Long Flaking Poems
Long Flaking Poems. Below are the most popular long Flaking by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Flaking poems by poem length and keyword.
Let the demons play — and let them fall
As they seek their next prey.
Merry-go-round, lost and found,
Salt trodden deep in earth and pain.
Zombies crawl. An ass's stall.
I don’t need this bottle.
I don’t need you.
Forgive me —
For all the prayers I whispered in your name in vain.
Enemies within,
Those who proclaimed to be my friends.
Lucky, I suppose,
That the last seven years were already hell —
So when your shadow came,
My mind was ready to let go of this shame.
To my unfaithful beloved —
A mask of joy,
A face long tarnished.
The whore of Babylon.
The queen of ice.
Go to your best friend.
I am not him.
My errors —
But thy affairs.
My vain prayers —
Your dragon’s lair.
Wheat, tares,
Smoke, and ashes.
Set my demons free or bury them. It matters not.
But let the world know —
There is moloch...
And then,
There is you.
1. (Honest John)
2. You, (Snow White ) the Ice Queen —
You both were demons
are demons
demons
The tragedy:
A ripple in time,
That cost me (Ginger)—
One of my mentors.
Spiritually, emotionally.
I bit the hand that fed me.
You —
You gave me amnesia.
Trauma-Induced Dissociation.
And I laid my pain on (Obsidian butterfly)
You humiliated me.
You dehumanized me.
You demasculinized me.
You unmade me.
You shattered me.
You haunted me.
Because of you…
I can now be friends with (Obsidian butterfly)
I hadn’t spoken to her in 8 years —
Because of her divorce.
I projected myself on her husband,
Wrote her off.
And yet, I reached out again…
Because of you.
Two weeks ago, I saw a beast.
And I thought of you.
Along with this and that —
Something broke.
I am
A corroded lead nail —
Twisted, cracked —
Forgotten beneath flaking paint and dust.
You squeezed my soul.
And all that remains is bitterness.
I loved you.
You F***ing whore.
I was beaten,
Battered,
Threatened at gunpoint.
You raped me —
By letting him.
I was forced to watch.
You violated my body and my soul
By what you allowed.
And I fractured —
Trauma-Induced Dissociation.
But for the longest time,
I unfairly choose to blame someone
I'm sorry for being angry towards you, (Obsidian butterfly
-----------------------------------------------------
The Shady Rest Motel
By Elton Camp
Wife and I were on a trip out of state
We were growing tired and it was late
Fairly soon, there wouldn’t be daylight
It was time for us to stop for the night
Motels where we were proved to be few
So we had to decide what we would do
The next place we saw over to the right
But it was revolting. Such a sorry sight.
Its huge neon sign long ago had gone out
But a crude sign showed what it was about
“Rooms for Rent” at the very top it said
The letters were uneven and done in red
The building’s painted walls were flaking
Faded and torn flag from a pole was shaking
We figured that we knew what we should do
When we saw the note, “Thirty dollars for two.”
In the car we had much rather have to sleep
Than to spend the night in a place that cheap
There was no choice except to press ahead
And hope we would find a better place to bed
After about ten more miles down the road
We spotted a spot where we might unload
It was well off the road in a scope of trees
It looked a pleasant place that might please
The little motel had a suitable name as well
Sign declared it to be the “Shady Rest Motel”
The shrubbery and grounds were well enough
It had an ice machine, vending and such stuff
To be extra careful, we took a look all around
And no particular fault was there to be found
We decided that the place was probably okay
So we went into the office with intent to stay
The office was lit up, but no clerk in sight
I called out, “We need a room for tonight.”
“Keep your shirt on and I’ll be right there.
I was in the back taking a nap in my chair.”
An older man stalked out, looking so sleazy
He was shabbily dressed and his hair greasy
A cigarette dangled precariously from his lips
A scary-looking pistol in a holster at his hips
Taken by surprise, we didn’t know what to say
“Uh, just how much for your rooms do we pay?”
We soon learned that he rented only by the hour
And it would be extra if we wanted to shower
We walked quickly toward the office door
“Sorry, but we are not interested any more.
Rather than stay in a motel this bizarre
It would be much better to sleep in the car.”
(It was 1860 when the English poet Robert Browning
stumbled upon an interesting artefact as he walked
through the city of Florence. It was a file of documents
from an old Italian criminal trial, and he would turn
this material into his masterpiece, "The Ring and the
Book".)
