Cropped Poems | Examples

fat funny friend

they always ask me to stay a little longer,
as if laughter came from my skin.
as if I could be unlonely
just by making sure no one else is.

I fill the room,
and yet I’m never
in it.

they love me most
in photographs cropped at the waist—
in group chats
where I type like a mirror
and vanish like fog.

I am the pause before the pretty one speaks.
I am the arm wrapped around her waist.
I am the voice that steadies the silence
but never stirs the heart.

boys tell me I’m safe,
like a bed they’ll never sleep in.
they laugh
and I laugh
and my laugh
is a little too practiced.

I know how to fold desire
into a joke
before anyone sees it.

I know how to be background,
the warm blur,
the easy comfort
you never imagine kissing.

and still—
when I cry
it’s always quietly.
as if I don’t want
to make anyone
uncomfortable.

Big Red

Where fire’s rage
no flame unfanned
The cinch retightened
no also ran

As horns go silent
the gate is dropped
 On victory’s path
his legend cropped 

Unbridled passion
distraction flees
A trophy hails
as reins go free

The end in sight
where roses wait
Ablaze in glory
— outrunning fate

(Paris Kentucky: June, 1986)

Guess Who

Started his career as a playback musician
He took no much time to reach the lead position
Renowned as a singer, dancer, and songwriter
Overwhelmed with heavy loads of musical flair

Stunningly, he used to swirl body like a snake
For him, dancing and singing were a piece of cake
with cropped pants, loafers and a suspended hair lock
Left crowds screaming with iconic moves of moonwalk

With tons of love, his fans called him the King of Pop
In roaring theatres, he used to make all scream and hop
Invincible Thriller, The Way You Make Me Feel
Rock With You, I Want You Back to the world to heal



(Third stanza- last two lines are his albums)

How Much Vengeance Is Enough?

How Much Vengeance Is Enough?

By Mark D. Stucky
How much bloody carnage and rubble
is required to atone for sins of a few?
How many eyes must be gouged
to extract desired justice?
If wronged, is exchanging one eye enough?
What about two eyes for one? Or ten for one?
Is twenty enough?
How about a hundred?
Such revenge might feel like justice,
but it fuels hate’s endless cycle.

Can we exit this interlocked sequence
of oppression and reflexive violence?
Can we struggle toward implementing
a radical, restorative, improbable alternative?

Remember what a crucified carpenter taught
about loving enemies and turning cheeks?
Do such ideals seem impossibly wrong
when gushing anger from our wounds?
Yet, as he stretched on splintery beams
no carpenter would willingly build,
he said, while gushing blood for all our sins,
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”


(See also my related poems “Your Order for Peace on Earth,” “Hate Vacuuming,” and “Weapons of Wonder.”)

(Cropped image is by Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash.com.)

OPEN VERSE 3-4

STRATEGY
a spatial
  boundary
dismantled
from
  memory
tranquil
  cropped
in
an
  encoded
facade
encroached
by
  eloquent
   realms
of unspoilt
semi- abstract
crests
  glistening
phenomena
patterned
  representation
consonances
plays of light
in recurring
ambivalent
  composition
indifferent
intractable
 invisible
dynamic
 contrasts
    summed up
in the
   unfamiliar

ELOQUENCE
a
 reticent
  celebration
of ambiguity
latent
licit
  straightforward
yet
oblique
  interpretation
beyond
 the
  inner image

nurtured
  in
  connected
tendencies
to evolve

closely
  obsessive
an ambivalent
narrative
  observed
in
  dreamy
abandon
of
unmistakable
pleasure
initiated
in
the
 unconscious
made
manifest
by
desire
  once
repressed
derived
  by
a sense
of
  intimacy

Franklin's Folly

As I cut the grass I curse Ben Franklin
He fell in love with France’s close-cropped fields
However, in the land of Kings and Jesters
Who never ate an orange wasn’t peeled

Knew not the toil of trimming, or re-seeding
Knelt before no one save for their King
Walked slowly the gardens of the peons
Felt not the thorn or hornets nasty sting

Strode beneath the banners of their quest 
An ancestry of poison, knives and lies
Powdered wigs, perfume, a silken jest
To clip the wilting flower ‘fore it dies

Curse you Ben for being France’s pawn
For ever setting foot upon a lawn


John G. Lawless
©7/2/2023

Conceit

I have power; this war I will win; Putin thought,
Hydrogen and nitrogen bombs war crews threw;
Ukrainian troops too like classic heroes fought,
Grief, fear, and rage within the hearts of people brew;
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, help from nations sought,
Some shammed to show concern; in truth, away they flew;
We're superpowers, the Russians float in pride,
It's then the Ukrainians took them for a ride...! 

NATO battle tricks the Ukrainians did adopt,
Vengeance from Russians with vigilance they blew;
With bombs, within Russians, hatred topped,
Within Ukrainians, lo, patient calmness grew;
When Putin thought the Ukrainian heads are cropped, 
From resilience, Ukrainians, their strength drew,
Thousands of powerful tanks the Russians lost,
Conceit crossed, tossed and frost, finally did exhaust...!!!


