The sincere romantic gesture
a perfect smile
a glance while holding hands
a dapper looking style
The whispers though out the evening
a passionate enduring kiss
a twinkle from that in your eye
while talking, that peckish kinda kiss
The Pièce de résistance is simply
you and I
all we have to do is
stop and steer
The heart of the matter
We are the Masterpeice
the center of the stage
is ours
ten zucchinni slices
1 cup of cottage cheese
1/4 cupparmesan cheese
garlic minced
2 eggs
green onions chopped
1/4 cup of chopped portabello mushroom
1/4 of diced sundired tomatos in oil
1/4 teaspoon of anchovie paste
1/2 cup of crumbled bacon
5 olives chopped
mix stuffing and line a greased cookie sheet
and stuff or layer the zucchii bake
until goldedn brown top with a hot tomato sauce and cheese
Caught up in the sticky gears
of this greed and grime machine.
Greased by our doubt and division,
fueled by fears and confusion.
No doubt it is a blood machine
carving and taking-never caring
trampling and raping-
never planting or repairing.
It's a Petroleum machine
looking far ahead but eyeless
never glancing behind at the destruction.
Sniffing out the next victim
never sated, always breeding,
Plundering and pillaging, the soul of
we
the people.
The machine nibbles away at our right to bloom
our right to own, to defend, to speak
to manifest the dream into reality.
The machine can only be beaten down
by the unity of the we.
Duty
People talk of Purpose, as if there’s always choice
I am somewhat different, perhaps a solitary voice
The Modern World commands the self, where each is to their own
But I was taught to share my spoil, no circumstance bemoan
So toil I do relentlessly, and selflessly I prosper
I sacrifice ambition that the Ego seeks to foster
For I've become the Carer, not child nor husband now
The one who keeps the wheels greased, the broke down cars I tow
I work until my brain and bones, cannot sustain the pressure
I gasp when I get time to spare, a guilty token gesture
For I am here not for myself, nor for the higher calling
My steadfastness I here confess is try to stop Them falling
But if you ask why do it then, why subjugate your freedom?
I open wide my mouth to speak, but find no words of wisdom
It's who I am, it's what I feel, so simple in it's beauty
I live and breathe and do bequeath my sanctum for my duty
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There once was a crazy squirrel named Charlie
Whose furry paws were unusually teensy-weensy
With his chainsaw well-greased and quite small
(Can you believe it? It was just two inches tall!)
With it, he secretly carved pumpkins with great savvy.
His masterpiece? An orange, gourd-grinning fright!
With bat-wings, witches, and such for Halloween night.
The owl, most perplexed, said "That pumpkin’s absurd!"
Charlie snarled, "I’m an artist. Haven't you heard?”
Creativity and power tools make my jack-o'-lanterns outta sight!”
More elusive than the missing link
than a greased watermelon
than a slimy pig (no longer pink)
‘Peace’ is everyone’s heart desire
But how to put out war’s fire?
Cheap cardboard clothes and tearaway dreams
Coupons drip dry thru lush laden aisles
This menagerie's not quite what it seems
Stitched across all their cheap cardboard smiles!
They'll tell you what's hot, sell you what's not
Just bring your friends, come play in our yards
While you buy and buy all that they've got
They smile while they fleece greased credit cards!
Designer rags and shoes that's walked miles
Once you get home, you spy the bungle
Stitched again by imitation smiles
They're the Queens of the Cardboard Jungle!
Grant me rest under your lissome stems
Let me hide from the raindrops — shiny globules
That drip with tropical hauteur,
Rain that harms the ribs with cold rebukes.
Welcome me within your greenish lair, from
Your cane roots to your starry leaves —I insist on visiting
In your prime, so fresh with dew and so green, like
The envy in the gritty eyes of singed composts,
When waving rays of the shifting sun
Bathe the narrow venues formed by adjoining stems
Up, up and up the stairs and dome of the jungle.
I pray to shoot up with you and befriend the skies.
Oh, such elevation!
Fill my gourd with green wine;
Make me drunk with the spewing colours of life.
My heart is open to receive light —from misty dawn to
Dusk crowned with your blessing.
Let it rain on, I pray.
My palms are spread out like your leaves — I borrow the
Innocence of your frondescence.
Carve me flutes from your nodes, and, from them
Raise the cadences for summons, to be accompanied by
Drums fashioned by hands greased by the gifts of
The forests. . . .
Raise the joy, the frenzy, the tone of the ceremony
Raise, raise . . . upheave them
To royal heights — such as yours.
Insomnia
By Evelyn Aimarie
Sleep eludes me
A winding serpent
Iridescent and alluring
In murky water.
I grasp for her but her crow feather sheen black
Scales glide through my fingers
Like rough, cold, beautiful
ink.
Greased in memory-
she slips.
My mind is constructed,
Carved by her teeth
To mimic.
Repeat
Repeat
Repeat.
My mind is now of the same cloudy material,
Broken pen leak,
Broken music box thoughts.
My life has become blurry.
Muddy.
Only when my costume’s
Been hissed at with steel
Do my garments ripple in small, stormless waves.
Only when my mask
Has been greased in pale mud
Do my blemishes blend with the sea of my face.