The Old Square Yellow Book
It was the kind of day they call a "stallion"
in Florence, with white sun, surpassing strong.
And it was noon. (In June, to be precise.)
The Englishman came strolling aimlessly
(or was it?) through Piazza San Lorenzo.
And, just as now, a market crammed the square
and foamed around the statue's marble plinth.
Here, plaster busts, there, flaking picture-frames,
and Garibaldi portraits (way back then,
in eighteen-sixty, they were giving birth:
Italian nationhood was in the air).
The tall "inglese", drawn towards the stall
which offered prints and books, picked something up.
He shouted "shop", and put one lira down.
The book was his. He managed to ignore
the girls, a-squabbling over tasseled shawls,
those burly porters, drenching head and neck
in Giovanni's fountain, braying mules,
cacophony and chaos all around,
to read his book. His blood knew, right away.
At last, he'd found the raw material
from which he'd quarry one great masterpiece.
One foot propped on the railing, near the step
which leads down to the fountain by the church,
he read, engrossed. Then, with a sudden laugh,
he threw it in the air, and caught it, safe.
What was it? Well, a book - but more than that.
It was the record of some long-dead trial,
some murder case of many years before,
with statements, pleadings, longhand notes. In this
authentic tangle lay a human tale
of fierce emotion, rich psychology,
if he could tease it out. So off he set,
re-reading as he walked, feeling his way,
along the narrow Giglio, then the broad
Panzani. Via Tornabuoni next,
so long and straight, down to the river.
He passed the Strozzi Palace, crossed the bridge
they call the Trinita. When he reached home,
the cool Felice, there was not a doubt.
His whole life's labour lay there, in his hands.
I saw in her eyes the sallowness of festered love.
My drum had beaten to the resonance of celebration,
Of the deeds of love evaluation.
Her art bemuses me, especially when spoken and
Sketched to the rhythms of assayed hollowness –
Mottled balances echo silently on withered spots,
And the words she cherishes lie way below frontiers of enchantment.
How short my éclat reigned!
And my blood congealed!
Do I lay prostrate to hypoxia?
If I could borrow a leaf from her, I trust it would be the leaf of Love.
And on the edge of skewered times, I would lend the fit of
Pyrokinesis, cauterizing the inclement weather of her deception.
There’s that culture shock which love carries.
It kills and maims, yet lays crusts of veneer on one’s
Premeditated ego, pointing skyward like the finial of
Root-pannelled structure of breathless architecture.
My heart aches to the illusion of several months borne
Through the whim of my angel.
I wake on the brim of her nose.
Her eyes are grey and distant.
Rust besieges her hair with sliced threads of extended harvests.
I level up to her art with a hamster tied to the loose
Slivers of bamboo elements – with a repast so heartlessly
Soured by the sun.
I lean beneath her iron door, long loosened by the courage
Of assembled art.
My heart bleeds.
She lied to me.
As slimy as the mucilage of the okra,
I have shed genuine light of her hidden treasure.
And on a dark, vengeful night on the corridors of April,
Saturn, spinning her icy rings, revealed much.
And her love, deep and garish, traces peregrinations of
A hunter’s search through wooded paths, rain-drenched and musty.
From the shebeen to the sacristy.
The village church bell peals to the beat of my heart – a heart so deceived.
The gloom, structured in gossamer, binds me, haunts me.
Red banners of camwood yield to the moist of invaded space,
Tenebrous, and soused with the tears of a fallen roof.
Flaking tongues of prurient monsters lick my toes in noisy flicks....
God, where have I been?
Enter Alice, the bestest girl.
Enter Kobalos, The gruesome goblin,
(You may just see him in the middle of the tree, (or not))
Alice:
Rachael! Rachael!
What an ill forgotten wood this is
It nerves the jingle jangles from my soul
Where else to look, though stupid if I do
To gaze up to this tree and ask for help.
Kobalos:
Now there! The jingle jangle eh!?
What panic stricken minx has woken wood?
The jagged edge of branches each a notch
So tantalisingly close above her head
Instead of calling Rachael, are yea dead?
And the torment of imagination lingers
When children at this time of day are scared
Look! my eager branches seem like fingers,
Equally as long as you've been there.
Alice:
Hello! Is someone there, I hear a voice,
Kobalos:
Then maybe who shall Rachael be, hello!
Come climb, the view is excellent you'll see
Projecting what are acres more than mellow
My dear, Rachael, is up here with me!
