miasma mercilessly merging, mournful men mutter miserably
Nobody needs niceties, navigating newspapers, nothing new now
Ordered out over oof owed, obstinately offering old objections
Pavement pool-puddles pose problems, precautions probable, prayers perhaps...
Quintessential questing queens querulously quarrel,
Rain rushes relentlessly, rudely, rapaciously
Sizzling, steaming, slip-sliding silhouettes, soaked saturnine suits seething
Terry the tiger-tamer, tastefully tattooed, taking time talking tactfully to trembling tramps
Undernourished underpass underclass, underwhelmed under useless ubiquitous umbrellas
Vulgar victors, vim-vigour-verve, voraciously vanquished, vanity virulently violated,
Waistless waifs, wasted wastrels, wrestle with wicked westerly winds
X-rayed, X-rated
Yesterday's youngsters yellowing, yawning, yearning
Zero zest. Zilch.
Categories:
undernourished, city, dark, funny, imagination,
Form:
Abecedarian
What is this ticking inside of me,
a heart that beats lesser than time?
I feel as though I have departed
into the halls of my own death,
life is but an echo
of footsteps fading
behind my back.
Am I too fat on life,
this trimming of me
is it to rid all but death?
I look into my own reflection
and see the fullness of years
laughing back, as if I was a joke,
yet I am a mere skeleton
of what I once was.
Is it an anorexic mind
trying to shed my own flesh
and spread me into ashless dust?
I was catholic, once
but parted to become something else,
is it that part of me, undernourished,
that feels the rest of me should starve?
Has something died and left me
only to masquerade as a life
where my own existence
is just a shadow cast
upon the ground?
What is this ticking inside of me,
a heart that beats lesser than time?
Categories:
undernourished, body, feelings,
Form:
Free verse
In numerous locales countrywide, they hold sway
Pirouetting at intervals like ballerinas from Bolshoi
Beauteous, feline and very feminine
Slender to the point of emaciation, not quite
Cultivating the undernourished look on a frugal diet
Decidedly austere for a longer tenure in the limelight
Basking in the fleeting warmth of an adulatory audience
A gathering of the doting kindred and the upwardly mobile
Some dirty old men on the sly, dirty young men too
Glued to their seats craning for a better view
By and large captive by choice, a handful perforce
Sitting through to pen their weekly column
Giving those they fancy their due in the sun
Witnesses to a parade of demure eyed lasses
And a few with flashy looks walking tall on stilettos
Essentially female and contoured though not prominently so
At least not to a marked degree, yet with excellent muscle tone
Opulence, no longer deemed a career necessity
Once considered right stuff, now rejected as wrong size
An hour-glass shape belonging to an age bygone
But hardly so, from the viewers’ mind, in retrospect
Enchanting and alluring yet not overtly titillating
Each in a state of dress and undress
Willing tools of designers flaunting their creations
Sporting dresses and hats and shoes, and lingerie too
In black or white and loud or subdued hues
Displaying formal wear, casual wear, swimsuits and sleep suits
Some scanty and figure hugging, others flowing and loose
A bony look required for some, others fulsome
A voyeur’s paradise, to be sure
Indulging a fetish without stooping too low
Chilly weather was never reason enough to cancel a show
Heat of arc-lamps taking care of goose pimples
Or brandy taken neat infusing the needed heat
Harbingers of tomorrow’s fashion and pall-bearers of today’s
The strobe lit platform of the pageant
Serving to launch new faces or is it legs?
The leggy look personified by Twiggy of yore
Carried through in the interim and sustained by the new genre
Captivating without doubt, and thorough professionals
Displaying unruffled demeanour and tutored bearing of thoroughbreds
Exuding confidence with every graceful step they take
Cool as ice despite the harsh glare of stage lights
And callous catcalls from boorish males
Performing in a backdrop of future fashion trends
Money and fame finding some, eluding others
Be it centre stage or in the shadows
It is bread on the catwalk for all
Categories:
undernourished, tribute, men,
Form:
Free verse
In a world of democracies, in a world where the great projects that have set humanity on fire are the projects of the emancipation of individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy; in such a world individuals must never be puppets or prisoners of the societies or cultures into which they have been born.
Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains, but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime.
I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It is something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.
There is no present.
We are living in the future.
Risk, risk, risk
We are all risk
Risking to go,
Risking to die,
Risking to learn.
Risking to fly.
We have made it.
We are ancient as we speak.
We are living in the future.
So some give their lives to history.
We are history.
So some give their lives to us.
Humanity has been challenged.
They have challenged humanity.
We have risen out of the ashes
That are not ashes.
We have picked ourselves up
Out of the oceans
Over and over again
We learn that we’re not safe
So we redesign.
We learn that we are wrong,
So we scrap and start a new.
We try again.
They call back to us,
"Please, try again!
Over my departed dreams,
Try, try again!"
We the undernourished,
We the underfunded,
We the constrained,
We the brave,
The daring,
The curious,
The planet,
The humans.
Life.
We are nothing if not inspired.
We will find a way
To our stars.
From whence the atoms in our souls
Were fashioned.