Only when my hair’s
Met a shower of glue
Does it cow to the waves that my fingers might make.
Only when my prop
Has been sharpened in stone
Does it shimmer like sun-shatter left in a wake.
Why preparation
To such a degree
When an extra’s the part you’re most likely to play?
True, when you’re starring,
I’m off to the side,
Doing my best to stay out of your way.
But I have a stage,
As do you, in the mind,
Somewhere my name’s at the top of the bill.
There, I’m flood-soaked
And pregnant with lines
And you’re in the dark standing perfectly still.
Oh, noble strangers,
Who pass through my life,
Storied and nameless, busy and kind.
There in the passing,
Your extra I’ll be,
And in my performance, maybe you can be mine.
My God is the God of broken ladders,
many rungs are missing
and I don’t have the skill to mend them.
My usual recourse for the unfixed
is to pen a poem about the
imperfect beauty of the
unfinished and damaged.
Breakfast is just for seating two,
there's another broken stool
propped up against a wall -
a silent testament
to 'found poetry' that needs
only a missing meaning.
I am not useless,
my wife says I am not useless,
but she never suggests furniture
that comes as a flat pack anymore,
and she often asks more adept visitors
to bring their own tools.
My God is a God of broken rungs,
I shall keep striving to fix them,
keep my toolbelt greased,
as I hammer images and metaphor
together
with yet more split nails.
In the beginning, there was salt.
It hung in the air like unfinished scripture,
gathered in the throat of the sea,
waited for a mouth dumb enough
to mistake thirst for an invitation.
Then butter,
smeared on the void like gossip,
greased the dark’s knuckles
like an understudy,
taught the abyss to melt.
The first sound was not speech—
it was a swallow,
a hush,
a crack of cartilage between molars.
We spoke in reductions.
Grammar dripped from the bones.
On the second day, teeth—
tiny altars lined with nerve—
ground memory into ashable pulp.
Pomegranates burst like promises.
Figs cloaked their apples in lace.
By the third, we named what softened.
We named what burned.
Built ziggurats from rind to rind.
Wrote psalms in onion skin.
The fourth hung hunger in the firmament—
a constellation shaped like mouths
mid-ask.
On the fifth, we forgot the recipe
and mourned it like a god.
By the sixth, we’d tongued every fruit
that offered a rumor of sugar.
We learned:
the mouth is a beast with no leash
and excellent taste.
And on the seventh, we lay full and feral,
belly to sky,
licking
the holy oil from our fingers.
Harpsichord in heaven?
Cubic or spherical?
Bread, O baker? Leaven.
Just flicker as you fall...
Dancing lights apace in space?
Watch them in her face.
Ghost, vanish without a trace!
Gold, case, carapace!
Desert floor in winter?
No more than one inch, snow.
Shredder, got a splinter?
Tormented, O my foe.
Panels, dance about the night!
Sparks in porcelain!
Falcon, gather wind in flight!
How we'll meet again...
Yellow eyed priest, bid the feast!
Shepherd, are ye fleeced?
Squire, page, are the wheels a-greased?
Only if they're pieced.
Connect, O my fibers!
Build high the city walls!
If they're born to jibe, sirs;
They're bound for taking falls.
Tyrant of the borderland?
Show them how we stand!
Crush them in thy hardest hand!
Order countermand!
Silence in the place of whole?
Remotely control.
Ye gods, what is mortal soul?
Golden light a-bowl.
Feeling kinda cruddy, yup, that's the word
Too many fries, too many burgs
When will I learn I can't handle that stuff
Stomach rebels, starts causing a fuss
Once could eat nails and all kinds of gunk
Now I eat mush and ground junk
My teeth are all gone, can't chew anymore
Things go down whole, my tummy gets sore
So such is the life of this senior type dude
Head for the washroom, each time I eat food
Food disappears like famous greased lightning
Or I sit there for hours, really quite frightening
Irregularity's my name, I'm “IRREG” for short
Hope an operation, I don't have to resort
An artificial esophagus transplanted in me
So I can go regular like it once used to be
Oh for the days when I could eat all that junk
Those days are gone, who woulda thunk
That one day I'd be eating my morning cereal
Laced with Metamucil or some such material!
I found the monster in the mirror, fleshed stitched with the fear of guilt, a puppet bound by veins. With whispers of rot beneath each breath.
I fed it well, fed it lies, fed it fear, greased its tongue with my own deceit. Till the shadows spoke in cadence with my voice and I knew there was nothing left to redeem.
I chewed on my own skin, hoping to purge the beast gnawing from within, each tear a prayer to silence the beast, but all that I tasted was the stench of my own decay. The bitter rot that was me. The truth suffocated me, and in that suffocation i became the beast.
The Wicked Witch was Tin Man’s fantasy
He'd never seen such a beauty as she
It rained and his joints seized
Left poor Tin Man quite peeved
Every step that he took was misery...
They stopped at Yellow Brick Rd gas station
Asked the pump jockey for lubrication
He sprayed Tin Man with grease
So, he could move with ease
Tin Man jumped up and down with elation...
He held the witch’s hand but wanted more
But didn't foresee what fate had in store
Something hadn't been greased
Tin Man wasn't too pleased
When his rusted man thing dropped on the floor...
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.