Derringer Poems | Examples


List of Member Poems

Premium Member Ugly Cement Gray Howling City Wolves

Ugly cement gray howling city wolves
More dangerous than their county cousins
Tearing families apart with contracts
Filling office workers up with impossible tasks
Tearing heads off colleagues during appointments

Ugly cement gray howling city wolves
Running city blocks to work in tennis shoes
Keeping shiny Florsheim in their desk drawers
a loaded derringer bouncing in their pocket
Incase an indigent asks them for money

Ugly cement gray howling city wolves
In San Francisco, New York, and Chicago
Mobbing, killing, raping the innocents
Not seeing people, no hellos on the street
More dangerous than their country cousins

Premium Member Derringer at the Ready

Her derringer was at the ready
Ripper’s favorite kind of night
Marlys wanted to kill him herself
After what he did to her sister
Her Victorian dress was the bait

Snake Slayer

I have a ‘snake slayer,’
a derringer I carry
when hiking in dry States.

So when I saw the coiled rattlesnake
sunbathing on a dusty track
I unholstered, 
ready to unleash some primitive instincts,
oddly though 
I chose, ‘instinctively’
to step backwards for a spell
and work my way around it.

I could have slayed it
with one .410 shotshell;
I mean who needs rattlers?
I could have cut the rattle off,
taken it home triumphantly 
to my mancave.

Then again, ammo is not cheap,
and snakes are all over 
this arid landscape.

Funny how it pans out…

sometimes instincts can surprise us
with a little caveman reasoning.


She Runs

She Runs 
She felt alone in her heart. 
It shouldn't have been like this. 
Her dark depression was her only companion. 
A silver plated Derringer was her only possession. 
Not to shoot randy men. 
No, it was to save herself from herself. 
When her depression overwhelmed her, 
a single bullet to her temple was her permanent escape. 
Till then she kept running.

Cyanide Footsteps, Arsenic Touch

Cyanide Footsteps, Arsenic Touch 
Everything about you is toxic. Your lethal kiss at dawn ending my life in a moment. Your breath stagnant when you stand in my personal space. 
Suffocation. 
The rasping assault on my eardrums when you shout at me, imploding my head. What of your arsenic touch, killing me by ruining my very cells? 
Unstoppable assaults on innocent me. What did I do to you? Tell me lady of the night? I paid for sex. You won't list the Sexually Transmitted Diseases I got off you or what your pimp did to me.
One thing is for sure. I stole your Derringer pistol and revenge will be mine. One bullet for you and your pimp.

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.

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