Imprisoning Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

Premium Member Confinement

Don't attempt to cram existence
Into the confining cell you've hidden
Your light in imprisoning your
Freest thoughts in a bottle
Opaque and silent
Doubtful and yet
Unquestioning.

Christopher M. Swan 2008

Premium Member Prisoner Of Depression

There’s a feel of heaviness around me
Weighing down my body and mind 
Restlessness consumes my very existence 
With this cloak of despair I can’t unbind

What brings this downfall upon me
What is the purpose of this misery
Other than imprisoning me in my life 
The reasoning for all this is still a mystery 

My life has been taken away from me 
I’m floating like a cloud in a sky despair 
How long must I be made to suffer 
Will there be an end to this nightmare 

This rancid darkness that’s overcome me
Has shown me on earth there’s a literal hell 
That will capture your mind to torture you 
And your captures you can never dispel

This mental prison they call depression 
Will relentlessly make you beg and plead
You desperately want to get away from here 
Alive or dead regardless as long as you’re freed

Premium Member Why I write

For velvet vanity and silver sanity
I write to unite mind and heart on sleeve
To free myself while imprisoning God in me
I write to escape at the same time I chase
My own path and wrath just to save face
I write to erase my sins and rewrite them 
But this time with a whimsical smile 
For a spoonful of sugar 
helps the medicine go down
And like the rabbit 
I love a good hole
To sink into
I write because I feel less alive
When I do not
Yet when I do I am not satisfied 
So for me it is a passion
That I endure brief periods of time
I wanted to be eloquent and 
Instead I form words like
A babbling brook splashing
Thrashing about hoping to travel
From one place to another 
In the end I am the only one wet


Let's party!

when I lie down, please don’t be
moaning, blaming, regretting,
imprisoning me in bricks, 
dispiriting my last party
an event of the century
wear pink and you’re invited 
free flow whiskey, intense weed
my favorite punk-pop indie
performing songs you relish

I'm lying down, set me free
let the flames unchain my leash 
erase the shame caused by me
burn our pain and grant our wishes
count to three announce proudly
disappointment deleted.

if there’s still some time to give
plant a tree
above the remain of me

Premium Member I wish I could put my tears back in your eyes

Life's a vacancy within my picture frame
Needs only an easel to display no one to blame
Imprisoning me by my own weak hands
Every canvas I paint no one else understands
Outlined only; this portrait of a blank stare
In a gallery where all the walls are laid bare,
As I struggle to modernize my antique ways
True colors won't release this brush of past fateful days
I wish I could put my tears back in your eyes
Since I can't picture a way to accept; even if you apologized

Premium Member Renunciation

The screen of awareness upon which life plays,
learns by touch whilst yet free from both joy and pain,
because it is not soul but ego that sways,
imprisoning consciousness in a thought chain,
wherein we trauma bond until end of days,
unless by force of will, dark desires are slain.
This practice requiring renunciation,
chooses cessation to raise soul’s vibration.


The dark place

There’s a dark place where I used to live that sucked me in down deep. 
The walls were huge, imprisoning and slippery and steep. 
Anxiety, depression, panic attacks just grew and grew and grew, 
until I felt so ill I couldn’t cope anymore with what to do. 
My mind grew foggy,  and illnesses came to me more and more. 
I felt I was going crazy immobilised to my core, 
Then slowly the dark place lightened as I climbed out bit by bit, 
painful, steep and torturous I was supported out that pit
I’ve now escaped that awful place that used to be my home 
but every now and then I hate back there my mind will roam. 
And triggers from that dark time make me anxious worried teary,  immobilised and scared, my body and mind so weary.  
There’s a dark place where I used to live that sucked me in down deep, 
but despite the odd visit back there I’m out, loved and not needing to weep.

Premium Member OPTIMIZING BONDING DELIGHT

Basking under celestial rays
there we are…
mother and son 
beyond hope-filled mirth
jubilantly surmount 
imprisoning boundaries...
since special child 
freely wheels himself
to optimize bonding delight
midst God’s boundless grace...
while I plunge into faith-flight
beholding his courage
wondrously liberating.

