Long Gallows Poems
Long Gallows Poems. Below are the most popular long Gallows by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Gallows poems by poem length and keyword.
I rejected form.
I rejected meter.
I rejected editing.
I rejected reading.
I'm a flash in the pan.
I'm fueled by emotions.
I'm emboldened by scars.
I'm challenged by time.
I wonder how far I could go
if I took the time to study.
If I sat down and honed my craft
and took pride in my words.
I'm certainly no prodigy.
Every verse came at a cost.
Perhaps I'm finally paying the price
by stagnating in my growth.
I let my fingers write.
My mind is actually blank.
It's just a silly white canvas
that never blossomed.
I never once toiled.
I never once struggled.
If it was hard I just gave up
and deleted the verse.
I'm told I write prose
rather than true poetry.
Maybe I don't understand
what the difference is.
I never had any talent.
Writing was my safe space.
Now I have to wonder
if it was ever safe at all.
Admittedly I rejected effort.
I didn't want to actually try
When the minimalist approach
seemed to work so well.
I'm not a prodigy.
I'm not a genius.
I'm not gifted.
I'm not published.
I dreamed of the glass ceiling
but I never dreamed of breaking it.
Maybe I'm just damned to always look through it
and see writers much more dedicated than I.
I made omelettes without breaking eggs.
I created houses with no foundation.
I sang songs without reading the lyrics.
I baked cakes without a recipe.
I don't want to sound entitled
but my writing deserves to be better.
In twelve years I should have accomplished more
than using these poems as tissue paper for tears.
In 2007 I was just a kid
writing five to ten poems daily.
That effort got me noticed
and I shared my verse with crowds.
I was driven by ambition
and fueled by emotion.
All I wanted was adulation
when all I had known was the gallows.
This is the last flash in the pan.
Fleeting emotions can't guide my pen forever.
I do not know what the future holds
but no longer will I be complacent.
I am a writer.
I am a poet.
I am a lover.
I am a fighter.
This is the swan song
of my old poetic style.
With eyes on the horizon
My pen will ever be furious.
In Pahalgam’s embrace, where solace bloom
Dawn’s tender hues now fade into gloom.
The innocent sleep, their laughter now stilled,
In cold, silent graves, their dreams unfulfilled.
A crown of bright jewel on our mother’s brow,
A snow-white dove, now lies crimsoned in woe.
Through mist-shrouded peaks, a wail scars the air,
Beauty and anguish entwined in dark despair.
Through shadowed pines, fiends crept in the night,
Their cruel hands drew blades on hearts pure and bright.
Guardians faltered, their watchmen grew blind,
Merciless guns left weeping remnants behind.
Unchallenged they returned, no fear in their tread,
To venomous lands where their hatred is bred.
Who carved them a path through the valley’s embrace?
Who shielded their malice, defiling this peace?
Yet free they roam, in shadows they thrive,
While graves cradle hopes that will never survive.
Young dreams, unshaped, now buried in dust.
While tears carve deep rivers through valley's crust.
Enemies sow seeds of hate, in heartless disguise,
Haters watered it to wage wars with in lines
Drown cries for justice in hollowed-out lies.
But our defenders roared fierce, their fury ablaze.
With flames of vengeance, their wrath set the stage.
They wrecked their heart, blazing their den
Yet foes, unrepentant, slipped free from the chain,
As an imposter uninvited gate crashed in disdain.
Cowards in disguise, displayed on road side stand,
Their gilded deceit seeks to spread only their brand.
In meadows where joy once danced with the breeze,
Grief whispers of wounds deep no time can appease.
Justice, a specter, haunts hills with its plea,
Pahalgam weeps still, unhealed, never free.
Till butchers lined to gallows, no redemption arise,
A valley of dreams lost to fear’s ruthless guise.
My love, I'm always the same man hanged by your rhymes like by a rope,
the lover who vomits poetry from his mouth like a sweet and bitter poison,
the one who will treat you with extreme hatred like the civilization trampling my nature underfoot,
raiding through my interior forests where wolves still howl at the full moon.
I erupt from night all my abyss that rhymes by itself like a broken bell,
my dream is an open wound that bleeds metaphors on the pillow where I sleep with my eyes open,
the spark that no longer illuminates beneath my bare and shiny bald head like a skull,
except for horse hooves sparking among stars like sparks of cosmic madness.
The dull clarity of morning I can no longer describe with my dead writing hand,
because it died on me in life like an unborn child falling from the womb of time,
and my bare-naked head so intensely polluted with dirty thoughts like night moths,
with my reason completely wrung of dandruff like by a disease that eats the brain.
My love, I'm always the same man who repeats himself like a scratched record on a phonograph,
the lover thoroughly hanged by rhymes that keep him alive and dead at the same time,
the one who raids modern civilization through nature like an elegantly dressed barbarian,
erupting your abyss from night that rhymes even with your cold marble silence.
My dream is an extinguished spark beneath baldness that only illuminates in memories,
horse hooves spark among stars like punctuation marks on the black sky,
the dull clarity of morning is too clear for my eyes blinded by so much crude clarity,
because my writing hand died on me in life and now I write with its pale ghost.
My bare-naked head so intensely polluted with modern civilization injected in my veins,
with reason wrung of dandruff like a wet rag from which dead logic drips,
the vomit I wouldn't want to escape from sometimes like a lover who poisons me,
until he shoves them in, my unfortunate sclerotic brain, all the normal minds into my head!
