Hunched Poems | Examples

OLD FRUIT

You are getting on, old fruit
Too obese to wear your new suit
Your face resembles a wrinkled prune
Old age is showing on you too soon,

What has happened to your lustrous hair
Your scalp is shiny and noticeably bare
Your jowls are hanging lower than your chin
My word, I cannot believe what a state you're in

Shoulders that were broad and strong
They are now all hunched and look all wrong.
Your knees are knobbly and a little bent,
The left leg forgot where the right one went.

I can not understand you when you talk,
Your brain, not your legs, has gone for a walk
Your eyes look blank, staring into space
You have lost touch with the human race.

We lost touch over the years,
After sharing much laughter and some tears
I have just seen you interviewed on TV
Old fruit, it was a shock to me,

To see you sitting in a chair,
With all the hoi polloi and fanfare there
Smiling happily from ear to ear
Holding up a glass of cheer

With the TV presenters and your guests
Wishing you the very best
And the audience stood up to say
Many happy returns of your 110th BIRTHDAY!

The Storm Water Pipe

The storm water pipe
gaped into open air
from an embankment 
where it surfaced
from underground.
The opening was a little
smaller than my childhood height
and they said it stretched
a mile or more but nobody
knew for sure.

A danger sign warned
against entry saying 
the pipe was subject to sudden
flooding - a protective grate
had a hole big enough
to crawl through. 
I would pause 
at its mouth and stare 
into a claustrophobic dark.

Hunched, heart racing,
I monkey walked
my way in, listening out
for water, breathing in 
the dank air. Deeper
and deeper I would go until 
courage left me when
the light from the entrance
faded and all went black.
Hell was there. 
It still is.

Lede Buried, in I Fell

I bowed for the story line.
Hunched over in suspense,
I hung-out for the punch line.
The twists of plot
lured me to the edge.
I could see the lede
lying buried below me.
Reaching in to grab it,
I toppled over, fell right in,
and became the story line.

Steam Radiator

The radiator whispered like breath
beneath the old window 
               (half opened for mercy)
where cold fingers of air
braided themselves with steam
and the snow stayed only for seconds
dancing above the sill
in the breeze.

The sofa, burgundy and bruised,
sagged like an old confession.
I curled into its velvet hush
and watched the cupola burn gold
               (above the parking lot at dusk)
through the veil of falling snow.
This was my aerie,
thin-walled and tranquil,
where I painted, and read,
and wrote my way
into becoming. 

Below, the café breathed 
lentils and clove,
hippies hunched 
at secondhand tables,
hands wrapped around chipped mugs
               (arguing softly about Hesse)
as incense tangled with the steam.
I read Siddhartha in the original,
while Han Fook waited in the margins,
quiet as smoke,
his silence teaching me
to listen without answers.

View from a Blind Laptop

This morning one songbird awoke first,
breaking the night with its spiral tongue.

Under an oak tree a puddle bloomed stars,
then washed its face with a watery light.

Moments later,
a narrow sky opened its window.  A rose red lip
of sunlight, kissed the verge of a far beyond.

Light crowned meadow daisies one by one.

I did not see any of this
I was hunched over a laptop
after a dark and restless night,
but my soul,
it must have wandered outward -
                    and it saw.

the bridge

the bridge

In the middle of the bridge, we leaned on its railing
 and looked into the slimy, green, and slow
 running stream. Its bank, decorated with plastic bottles,
 used condoms, a long-since-dead dog, yet grinning as
 recalling a filthy joke and a three-month-old abortion,
 half eaten by discerning water rats.
Over this beauty of decay hung a reluctant, pale sun
 refusing to lend light to this polluted river scene.
 The first time we came here, the water was clear, we could
 see fishes you held my hands, she said.
My hands were cold, spat into the filth below, dug them
 deep into my pockets, hunched my shoulders, and
 began walking. No bother telling her that our love was
 like a river burdened by too much debris.
 All we have in common is our shared solitude, but that is
 a dad is better than being alone.

Now the lamplight flickers

I’ve bloomed well past blossom season, no fleshy pink 
petals here. Wrinkles appear now. Feet left by crow. You 
see the grey in the brown, see a patch of scalp showing.
You see the change in my gait, see my once brisk pace 
slowing. But what you don’t see is me: I am no longer 
desirable, desired, nor worth a smile, a glance from afar.
I’ve grown out of season, a dead drink left atop bar.  I cling 
to youthful glow for that is when you saw me. Now the 
lamplight flickers, the bulb is on its last. A livewire fuse close 
to short. As I pass, you might see a shoulder hunched, an 
eye cast down. You see hands that surely once held a lover’s, 
lips that had stories to tell. But that clock is ticking and so 
you turn. And what you don’t see is me. I’ve written words 
you might read, taught things you might learn; once, you 
saw me dancing under club lights, saw me whoosh by on 
rollercoasters. But that hand is moving, and you’re conscious 
that time wants to flee. You see a body, a person, a 
frame with history. But what you don’t see is me.

