Knick-knacks
lost gems of past
family photos and jewels
old recipes and grandpa's pipe
heirlooms
We swayed back and forth as we rode town to town
where the gullible would soon bring their money around
my daddy sold elixirs that would make them feel good
making as much money as a poor boy-grown-up-man could
my mother sold knick knacks she hand sewed in the back
my sister and I were ringers in the audience, causing some flack
I used it and my blemishes were gone in a week I would yell
it cured my cancer and other things, hollered my sister Chel
making the money we needed to get to the next town for our next show
Those were days of contentment, more than I would yet know
our love is finished
going through your leftovers
find nothing to keep
tossing of pictures, letters
souvenirs, knick-knacks, trinkets
all reminders gone
nothing left but bitterness
one thing I must keep
Giggle and jiggle the pudgy belly.
With a thunderous boom, Santa's jelly
were diet-free snacks.
"Breaking some knick-knacks,"
ordered Rudolph to the nearest deli.
Name of the Contest: Snow Fantasy or Christmas Nostalgia Poetry Contest.
Sponsored by: Constance La France.
"Don't Christmas bells peal through each passage of time?" - Poet.
I think of the times when I was a child.
How, with glittering new garments, I smiled!
The stars, bells, and the animal idols...
Everything resembled solemn idylls.
My adolescence didn't change things much.
I had, then, imagined your gentle touch.
Hymns and carols gave a serene feeling.
Every scene in the church seemed appealing.
Nothing can be compared with that Christmas.
In which each thing, for us, was auspicious
In time's grace-filled tapestry, our threads met.
Our life, like the polestar, seemed to be set.
Our children adorned the cribs, then, each year.
With cuisines and gifts, we had unique cheer.
They got married, had children, and time passed.
We stood, to each other, always steadfast.
Fate has taken you away from me now.
I share my joys with each one, anyhow.
I find your image in knick-knacks and gifts.
I'm feeling within too, the time's soft shifts.
You sachet round the aisle
Just to seek an earnest romp
You flash your crooked smile
More of your parasitic pomp
A masher and a cad
You ever prey on their desires
Take everything they had
Then put out their friendly fires
You'll laugh your life away
You're quite the jester, yes it's true
I've just come here today
Saying, the joke my bloke's on you
No one ever calls you friend
Nor will ever recall your name
When you reach the bitter end
You'll know you played a losing game
No mourners will be present
Teary-eyed beside your grave
No tender reminiscent
No fond knick-knacks left to save
Some may find it sad indeed
But, all the same, I find it just
Time to plant another seed
One more idiot in the dust
“In my empty heart – only memories” by poet
Today our mother had his bed removed
and took posters down – even things he’d drawn
depicting stuff of which she’d disapproved.
Those posters that revealed his heart – all gone!
She took his dresser out, and all his clothes
she folded up to donate to Good Will.
His nice suits in the closet – even those -
as well as knick-knacks on the window sill!
I understand the pain she’s going through.
What good is there in taking all away?
The rest of our family's grieving too.
I press to my face a saved shirt of grey.
It was his favorite. In his empty room,
my tears release. I’m standing in a tomb.
A routine annual clean up
at the start of the New Year!
Among heaps of used up papers
and broken knick- knacks-
in the contents of her shelf’s drawer,
lay a photograph,
old and musty.
Memories rushed back as waves onto the shore.
She had kept it as a keepsake,
when love was raging through her veins!
A face that she wished to see all through her life,
now a bitter sweet reminder of joy and pain.
Through the years, what all changes
and how their love had faded out of memory.
Suddenly,
all too suddenly,
from the charred bones
of a died down funeral pyre,
resurrected someone,
with lovelorn eyes
bursting the bandage of time.
His sad eyes, rivetted at her.
She saw the smile fading out from his face.
Her eyes went dim with tears.
In the blurred image, she saw her past.
A torn leaf from life's chronicle.
A story she had hidden from everyone.
She felt the ground slipping under her feet
Blood and serum oozed out
and once more
she became,
a festering wound!!
