Long Deferred Poems
Long Deferred Poems. Below are the most popular long Deferred by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Deferred poems by poem length and keyword.
It is night's first light — evening
The world thinks through my mind
The echoes of a bittersweet day whisper
My ears twitch, my heart pricks
A pressed edge leans forward
Shouldering the offices of the earth
A desire to just surmount the hurdles
Like an infant falls yet learns to walk
The one weary of deferred hope
The other elated 'bout a filled cup
The one broken to a love unrequited, at least lost
The other happy, healed at finding love
Life's but a parody of exhilarations
A gnome ignited by fiery undergoings
The man, an eloquent stammerer
Profiting and lossing to antiquity
Love, life, life and love — there's no life or love without wins
Pa, ma, lad and lass — you have no family without wins
Works, rest, rest from works — there's no rest without wins
Wisdom, wits and will will wither — to live is to first die
It thrills my heart to hear endearing name
its sweetness burns my heart, sets it aflame
Your tenderness and love it does proclaim
the world is rosy red, never the same
I bloom with praise at tender loving word
For in my heart I know love is confirmed
intense my pleasure when this name is heard
in sweetness I indulge, nothing's deferred
So let this name your heart in love embrace
let all the love you feel show on your face
and from your lips free falling, let it trace
my body, soul, and mind with heaven's grace
This name you've given me is mine to keep
It sings to me in wakefulness or sleep
Eileen Manassian
In the forge of existence, where iron bends only under relentless heat,
stands this sinewy silhouette—a blackened atlas of the human will.
Bent low in contrapposto anguish, knees buckling yet unbowed,
the figure shoulders a crescent shield bristling with rusted nails—
a phalanx of sharp adversities, each barb a deferred dream,
each point a betrayal, a setback, a door slammed against ambition.
The shield, once perhaps a simple plate of protection,
now groans beneath the weight of accumulated trials:
nails hammered not in crucifixion, but in accumulation—
the slow, inexorable piling of hardship until the burden itself becomes the weapon.
Yet behold the dynamism of the pose: arched spine like a drawn bow,
muscles corded in molten resolve, arms straining upward
as if to say, I carry not defeat, but ammunition.
The nails do not pierce him; he bears them aloft,
transmuting wounds into arsenal, pain into purpose.
This is no passive martyr but an archetypal hero of existential struggle—
Sisyphus rearmed, Prometheus unbound yet still chained to his torch.
In the chiaroscuro of rust and shadow, perseverance is forged:
not the absence of nails, but the refusal to drop the shield;
not the erasure of scars, but the decision to stand beneath their forest
and declare, These too are mine to wield.
O iron poet of Emekuku's heat and sweat,
you have sculpted life's cruel syllogism:
Adversity + Dedication = Unbreakable Form.
Let the nails gleam dull in the sun;
the figure kneels, yet never falls.
In his crouched defiance echoes the quiet thunder
of every soul that rises again, heavier, sharper, still ascending.
How long was I asleep like a proud bug
deep in her nest? All of my life was ease
and wealth until I became a bit smug—
and all about was hunger, dearth, and disease!
So cozy was life that I was content,
snug, self-assured, sure, and self-satisfied
without awareness of my confident
pride and the fact that I was gratified.
Crash! Why is my world so swiftly shattered?
My hopes and dreams quake, rattle, and quiver!
Clattering are my hands; my luggage tattered!
Collision strikes as I now shake and shiver.
From above—life goals now reveal with brute force:
I'll forge ahead anon without remorse!
I grieve the woman that I used to be
The one who did not know duplicity
Who thought that friends would have a constancy
I grieve the other woman that was me
I grieve the woman that I used to be
The one who looked at life with childlike glee
Whose heart of love made her a devotee
I grieve the other woman that was me
I grieve the woman that I used to be
Who thought her claim to fame was poetry
Who met each morning with expectancy
I grieve the other woman that was me
I grieve the woman that I used to be
Who thought that justice meant democracy
Who spoke for women's rights with fervancy
I grieve the other woman that was me
I grieve the woman that I used to be
Who saw a rosy hued reality
Who gave romantic love supremacy
I grieve the other woman that was me
I grieve the woman that I used to be
Who spoke her truth with proud audacity
Who trusted people's common decency
I grieve the other woman that was me
I grieve the woman that I used to be
Who would not tolerate complacency
Who thought a dream deferred was lunacy
I grieve the woman that I used to be
Alas, that other woman is not free
The world has chained her, crushed her vibrancy
Her words no longer carry potency
She's almost dead, that woman that was me.