Stockholm Syndrome

Don Cody is the main antagonist of the 21 film Girl In The Basement.He is a controlling and cruel father who believes he is right all the time and throws temper tantrums whenever his ego is bruised,or when someone does something he doesn't like,until he is arrested for his crimes of imprisoning his family against their will for two decades.Elisabeth was given a new name following the trial,with strict laws to prevent her identity being revealed.The children,aged between 20 and 34 as of February 2023,reportedly slept in rooms with doors permanently open after undergoing weekly therapy sessions to eliminate the traumas they suffered inside the cellar.Note.Kia Bakchodi film da Don Cody.

Premium Member Detachmeant

the more man possesses, the more he must protect
imprisoning himself within his own suffering, 
unknowing that all things are impermanent.

Premium Member Fear-Unwelcome Emotion

Conjuring anxiety, obstructing path of hope,
A quivering hesitation, frightened to cope;
Fear is omnipresent causing anguished moan
Agitating aspirations in distress of unknown.

Fear is darkness, a trepidation upon norm,
Worrisome, trembling, turbulent as storm;
An obstacle threatening progress of life,
A messenger of panic, an architect of strife.

Treacherous to audacity, fear is a cheat,
A betrayal to victories, fretting of defeat;
Fear is melancholy, an expression of gloom,
Hampering courage, perturbing in doom.

Fear is a loathsome impediment to goals,
Dashing endeavors of endearing souls;
Averse to commitment as love goes awry,
A remorseful cry, where lost kinships sigh.

Unwelcome emotion imprisoning ambition
Unleashing inaction of paranoid inhibition,
Fear immobilizes, as if, bird trapped in cage;
Paranoid, valor-less, upon life’s center stage.

January 21, 2023
Placed 1st: Fear Is Liar Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Sotto Poet

Petroglyphics

Writing the words
imprisoning the words

Lettered confinement
—frozen in time

(Dreamsleep: January, 2023)

Premium Member Not Making War

In anti-social economics
for escalating violence
and waging war,
what matters most
is who
and/or what 
you actively distrust
divest enough to sustain revenge
and imprisoning
dissonant
dissociative dispassion.

In politics,
as diplomacy 
and peace-building
and making love,
what matters most
is who 
and/or what
you invest in trust
enough to create
and recreate compassion.

In healthy
and safe ecopolitics,
what matters most
is who
and/or what
you co-invest with trust
and do not secretly distrust
enough to recreate 
therapeutic compassion
letting go of hate
before it's too late
for traumatic unknowns
to become outgrown
historic dispassions
disappointments
disarray,
health and safety
distancing dismay

Freely set aside
when it is,
as now,
past time
and sacred space
to come out
for more
and evermore
compassion's healthiest play.

Premium Member A Darkest Night Too Brightens In Dawn

When I ruminate in trepidations forlorn,
Darkness traversed in search of dawn,
Vying fertile shores, oceans I crossed,
Nightmares that my dreams doled out;
Looking back now, how I fondly recall--
In those hardships success was born.

As I watch frigid woes glinting on snow,
Winters that melt and in rivers flow,
Parched-leaves tinting autumn’s glow,
I wonder how seasons in throes know;
Behind clouds of despair rises arc of hope.

When I spend today in tempests bygone
Brooding in defeat of conquests lost,
Yesterdays that were callously tossed;
I once again follow footsteps of the past
Imprisoning my triumphs of tomorrow
Arresting winsome ambitions of now.

Learning the lessons from where I was
I reassure anxieties perturbing my life:
Travails of turbulence won’t last long,
For a darkest night too brightens in dawn,
A rainbow forms after a storm is gone.

So, I clasp the hand of a leisurely walk
Unfettered by constant tick of time clock, 
Passionately answering call of my heart
Bequeathing moments that forever last.

August 8, 2022 
Placed 1st: Free Verse -Old or New Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Joseph May

Armor Against Glamour

Against her conquering glamour 
I wear my steely armor,
Self also defending against rich humor
With a face of Cancerous Tumor
While my pals she shakes with a tremor
That hardly spares a good femur 
Like The Kingfisher did and I fell for Seymour 
And till today for the story clamor!

Yet, my eyes sometimes flash The Glints
In Endlessly Reckless Yours
Their messages in a hard print.
A seductress exploits their flaws
For imprisoning a guy in her baiting arms
Or spinning round his misbehaving palms …

Either way to not go in his favor
Nor same showcase as True Endeavor.

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.

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