Puppy Loving Santa had a house full of dishes, water bowls and pups.
He had to keep his breakables up high, especially his own coffee cups.
For when he was zooming around at night in his beautiful red sleigh,
He had to keep awake, so he did not fall out and disappoint the day.
Puppy Loving Santa had cocker spaniels, great Danes, and poodles too.
Mrs. Claus liked cats and had suggested two of them and a cockatoo.
There would be no room for the elves, Santa said with alarm.
So Mrs. Claus built the elves an exclusive Welcome to North Pole Barn.
You are so handy! Puppy Loving Santa said to his handy-dandy wife.
Remind me to keep you and cherish you for the rest of my life.
By the way, honey, if you run out of things to build today.
I could use sixty-seven dog houses, and could you please add a bit of hay?
Fragile: Handle with Care
We write in bright red
On the boxes that carry
Our treasured breakables
Fragile…..
Our human souls
Wrapped in all kinds of protective material
Some of which look sturdy
Able to bear…..
Life's daily wear and tear
Others which seem so frail
Not able to take
Rough handling, shoving, pawing or even a shake
Fragile……
I, for one, wish the world would take note
Of the bright...blood red letters
That with my veins' life fluid on myself I have written
The delicate condition of the state of MY heart…
Fragile….
Oh, reader, you whose lips now smirk
For to your strong fortressed soul
the label doesn't apply
…or so your inner voice implies
But what was that?
The faint tinkling sound of shattering glass
As they bounce you around, trying to make you fit
The right place….
A tiny bullet word pierces the bubble wrap of your dreams
Making contact with the heart of your treasure….
…With the treasure of your heart!
Alas, my friend… It's too late to write the warning:
It's too late to heed the warning:
F r a g i l e….
Fragile…
Handle with care!
She arrived.
Meet her,
Boiled egg, naked smoothness white
Like marble, reliable and strong.
O svelte composure of demureness,
Burst and strut through
In the last quarter of the year
To us.
Border line, rain and sun
In battle, drench an already saturated earth
With querulous mingle.
And I am not earth bitterly
To harvest warm dimpled kisses.
Should I dare,
Descriptory massage,
Almond rounding of your eyes
Received and stored in a lid
Lubricated with tears, and contained. Those eyes
Belong to stellar-clad skies
Scudding pedagogically for the Magi,
Myself, they move, and I learn
A lovely pencil of nose, yours,
Yet domicled above lips
Unselfish to reveal snow-white melons
An opening of fresh rose bud,
With the fragrance raw.
The gait is contagious
Not to me. But I wish
I could see disrobed her figure eight
That would never be mine.
The soft breakables of the valley
Would be adored to wetness and excitement,
Fantastic, incited not by me
Who cannot enter that palace
Preserved in the garden
Of her thighs.
for Chiugo, my elder brother's wife.
(c) Onyebuchi, 2011.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.