Long Flattens Poems
Long Flattens Poems. Below are the most popular long Flattens by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Flattens poems by poem length and keyword.
I know there are some people out there who in their hearts believe that…
in spite of all the evidence to the contrary our planet Earth…is flat!
When I hear this…I admit…I am astounded…
for I believe the scientists and my own eyes…when I say the Earth is rounded.
I say rounded because due to centrifugal force, gravity and the whims of our creator
Earth flattens out a little at each of her poles and bugles at her equator.
Which technically makes her an oblate spheroid as scientists have found…
but for the purposes of this poem…It’s okay to call her round.
I’m not interested in her exact measurements, her circumference or her girth
today I’m interested in her corners…yes in the corners of round Earth.
Figuratively Earth has a multitude of corners…corners specific to you and me…
my little corner of the world consists of my friends and family.
Which means every family out there has their own corner…corners they can see
and we do our best to make our little corners of the world…as happy as they can be.
And since we’re talking about the Earth…no matter how you spin it…
we each hope our little corner of the world…will smile on everybody in it.
But such is the the nature of the Earth…if you travel at all you might suspect…
none of our corners stand alone…they all intersect.
Which means and I’m sorry for the convoluted nature of this poem…
how to get to the point it took me a while…
But if we tried a little harder at the points where our corners intersect
perhaps we could make the whole world smile?
In the cosmic dance,
where stars collide,
Galaxies spiral,
and planets ride.
Saturn’s rings shimmer,
Jupiter’s dim,
Moons circle round,
a celestial hymn.
From quasars’ crescendo to pulsars’ beat
Cycles in cycles take form and retreat
Superstrings vibrate,
harmonies entwine,
From dust comes life,
Is there a design?
Supernovae explode,
Notes of awe,
Dust fields condense
To a nebula claw.
Mass bends space
Took Einstein to learn
But space guides mass
Both take their turn.
From quarks to quasars,
Our scale in between,
We know we exist,
but what does it mean?
Personality traits combine to make you
Like notes combine to make melodies ring true.
Can you hold the tune through the rise and fall?
Through the noise and the smoke, can you stand tall?
This poem you read now,
complex inside your brain
simultaneous patterns
a disciplined flame.
Minds model dynamics,
Our neurons fire,
a strange attractor
assembling a choir.
Our genes express patterns, recursively repeat
Make diagnostic music, a remarkable feat
if cancer lurks, the music hits a false chord,
And tunes affect gene expression, a joke by the Lord.
Between order and chaos,
Our thoughts arise
Each man a universe
Don't waste the lives.
Will the universe end, entropy reign,
Shall all come to naught, in silence remain?
A stacked game, no way to win
Nothing left, no judge of virtue or sin?
When all flattens out, was it worth all the scheming?
Was sound at the end more important than meaning?
Maybe all you can do,
before that final hush,
is take life in both hands,
don't think too much, feel the rush.
Cherub's unfurled fingers faithfully extend to his fallow fringe
hung from a chest made firm by suede, sweat and rain.
Chernobyl blue irises mimic April '86 radiation,
dessimating her Cherokee's sense of societal decency.
Devoted to her capture, suede cape kidnapped,
kept protected.
Kernel lodges promise in her gut, cob of compassion sprouts
from yellow potential.
Shrewd Indian whisks his skin of citrine amber sap seraphim
away, to landscape blameless bare.
Motor mumbles underwater torture breathes through
chrome clothing.
Frothy stew swirling storm of snake flesh snow flakes.
Cherub's education quells emotion, pain never developed.
Teepee tall frame levitates in opaque of inequitable love.
Flimsy slim strands strong in Cherub's raised comprehension.
Fringe flown backwards flattens beneath her face,
bohemian bombastic.
Dislodged sand grains foretell
Grasp nestled naive fledgling
Prospered pillion flame
7th June 2022
Written for Contest:
Like A Child
Sponsor:
Regina McIntosh
I could shout it on the streets,
I could glisten and I could gleam
add a shade of every colour and make myself believe
that each day I don’t see it, that look on their faces
or that I don’t hear them half listen to every word I say.
