"We come into the world alone and we die alone." ~ Diogenes
What was that, Diogenes?
Speak a bit louder if you please.
I'm old and hard of hearing,
and I fear my death is nearing.
Well, anyway, I've never died,
so, I couldn't tell you if I tried,
but I heard Death's pretty skinny -
meat on his bones, he hasn't any.
On that sad day your number comes up,
and he's at your door, don't give up.
Bar the windows and lock the door.
Disguise your voice, try to ignore
him, but you know he'll get 'ya,
and everyone will soon forget ya',
which I suppose is just as well.
You'll have worse problems down in Hell.
When you die, it's really a shame,
but you only have yourself to blame.
You didn't have to eat it all,
but you never worried 'bout cholesterol.
I hope God will hold my hand,
that really would be mighty grand;
and I ask for His forbearance.
Please don't send that angel Clarence.
What's that Death? I can't hear ya'.
You look all scary, but I don't fear ya'.
Come again some other day.
I think I'll go outside to play.
placebo verse is sugary and fake ~ i’ve swallowed tons by mistake
By
David Kavanagh
It's Friday night, work's days complete.
But years inform each week's retreat.
Youth 'gives' five days and hopes to 'get'
for two at least (their pace to vet)!
More selfish think all service cursed
and dream the Bible's truth's reversed
(God's blessings earned by 'good' we do
on Sundays sitting in a pew)!
Yes, faith may save, but 'Blind Faith' kills!
Who clothes the golden daffodils?
They stretch toward Sun (do they have thoughts?),
trash pushed aside by juggernauts.
Were Noah's woods what fleshed out ark
or trees (pre-Noah's time) its spark?
To seek true Bliss each servant's right
(All days aren't weekends, friend?) Good night!
Long Tooth
October 16th in 2021
Depress gasp peddle
make jest mettle, mannequin IQs
easy to steering will move
Simple-minded plan acceleration,
night shift flux be
turbo stupidity
Oxy dark vacillation
speedily end in
moronic wind tunnel termination
Pulse crash dummies
swerve change rational lanes
dash bored recklessly
Cranial balloon buffoons
always gon fail
those lobby pop quiz pitch tease
Stooge sputtering cartoons
fatally skid sail —
Icy ad vice was a lemon squeeze
Vacuous palpitations
ventricle bend:
Idiotic windy flummox sensation
Pulse crash dummies
defective air bag manic brag
of vent kill mentality
Empty parking lot feelings
are plastic bosom empathetic tested
Accidental findings be fume ingested,
poser belt fear unfastening
Sift through the scattered remains
of collateral crash dummies
Tik-tok stamp the carnage strange,
ventriloqi emotional debris
Wood you marry me?
I love you can't you see?
I hope you will agree
So please, please, please,
Marry me...
They say it's no good
Because you're made of wood
For me it's understood
So please, please, please,
Marry me...
Ventriloquist's
Wooden dummy
You give me fits
Please marry me!
Please take my hand
Together we can stand
Our life will be so grand
So please, please, please,
Marry me...
I'll have your back
You by my side
It's just like that
Please be my bride!
Life will be complete
My mouth closed when you speak
Our future bright not bleak
So please, please, please,
Marry me...
To live without known flaws or aches
Is providence of tender age,
Enjoy the youth that's briefly yours,
Learn all you can from life's detours,
Give voice to words in need of stage
When virtue soars, don't fear mistakes.
Do your best to keep life simple,
Blessed to know your frame's God's temple,
Knowing friends are "greatest treasure,"
Find your joy in other's pleasure.
Trust your needs to God's provision,
"Grace to all" your life's decision.
Share Spoils of Peace with enemies
And place at Feast to change their mind,
Control is not where safety lies
But man's delusion in disguise.
The risk is slight in being kind,
Find wealth in new economies!
Long Tooth
June 10, 2017
The Chinese tend to take the long-term view.
They do things differently in Old Cathay.
A thousand decades, almost to the day,
have come and gone. There’s really nothing new.
While foreigners fixate on Fu Manchu,
The Eastern mind sees things another way.
While we pervert, prevaricate, parlay,
the “chink” prefers to chew, review, construe.
“Since Revolution’s what you like to do,”
some western wag asked Mao in sixty-two,
what of the French?” (Vendée, Charlotte Corday,
the sans-culottes, et cetera.) “Your view?
A triumph, or disaster?” Like Sun-Tzu,
Tse Tung replied, “It’s far too soon to say.”
Though Canton claims it’s communist, it’s not.
Beijing, like Belarus, breeds oligarchs.
There’s nobody alive who’s heard of Marx:
a rickshaw ride’s the only kind of trot.
