Long Floorboards Poems
Long Floorboards Poems. Below are the most popular long Floorboards by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Floorboards poems by poem length and keyword.
Dream Keys
by Odin Roark
A NY mantra
Rent the rentable
Move the movable
Key the keyable
Apartments
Four-wall-guardian of yesterday’s youth
Vacuous cellmates of old age loneliness
All part of a cyclic maze
All having a key
Urban life’s Rubik’s Cube turnover
Today’s the day
“Two rooms”
“New paint”
“Clean window”
“No-squeaky floorboards”
Superintendent loves to present
Move in
Keys
Entrance door
Mailbox
Apartment
Laundry room
All yours
A windowsill vase of plastic roses
Your welcome of faded memories
The window to the people below
Your traveled city as roommate
Through another glass darkly
Gotta love it
Pea green layering
Over cracked and peeling bygones
Your very own chipped-paint scrapbook
A giant shoebox of ghostly images
Once possessing your castle-keys
Settle in
Struggle
Dream
Survive
Stand at your window
Watch canyon updrafts
Swirl your make-believe snowflakes
Carrying them skyward
Mixing with sparkling darkness
Where every star is yours
Count the days
Where light to see
Will be owned by neighboring towers
Where former tenants came young
Left old
Where thrown cups and china
Christened walls
And confinement’s anger and tears
Found solace in an ever inviting empty bathtub
Where pounding fists
Rattled bathroom door hinges
While a child hid beneath a bed
Smiling tearful thanks
A wanderlust roach
His ever-faithful friend
All yours
Here
Where a Sammy Glick got started
And an undergrad
An engineer
A Radical leftist
A piano teacher
All touched
All turned
All once secured your keys
So
Add your imprint
Become tomorrow’s remembered page
The scrapbook knows no end
This is Manhattan
Scenes will erupt
Hysterics will rebirth
Life will live
Maybe live some more
Then
Your turn to pass the keys
Your turn to pile worn memories at the curb
Mattresses always appreciated
Stand across the street
Watch the ever-smiling Super
Hand the keys to the next habitant
And then…
Go
Never to forget your contribution
Leaving behind another preparatory memory
Allowing the coming year
Your next season of imaginings
To dream of another home
Somewhere
Waiting…
Gifted with keyless entry?
Loneliness gone?
I don’t understand you any better anymore
reaching under floorboards of my father’s pickup truck
lost inside imagination
left with haunting resignation
I don’t understand you any better anymore
after spilling words
clawing through the growing weeds
walking backwards over needs
swimming upstream in
yesterday’s pea soup
gone cold
I don’t understand you any better anymore
sights and sounds, paintings and prints
long vows, short stints
Phil and Oprah, Charlie Rose
this and that and these and those
each day ends with bloody nose
I don’t understand you any better anymore
tried not trying, walking out
running back to your attack
stealing moments peeled from bottoms deck
carved or pared or shouting what the heck
I don’t understand you any better anymore
so easy merging
two chameleons sharing light
now dark, sandpaper rough
surprise, the look inside each other’s eyes
slips of tips of fingers
we’ve forgotten
I don’t understand you any better anymore
walking through the door I’m gone
no longer there to care for cures that kill
I miss what I’m no longer longing for
had my fill
I don’t understand you any better anymore
it doesn’t fit like it used to do
un-curved limbs branching through
a love no more than chance
different moves to someone’s different dance
leases in release of hope
currents, eddies, moving through
to meet the day somehow I may
understand you better than I knew
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First, it was the way the light
refused to touch the hallway~
how the floorboards sighed
beneath something unseen.
Then came the whispers,
not from walls, but from the space
between them, syllables
chewed soft and wet.
You learned to ignore the fingers
brushing your neck in the dark,
the way your reflection
sometimes blinked too slowly.
But tonight, you wake
to the sound of your own voice
downstairs, laughing,
while you lie perfectly still.
And now you understand~
the house wasn’t haunted.
You were the thing
it was trying to keep out.
I lay there and I listened
to every sound that came through the night:
the floorboards creaking,
the wind blown window blinds beating against the metal window frame,
the scuttling of rodents in the roof,
the odd disconcerting sound that I could not identify
I pressed my face into my pillow,
slowing my breathing,
whilst the pillowcase soaked up my tears,
my forehead burning hot.
“It hurts,” I thought,
and with that thought another memory of him filled my mind
and my pillowcase,
drenched and pressed against my hot face,
began to feel like a hot wet cloth
I was thirsty,
but unmotivated to care for myself
I had lost all ambitions to live a life worthy
of being alive
Once we parted,
I began living each day,
as a day to be spent and forgotten,
nothing had meaning,
and nothing felt passionate.
“I will never leave you,”
were words we had often exchanged;
yet words we never lived up to
“I am already gone,”
were words I had used to leave him,
and he let go
No promise kept of “I am always here.”
