Death Stale Symphony Discount
Written: April 14, 2025 for contest sponsored by Brian Strand
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The subject matter of this poem explores themes of transience, intersection of life and death, and the fragile coexistence of human and natural worlds.
a loaf of discounted bread
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Categories:
discount, appreciation, bereavement,
Form: Free verse
The Discount
I had planned to weather the storm until the break of dawn and hibernate in my shell until the wicked is dead, but it kept lurking behind the door with manipulative words trembling on its lips and banging on the roof and shouting profanity in the street.
I curled tight into my shell and watch the
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Categories:
discount, business, change, community, courage,
Form: Narrative
Permanent Discount
Intelligence, it seems, is very expensive.
It makes you work to gain advantage.
It makes you pay to find success.
It’s the law of supply and demand.
To learn, one must also be willing to lose.
The scarcity of human resources,
Even in a world of eight billion souls,
Requires that smart be given a price.
Whatever is gained in acquired intellect
Must
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Categories:
discount, allegory, america, anger, anxiety,
Form: Burlesque
Discounts Fetch Smiles
There’s no amount
Which does not count
In an account…
Yep, no amount
Sellers discount
And while recount
Your whole story
Fail to glory:
Place in praised sky
For being Quite High…
Don’t pressures mount
After discount
For more from Fount
Or self soon count
The Badly Bluffed,
His wish rebuffed…
Discounts fetch smiles;
Who gave went miles!
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Categories:
discount, anxiety, betrayal, care, money,
Form: Rhyme
Discount Compassion
There is a problem in aisle three.
I can't reach the cans of garden peas,
they are on offer.
An elderly man is down.
A handful of helpers,
on one knee
it looks bad.
I cannot get there,
I have to wait,
for the oxygen,
the first responders to
firstly respond,
for the aisle to clear.
Then I had to push through
a group of concerned onlookers,
to reach
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Categories:
discount, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Discount Stores
People entering Giant Tiger usually have grey hair
It's something to do with the tattered clothes they wear
Bank accounts are smaller
They have dwindling dollars
A mask solves the problem of being recognized there
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Categories:
discount, age,
Form: Limerick
Discount Justice
Discount Justice
I go to the store,
there is a paper…
It is meant to sell me things.
Most items I need,
some I want,
others are on SALE.
A coupon is cut from
this same sheet,
It is a promise,
of goods,
of services,
of excellence,
and loyalty,
appreciation.
Yes… they mix and match.
Yes… they have a system.
Yet the
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Categories:
discount, absence, analogy, appreciation, december,
Form: Free verse
Discount Bin
I'm Bald headed-have piss yellow teeth
don't use balm or whiteners to appear young again
every scar is a jagged path to a novella called living.
Cursed and blessed with a good heart
wild horse temperament that's bucked most riders off.
Loyal to a fault for the few who've stuck it out
through all the ups and downs.
I could
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Categories:
discount, age,
Form: Free verse
Discount Bin
christmas eve
rooting through the discount bin
not finding jesus
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Categories:
discount, christmas, jesus,
Form: Haiku
Tucson 2018
Today I rode into Tucson
Determined to buy a new futon
A squirt in a skirt
Got down in the dirt
And flashed me a discount coupon
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Categories:
discount, culture, discrimination, gender, prejudice,
Form: Limerick
Discount
The industrial hull of the SUV
Sways with the slightest wind taps
And pothole shoves. Popeye’s signs,
Golden shell displays, the lingering smell
Of Premium-grade gasoline.
The prices are Down, but our gas meter still
teeters closely, Dangerously, just inches away
from zero. Still, we push on.
We pass Targets and Walmarts,
advertising last minute
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Categories:
discount, night,
Form: Narrative
Voter Discount
One-third off,
sixty-six percent marked down quality
At the voting booth bazaar,
base gypsy thoughts are belly dancing
around your capitalist-veiled head
You like what that smiling politician said;
promising you a lot of green bread,
come get your lying share
Saying you gon have so many job offers,
corporate courting you to their employment bed
Every four years,
work is always
glamour sold as
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Categories:
discount, allegory, political, slam, truth,
Form: Free verse
A Discount
A DISCOUNT
May I share the story of a man
Who for a maiden emptied his barn
And for clarity her name is Anne
And her hair smooth like yarns
May I share the story of my kinsman
Who for a maiden traded a cow for a lantern
And for clarity her name is Anne
Yet my story just
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Categories:
discount, africa, anger, betrayal, character,
Form: Rhyme
A Restaurant Discount
Had a chicken dinner in a restaurant last night
Asked the waitress for discount coz we were so nice
She looked quite amazed
Figured I was a bit crazed
Said, “Pay or the cops will be crawling the place”
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Categories:
discount, fun,
Form: Limerick
Discount Shelf of Life
Armless doll
Thrown in Fate's trash
Her heart still beating...
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Categories:
discount, life,
Form: Senryu
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