Seek Mensheviks in Minsk, you’ll end with squat.
In Kursk are cadres countable as quarks,
and proles in Petrograd? Like hunting snarks.
It’s Putin’s perestroika, not Pol Pot.
Why did the whole thing vanish in thin air?
Why’s Sputnik spat on? Why is red so square?
We needn’t be complacent in the West.
There’s lots to learn within the Warsaw Waltz
for, as a tool to scrutinise the faults
of Christian Capital Conquest, it’s the best!
Mosaic tablets are not monoliths.
It all depends (despair, or last best hope?)
whatever end of Tocqueville’s telescope
you happen to be viewing. One man’s myths
are gospels to another. Freedom fighters,
or filthy terrorists? A vexing ton
of evidence encumbers Lexington.
Our certain self-assertion might indict us.
A foreign army’s trampling our soil,
despoiling farms and cottages at will?
We’re justified (according, then, to Hoyle)
in using violence? It’s never quite as
simple as they say, those righteous writers.
Is Dien Bien Phu so far from Bunker Hill?
The thorns-in-sides are various
which mar incumbents’ slumber.
Could Belgium bear Lumumba?
Would Britain brook Makarios?
There’s Bolsheviks or Mensheviks,
Parnell or De Valera:
Marat had Robespierre, or
the Romans, Vercingetorix.
There’s Che Guevara, Spartakists,
the Mau Mau, Mata Hari,
the Contras, Carbonari,
Hamas, Harmonious Fists.
The song that stops the show?
“It Ain’t Necessarily So”.
The key, for me, must be those onion domes.
Concentric skins, like Russian dolls, contain:
they don’t obtrude. Defensive rings explain
the posture. Let’s not bother Sherlock Holmes
with this one. Save Bill Bailey’s fine-tooth combs.
They feared for Minsk, like others fear for Maine.
The Wall was there, so brains would cease to drain
towards those tail-fins, all decked out in chrome.
They tried to build a comely comfort-zone,
a space to place a hundred home-grown flowers.
We couldn’t wait to see it overthrown
(Archangel, Wayne, Polaris, Gary Powers,
Capone, Stallone, Cohns, drones and Sharon Stone).
They wanted only to be left alone.
There’s nothing lacking in the thing itself.
In some ways, it’s the very best of us.
It’s not like Marx was some egregious elf,
or Rosa Luxemburg some succubus.
The deal is, if you subjugate the masses,
they might not like it. Corner them, and they
will fan out fiercely, as do poison gases,
and pimps and prelates will be swept away.
So simple, so methodical. So why
did communism curdle and collapse?
One short, scant century it took to die:
a flimsy, flawed philosophy, perhaps?
We messed up, through our immaturity,
the grandeur of that peerless theory.
There’s none more racist than your Working Man.
Conservative. “Let’s keep it as it is:
just give me Tic-Tac-Toe and Criss-Cross Quiz.”
No greater sexist since the world began –
that foxes have their prices, he’ll accept,
and swallows whole the tabloid rag he reads
(the breasts of teenage girls are all he heeds).
Compassion for his Comrades? Jesus wept!
He’s happy with his Fangios and Faldos,
admires Samantha Foxes, Katy Prices.
His only Cristianos are Ronaldos,
and God alone knows if he’s heard of Isis.
Keep feeding him his Oprahs and Geraldos,
but pray you don’t encounter him in crisis.
Marx and Spencer
Were I to tell you what I think of Spencer
(the middle-manager, without the “man”,
and vilest cockroach since the world began),
my poem would incense the meekest censor.
But when our hands in insurrection join,
we arm ourselves to take back what is ours,
red banners streaming from the highest towers,
my first clip’s going straight in Spencer’s groin.
Don’t tell me that we’re going to do it clean,
that revolution’s flawed unless it’s surgical.
Old Shakespeare knew (and why not get liturgical?)
let slip the dogs, you get mujahideen.
Drag Spencer out and bludgeon him to death.
Revenge, and not reform? I’ve seen Macbeth.
B52s above the Aleutians?
It never was a Red Dread global mission.
Fidel was just Galician patrician,
and Ho and Mao were scholarly Confucians.
They wore those uniforms like horsehair vests,
to carve from abject nothingness an entity,
a national and regional identity,
ingredients which only coalesced
when nascent nations donned that soviet skin,
abhorrent to the blinkered Baywatch mind:
unowned, untethered, boundless, non-aligned –
but with Kalashnikovs airlifted in.
As Mary Jane moved in on moonshine stills,
the five-year-olds rehearsed their fallout drills.
Sub Categories
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.