Harbouring Poems | Examples

When grief became a shadow

When grief became a shadow
It felt as if nothing else mattered 
Like a sudden darkness
Raining down upon us
Like sucking the light from our eyes 
Like a wound opened multiple times

It follows you like a stalker
Creepily walking behind you
Keeping an eye on your every moment
And when you think you outsmarted it
When you take a deep breath and treasure the moment
It strikes when you are most vulnerable 
Stealing your breath 
While watching you struggle

The weight of what could've been haunts you
Wishing you didn't give in to the world's cruelty 
Whishing you could travel back to the moment 
When the world taught you, your skin was a problem
Telling the broken you 
You love them

When the world forces you to carry perfection 
Whilst teaching white children that their skin equates to perfection 

Wishing the world could see
How damaging trauma can be 
When you make black kids believe 
That they are a crime against humanity 
Carrying it to their teens
And through adulthood 
believing
A world harbouring their envy
When in reality 
It's us They want to be

Hospitals and mountains

Everything leads up to this
adds up to this position
where you think you'll be alone
forever but fairly soon if not exactly
next week you will meet someone
in a park or stuck in traffic

They will set your flesh alight
slowly much too slowly and it
will seem like bad behaviour
you will feel as if
as if you are harbouring an infection

You will be together for five years and six months
through violent happiness and time zones
and locations such as
hospitals and mountains

After which you will think you are recovered
having acquired a liquid grace and social ease
friends will say
you seem younger less precious

Now take this pill you must forget
this will ever happen

Snippets of Spring vol 1

Blakean ghosts' boasts..frollicking in rollicking

Rolling hillock hosts..ripe shenanigans..perry toasts

Believing in hefty heaving heroes

Hallowed harbingers..halcyon hedgerows

Harbouring tranches of branches..ferry very merry berries

Majestic mosaic montage barge of balletic 

Incandescent flowers..weaving wherries

Showering prophetic kaleidoscopic poetic dreams

Streams through towering mesmeric green tunnels

Full to the gunnels..reams of sheens teem..flowing funnels

Bestowing.. glowing transcendent beams gleam kinetic

Luminescent aesthetic barrage..overpowering iridescent fluorescent flowering
  
Every single one of Mother nature's tendrils tingle

Mingle..saluting seasonal succour..mooting rebooting from fruiting..pukka

Granted yet denied

Spirit remains young though body ages,
heart harbouring desire for a rebirth,
bringing back next time wisdom of sages,
that blissful and joyful be time on earth,
where presence is always bubbling in mirth.
Refrains replay with memory erased,
with each immersion leaving soul amazed.

A Tale To Tell

An old stone cottage stands on the seafront
Abandoned and alone
Windows covered in sea salt and cobwebs
Its history and story unknown

A small white cottage with good bones
That has weathered many a storm
Now unloved and neglected 
Still stands steadfast ,proud, yet sadly forlorn

A large stone fireplace graces the front room
Blackened by the years that have withstood the test of time
Giving warmth and comfort to many a soul
Comfort so sublime

I wonder who resided here
Was it a happy home
Was it alive , full of love and laughter
Or harbouring sadness and secrets unknown

I would love to sit inside this cottage
Light the fire and share a cup of tea
So the cottage could tell me its story
Of life as it used to be

A story perhaps of long lost secrets
One of intrigue and mystery
Or maybe just a simple tale
Of a loving family

In appreciation and gratitude for story told
A cuddle it would be
I would visit time and again for the warmth of its fire
And to share another cup of tea!

Zen mode

as form we sense ego’s response
to the ebb and flow of shifting tides
we dwell in form and so must enagge
whilst recognising that life is but a dream
thus harbouring paradoxical emotions 
we are poised for action in surrender
knowing that what will be will be

Narrow Margin

- in those moments, it shines.
The nostalgia of an upside down
world glinting up through hourglasses of years,
a mark impressed upon flesh; a scar harbouring
simple childhood games inside a jagged
line now faded. Occasionally it flares,
reddens from a twist of skin uncomfortable,
or in the tightness of early morning dressing;
the twinge acts as an echo, a ripple, a call from
back then, years ago, an era lost like sand 
through fingers sweaty from summer heat,
lemonade with ice cubes clinking. The scar,
the mark, that narrow margin of error, a
Faultline physical memory running like a border
along my skin. And you were there, holding my hand
- in those moments, it shines.

Spaced Out Inner Space

Spaced Out
Inner Space

Astro projected, in the seventies, travelled into the Universe at the speed of light,
Into my memories hoard, exploring the essence of every solar system.
Experiences come to life, memories created, permeate histories moments.