The unspoken

In the solemn fortitude
Of a square box,
I sat at a 90-degree angle,
Hunched,head between my knees.
What went so amiss?
My lofty heart cannot fathom.
My head is in shambles.
Whence do I turn?
To a kin,turned foe?
The silent whispers and the scorching gazes I see.
Oh, the fall of the ferocious,
Encapsulated in heartbreak,
and the ugly garment of shame.
I should have fled.
But the honey voice of the viper kept me ensnared.
Now my "fate is altered,"
For another life breathes in my womb,
Who will never know the word "father."
Hope is delusional,
But I will hold onto its fiction,
That there will be a future of bliss,
Where affection shadows indignation.

Paid

The thing about killing Angels
you have to remember is always go for the kill shot
Most of them can easily take a grenade to the face
Those arch ones usually stay put and watch
Basically on tap with God
Seldomly they will make an appearance
Demons are tricky
Disguise themself basically animal vegetable mineral
One time my electric razor tried to bite a clump from my cheek, huh still makes me smile
He turned towards the boy
His crumple of a face
grimacing
The book boy learn it well

He turned hunched over
Bent and snatched the head from
the prone child at his feet

The sack boy open it
Without the head
We won’t be fed….

The boy pulling a single golden strand from his pocket
the strand warping reality around it
air forming the sack

Please
Just once
Not a three point shot…

Another 3 seconds he chide only infinity to go
At this rate we will be working long after the end

Spring will devour the wind

A cold wind challenged Spring
Watering my eyes as I hunched against it
Hawks circle beneath white puff clouds
A squirrel weighs its options
Robins wrestle chilled worm sushi
Nervous Mallards pace awaiting delivery
Jonquils boldly strut their stuff
I shiver knowing that spring will devour the wind.

Sky Paths

geese are arriving or going
straight lines crisscross the sky
a history of contrails
in a blue honking yonder

under
a brightly birthed daylight
eyesight cannot settle
but dazzles
upon fleeting wingtips

geese continue to fly
through gaps in time
ghost planes still roar
over unseen horizons

a peddle bike and hunched rider
whoosh past me
a streetlamp sprints
around my eyes

whichever way I go
the sky gets there before me
only to redraw the shape
of what has only just now -
occurred

The Woman by the Sea

The first time I met the ocean,
it roared in welcome,
a vast and restless beast—
powerful, endless, untamed.
Yet the sand held it still,
defiant, unbowed, unbroken.
Life and death, locked in a dance,
whispering promises I did not yet understand.

The air was thick with salt and sun,
golden waves swallowing the sky.
A tuk-tuk rattled near the shore,
its driver, a grinning guide to secrets
woven in the wind.

He spoke of the beach, its hidden alleys,
its shadowed souls.
Then he showed me her—
a woman alone, hunched in sorrow,
staring past the edge of the world.

The sea mirrored her silence,
rolling endlessly forward, pulling back.
A ghost of someone loved once,
now lost to the needle’s cruel embrace.
Her husband had been buried in waves or earth—
it no longer mattered.

The sun draped its last light upon her,
a warning, a farewell,
or maybe just a promise
that it would rise again tomorrow.

The Woman by the Sea

The first time I met the ocean,
it roared in welcome,
a vast and restless beast—
powerful, endless, untamed.
Yet the sand held it still,
defiant, unbowed, unbroken.
Life and death, locked in a dance,
whispering promises I did not yet understand.

The air was thick with salt and sun,
golden waves swallowing the sky.
A tuk-tuk rattled near the shore,
its driver, a grinning guide to secrets
woven in the wind.

He spoke of the beach, its hidden alleys,
its shadowed souls.
Then he showed me her—
a woman alone, hunched in sorrow,
staring past the edge of the world.

The sea mirrored her silence,
rolling endlessly forward, pulling back.
A ghost of someone loved once,
now lost to the needle’s cruel embrace.
Her husband had been buried in waves or earth—
it no longer mattered.

The sun draped its last light upon her,
a warning, a farewell,
or maybe just a promise
that it would rise again tomorrow.

Pity the Shovel that Buries the Earth

Beneath a callused skin of light
the hunched and mustered
clap a prayer between a leaking sight.

It is the earth that mourns itself,
whether baldly thrown or loamy laid
the silent soil repaints its sullied shrouds
far beyond any atoning sorrow,
or cooling heart.

It is none but a laboring pity
to lay down the past
as deep as a weeping sky allows
or raise a hand only to tamp down
a new-turned mound.

Restless are the skewing worms
ever churning a blood-born mud,
eyeless they cover the once begotten,
cloak a hard pressed present and loss.
as the missing
deafly retreat beyond our ken.

Hear now the trilling birds,
how they far-fling their buoyant hymns,
see how they hop between their own bones.

Bridger

Here with walls green and bright
My inn with fire’s warmth and light
By a ravine low and steep
An old man came in the night

Hunched, disfigured, neither proud nor tall
With a face shaped much like a wall
Wishing to bridge the sides of the chasm deep
A bridge builder was his call

He asked for a place to stay
Where in the night he could lay
Near the pit where dark things sleep
During the day he will be away

Despite a frail body and limbs uneven
I found he had a big heart even mid the wintry season
Despite the shadowy gloom the ravine does keep
But why he built I had no reason

When asked he said it was for those not yet
For them was his life’s work to be met
So they need not worry about the depths where evil does creep
He felt it was to them that was his debt

For long ago when strong and young
He did things that should not be sung
Until he climbed from the chasm steep
For once down under his soul was wrung

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