Long Frayed Poems
Long Frayed Poems. Below are the most popular long Frayed by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Frayed poems by poem length and keyword.
It began as a lovely September, 2001, at least, it should have been.....
somewhere lost in the crossfire, between summer and fall
days growing short, and evenings long
But, things now warped into a sense of surreal. What was seen, could not be real
As if bifocals were mixed in a bin, out of focus, rim to rim
I've asked to borrow a broken pencil, I find paper blowing in the acrid wind
my fingers shake with tensile fear....and, I write a goodbye.. I don't know why......
An edifice of a city, shades of gray, smoke, and ash,
stony faces, and rubble, of ruin and glass
littered streets, silent people, crying people in shock
A playbill, lost and frayed, blowing into my face
It began as a lovely September, 200l, or it should have been.....
Sirens, shattered concrete, sidewalks, shepherding the living into
the arms of someone, or maybe, .... into the arms of no one
Someone is borrowing a cell phone, ... there is smell of burnt sulfer
Bridges, crosswalks, that will take them back into calamity, .. our new reality
Someone lends me a broken pencil, I find paper blowing in the acrid wind
I write a goodbye... I don't know why......
It began as a lovely September, 2001, or it should have been....
_____________________
10/3/14
For The Challenge "Chopped"
Sponsored By Craig Cornish
Residential School Students
Atrocities towards the Aboriginals in Canada
OUR PLIGHT
The creaking of the door at night
Always sparked a fright
For me and all the other
Boys and girls
What they were doing; was just not right.
Morning, noon, and night
Our thoughts were filled only
With thoughts of our plight
With desperation of the words
“Flee or flight”.
Where can we go?
Who can we tell?
Our teachers and mentors
Were our tormentors
At night we layed down
Never a smile, always a frown,
Always wondering
How it would feel to wear a crown
It has to be better than this
There has to be bliss
My parents, you I so miss
Your hugs, your love, and most of all
Your kiss
With our thoughts and minds
Frayed and being led astray
We held hands and prayed,
God, keep us strong,
Let our suffering be gone.
Written by mintra j mankasingh April 2014
Form:
I can feel it all burning down,
the walls I painted in soft colors,
the corners I swept clean for company—
they crackle in silence.
Instead of exploring other ruins,
chasing ghosts in forgotten places,
I should stop.
Sit with the dust in my own lungs.
Run my hands along the scorch marks
I never let cool.
There is wreckage here
I never named.
I’ve been walking through myself
like a stranger with no flashlight—
stepping over the memories,
ignoring the rot,
pretending I’m whole
because I never stopped moving.
But now,
the staircase from my heart to my head is collapsing—
each step a splinter,
each thought misfiring like sparks from frayed wires.
The chandelier has hit the floor.
Glass teeth scatter across the silence.
It used to shine.
It used to hold light.
Now even the ceiling
has given up on me.
"It's just dust," he said, kicking the dry ground
With a worn boot,
Toe pointed cowboy style
But with none of the flash.
"This could be grandpa," he said,
Shoulders rounded, eyes to the ground.
"They didn't bury too deep in them days,
And no boxes or vaults out here.
He could've just rose up after a while.
Could've just shook off the dirt
And blown off west again,
Just another dust storm
Trailin' bits of himself behind.
He wouldn't of thought twice
About breakin' grandma's heart
Just one more time."
I watched the sun pick shadows
Off his worn chambray shirt.
He looked hot, weary,
Big hand taking his frayed straw cowboy hat
On and off and on,
Either the fidgets or his way
Of air conditioning his head,
With its damp hair that could stand a cut.
Suddenly he looked straight at me:
Leather-tanned face
That had run up some mileage;
Pale eyes the worn blue of his shirt,
Meeting my eyes then sliding his gaze
Off into the dirt-colored distance.
"You're the one's got all the degrees,"
He said.
"Why do folks say 'just' somethin'?
Like 'just dust' or 'just no reason'?
Myself, I don't see justice is much involved."
"I could make up an answer," I said.
"I have no earthly idea.
I just know we do."
He snorted a laugh,
Shook his head,
Turned toward the house.
"You just come on in, then"
He said, something inside him
Sounding a little less buried,
His shoulders a little less hunched.
"I'll just make us some cold sweet tea," he said.
"That's just what grandma would've done."
And then, just then,
I knew it would be all right.
Just prior to the dawn
Stillness clung to the pond
When sounds of the wild resound
Every sense was cast
Upon water of glass
For no fish sought to be found
Rewarded with a bite
Bass in a mood to fight
A fish with girth to astound
From the water it jumped
Then wrapped around a stump
My line now tattered and frayed
"Maneuver the canoe"
and "guide the fish to you"
I know how the game is played
I grabbed it by the lip
Vessel began to tip
The aquatics won the day
Water rippled and rough
Swam to gather my stuff
The water murky and cold
Towed all my things to shore
body beaten and sore
Looked to the east to behold
Wiped the drops from my eyes
and gazed with some surprise
At a pond now bathed in gold.