01 January 2023

Clerihew Cassat

Artist Mary Cassat so ' Henry James'
helped collectors with their acquisitic games
With meaningful moments of the 'well-to-do'
in attractive pics cropped&true

The Only Star For Me

The Only Star For Me

It’s my corner coffee shop, Starbucks 
The cheer starts here with hot coffee
I’ll get yours, it’s nothing, awe shucks
A home away from home, my family 
A blended Frappuccino, at lunch to boast
Make it a Sumatra Arabica venti
Fresh whole coffee beans dark roast
Patrons on Laptops, their cup’s never empty
Macha Latte hot tea, sweet and uplifting

Named after Starbuck, the first mate in Moby Dick
Originally intended on naming the coffeehouse Pequod
after Ahab’s whaleship, the name would not stick
At the brand’s core is the Starbucks siren, odd 
The bare-breasted, two-tailed mermaid but
was intended to be as seductive as their coffees 
Based on an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut
The Seattle’s Pike Place logo evolved in the seventies
They unveiled a cleaner image of the mermaid
She was updated, cropped, and repositioned,
so that only above the navel is displayed

Lost To College

Morning’s first frost
Ghost sprawled to lawns

Horizon sun
Snowman’s head rolled from fog

The backs of deer
Cut atop the cropped bean fields
Like circling shark fins

On the way
To my last years at work
I wait like any other
As a bus fills up with cut-out children

Red lights flashing
Engine trembling from its hurdy gurdy

The last of our birdies
Has flown the nest

What will be left
Of us?

Tale of Two Cracks

Tale of two Cracks 
__________________

Farmers Heel crack
S C R E A Ms
Bountiful harvest 
is no time to rest  
From Farm to Market
Middlemen exploit 
Money lenders squeeze 
Scheme benefit vanishes 
Bumper crops 
finally yield cropped price 

Farmers lugged 
on soil to survive
But best efforts 
and worst System 
cracked their hopes
created cavities on heels
Unable to crack 
mystery of destiny
hung by rope on tree
World calls it suicide
But is a murder 
abetted by apathy of society

Land Peel crack
S C R E A Ms
Ecology cycle of 
Water-Vapour-Clouds-Rain 
callously breached 
Depleting water table
meagre network of irrigation 
leaving soil parched 
Brittle cracked pieces of soil 
sliced sand gasping for life 

Disregard for Environment
causing floods, famines 
drenching, dehydrating soil 
depleting nutritious layer
fertile land turning barren
Earth suffers miscarriage
feeding bosom dries
Blossom dies 
Flora and Fauna cries 
World calls it Natural calamity
But is ecology's murder 
abetted by humans antipathy 
____________________________
© Dr Hitendra Mehta

The Last Dance

Fields that once were ripe with crops
Now play host to blackface and cheviot
Where the children ran and played
Among the bluebell and the thistle
Now screams the wind in bansidhe wail
Looking for those who once dwelt there.

This land was once our land
Where we lived and loved
Rings now with silence
In  this our last dance.

In wooden vessels on the clyde
Like the silver darlings 
They were packed side by side
Across the mighty sea
To lands of distant shore.

Homes in ruin lie ivy on the roof
Grass cropped short by a million mouths
Flies the eagle his gaze on land below
Looking for the people who danced to natures tune
Still grow the bluebells among 
Pine and birks and stream.


Apm 4/1/14     1.25 am.

Old White Women

They fired all the docents
In Chicago. This is why:
They’re mostly old white women,
Though they’re well-informed and spry.

They train for months and volunteer;
That’s right - they earn no pay,
But since they’re old white women,
They won’t be allowed to stay.

They mainly are retired
And, of course, a few are men,
But questions of diversity 
Have cropped up once again.

So someone thought it would be wise,
Despite the years they’ve spent,
To replace the demographic 
That they seem to represent.

In New York, I’m a docent
And an old white woman, too.
If my museum follows suit,
There’s not much I can do.

Silent Songs

In the event that I forget what this poem is about
I refer you now to the birds outside my window,
they are singing but the song is silent.
I should have titled this poem ‘Windows’
but then the silence and the birds got my attention.

Days before father died in the Hospice
he would gaze out of the same window.
On the other side of that silent window
horses grazed in a paddock – nothing special.

We both would sit facing that expanse of glass,
I wondering what to say next,
he nodding and smiling at the horses,
the green cropped grass - the occasional birds.
Not a sound did all make
but father was listening
as only those close to the center can hear.

I believe the words end now.
In the event of my losing my hearing in the ensuing quietus
please look away.

Lament

Would that LIFE were like the magazine
each article proof read
buffed and polished to a fine sheen
edited and re-edited
pictures cropped as needed
photo shopped perfection
at odds with the “camera”.

A full faced “lie” on the cover
reveling in “romantic recall”
basking in the loneliness
of the present.


9/15/2021

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