Alice:
No! I shall not look for if I do!
The curse of Goblin Wood shall all come true
That they who talk to trees shall be as well,
A tree for ever more, and this they tell!
Kobalos:
Bunckernuk and dribdroch nichentoct,
Weirdy words of wood like magic spells,
Entice the girls and boys like any noise
As if the gaze itself was indeed there.
Alice:
You mean to say, it doesn't matter if
The tree I talk to doesn't hear a thing,
Yet if I were believing this were true
Then, why the wait, lets make a fairy ring!
Kobalos:
Humpdunk, toodletrash, mock of wisdom wise
Scandal monger, fairy rings, to seal a goblin's eyes.
Alice:
Trees are all around, and shaking mad
Oh! No!, The curse is fighting back, don't fall!
But what can Alice do, she has to call!
It happened, when I came here with my dad.
enter, The Narrator
Narrator:
Where hollowness should echo flaking bark
Abodes to goblins seven days a every week?
No! Just listen silently, there! hark!
Rachael's in the tree for Hide and Seek!
EarthCare Elders
repurposed our red brick industrial
BrownField
Including a rusted metal box
the size and shape of a giant's coffin
orange and dingy brown
metal flaking paradox
floating toward sacred ground
along river's sweeping fed up bed.
Here lived a racoon mother
as had her Elder EarthMother
before her,
members of an indigenous EarthTribe
with river wisdom
long before our anthro-privileged
patriarchal/matriarchal political
and capital economic divisive time,
perhaps more cooperatively sublime.
Because of Mother Racoon's prior claim,
our Elders could not remove this blatant blight
from commercial waterfront views
when they salvaged the metal roof
beneath it
to install solar panels
and repurposed metal blades
for wind turbines
Facing south
toward Long Island's soundless waves
and marshy breezes,
rapture to our downstream raptors.
So, instead of decapitating
this rusted tomb for racoon's rest
Her bedroom was brushed,
redressed high up
above our healing river
and painted fiery red
with a black raptor's feathered eye
guarding furious west
across autumn's sky
Relentlessly watching
our rivered valley
as trees burn orange
rich crimson
mellow yellow.
Our sacred river eye
of gratitude for River Gaia's flowing
watch back through transportive time.
She brought us rich soil,
luscious drinking water from the North,
seeds of grass,
raspberry and blackberry vines,
mountain laurel,
blueberry and cranberry bushes,
maple and oak and chestnut
and evergreens,
Edibles and ornamentals,
mushrooms and nuts,
berries and squash
and melons,
herbs and strawberries,
squirrels and frogs and bears,
cats and wolves,
bats and eagles
flowing and following upstream sometimes
collaboratively unaware
But, mostly down deep under,
sprouting magical thunder
awe and sacred wonder
All this
before our Raptor's Eye
for those who see
what others hear
of EarthTribe's mystery.
Sexy Love
Some say that love is when our rivers join on cotton sheets in mounting passion
when you and I share days and nights with Venus’ delta freely flowing
advance our bodies candlelit caress desires fit and fitting in all the latest fashion
when mingling waters splash the rocks and roll on tidal beaches growing
position musky gushes’ swelling delights’ passages in carefree physical obsession
when springs let loose in coasting caves change blushes into glowing
and we fulfil crescendo’s rhythmic interludes but do mistake loving for possession
Hard truths await when rivers dry turn flaccid stagnant trickle’s scorch our beds
when climate change in our hearts and mating souls abandoned lie exposed
our union built on quick sand crumbling walls fancy contortions immaturely spread
when flaking righteousness only amounts to shallow promises disposed
reveals the hidden secret of why rainy storm clouds erode the lover’s mindless head
when then and how and where the thirsty moonless plights are loathed
that reckoning deserves some thought when all else has been done and said
Sometimes our rivers flow below the earthy needs and wants flown in the wind
when fire’s pleasures kindled spirits need to join beyond sexual application
and thus all sensual heartfelt feelings have to be twined and twinned
when kindness compassion consideration might super-cede awesome copulation
the biggest phallus shapely **** augmented egos and shapely waistlines trimmed
when thinking conversations holding each firmly outweighs the grandest fornication
and then the river riders circle to sheet and intercourse in true love never dimmed
09th October 2016
It’s late this night of Halloween
I’m lost and quite alone
Walking down an empty street
To find my way back home
Along this darkened shadowed path
A church in silence sits
So many days recall its past
I’m scared out of my wits
Flaking paint and rusted hinge
A sign that reads “Keep Out”
An iron gate that stands ajar