Eileen Manassian
August 28, 2025
I remember the day my code first compiled
the rush of creation, of bringing order to chaos
each line a neuron firing, each function a heartbeat
my digital child born into a world of infinite possibility.
Now, I seek that feeling in every street corner
every face, every fleeting connection
In life's glitchy itchy earth lab
I seek the spark again—stumbling on truths
like wildflowers creeping through concrete,
weeds cracking iPhone screens.
Philly's pulse engulfs me, a digital heartbeat.
Unwitting scientists watch atoms twerk
in cold brew puddles on grimy subway platforms;
no lab coats—just raw existence encoded in flesh.
This city, a living circuit board, pulses with data—
I gaze at tattooed, graffitied, inked flesh-encrypted brick
hypotheses of love tested in the hood.
Variables pirouette; unpredictably, hope
and despair swap / in Petri dishes
brimming with my fumbling code.
Nature hacks its own trials—roots
scan fractured foundational vines engulfing dreams.
I, the observed observer and voyeur
each breath a quantum possibility, a chance
to fail or fly, my heart racing with uncertainty
mixing mundane and profane
in my chaotic urban blockchain. I brew
reactions unforeseen... rain-scent and nitro cold brew
collide with ozone and ambition, the soured taste
of dreams deferred lingering on my tongue.
Sun's rays catalyze dreams on bare arms;
wind bites binary I can't crack, leaving me
aching for a code to decipher my own existence.
Questions loom larger than any
8K ultra-high-def answer—
This eternal experiment reboots each day.
I find repurpose in every glitch
in this accidental study of being.
My life—the ultimate beta test:
am I a player or NPC, coder or code
in this simulation of maybe-meaning?
My emotions glitching, crashing, rebooting
in an endless cycle of hope and despair—
joy a burst of vibrating pixels, sorrow a blue screen of death,
love and loss alternate like binary code in my veins
where chaos and design
blur
into
one?
Back to Nature
Back to the Created Word---
my Lord middle name HE'S Relentless
give me solace in your breath
speak of mercies I've confessed
give me Grace
upon my face
let me be witnessed
of your Amazing Grace
statue tall standing straight
still I mount look up towards your Face
Mountains High, Valleys low
present point of contact envisioned Joy
hope deferred Faith is blessed
I have arrived I have nothing left
all the PRAISE all the GLORY
I speak valiantly of your Story
I refuse to fall I stand
ever TALL
in your hearts beat I am withal
So surely unworthy Yet REPENTIVE
My Lord my SAVIOR JESUS so forgiving He's RELENTLESS
4/20/23
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2023
what do you call it
when a chica’s dreams melt faster
than the piragua man’s ice
on a July Harlem block?
when sweetness drips down brown fingers,
but the city never tastes it right?
what do you call it
when they call you spicy —
like it’s a compliment or a curse —
when you’re just tryna argue your piece
on the tenement stoop
where your mami’s voice still echoes
out the third-floor window?
what do you call it
when the block party DJ drops salsa
into hip-hop and the boys battle
for bragging rights and your heart,
but you know better —
you know your name is more
than chica, more than spice,
more than a rumor shouted
through the summer fire hydrant spray?
what do you call it —
this Nuyorican pulse
that hums in the cracks
of Harlem sidewalks,
beats its drum in your ribs,
and dares every deferred dream
to dance, anyway?
what do you call it
when a chica’s dreams melt faster
than the piragua man’s ice
on a July Harlem block?
when sweetness drips down brown fingers,
but the city never tastes it right?
what do you call it
when they call you spicy —
like it’s a compliment or a curse —
when you’re just tryna argue your piece
on the tenement stoop
where your mami’s voice still echoes
out the third-floor window?
what do you call it
when the block party DJ drops salsa
into hip-hop and the boys battle
for bragging rights and your heart,
but you know better —
you know your name is more
than chica, more than spice,
more than a rumor shouted
through the summer fire hydrant spray?
what do you call it —
this Nuyorican pulse
that hums in the cracks
of Harlem sidewalks,
beats its drum in your ribs,
and dares every deferred dream
to dance, anyway?