We are Challenger.
I am a Challenger.
A Challenger Challenges only?
To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
By Aliza Kashmala Kiran
Categories:
undernourished, faith, patriotic, peace, philosophy,
Form:
Epic
I got to know her on Pacific Crest Trail's ridge
It was a water shed transition in my life.
With best friend Kim, my wife to be (or not to be) ,
Georgia and Kim already three weeks from trail head,
And I was bringing bacon home
To lovely, undernourished waifs,
A hero certainly in my own mind.
A full moon raged at first night's camp,
Just down the hill from where they'd camped,
I'd bear-proofed food high up in trees
For our projected trip to Tuolumne.
Across a knee deep rushing stream from stores
Lay hot volcanic springs in meadow graced
By grotto like rock walls that offered privacy.
And we cooked supper on their grassy, moon-lit banks,
Our feet deep in pool bottom's silky mud,
A memory I treasure still of serendipitous reward.
When morning broke we hiked back up
To where I'd found the girls,
Expecting to renew the trek,
But plans had changed and Kim
Dropped bomb that she and I were through,
Though she would always 'be my friend, '
For reasons not yet clear.
If Kim and I had had a checkered past
Of on and off, a modern digital romance,
Once more I thought that we were done.
So I packed up to go back home alone
Instead of hiking with them as we'd planned.
My own tears cut short by the shock
And mollified by Georgia's empathy,
Opining that I once more was a single man,
I thought to ask for Georgia's phone,
In hopes that she might be my friend as well.
Apparently this was a big mistake,
Although I felt no guilt at all,
But girls shed tears and both were mad at me.
Then suddenly, plans changed again,
The girl's hike also came to end,
And all packed up for our trip home,
Though what remained was all downhill.
Hitchhiking sure is easy with cute girls!
Brian Johnston
Feb 29, 2016
Categories:
undernourished, life, loss, love, ,
Form:
Free verse
Wisdom: a cliché,
a soul left undernourished
as ignorance gloats.
Categories:
undernourished, philosophy
Form:
Haiku
Along a summer road of eternal dust
that flies in the face of poverty and disdain
red and hardened faces with hands
as brown as the shine on shoes that
at one time reflected in their youthful faces
oily overalls now replace the snappy suit
he used to wear and the shiny automobile
that took him to his job in the city
memories well up in tired eyes that
fill with tears as bony shoulders heave
and protrude from a undernourished body
blows his peeling nose on the red handkerchief
stuffed in a torn back pocket
crafty crows swing from last year's harvest
as a dry wind rustles and crackles through
skeleton corn stalks...
he searches in vain for one piece that
the crows have missed as he salivates
thinking of the kernal mash in his dry mouth
crows heckle his futile attempts and take to
wing as back to the road he trudges..
back to that tiresome journey called life..
Categories:
undernourished, depression
Form:
Free verse
You're everything I wanted
Everything I need
You are so beautiful to me.
Joe Cocker
She was a scruffy little thing
An undernourished, pale wisp of a child
Never quite recovered from two bouts of pneumonia
Before she was a year and a half old.
Her mommy said,
"I never knowed she was sick til the neighbor told me
To take her to the doctor."
Her face was always dirty
And her white hair looked as if
She had stuck her tiny finger into an electrical outlet.
She cried continuously for her mommy,
Who had not bothered to wean her from the breast
Before sending her to the free day care across the street.
I looked, and found, deep inside this fragile waif
An inner strength and beauty
And for the first time in my life, I knew
The true meaning of love.
Categories:
undernourished, love, people,
Form:
Free verse
Hungry cry of waking baby
challenging the staccato
of small arms fire.
School bus honking
over the droning hum
of I-phone ear-buds.
Wood fire banked against
searing desert winds
rattling glassless windows.
Pop tart in microwaves,
nutritional nuance
of the overfed
undernourished.
Dogs barking in the distance,
squeaking well wheels
bare feet padding
to distant comfort.
Beeping, one eyed tyrants,
demanding attention
“whatuwearin’”,
Rooster’s inane need
to alert everyone
“SUN’S UP! – SUN’S UP!”
Children squabbling
over much – or little.
Pots and pans and decisions,
“who likes what” vs
“who needs it more”.
Mother’s spreading love
on fragile hearts,
singing songs
long forgotten
by the fathers.
Prayers said
in the hope
of golden morrows
tears shed
in the depth
of poverty’s sorrows.
The cry of a waking baby,
the hungry sound of an empty tin,
choking angry words:
“Please sir, could you help, again”.
Sounds of a day
blowing across a hardened consciousness
aching to be heard.
6/18/2016
submitted to – Sounds of the Day – Poetry Contest
sponsor – Nayda Ivette Negron
Categories:
undernourished, life, society,
Form:
Free verse
Behind the mayhem and drama
Beat a sweet loving heart
A childlike playful heart
A heart lacking in self love and worth
An isolated troubled heart
A self inflicted undernourished heart
A heart that stopped beating at the age of thirty eight
A heart that should still be beating
An anorexic heart
Categories:
undernourished, girl, mental illness, sad,
Form:
Free verse