Time may put an ache to sleep,
but anytime it may wake up and peep!
get out your words and try
try to make everything all right
sling them like arrows
into the gauntlet of time
do they even know
what they're trying to find
or do they just need to unwind
this old man played
too many knick-knacks too many times
too many paddy whacks to give his dog a bone
and that's okay... he's got his syllables
to lead him... astray ...or guide him home
it doesn't matter... they love to roam
over the highways and byways
through space and time
through the intricate mazes
of his heart and mind
not looking to mean anything
but to be happily lost.. like petals in the breeze
fluttering, floating and flying free
that's all they've ever needed to be
but if they could find their way
to a better place on some promising day
and could kiss you long enough
sink hard enough and deep enough
they'd never be forgotten
Today I feel unreal.
‘Decohered.’
Like a suitcase full of writings
and knick-knacks and scribbles
torn asunder.
Splintered.
And the collection that was contained
therein can no longer interact
in the same manner.
But then calmly you sit
and take into yours my hand
so that one thing remains-
I want to stay here.
" Obsession to live on memories losing past invites nostalgia." - Poet.
NOSTALGIA
Nostalgic notion nags for those already depressed.
Overwhelming obsession to reminisce dead events.
Sickness to swing on search of old sentiments of bygone days.
Traveling back along path of memories longing for relishing fresh.
Approaching in vain to access on chapters of past life.
Lingering over lamentation or contentment met in adrift days.
Groaning, grating, grinding grasping forgotten knick-knacks.
Intense inclination to live on remembrances.
Alluring rumination of long-lost dreams once aglow now fading..
Knick-knacks, bottle caps, pop tabs, and acid
The reflux of my mind of many memories redacted
Connections don't elucidate the fuzzy things that happen
Only emphasize the vacuity of brains fried and flattened
I wouldn't deign to age another decade with this habit
But self-control's a feeble virtue in youthful years uncounted
Demote me to a lesser life where everything is vapid
My rancor for the world only grows as time elapses
I press on indulgently into the sugared gasses
The romance of it influence next generations addicts
For boys discover empathy and girls affirm their status
They haughtily plod to the tracks as the sully train passes
Baubles and bangles
doo-dads and what-nots
Trinkets and knick-knacks
don't stir my pot...
Excitement, adventure
discovery, peril
Launch me over Niagara Falls
pulling levers in a barrel
boxful of Scotland souvenirs at a car boot sale
a life’s possessions
in thirty or so boxes
from the back of a white Transit
knick-knacks from Scotland
a wee man with ginger hair
tam o’shanter
and a corkscrew
a picture of Ben Nevis
with all the red vibrancy
sucked out of it
by years of rising suns
through flat windows
a toilet roll holder
from Edinburgh
cartoon spider and an inscription
taken straight from Robert Bruce
“if at first you don’t succeed,
try, try again”
an empty whisky bottle
shaped like a hand bell
a small bundle of colourised postcards
in brown, green and purple
of the Scottish Highlands
a tea towel with a stubborn brown stain
of the Isle of Skye
a pint glass with a colour scene
lettered Aberd—n
and a dried bunch of heather
bound by a tartan ribbon
from the banks of Loch Ness
that bunch of heather,
forty six years picked
owned from honeymoon to death
thirty or so boxes
of worthless detritus
to rummage and ransack
on a summer Sunday morning
a life lived
in one of thirty boxes.
6.6.2011
revised 6.6.2022 6:45am
Buried in a great big trunk
are things that some might call junk
Sweet cards from old friends and beaus,
decades-old knick-knacks and prose.
“Unclutter your life,” some say.
“Throw what you don’t use away.”
I say to them, “Let me be.
My keepsakes aren’t junk to me.”
*This is jeuju poetry. Here is Soup's basic definition of the form:
A Jueju is a type of poem from China that consists of a matched pair of couplets. Each line has either five syllables or seven syllables, so I followed the model given at Soup and then I wrote two Jeuju that go together.
March 22, 2022
For the Form J - Just Write Me A New Poem Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Constance La France
(#4 word chosen: junk)
Sub Categories
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