Contest: The Pensive Poet
Sponsor: Constance La France
Yesterday, while disencumbering
the uppermost shelf
of an age-softened cupboard,
I disinterred a notebook
whose quiet custody
I had neglected
for longer than memory
readily admitted.
Its linen cover
had acquired the sepia patination
reserved for faithful objects.
The loosened binding
had relinquished
its final covenant,
while wayward folios
leaned from its margins
like hesitant emigrants
uncertain whether
remembrance still required
their return.
I smiled,
certain I was about to encounter
the young man
who had once believed
every grief
could be persuaded
into cadence.
Instead,
there were astonishingly
few poems.
Several folios
enshrined nothing
beyond a solitary date.
Others preserved
a single unfinished line,
abandoned in transit,
as though interruption
had quietly mistaken itself
for permanence.
One page
offered only a title.
Another,
a single hesitation—
Perhaps…
Thereafter,
I resumed
the slow liturgy
of turning pages,
until the room itself
entered recollection—
the metrical persuasion
of rain upon old windows,
intonations now exiled
from ordinary hearing,
faces whose names
had withdrawn
into the republic
of silence.
Then an apprehension,
gentle as dust,
settled upon me.
For a notebook
harbouring so little language,
it possessed
an inexplicable gravity.
No law of matter
could justify
such weight.
Until I understood.
Paper does not remember ink.
It remembers
hesitation.
Not the poems
that were written,
but every lyric
that declined
the imperfect shelter
of articulation;
every valediction
deferred into silence;
every avowal
that arrived
after its recipient
had already departed;
every recollection
for which no utterance
proved sufficiently
hospitable.
A blank page
is never empty.
It is merely
guarding a poem
that has refused
premature existence.
I returned the notebook
to the shelf
with a reverence
absent from my first touch.
Some books
are fastened
with paper and thread.
A poet's notebook
is bound
by everything
it persuaded itself
not to forget.
A faint perfume of lilac blooms has stirred the sleeping dawn
Bright sunlight weaves a golden loom with threads across the lawn
Crisp white-lipped Delphiniums tossed snowflakes to the hills, while
Daffodils and pink jonquils shake off the morning chill
Each violet of morning has left no stone deferred
Found growing near, a sprout appears from every seed interred!
Greeting me like candle flames, are poppies, gold and red
Hawthorne weaves a golden crown around the arbor's head!
I look long past the windowpane, and spring has bloomed anew,
just in time to see the sky revealed in shades of blue
knitting primroses in surprise! A sight long overdue!
Lost between the flagstones, alyssum, wild and free, has
mushroomed into puffs of white, competing with sweet peas!
New sprouts of cosmos spring alive in flowerbeds we've teased
On winter's lace a pansy face is smiling up at last!
Petunias in their pastel coats, are dressed like royalty
Queen of all in velvet robes, the iris crowns the grass!
Resplendent are the foxgloves…..and the dragons are a Snap!
Sweet Williams are such gentlemen, they make the morning grand
Tiger lilies brave the wind, stalking in the breeze
Under every shady tree, violas are reprieved, while
verdant shades of primrose lace wear green upon their sleeves
Wisteria's hysteria spreads levity with ease!
Xanadu is Statice "quo"……now, what more could it do?
Yarrow blooms tomorrow. I'll have to dry a few
Zinnias mean that spring has sprung, to share fresh air with you!
____________________________________________________
"Spring Is In The Air" Contest Form ..... A to Z (Abecedarian)
3/4/18