Memories flash by at lightening speeds, lightening scorches the essence of life,
changing its molecular structures, its psychic abilities, forever altering reality
from what once was, to what is, to what will become a new reality.

A surrealistic vision, once harbouring the colours of rainbows seen through prisms.
All colours of the spectrum, life’s experiences, fading from view, only shades of gray
covering this universe, memories hoard, life’s experiences with, one day soon, a death mask.

B. J. “A” 2
February 6th, 2024

Balefire

Balefire

What glory is a lighthouse with no storm to weather?
For there is no solace in harbouring a harpooned wanderer
Truth be told, I am the jaded sea-torn sailor
Yet they sing to me and call me the Balefire

Doldrums
Doldrums
Dear doldrums you call…..

In endless seas jetsam thoughts seek out the siren’s forever
Despite smooth tides and the steady marauder
Truth be told, I am the sea-sick star-gazer
Yet the sing to me and call me the Balefire

Doldrums
Doldrums
Dear doldrums you call…..

Washed ashore, these barren lands may guide me asunder
I can forget my qualms in search of treasure
Where windward dreams shall starve the fever
Truth be told, I am the moody-marooned mariner
Yet they sing to me and call me the Balefire

Doldrums
Doldrums
Dear doldrums you called…..

They say the ocean is home to many souls lost at sea
The Doldrums tell me there is no greater death than the one within me

Bitterness

Bitterness a destructive human trait
Harbouring ugliness in a vessel
To escalate….

Bitterness festers in the soul
Injecting hatred into the heart
Creating a black hole….

Walking Through the Fire

Walking through the fire that is lit within,
is a tough task.
who lit the fire please don't ask.

The fire is so destructive,
engulfing anything minutely creative.
It is a monster starving,
it is a parasite eating you away.
it is a  predator living within observing.

The fire is waiting for you to lose hope,
making you dejected and helpless provoking  you to leave the rope.

The courage is in walking and walking,
not stopping when you want to .
once you have walked through the fire,
you will come out new,
not ashamed of your failures,
not dejected with the rejections.
not harbouring hate for yourself anymore,
not picking your scabs and letting it rest and learning to endure.

Rites of Passage

Down the hot sun,
I crumble down the snowflakes, 

One minute,
One tribute, 

Let's have a wintry solitude, 
Wrapped in a flesher's heartbrokenness, 

I derelict this relict calf love,
Squall on this spur,
Am peel in peals... 

Scuttle the fondle, 
Dottle the dawdle, 

Harbouring an everlasting embosom...

Karma

Wracked with guilt I lay
troubled in spirit body all thoughts invoke
recalls my elevation
gut wrenching waves of remorse robs sustenance
unaware  of how one’s life’s machinations
can cripple one’s destiny
no spirituality
boastful and selfish
no code to live by
wishful thinking throughout my earthly sojourn
for accumulated wealth
now weary in spirit my riches suffocates
my life review horrifies
capturing each thought word and deed emphasised 
it’s counterpart reaction denigrates me
friends and love ones all harbouring resentments
had I known before
would I have heeded
the wheel of life will summon me once again
at the appropriate time a contract signed
karmically a chosen life regenerates
chance to right the wrongs

Contest Suzette Prime Poetry Contest
Sponsor Emile Pinet

For the Lost

In fog's night,
there's a shimmer.
A hint of hearth and home.
A muted invitation
to one who walks alone.

Far away from native shore
and succor of the soul.
Harbouring a longing for
the things that make us whole.

Fishing for remembrances
of paintings in the mind,
but finding only semblances
in images unkind.

And now they come, in elder times,
these showings of a land.
So often gleaned from ancient rhymes
that lead us by the hand.

As if to say this life of yours
is wanting for its bed,
so be untroubled, free of chores,
and rest your weary head.

My Silent One

in silence
or even with soft taps
of a black or a white key

I see
behind those delicate eyes

attention
calling out to me
and I respond in verse

a meandering of the wonders to be
each thought liberty
a chance to pull
the flickers of existence
into your shell
if only for a moment

listen to the echoes
harbouring for humanity
surrendering to the night
•
so we write
intertwined blood and wine
tracing each other's skin
haiku'd

the moon lifts her head
feint loneliness in her blush
freshness stills my air

I breathe
boy do I breathe

pebbles skipping across
the glass plane of life
I your ripple
in these chapters
so we write
•

it's amazing the miracle of the mind
a suspending with wanders in time
diluted in the strength of my arms
to carry you close ar'ry of harm

• Short Harbouring Poems
• Famous Harbouring Poems
• Best Harbouring Poems
• Read Harbouring Poems
• Long Harbouring Poems
• Harbouring Quotes