Long Counts Poems
Long Counts Poems. Below are the most popular long Counts by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Counts poems by poem length and keyword.
You celebrate your Death-Day every year,
a “selfie” trampling on your grave-to-be,
without your knowing. Anniversary?
Through predetermined locks you have to steer.
As flotsam tumbles over each steep weir
in transit to the dark and formless sea,
you’ll pass the date of your finality
repeatedly, before the end-of-pier.
That day will dawn. It really will. The rows
of serried numbers, rigid, unforgiving,
that fill your calendar like Van Gogh’s crows
contain the fatal date. Your body knows.
You’ll dash about, stash cash and call it living,
but all your thrashing counts as dying throes.
Doctor Them
Dr. Them and himself remind us
There is no cure for life or after life
They give their assurance without playing with themselves
It is only the here and now that counts
Doctor has a dual personality of balanced size
To help keep you alive, so do comply, happy side by side
Turn over your wallet so you don’t expire
Not for any other reason, but medical, of course
The need to visit golf courses is purely coincidental
If you give us your insurance card we’ll throw in dental
With multiple personalities we need more fees now and then
New pools and houses would please us to no end
Dr. Them says; for all things medical, medieval or stormy
Take 2 aspirin and call him in the morning, (which him is up to you)
Accordingly, they will tell you about storm warnings you can use
If you call him or them a meteorologist, that will be billed too
Gratitude
for grace already received
is a robust measure of generosity.
Compassion scans for generosity's fullness
felt within
as incarnated without
As dispassion predicts greed's anxious emptiness.
Giving is physical and/or verbal
while generosity is mental and nonverbal.
Giving,
like loving,
hoping for a return of grace
within your lifetime's future,
does not share
or stretch
your gift of generosity.
Giving,
hoping to receive in equal measure,
plus interest,
plus loyalty,
plus admiration for our generosity,
is an investment
which counts the cost
of risking loss
Not necessarily a failure of gratitude,
or love,
for oneself
as for Other,
and also
not an outward compassionate act
of inward
mind-nourishing generosity.
Cut To The Chase...And Tan Hat Man!
Though reading horror stories (macabre),
an only every now and again
genre crazy wave
washing over me like
a killer tsunami,
(subsequently fueling
desperation) to save
thine scrawny ****,
(a derriere laughing stock,
and hence cheeky of me to rave),
those rare occasions satiated, when
hung over insomnia heavily bulging,
rheumy myopic blood shot eyes
nonetheless lock into
critical opening sentence determining,
whether adroit kingly author
nimbly setting the stage and pave
ving what thenceforth, pro
misses tubby a cell out ace
in the hole captive audience
(me, this apt pupil), doth brace
himself (by all counts once
a bad little kid) deserving, well...now...
just a bag of bones,
who fiendishly cackles
when leaning in (Sheryl Sandberg like),
whereat after opening sentence, an instantaneous
possessive gnarly hand
forcibly grabs my attention
presaging and frightening
yours truly (juiced in case
ye did not know),
where within the bazaar
of bad dreams epic,
which seems like forever,
when I finally erase
and exorcise the bogeyman who,
masterfully, immediately,
dramatically got woven
lady chattery teeth and all
withering wicked warp and woof
establishing (proof positive),
an excellently crafted
Chiral Mad heavily shades
of night are falling
gussying haunting place,
where the color of evil permeates
every cerebral space
with darkness, said
sub rosa prime evil punctuates
the mind this dream catcher,
whence after four past midnight
the reaper's image appears
sending adrenaline rush,
viz flight or fight blind
did, when firestarter alarm didst grind
passage of time manifesting dark forces
blaze zing atavistic fear itself lined
up battleground formation
from the borderlands of my mind
this even before turning
the first page where the eyes
of drag'n my afterlife shined!
Dusk with Bells of Ice
We leaned our shoulders against a dusk with no edges and no name,
and we're as cold as a mouth filled up with nothing but bells of ice,
what cure could that promised return be, sworn only in dreams, never in flesh,
a river of ash flows backward toward a spring we no longer remember.
Useless to count the ashes, useless to wash the anchor of stars with moon-water,
we braid ourselves into ropes of heavy smoke rising from useless words,
and we bind our temples with wire of melted lead, so the cure won't leak out.
I often wonder who else, besides us, still speaks to the night
through collapsed wells about ships that never actually sank,
who still carries a blind and permanently freezing compass in his pocket,
and who would hide inside an old wardrobe, among moldering coats,
just to scold the wind for the wrong road it showed us last night.
We curl into ourselves like a moth circling its own dying flame,
with feathers of ash growing from our shoulder blades instead of wings,
with little bells sewn over our eyelids, so we can hear the world without watching it burn,
and we dream of the child from the story who counts the stars backward, so time might turn around,
and falls silent, because any word spoken now would shatter the mirror of the night.
You, fox of wax, roll silently before us,
you train yourself in a frozen puddle, bare-legged up to the ankles,
as if we were drifting through a dream with no witnesses, not even a shadow to recognize us,
stay like that a little longer, your forehead in the light, let me watch you slowly burning,
like a candle forgotten on the doorstep, and let the pity rise in me like a tide that no longer knows its shore.