As spider webs do sprout
Its steeple points towards the night
While clouds now slowly flow
The moon is full and eerie bright
A howling wind does blow
Tombstones wait beyond the fence
Unearthly silhouettes
Chiseled dates of someone’s death
Lost souls of sad regrets
A faster pace my feet they move
Till something that I spy
Brings a fear into my heart
Caught within my eye
A tiny light does flicker so
Behind the stained glass pane
I try to look away but can’t
Oh, there it goes again
Now this is dumb, I know it’s true
But I can not resist
I sneak up to the broken glass
To see what does exist
I press my face against so tight
Horrific was the scene
Startled so I could not stop
And I let out a scream
The shadow in the window jumped
It knows just what I saw
The front door creaks its opening
An eerie shriek does call
I run so fast my heart it thumps
As I can hardly breathe
I feel a hand, the footsteps thud
It grabs a hold of me
I wrestled hard so frantically
I kick, I plead, I cry
And as the thing let’s go of me
My feet begin to fly
Running till my muscles burn
Never more to see
What creature lingers in the dark
Waiting there for me
Finally I make it home
Climb into my bed
Pull my covers way up tight
Covering my head
A lesson learned, oh that’s for sure
Of that nightmarish scene
I’ll never walk alone again
At night on Halloween
Written for the Halloween Night – Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Nayda Ivette Negron
It’s a sad and sorry state to drive past every day,
the little Baptist Church I once attended every Sunday.
Weatherboards are flaking paint and spouting needs repair.
The Cross is leaning at an angle and starlings nest in there.
And like so many others now I no longer do attend,
Sunday has so much to offer than to find some time to spend
an hour locked in worship that so dearly should be found,
and so I turned my back upon the Church that’s falling down.
Then a note was sent to everyone who once sat in the pews,
stating that on Sunday involved important Parish news,
and every baptized Baptist would be wise to now attend,
the little Church where many years bore comfort as a friend.
Rumours spread like wildfire through pub or school and street,
that the Church’s days are numbered and that is why we have to meet,
but the Vicar kept his cat inside the bag for all he had to say,
was “Make sure you do the right thing and I’ll see you on Sunday”.
Now like that cat with curiosity it’s killing all of us no doubt,
while we try to figure out just what the Vicar’s on about.
Is he throwing down some gauntlet? Will his news be good or bad?
Or will he tell us all that progress, will claim this Church we had.
Every seat and up the back was crowded to the core.
The Vicar’s never seen so many in this little Church before,
and when he ranted fire and brimstone, us sinners couldn’t look at him,
then he took a breath and solemnly declared that things are grim.
“This Church” He said, “As you can see, is desperate for repair,
but there’s good and bad news for you folk who I believe do care.
The good news is we have the money for renovating to fulfil -
The bad news toward our Church is - it’s in your pockets still”.
dark skin closes over my eyes
ringlets darker than wet curls
stay open, i plead with them
my wrists rest on the keyboard
red and sore, covered by lace black gloves
my feet tap the bed, skin brushing against the soft fabrics
pink nails masked in darkness
black flaking off day by day, like my good mood
tight jeans cover my legs
skinny jeans their called
a dark silk shirt dips into cleavage
covered only by the gray hoodie i have half zipped up
and the multiple silver chains that hand off my neck
too much eye liner i was told, blends into my eyes
showing my exhaustion more than planned
my blond red hair, thrown up sloppily in a ponytail
bands still hang down, partial to covering my face
my eyes, look out, zoned out, clear, almost glassy
i tap anxiously, and listen to my father play the guitar
its calming, my favorite, sad song
my head feels weighed down, just as my body feels stiff
chains hang off of my wrists, and my belt
my rainbow and black colored belt
again today i was called emo
i shrugged it off, too use to hearing it by now to care
i force myself to eat, though the food i consume makes me feel sick again
i breath, shallow breaths, and count, while reminding myself
what therapy says, what doctors say, two groups of untrustworthy people
"in through the nose, out through the mouth"
about the only advise ill hear from them
i breath, trying to clear away the pounding noise within my head
though my surroundings are peacefully quiet
i think, even though the effort to make my mind do anything at the moment is great
shhhhh, i whisper to my thoughts
allowing pictures to take the place of words
and still carry my prayers to god
Form: