Long Cardboard Poems
Long Cardboard Poems. Below are the most popular long Cardboard by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Cardboard poems by poem length and keyword.
Heard the term “outside the box”?
What box are they referring to?
Sitting in my jammies at my computer
Don't see no box, do you?
A term you hear a lot these days
What can it possibly mean
This old guy is totally confused
Totally betwixt and between
Catch phrases have always confused me
Prefer simple Dick and Jane words
So all us grandpas can decipher them
This stuff is sure for the birds
Maybe I'll get an old cardboard box
And sit me therein for a while
Then emerge and start thinking of stuff
In a clever “outside the box” style
Really that's not at all what it means
Heard someone say emphatically
To go where no man has gone before
Think a lot more erratically
Now confused much more than ever
Think I'll lie down for a while
Till the world spins a few more times
And I get back my winning smile<>
he entered the room as if rice was about to boil over,
seeing faces of those he didn't recognise look as though
they were reading the last line of a book they never read
before, staggered, asymmetrically pensive in times during
coffee servings and bites from donuts, but, given that it
was only midday, the flavour of the waitresses grumbled
in overlapping office lunch hours. little did our hero, who
entered with arched cat-back whiteness, know, his un-
expected audience, delivering blank verse in motor-
cycle and side-car loads, were systematically only there
to make up the numbers, merely propping up the inward
burst of off the street heart attacks, the last hope of ever
thwarted reasoning and too the waitresses were cardboard.
In my dreams I don’t do well,
there’s always a gremlin
that leads me through a door
marked: ‘fears.
Last night, pretty much the same,
but then the lesser god who organizes my brain
into motel stops on an insane highway,
gave me a break.
I am this great guy I always wanted to be.
The dream takes form.
I live in a lakeside house, a place
shared with a great looking dog.
Life is just great.
It’s twilight, and I take a notion to swim.
Behold! The lake is thronged with naked females.
They’re so pleased to see
my old wrinkly body out there in the moonlit water.
‘Great’, I say to myself, ‘just great’!
Then just as I am doing great,
the dream falls apart like a wet cardboard box.
In the morning, the cat has pissed in my slippers,
now it sits on a shelf licking its paws.
I can tell
that it don’t give a damn about my dream.
Darkness has overcome me, back alleys alongside the stray cat, no needs to be seen no longer, everyone’s gone home… only the sounds of sirens chasing the empty city streets…
Strangers wrapped up in their only warmth of a tattered blanket, cardboard box is their hotel. No family around to seek my feelings, welcome mat has been pulled..
Life’s showing its ugly face, broken beer bottles, fu garbage cans becomes my fast food, no stranger am I to thus depressing mood.
My only companion is my shadow looming in the evening moonlight, our nightlight soothing our sorrows of a once loving family, laughter, hugs, a warm roof over our head, loving mom who tended to my every need, now up in heaven..
Time for bed, as I wrap up right in my one dirty stingy blanket, a jacket as a pillow to lay my burdened head down, my darkened shadow too is laying down, good night world, my soul I give to you, if I shall die before I wake I give it to God…. Good night
Normal people come in packs of six
Some are born in cardboard boxes
In suburbs, in summer, in campers
In the middle of the middle class
In clicks and clacks on railroad tracks
Rich people shower frequently in power
In God we trust the upper crust to laugh
Normal people want mobility Up
To supper in good company
To be pretty as a picture on the beach
To frolic in the waves of milk and honey
With apologies to Jesus people sing
Some dance in fire merrily
Normal people come in from the cold
Candy sweet and happy to be seen
Some come from baby factories
From across the street in greeting seasons
Middle class people love the poor
They love themselves much more
That is why babies are born
Subways are for the pedestrian class
Travelling from left to right transformative
In nature train people are always in motion
Moving on is always right
The mundane remain the same
With Happy Hour and a six pack waiting
Somewhere down the line the land cracks open
It is another earthquake opened with a smile
It’s taken care of.
A friend of ours
who owns property by the Ohio river
has agreed to make use of her pontoon boat,
to take my ashes, to scatter them.
I have been working toward this, making plans,
arranging for loose connections to connect;
it’s what I want and imagined.
Now we are drifting over an Autumnal morning mist,
the craft, a handful of mourners, the low throb
of a 90 horse power outboard motor.
I like the thought
of 90 horses under my cardboard urn.
I like the way even Autumn can be arranged
with a little forward planning.
I envision the water churning, horses
plowing a way through the still stream,
the craft rocking gently, a limousine
full of spectral wide-eyed children,
some of them sketching elaborate blueprints
of the day after,
some plotting navigational calibrations
regarding, spread, speed and eventual dissolution
of burnt atoms into the smaze of
recycled fish food.
We are all sanguine, buoyant with hope and wonder.
I would pat myself on the back if I could.
My wife kisses my dark container,
everything is going just as it should,
I have taken great care developing this scene.
