With each quick swishing away
A grass within
This thought does spring:
How much more is hid from us
In their thinking?
Farmed, from out this, such can we
Firm as fearless
Stands, stares access.
Not just bored with; bewildered!
Mooing, mock less!
As a poet
you need a profession
beyond the written word
Neal Hall
an ophthalmologist
Robert Burns once farmed unheard
One hand to feed
the other
as labor stakes its claim
Before
the words were uttered
— the genesis of fame
(Lessons From Neal: October, 2016)
There are no crashing Hebridean waves here,
just flat acres of cornfields and country roads,
only farmed earth and red barns.
This mist drowned morning
the sky has offered its own sea,
it carries a saline memory
of spray and spume.
Here in my suburban garden
North, South, East and West
are one.
Blooms are now sea anemones
the hedgerow a reef,
a familiar tree line is a gray cliff face.
For a long moment
I gaze from a Scottish shore,
but then a kitchen radio is turned on,
a truck blasts its air-horn, a child shouts.
A blotting gust of wind scatters
all before it. Ohio quickly repaints itself.
Somewhere in a cornfield
a rabbit sniffs a passing sky-wave,
it may have shrugged,
hard to tell, but I assume it did.
forget not king warning demonic
danger incremental gradual liberal
nor genocide joey precedent
nor dispensation donny cleansing
oligarchy authority false choice
g ford greater more effective evil
empire merrikka people subjects
rejects will well being ignore
dream fruition arriving never more
guard commons free speech farmed
private sector extract boiled ready frog
politic elect thesbian culture war
tonies grammies oscars divide conquer
chopping chomsky consent manufacture
wealth income earth labor rare birth
despair lament pay rent higher
proper response race both blatant
subtle kinder gentler totalitarian
all planet people planted excluded
possible power economic politic
remote hemmed chemical psycho
social escape routes addict dead ends
abundant narrate nook craney cross
every color four bid three finger all pro
nouns nun since seeing poking stabbing
lids bins laden all gore beat rhyme
tapdancing tintinabulation embedded
robot tune ruin seesaw sooth soul life
sleep endless bow dark nestle loud
selah
a place preserved in memory
as if in mystic fantasy
where revolutionaries farmed and fought
no time for speeches or dialectic thought
a place where survival was the goal
requiring discipline, stamina, self-control
where it was ‘from each according to his ability
to each according to his needs’…
a place somewhere between museum piece
and curiosity
~ every Israeli kibbutz in the 1930's
Just what have I done with my life
A man put that question to me
I started to think and I gave him a wink
But my mind drew a blank, well, let’s see
I’ve not built a bridge made of steel
I’ve not a photographer’s eye
I’d not fit the bill of a fireman’s will
I’ve not flown a plane, no, not I
No land have I gardened or farmed
Machinery baffles my mind
Accountants are great, that wasn’t my fate
An autograph, never I’ve signed
Yet I knew I found what I sought
Without a degree and its pay
The bonds of the heart, right from the start
Yes, that’s what I wanted to say
And I’ve been the happiest man
I’ve done more than all else above
For all that I needed, I’ve surely exceeded
Quite simply put, I have known love
For your Super Bowl party,
When buying your chips,
Cross off guacamole
As one of your dips.
For most avocados
Are farmed way down south
And travel from Mexico
Straight to your mouth.
The same will apply to
Tequila and beer,
Since tariffs raise prices,
Or that’s what I hear.
So Mexican products,
Canadian, too,
Will get more expensive
For me and for you.
Though prices of eggs
Have been causing a shock,
Just wait ‘til folks find
It’s the same with their guac!