I never let another man in
to what I considered his kingdom
I was a queen with no king,
at my throne
I lay there,
silently begging him to come back,
knowing that after all I had done,
if he were to return it would be,
at his own will
and with each passing year,
I lay there
and I listened to every sound that came through the night
Bloodcurdling...
A scream splits through the dead of night,
sharp as glass, raw with pain,
choking, gasping, lost from sight.
Bloodcurdling...
Footsteps pound down hollow halls,
too fast, too near, too filled with dread,
yet silence lingers after all.
Bloodcurdling...
A door swings wide with aching groan,
a shadow lurches, jagged, wrong,
its breath is heat, its touch is bone.
Bloodcurdling...
The walls are slick, the floorboards creak,
something drips, slow and thick,
a crimson trail too fresh to speak.
Bloodcurdling...
A whisper hums against your ear,
too close, too soft, too full of glee--
You thought you'd run... but you're still here.
Certain she’s sleeping he slides out of bed
collecting his discarded clothing
quietly donning them
slipping away silently like a specter
cautiously opening and closing the door
hoping the hinges don’t squeak
the floorboards don’t creak
Slowly sauntering down the stairs
conscious of where his feet fall
for he dare not switch on the light
listening for the bell on the collar of the cat
she introduced him to
after inviting him inside like a vampire
who must be granted permission
to pass over one's threshold
Exiting out the back into the night
every word he’d said rendered a lie
each gesture of affection fake
a carefully crafted illusion
though for a few fleeting moments
he thought he might mean them this time
In the end she was only another shoe
he shoved his foot into trying it on for size
to see how it would feel
Arriving home before sunrise
he has a bourbon and soda from the bar
before retiring to his own empty bed
celebrating another successful escape
from anything real
I'm the child that no-one See's, no-one ever remembers me, I live across the road from
you, the one with bruises, black and blue, the child who never speaks or cries, the child
with sunken dark ringed eyes.
I watch you as you walk on past, from the dirty bedroom window glass, I never smile or
wave to you, my arm, like my heart is broken too, but that's something I must never
mention, my bones mend without attention.
I don't get hungry anymore, although my throat gets dry, I try to forget how I feel, and
watch the world pass by. I saw a lady with her dog, he pranced and played on grass, I
liked that very much, just watching from behind this glass.
One day I will play outside, and I will have a dog, the sun will shine upon my face
instead of dirty fog, of all the dreams I had today, this one I will keep, I'm going to
play with this little dog, once I fall asleep.
With such a start I turn around, the door is opening wide, and stepping into this lonely
room, he grabs me as I hide, my frail body thrown around, my head hits against the wall,
he smiles at me, he's oh so pleased, as I hit the floor.
As he turns to leave the room, my eyes become a mist, he hit me really hard this time,
full force from his fist, I used to find the strength to stand, I'm usually ok, but this
time it's so different, I'm being pulled away.
On wooden floorboards where I fell, I'm certain I see God, he has come to take me home,
and with him is a dog. As he takes my lifeless hand, and lifts me to his chest, he tells
me there will be someone, me they won't forget!
'Suffer little children, to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom Of heaven'
they dont know im the midas of rust
everything i touch turns to dust
but i have something midas lacks,
eyes to see through window cracks,
ears to hear the floorboards creek,
legs to move me from my keep,
and head enough to know im beat,
when everything before me screams,
please do not come near me,
im a walking example,
a fairytale you tell,
im the moral of your story,
and I’m go to hell,
or maybe im already there,
forced to live each day in prayer,
a sinner in the hands of an angry god,
what hell could you construct for me,
worse than what ive made for free,
if death were not so frowned upon,
i know for so that id be gone,
and if the gods of greek seek
to punish me, i wish to see
the end of every tragedy,
and feel with all finality,
the end of my reality
My parents moved recently–
a nice place, marsh view,
plenty of trees and walking trails
a nice big kitchen for Scottish breakfasts.
Their deck upstairs looks out
on the marsh water shining in the sun.
The aquatic landscape broken only
by the stilted legs of hungry herons.
The floorboards no longer creak
beneath my ocher footsteps
and I feel like a visitor here–tourist
Then I wonder, how much of myself
was left in those creaking planks?
How much of my life is threaded
in their wooden veins?
Perhaps this new deck doesn’t creak
only because I’ve shed the weight
of my childhood, the cloak
of memory–disrobed and I am refreshed
like new bamboo shoots in spring.
A tune warbles from worn out speakers
Awakening a long lost and lively spirit,
A girl in saddle shoes, a boy in sneakers
On a night they should chance to hear it
They go strolling beside the old jukebox
Leaving a mark, the steps not forgotten,
Made by their boot heels and bobby socks
On floorboards now marred and rotten
The neon lights blink, trying to dance, too
With Sinatra and Crosby, Presley and Holly,
The music never dies for what's old is new
Be it upbeat or one slow and melancholy
All oldies but goodies, low and long
One song plays for a ten cent token,
Priceless still is a remembered song
Once forgotten on a record broken.