Best Upstanding Poems
Leader
Confident, assertive
Leading, aiding, helping,
Friends, admirers, haters, destroyers
Gossiping, bossing, glaring
Passive, aggressive
Follower
She is odd, they said.
She won’t talk to you.
She is stuck up.
She is mean.
He did not believe them.
Them who had lied about him also when he was the new kid.
He sat with her during lunch.
They laughed like hyenas; he found her refreshing and delightful.
After school they cornered him.
They accused him of being disloyal to the pack.
They were angry that he did not take their word about her awfulness.
They were incensed that he had a mind of his own.
She is depressed, they said. She is a downer. She is bad news. Stay away or we will not be your friends.
He saw her sad, and soothed it.
He understood her downs, she had reasons for them.
So he sat with her at lunch, and he walked her home, and they used their sense of humors and they laughed.
Being with her felt wonderful, being with her was cathartic, being with her was love.
They were angry now. They surrounded him with baseball bats and bully clubs.
If you insist on following your heart and being nice to her, we will hit you, they told him.
We will hurt you.
We will kill you.
She is different, they told him. She is odd. One of them spit on his arm to prove his rightness.
He threw back his head and laughed at them and he did not stop laughing. He laughed for hours.
Their faces were mad. They were upset. They were so angry. They ran away, because they could not change him.
She came out of her house, ready to be walked to school.
What was that? She asked him.
A bunch of silliness, he told her.
They got married, and made friends all around the world.
Friends who liked them for having a sense of humor and minds of their own
And they lived happily ever after.
warrior Lion stands proud
snow tanks grip winter wasteland
frozen hearts cry peace
March 16, 2022
A Man Upstanding
He’s an upstanding citizen,
A judge no less;
Six feet two, silver white hair;
Posture with an athlete’s chest.
So admired, him and his wife,
He always had his arm round her waist;
Both rocks of the church, so many years;
‘Til she died and saddened his face.
Still he stood tall, it doesn’t take long,
For church widows to zero in;
Saturday he married another church lady;
A new life they’ll happily begin.
Now I know you’re wondering about him,
What dire secret he has must be big,
Sorry to disappoint you folks,
The worst you can say, he wears a wig.
For the years to come I want you to be upstanding
Cheering me on as I'll be picking up my accolades
For the hard work that I've put through the years
It was a matter of time before everyone saw my star
Some saw it as far as Burj Khalifa, Dubai
Under the desert skies full of humidity
And just like the towering skyscrapers there
I'll be piling one accolades after the other
For years I wrote in the confine of my mind
Until I was able to write in other people's minds
I live in most of them, that's why I even got here
For they didn't have to see the light for them to follow
Some saw it in the struggle as I labored to rhyme
Till it came so easy for me that's why I've been delivering
Each & every time that's why I make you all smile
Cause its happiness I spread & spread something more ??
Remain upstanding just a little more
Till I take to that stage and say my speech
Cause all those days and nights lead to this
But it's all you who believed that have kept me going
The PO£T