I can pretend that I’ve been saved from it all,
been freed from a silence and that I am living my truth
but sometimes the truth is far more ugly:
it’s the reason you never quite become friends, it’s the reason everything always has an end or how every joke lands at your expense because your sensitivity is clearly the strongest in the room.
I’ve always known that my interests just can’t be of interest
that my humour is not what’s being laughed at, in those rare moments I feel I can let loose.
I’ve been conditioned to not take up space
told not to go and shove it in their face
yet when this month falls I’m to go and parade?
Forgive me if I’m now playing the victim
forgetting the sacrifice of so many braver than me,
forgetting the privilege of roaming free
but when your difference brings you so much pain, when it paints the most prominent double yellow you’ve ever seen, you can’t quite seem to feel proud not even for a month.
You think of the secret messages that you’d send to Chris or to Nick or to Jay or to Ben knowing in truth, that you’ll never meet, that you would ignore them if you passed them on the street because it wasn’t you they wanted or they didn’t want what matters; with your clothes still on, the interest just flattens.
You think of life events and how you’re still quite far behind
you’re surrounded by love but it never quite reaches over, you just float in its orbit and congratulate the others celebrating two or more years soon to be three while you sit alone at home, hoping someone can see that you’re desperate to be held, you’ll take just a few moments at this point, you feel the lovelessness flow through you, and how it stiffens all your joints.
A month full of pride? Or is it a month to hide
the crippling ripples of shame that stem from a name
I carry a message deep inside my chest,
a quiet storm, a sacred word,
but when I hold it out to others,
they look at the dust on my hands instead.
"Oh ok," they say, with a careless shrug,
or a nod that flattens the sky to rock.
They count the bark on a rotting tree,
while I alone feel the forest breathe.
It hurts to speak into a dynamic light
to eyes that are attuned to the shades of black,
to watch the truths that burn inside my very being
be swept away like dust.
No ear to catch the undertow,
no voice to match the frequency—
a language built for depth and ache,
trapped inside the core of me.
I look to the left, I look to the right,
on a winding road through mountain paths,
with no one to walk beside me
or take this weight from my tired hands.
So I let the surface keep its calm,
I’ll stop trying to make them see.
The ocean doesn't ask the shore
to understand the depth of the blue sea.
The road does not demand a crowd
to prove that it is true,
and though the silence presses in so loud,
the path still carries me.
Let the shallow waters stay behind,
unmindful of the rising tide—
some paths are meant for one,
with all of Heaven by my side.
I have counted her footsteps
for thirty-seven years
the same path worn
into my slope,
the same pause
at the thorny ridge
where she catches her breath
and adjusts the
weight on her spine.
Her daughters
used to follow,
small shadows
learning the art
of bending
without breaking.
Now I watch
the granddaughters
in school uniforms,
walking the paved road
that cuts through
my base,
their backs straight,
their hands carrying
books instead of
bundles.
But still she comes,
this woman
whose name
the wind whispers
Kamala, Shanta, Rukhmani,
it changes with the seasons
but the story
stays the same!
Dawn rising,
feet finding
familiar stones,
hands selecting
the dead branches
I offer
like a prayer.
The forest guard
has grown fat
on his government salary,
his radio silent now,
his eyes
finding other
thin women
to follow
with his hunger.
She knows
the sound
of his boots
on gravel,
knows which trees
to hide behind,
which paths
lead nowhere
but deeper
into his reach.
Some mornings
I want to
shift my stones,
close my paths,
keep her
in the valley
where children
wait with
empty bowls
and homework
they cannot
read.
But the wood
must be gathered.
The fire
must be lit.
The rice
must be cooked.
And I am only
a hill,
holding
the weight
of women
who climb me
like a ladder
to survival.
When the rains come
I wash away
her footprints,
but by morning
they return,
deeper now,
carved into
my memory
like a promise:
I will rise
before the sun.
I will bend
but not break.
I will carry
what must
be carried.
And when
my bones
become dust,
when development
flattens my peaks
and paves my valleys,
when shopping malls
bloom where
my forests grew
Still,
in the concrete,
someone will remember
the weight of wood,
the curve
of a spine
learning
to hold
the world.
The children
with straight backs
will teach
their children
about the women
who climbed hills
before dawn,
who made pathways
out of necessity,
who left footprints
deep enough
to follow
home.