My widow has not had breakfast yet
and the air is a little chilly.
‘Now’, I declare, ‘better here than elsewhere
don’t let the plot drift away’.
The mist is lifting, soon the world
will reveal itself to be just shorelines
between one dream and another.
I need to be away,
vainglorious schedules must be met,
the script notarized.
The winter winds piled snowdrifts against the old vets cardboard shack.
Another homeless vet, he shared his humble abode with his doggie Zach.
He pulled his tattered army overcoat about his frail frame and lay upon his back,
To reminisce about Christmases past when things were not nearly as black.
He recalled Christmases as a lad when family gathered about the Yule Tree,
To hear the story of that First Christmas as read from Luke at his Father's knee.
He mused, "How I pine fer Mother's turkey, sweet pertaters and punkin pie,
The warmth of my very first love and our sleigh rides beneath the moonlit sky!"
He wondered where his wife was and how the children were getting by.
Alas, demon rum controlled his life and they left without saying goodbye.
He shivered recalling Christmas '52 in Korea and being on the battle line,
The numbing cold, death and C-rations for Christmas fare on which to dine.
He was startled by the tolling bells from St Mary's Church across the way,
Heralding the joyous Birth of the Savior and he bowed his head to pray,
Saying, "Lord, I've hit bottom and I reckon to You I ain't of much worth,
But please lend Yer ear and accept my thanks fer that little Feller's Birth!"
Tomorrow, Christmas Day, he'd have dinner at the Springs Rescue Mission,
And sneak a bone or two for Zach, always looking out for his nutrition!
He'd abide 'neath the Uintah Street Bridge 'till the cops asked him to depart,
But he'd shift his meager belongings to another in his battered shopping cart.
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) 2014 All Rights Reserved
When I suddenly lost my loved one,
Despondency and despair took control of me—I felt like I couldn’t cope;
I had no one to help me heal or alleviate my anguish,
I eventually turned to alcohol and dope.
I knew these were bad choices,
But at the time, I felt that they helped ease my pain;
The miserable feelings of hopelessness and failure
Overtook me again and again.
Ultimately, I lost everything,
My job, my family, and my home;
Hitting rock-bottom, I suddenly realized I was destitute, distressed, and all alone.
Wearing dirty tattered clothes, on a busy street intersection I stood,
I felt degraded and downcast while holding an old cardboard sign;
Asking…begging…and pleading for any spare change,
I felt humiliated as the drivers looked at me while they waited in line.
Very few really acknowledged me,
And those that did angrily gawked and stared;
I felt so much embarrassment and indignity,
It hurt me deeply to feel as though no one cared.
I never thought I’d have to have these feelings of upmost shame,
That I would become one of society’s outcasts, a nobody… an unseen;
Lord, on bended knee, I pray to You…
Please help me turn my life around, so that I may feel happiness and peacefulness and all of the good things in between.
NOTE: My poem isn’t about me personally. I wrote this for the people that are in this particular situation.
i wake up
brush my teeth
in a puddle of mud
in the middle of the street
the same place
i wash my face
homeless early
homeless late
i check my reflection
in a right hand mirror
wipe it clean
it's a little clearer
objects are smaller
than they appear
like my life
since i've been here
of course i don't like
where i am
with no one here
to call me friend
hard to remember
my past life
something about that
don't seem right
i unfold
my cardboard sign
recite the lines
i've memorized
hoping for
one meal a day
but have had less
as of late
on the corner
is where i see
people avert
their eyes from me
i have to wonder
what i've done
as i haven't
harmed anyone
they look at me
as if i were a bum
but what i am
is a mothers son
look hard enough
and you will see
i could be you
you could be me
In tinsel time the bells do chime.
We deck the halls and shopping malls
with plastic bough and holly wreath.
The conjured tricks that lie beneath
the plastic magic make-believe
pull cheap tradition from the empty sleeve
and, with the angel chorus on demand,
demand the payment of the damned
by overdraft and plastic cards,
with season's greetings and regards
for Christmas Joy and Yuletide Cheer;
the end of one more bloody year.
In tinsel time the bells do chime
the dance of money and the mime
of love's best giving soon forgot.
And in each cardboard palace, hot
inside each borrowed suit of red,
each Father Christmas pats the head
of every child, drags out the lie;
and so the holy days go by
and fall beneath the pounds and pence
that parents value more than sense.
The harlot traders rub their hands and cheer
the end of one more bloody year.
In tinsel time the bells do chime
and all rejoice and with one voice
proclaim, disclaim, complain the lack
of honesty in Santa's sack.
The parties drag from pub to pub
and end up at somebody's club
and after, in the morning pain,
the disenchanted mutter "not again"
and stagger through another day
but then, again, go out to play;
Until, at last, the bells they cheer
that start another bloody year.
Kim James
12/12/95