Denmark’s war
When the Germans occupied Denmark during World War 2 the old king was not dethroned
Every morning, he was seen riding in the park
Once, when his horse was spooked, by two German soldiers. he fell off his horse but got up
He dusted himself off, mounted his stead, rode on
The occupier thought his presence was good for morale, keeping the people passive
It was difficult to be a resistant fighter there was no place to hide after all Denmark is nothing more than a gigantic sandbank
The story of the king could have been written
by Hans Christian Andersen his work has been translated into my languages
We must not forget the physicist Niels Bohr who contributed to the understanding of nuclear power
There are many more names but this is not a list of great achievements
Denmark survived the war by not being overly aggressive making the enemy feel at ease
The farmers farmed, and fishermen fished so much that when peace, came they could help
Norway who faced starvation
PEARL
This damned speck here is so irritating
I’ll try and cover it to find some peace
The only resolution I have is to calcify
It’ll take some time, but at least I’ll try
Hopefully then, this itching will cease
I am a patient oyster, good at waiting
I’ve heard tales of such things before
They call them pearls, tiny and white
Thought as pretty, at least with others
I guess all are products of my brothers
Each one shiny and reflecting the light
But tasty food is what we’re farmed for
Stuffed heads on imposing walls
beady glass eyes, glare.
The house is stuffed with horns,
tusks, fangs, and jowls.
Many a taxidermic glower,
gazes down,
with a moth-farmed visage.
Slaughtered beast
hang heavily from high mounts.
Teddy Roosevelt’s elephant gun
leans against a hollow elephant foot.
On gaslit nights
light gleams upon eyeless tigers.
He ‘bagged’ them all - a manly trait,
(historical context is everything),
truly, great men often display,
their overstuffed ego’s.
Later, Teddy Bears make amends,
as best they can.
Often, It is said,
that these wood-paneled veneers’
echo yet, with the lion's roar,
the panthers rage,
and the rhino's blind charge –
their spirits lunging once more,
toward their now, out-of-date
fate.
Grandma's kept up the house
made sure food was hot
while Grandpa's farmed
If boxers worked at farms making bales
Then we would call them haymakers
If hammers are made to hit nails
Then they could be finger breakers
If boxers ate hay everyday for lunch
Then bale making would be hands free
If the haymakers really pack a punch
Then that’d be the last straw for me
If fingers were stronger than hammers
Then consider boxer’s hands armed
If they’re used for more than nail slammers
Then bales are made in jails, not farmed
April 12, 2023
Writing Challenge-T words poetry contest
Sponsor: Constance La France
Listening to the Boss Singing
The Ghost of Tom Joad,
Imagining the Okies as they
Travelled their Desolation Road.
Word Pictures by Steinbeck,
Dust Bowl Ballads by Guthrie,
Green Pastures Of Plenty
Pretty Boy Floyd, Doh Ray Mi.
Ecological disaster,
Dust and drought,
Trees chopped down
Good land farmed out.
Then came the winds
That blew the soil away
Followed by the Bankers
Who took their land away.
Pack up lock stock and barrel
In the trucks and on the way
To the promised land of plenty
The fabled Californ-ia
So long it’s been good to know you
And then like the family Joad
Driven by need and poverty
It’s off and on down the road.
With Global warming progressing
As more habitable land disappears
Will a new Steinbeck and Guthrie
Chronicle new Grapes Of Wrath years
Will there be a new Springsteen
To sing about a new Tom Joad
As they join the new exodus on
Their new desolation road.
I love my family
and they love me.
We are all connected
like the branches
On our old apple tree
With lots of cousin's
One two three.
And we all live
in ohio in the good
old USA.
That right ,
The land of the free.
My daddy farmed
the land out back.
With rows of corn
Plus green beans
And potatoes
that fill a few sacks.
He used his old
gray tractor
while wearing his
old straw hat.
I wish his grand
baby could of
seen all of that.
In the evening my
aunts and uncle's
Would stop by.
Mama would serve
them with
a cup of hot coffee
and a piece of her
home made
blackberry pie.
I love my family
and they love me.
We are all connected
like the branches
off our old
apple tree.
The call to cut, dizzy came, the rib is off,
Now woe man!
Spiritual farm farmed by he
None another could carry;
Moisturized soil dried,
Sea wildlife fried,
Bush toil players, roared but are reared,
All other breeds feared.
At eve, He was hissed,
Ahhh, the devil dined!
This stew is rare; not many but few are real,
Thine rib made thee whole.
All these, many are the woes on he,
Beside the sin, sweet is she.
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.