Mirage Files
by Odin Roark
How rapid their collection
From nasty medicines
Cloaked with mother’s smile
To spoonfuls upon mouthfuls
Handfuls to bucketsful
Filling irony’s three-drawer history
Upon one’s shoulders
How innocent they approach
These mirages of surety
Where rest and peace certainty
Evaporates like vanishing rabbits in a hat
Life’s landscape
A parent’s belief
A child’s trust
A teacher’s urging
A boss’s mind-game
A relationship’s oasis
Eventually
The undulating future flattens
Erosion’s desert wind catches up
The parched soul forgets thirst
Realizes that which weighs down its back
Has made but a packhorse of the seeker
Nodding exhaustion’s acquiescence
Delusions swirl upwards
Sands of the past
Readily make way for tomorrow’s footprints
For the fortunate
Insight makes light the burden
Revealing a road paved with perception
Rousing the traveler from a dream
Merely waiting to awaken
Like a sheet blowing in the wind
Your hair flows gently
I feel your embrace with protection
Like the mother sparrow feeding her chick
The embrace nourishes
When the wind dies and goes where it goes
You gently tug my soul
It goes to where it's quiet and lingers
The sheet flattens
In that embrace I wait
Waiting is what matters in life
So in the quiet embrace we meet again
And hidden behind the fluffy cloud
The sun , breathes out peeking …
And the warm luxurious breeze captures
In it’s final moments, lips wet and our song
The sun sets until it remembers
Somedays I feel like I'm surrounded by bars and bricks
encaged on a stage in tar that sticks.
There's an agonisingly unfamiliar reflection in the mirror,
as my eyes detect an unrecognisable inferior figure.
I can't see the stars in the sky at night,
and the sun doesn't rise to provide daylight,
creating days filled with unpleasant darkness,
feeling the hate, I will for heaven sent brightness.
It would be nice to see a flicker,
a shooting star or something quicker,
as my impaired eyes see unseeingly at paradise.
It seems these days have perfected imperfection and sadness,
as though infected but immune to antidote injections that stop madness,
and the bad feel projecting out onto these days seemingly disastrous.
So I turn to alcohol and slowly increase the dose
and down the booze until I doze,
to awake with the shakes that alcohol creates,
reaching straight for the glass of straight voddy,
drowning myself down in hate toward the junkie category.
A way I find carries me through this hell that flattens me,
clouding my mind, shielding hurt that comes with thinking clarity.
Leaving me imprisoned and unable to escape this reality.
………………………………………………………………………….
Somedays I feel like I'm surrounded by bars and bricks,
so I drink water and take vitamins to get far from my minds tricks.
My mind digs up thoughts sick and twisted
from the ditches of the mental scars life inflicted.
I see a full moon but no stars in the sky at night.
There must be a faint cloud blocking that far travelled light.
Throughout the day I stay active as it distracts the gloom
and subtracts it until a world seemingly more attractive resumes.
I shrug off the booze and don't meet the thugs
that deal drugs and rise above a life for chumps.
I start these days feeling down in the dumps,
but if I live the right way I move passed the grumps.
I feel that just the moonlight moves me to comfort,
I perk as I forget today and all that work.
Tomorrow is another first,
I think life offers more than I deserve.
Wild Irish sea pounds spray ashore,
its white teeth gnaw the stone down,
each tide returns, bites as before
wearing away the brown cliffs.
The wind flattens salted bluegrass,
while gulls wheel up in the sky
soaring as on an overpass
hang gliding over the crags.
Breaking waves surge up the sandstone
Falling back as white foam veils
stroking the old wounds to atone
for the endless scouring blows.
The strong swells drum through sea caverns,
blow-holes spray up in the sky
bringing cheers to seaside taverns
for the pipe, fiddle, drum songs.
Irish seals dive through kelp seaweed
silver backs, flash through foam spray,
twisting and turning at high-speed
laughing at angry sea grasps.
O Irish sea, carve deep tonight,
let your foam and surge shape me
for rugged crags are a highlight
on our weathered skin and shores.
O Irish sea, carve deep tonight,
let your foam and surge shape me
for rugged crags are a highlight
on our weathered skin and shores.