Two words,” Hey Handsome”,
occasionally thrown my way.
Something I could never feel or believe.
Could it be that someone actually found me attractive
or perhaps that I really was?
Why was it so important to me?
How did I come to believe that my self worth
was measured only by appearance?
Still, I longed for beauty.
“Hey Handsome”, I’d hear.
But all I could see were lips that were too big
and ears that were uneven
or a chin that was too weak.
I looked in the mirror today:
“Hey Handsome” I said to myself.
Not sure if I believed it.
But I can say that I like myself
and I’ve learned a bit more
about what really counts.
So the next time, I hear
“Hey Handsome”,
I’ll just say, “Thank You”
11/2/17
For Contest: From My Diary
Sponsor: Broken Wings
They speak in flames that do not burn,
A furnace of phrases, polished and loud.
“My government will leave no stone unturned
Until the perpetrators are arrested
And made to face the full wrath of the law.”
Sirens of promise wail through the air,
Yet the ashes remain exactly as found.
Words roar from official handles,
Broadcast in waves across waiting ears
Through every medium
Threats dressed in the uniforms of law.
“Full weight,” they say, with borrowed thunder,
But justice sleeps behind a bolted door.
Each dawn counts bodies like broken clocks,
Lives shattered between headlines and dust.
Homes reduced to nameless rubble,
While speeches rise:
“I have given marching orders to the security chiefs
To ensure these criminals are hunted down
And face the full wrath of the law”
Faithful in tone, yet barren in truth.
The killers walk with familiar shadows,
Their footprints unafraid of the light.
No cuffs clasp their wrists,
No courts summon their names into the night.
Words parade proudly across the screen;
Action limps, wounded and late.
Declarations pile like fragile sandbags,
Still blood seeps under the gate.
O cold fire! You glow without heat,
You threaten without a strike.
You roar for cameras and crowds,
Then whisper when justice must bite.
How long shall we be governed by echoes,
By vows that die at the microphone?
A nation cannot be warmed by slogans,
Nor secured by a voice alone.
Let silence fall on empty threats,
Or let deeds finally speak.
For fire that cannot save a life
Is colder than the weak.
Being so much alone
While a pretty figure appears
Thought you had find a crown
Hunt to cement partial fears
Between together
Or gone forever
And to never give a thought to be as we are
Choose to be in love
Fears to cease the shame of rejection
Better being told and turn a mere laugh
Than get burnt a cookie via affection
Useless is a vow
To which you do not bow
And meet up no matter how
Reality of the heaven
The confusion of the earth
Tugs the dream to share in even
Renting the reason to kiss noble breath
Jug the love
Move hastily in wave
And tie no reason counts gold to enslave
Dictation of being
Designation of mind's views
Do not guarantee foreseeing
Yet free off visiting the blues
When love is true
All your partners' faults enough a clue
For both to become anew
in mixed media tonight.
I used an acrylic paint marker
to mimic the petals
I see in spring
on trees I cannot identify.
I used metallic green,
blue and gold
for the two stems
of my abstract effort.
I used a silver
metallic brush marker
for whimsical swirls.
I used a black
permanent marker
for the bold strokes,
and a black micro
tip brush pen
for intentional
detail
where it counts
(the roots).
For sentimentality,
I used blue and pink
chalk writers
from the dollar tree.
Few people notice flowers
or poems
when the bigger world
is screaming for attention,
wealth and realism.
A northern mockingbird
is singing to
his heart’s content
on the telephone pole
tonight.
Nothing outshines
you, my sweet
spring singer.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
An intruder inside my mind, knocking endlessly.
A fuse burning down in the dark, reminding me that every second counts.
Every spark that drops is another chance to study, to work, to do more.
It pulls at my nerves like the strings of a guitar that
instead of creating a beautiful melody, cry out in pain.
It washes me in burning gall,
gurgling up my throat,
crawling its way upward until I can't breathe.
Like a book without an author, it writes itself in my head: scenarios, stories, things yet to come that I never asked for, never wanted to see.
And then it starts, questioning me over and over:
What if I mess up?
What if I fall behind?
What if I try my best,
and it still isn't enough?
What if I'm a sponge, soaking up knowledge,
pressure... everything, until I can't hold it anymore?
And with time, like a sponge that has absorbed too much
I will overflow, and everything I worked for will spill out and disappear.
Then they arrive...
The holidays, when mornings no longer lead to classrooms,
when days are no longer pages left to complete, but pages left open,
carrying nothing but the gentle weight of themselves.
And the pest that used to hammer relentlessly through my skull
realizes that it's time to take a break from
pulling, ripping, slicing through thought after thought.
Like a sponge, we spend our lives trying to absorb the world,
collecting every drop of expectation,
every hint of worry,
thinking that holding it all is what makes us worthy.
But a sponge is not meant to hold onto water forever.
If you never learn how to empty yourself,
if you never learn how to let go of what you carry,
the world will eventually squeeze you dry.