Cankering Poems | Examples


Premium MemberWorld Stages of a Disease

As psoriasis; old scoros is'
With vulgarity; of method-biz
Darkening all hearkening
Bloated out ego-cankering
Blood money his diocease!
Categories: cankering, allegory, allusion, conflict, education,
Form: Limerick

Premium MemberRound the Corner

Lightly do the carefree cries of kids carry on the wind
As they cavort in the quad during recess.
It is in such moments their trails of glory find expression
While I struggle to remember vestiges of mine.

All too soon the insidious worm will enter their souls,
 Cankering their innocence.
Should we envy them their guiltlessness
Or should we forewarn them
Of the pitfalls ahead?

Who will take the blindfold from their eyes 
To expose them to the stark impersonality of life?
Nay, let them clutch at the straws of family,
Friendship and hope
Where the excesses of bitterness  can be softened
Unless betrayal removes even that.

So I listen to the faint  bursts of vocal energy
And pray that their lives 
Will not run crooked
But where they do
The straight path will soon be found.
Categories: cankering, anxiety, hope, sad,
Form: Free verse


Parable of Wretched Malcontent

Not content with just penurious loaves
Wretched pauper for richer diet strove
Seeking treasure from a wealthier trove
Delicate crumbs from hearty stoves;
Pungent fruit from well-stocked groves

Poached sustenance frail body did gladly receive
Yet of better fare covetous mind did conceive
Then with guile from gullible hearts  lucrative profits deceive
'Til stitched threads a fine, seamless tapestry did weave

O'er time malfeasance with cankering anger did twain
With licentious craft bartered for wanton gain
Still, embittered spirit did all the world ruefully disdain
Tethered to earthly mammon; eternal soul did enchain

Moral, be content with the goods you have
A shriveled piece of bread better than a poached calf
With tendered tissue your festering wants salve
Lest infectious greed spread to heart's valve
Categories: cankering, christian,
Form: Rhyme

Jaded Valentine

Roses were glazed red
My fertile heart to woo
Cankering jealousy did spread
Bright petals now jaundiced hue

Violets were silted blue
Noble ambitions to thread
Blossoms with intemperate juices did stew
Now mildewed petals cloak our shallow bed

Tulips were glossed yellow
My cerebral chords to cue
Anon, savory tips did mellow
Now stale cortex in dark milieu

Carnations were flossy white
My purer instincts to hew
Your waxed petioles lusty suitors did invite
Now browning leaves on tendered stems accrue

Now barren soul rimmed by bland fescue
Heart heavy from chilling night's dew
No garlands around glib psyche to strew
Only drab, dense weeds to bid me adieu
Categories: cankering, angst,
Form: Rhyme

Ambiguous Desire

Mongrel, I smell you miles away
Returning through the dingy dark
From rummaging waste and decay
Till you putrid like them, can mark
A skunk's trail home. What germ you breed
Now to infect my pure desire,
O mangy bag of foul, dank weed,
You sodom of sulfurous fire
I hate your lying promise, hate
The harlot cankering my fate.

But what bone your slobbering would not drink
What dark would I not pull you to the grass
I long to plunge in you, the roots that sink
Bottoming decay. For time wretched pass
'Til that scent that frown's the nose rejoice my lips
And we our two germs kiss, with mine to last
Through shaking thighs to your sweet swelling hips
Then on your breasts delicious breaks its fast
Our two fires burn one sacrifice, and love is found
Where the jealous heart have fondled its deepest wound.
Categories: cankering, passion,
Form: Rhyme


Harbor of Incontinence

In loves harbor moored in the dock of regression
and anchored in the quicksand of incontinence
as briny waves of inconstancy wash over my jaded bough
scouring my white-washed deck over and over 
leaving the silty residue of bartered romances
tarnishing the fibers of my brigand hull
peeling back the glossy facade that coated my proud vessel
the drift wood of jilted lovers floats all around
shrouding my leased yacht with the residual chaff
of once fertile fronds that bloomed with romance
then were blighted by the cankering disease of insincerity
tides bring in the brackish seaweed of of salty flings
that never rooted my wandering eye or planted my wavering feet
which were tossed to and fro by a truant wind
constantly moving in a listless, uncharted direction
bandied about by the restless currents of change
barges of opprobrium clamor about in my choppy waters
tugging at my corroded conscience pushing the dross
of my intemperate, impulsive dalliances into my feckless psyche
Categories: cankering, lost love, social
Form: Free verse

Forecast Ii

Storm clouds gather over the sea, omens
Tell of a coming agony
Young lovers stay, O hear me, maidens
Most in marriage long to be free
The world's social order in disarray
Engines faster the extreme of day.

Summer is gone, harvest is come, behold
Earth's buttress battered and tattered
This is the cankering of blemished gold
The sea warms and we are scattered
O children, it's late, O too late to play
The sands on the shore are washing away.

Bring the boats back to the dock, rope them
In vain, the waters rise again
The streets are silent in Jerusalem
Except the cankering chain.
Vacant houses everywhere shall now tell
Time has taken its first step into hell.
Categories: cankering, visionary
Form: Verse

Social Camera

Across the street and down the lane
The long line curves around again
And men shivering in the wintry rain
Tell adversity's avarice in each refrain
This is the worst of time the best is gone
This is the end of time, night comes fast
And children, old emblems of the dawn
Are bent like wheat stalks in the blast

How could the prognosis be so wrong, this
Endless disease of human spirit, this
Cankering cavern of blight upon bliss
Something more than human is here amiss
And few that gave where many once stood
May your blessing be multiplied in kindness
And in health, for charity is the brightest bud
On the tree of hope in hard time's darkness.

Across the street and down the lane
Someone is singing a still refrain
The human spirit rebuking doubt and pain
While men are shivering in the wintry rain.
The country is broken, is flat broken
This is the end of time night comes fast
Compassion is life's last token, last token
And children are bent in the bitter blast.
Categories: cankering, depression, history, natural disastersnight,
Form: Verse

I Am a Maroon

I am a Maroon
Flesh and blood and everything
My spirit cries against the toxic air
Of cities, and broken moon
Perched on skyscrapers
Surveying ruin
Blowing with greasy scraps of paper
Through the horror of night
Eagles with broken wings.

I want to enter the bush again
And be still
Within the wash of rain
Far from the folding clothes of pain
Cankering my will.
I am Maroon
Lover of the land like Muta
Baruka
On when the California fires burn
I sit and smile with the sun
Staring at my wings of wax.
Categories: cankering, allegory
Form: Free verse

Capitalism Dilemma

Clawed eyes bleeding the red acid of tears
Anguished hearts with piper's music in their ears
Pleasures throves of greed and selfishness
Indicts our vision of the citadel's shining
Towards a better promise of togetherness.
Anxieties mounts against Babel's towers rising
Lattitude to pain, when will the chrysallis from
Imago change again to butterfly
Ships can dare, but captain beware this doldrum
Masking the Bermuda Triangle from your eye.

Denial is vain when some have piled more
In worth than life can spend. Something is wrongly
Listed here, more than greed rots at the core
Emotionless, hearts uncreed of empathy
Messianic foundation broken before the towers fell
Mammom cankering the apple with hell
Apathy cannot endure against the ego's fear.
Categories: cankering, political
Form: Acrostic
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