The rays replenished hope
Gave me the will to cope
So I shoved off once again
All the rest of the day
Tackle was stowed away
Adrift in a state of Zen
Absorbing sights and sounds
Lost in all that surrounds
A story of fish and men
Of what the ocean is made
Nothing else but the heart of cloud
In billion drops of water
One making the other bigger
Fused in blue vastness portrayed
The efforts riding waves crash on cliffs unsaid.
Of what the life is made
Nothing else but the shadow of heart
In billion drops of tear
Joy and grief in tandem bear
Welded in welling emotions unswayed
The toils of life remain unsaid.
Of what you are made
Nothing else but the glint of sun
In billion drops of dew
On the grass of morning meadow
Convey tender feelings frayed
Your fear of fading remains unsaid.
September 13, 2017.
search for me when
black are the
stars of midnight
for in every sunset
I see your name
in every moonlight
you feel
this restless flame
poetically fading into
rose-gold ruffles
of riddled reflections~
a spectral mirage
calming the
singing thunder
veiled beneath aching lungs
struggling to breathe
when the air feels
like scorching sorrow
infused with
rusts of regrets
gusts of gloomy garnets...
yet this heart
is a field of butterflies
a fragranced ambience
enhanced with empathy~
I forgive you for
turning my muse
into
a galactic garden
of
grieving geraniums
whilst you scroll
through the soul of these
s c a t t e r e d
lines of unrequited love
from a distance...
perhaps these woeful words
failed to reach
beyond your bleeding sighs
stuck in virtual pages
reminiscing moments
of magic
as I stand on the frayed edge
of
porcelain frames,
listening to turquoise tenors
while whirling waves
of memories
caress wind-swept
footprints
of
sundered soulmates~
and I long to be your dusk
where
wilted willows
s p r o u t
and
s w i r l
like emerald embers ...
They measure my pain on a scale of their own,
And call it a performance when I bleed alone.
They say it’s a phase, that I’m built of glass,
Waiting for the next dark storm to pass.
"All’s well that ends well," they casually state,
While leaving me locked in a brand-new fate.
?Who could ever leave me? I echo the cry,
But who could stay when they look in my eye?
They claim that they see right through the facade,
Yet label my grief as erratic and flawed.
They called it mental—the cages I bear—
Then wonder why silence is all that I share.
?I carry the embers of souls that have walked,
While they count the seconds whenever I've talked.
They twist every truth till I’m held for the crime,
Absent for my worst, but absent in time.
They wouldn't last an hour where I spent my youth,
In the asylum of expectations dressed up as truth.
?I want to snarl, to show them the scar,
To prove that their words left me marked from afar.
What if it was about me? What if they knew?
What if the damage was meant to break through?
They tell me I’m foolish, that nobody’s made
To anchor a heart that is constantly frayed.
?I try to reach back to the person I was,
Before every exit came with a cause.
I don't want a shadow, a ghost, or a maybe—
I just want a world that is certain to save me.
Until then I sit in the hell they built,
Wearing their judgment, but refusing the guilt.
In a tippy old house on a chilly hill slope
lived a stout lady, turning to seventy two.
She’d sit by the fireplace rocking in her quiver chair,
not knowing the beasty drama being played downstairs.
Two sneaky creatures, composing a fiddle-shifty pair,
a snoozy muffin black cat and a wiggly zipzap grey rat,
lived in the attic for ages in curiously peaceful zest,
danced wild doodling samba through the hushed nights.
The cat curled on her frayed mat for smarty catnap,
while the rat flipped-flopped doing acrobatic twists.
He’d wiggle in a flurry of zigzag gymnastic twirls,
snake all over the cat’s tail like a merry-go-round robot.
One napping afternoon when the lady sipped tea,
the cat lay flat purring slowly in a snoozy relaxed mood.
The rascal rat turned a brat and with a quick nibble
bit her tubby tail as if that was a juicy sausage roll.
The cat sprang up like a spring, screeched a shrill scream,
puffed her quivering whiskers and strutted through the air.
With a wiggle and wriggle she pounced swiftly
on the darting rogue rat to settle the score on her terms.
The rat, quick as zipzap, vanished in a split blink
through the tiny hole into the dark and murky tunnel.
The cat stomped and tramped with a gritty groan,
shoved in her over-sized head into the rat hole.
Poor kitty, her thrust to punish the rat fell flat,
her head got stuck in the teeny hide-out of the rat.
The penultimate decadal chronicle so very exciting
The twentieth century wrote through the eighties
My young mind marveled at how the pages were turning
Frayed memory still preserves them as a living treatise
Of times underscoring the arrival of the IT wave in a swing
Changed our lives morphing knowledge into digital entities
The world started to shrink, caught in the web of internet
Cell phones unclogged the impeded lines of communication
As with the computers our lives began to slowly relate
Artificial intelligence emerged from the state of incubation
The music of ABBA enthralled me from the Swedish shore
While entrenched political scenario in India began to change
Building foundation of market economy tried never before
To set the country on growth path with reforms wide range
As the crumbling communism ended the age-old cold war
And the Berlin wall tumbled forging the great unification
The precepts of climate change became increasingly clear
An aberration waited for the 20 first century for attention.
Like all other decades the eighties hurriedly passed me by
They made an indelible mark in my mind I don’t know why.
November 12, 2018