All but really all the ty thoughts directly into my skull full of garbage,
my love, I'm always the same poet hanged by rhymes that keep me alive like a gallows,
the lover who hates you with extreme love like a civilization that's collapsing,
raiding your nature through my abyss that rhymes by itself in complete darkness.
A funny thing happened on the way to my hanging
Couldn't sleep the night before my head was banging
I was innocent of a crime that I did not commit
But they roughed me up and got me to admit.
The face on the wanted posters said it was me
Anyone seeing those posters would be inclined to agree
I was in a horse drawn prison wagon with bars down the side
Thinking to myself, it will be my last ever ride.
Heading for the gallows then onto Boot hill
To pay for shooting a bank teller that I didn't kill
Two miles from the town all hell did break loose
Unbeknownst to me I'd be dodging the noose.
For ten desperados' brought the wagon to stop
Then ordered the guards, their weapons they drop
Some gang members got me out and they set me free
The gang leader approached and he looked just like me.
He said " in this life you look out for your own "
Then he told me something that I hadn't known
" We were Separated at birth and we had the same mother "
And that this mean desperado was in fact my twin brother .
" We heard that you'd been framed for our crime spree
But you are my brother and that's why we've set you free.
The teller had died because he went for his gun
We grabbed all the money and went on the run ".
He gave me some money and said " start a new life "
Told me head south, settle down and find a good wife
There was so much I wanted to ask him and so much to say
My brother said " some other time, best be on your way " .
Written on 4th July 2018.
For a funny thing happened on the way to...poetry contest, sponsored by Robert Haigh.
glib glassy green-eyed gruesome ghoulish goblins grabbing gloriously
glitzy glimmers of gourmet garnish. Giants give garbled ghosts gruff
growls. Gargantuous groups of glamorous gargoyles give greeters
goopy green gravy. Garbanzos grab globs of giant gamblling goulash.
Glum grieving giraffes generate gibberish in German. Granulated grocers gripe about grimy glittering goblets. Gainful games google greening, guessing about grimy graveyards of gruffly grotesque ghouls. Glam Grandma Gigi gazed at gradual greasy grasshopper’s greedy game-changing griddles and granolas. Grazing garbled granite gleaned Greta Garbo’s grateful giblet. Gus’s glorious greasy gangly go-go galoshes garnishing Gilly's’s gristled grizzled gemstone gleaning gallons of gracious gangly gallows.
Engraved with harsh sound, each shackle's screech molested my eardrum,
Its starry silver, sparked oblivious wham into my heart, shattered like shard,
Rigorously, premature sweat hopped down to my forested beard,
Never! They can't let me loose again, as they gathered like a scrum.
Amid the encrusted iron on my encased cage,
My bendy fingers scratches till shallow hole,
Gallows way, full of groggy drops, I envision the woody pole,
Conscience before me, not my time, my death a sin to age.
Guilty of whatever, the judgement not from the creator,
I despised freedom in all form
Next world, I will buy a spaceship to carry law sector,
For, my time is over like a heavy storm.
Pity and pity me no more,
For, my journey a moral lesson in the folklore.
"Nobody favors a share ...
for sins I bear,
no one cares.
Now that the appointed hour pines faintly,
I stand in lights grace, a shadow no more,
barring lives in my wake and none before.
My cup did run over, right into me,
and spilt nothing,
and as I saw the empty cup,
I prayed.
Do tell, 'What does absence appear to be?'
Shunned by God as a void cataloged life.
Does it take some sordid form?
If so, be it horridly misshapen,
and be there a face that pulls night's veil,
luring darkness to hide its shame,
thus causing sleepless nights forevermore.
A son and brother were I and then a husband,
later, a father ... a family's man, thought I?
Benevolence accommodates me naught,
for charity had tipped over its cup.
Hopes I join with lives once shared,
those times when I was happy."
[For the uninitiated or for the inebriated
Or because I fear my story might be underrated
I feel I should advise you using any fact that fits
That Sixgun Sid has wooden legs and other wooden bits.]
****
Sixgun Sid stood in the dock and swore he didn't know
Why ladies didn’t like his wooden member down below
He said, “Some things go hand in hand with rocking to and fro
That’s how I left a splinter where a splinter shouldn't go
“She dragged me in the shrubbery and took me there and then
I thought she was euphoric when she squealed out loud but then…
I had a smoothness problem as your witness has attested
And so I grabbed some sandpaper… and got myself arrested
“I’ll swear before this court she was all over me that day
But then my wooden legs etcetera made her stop and say,
‘Why can’t you, like other cowboys, just shoot from the hip?’
But then she spent ten minutes pulling splinters from her lip.”
The judge said, “I have heard enough, my judgement will be sound
You shared your love, but also, she was putting it around
I think that I should send you to the gallows with your lover
But I’m concerned those gallows might turn out to be your brother.”
In this groaning wreck we dare to call a country,
the destroyers still walk among us, unashamed.
Babangida once swaggered in khaki terror,
his iron fist crushing tomorrow before it could breathe.
He ruled as tyrant, blind to every future seed,
power in his palms, yet the nation he bled and looted dry.
A servant for a season, he and his circle served only themselves,
then retired to stolen mansions, fat on the marrow of the land.
He hounded honest tongues to the gallows for daring to speak truth,
while arrogance dripped from his lips like poisoned honey.
Millions he impoverished, helpless souls left to rot,
their dreams ground into dust beneath military boots.
“Maradona” they called him, but never a name of honor,
only a slick trickster dribbling the people’s hope into oblivion.
Now he bows his gray head in the quiet shame of Minna,
too afraid to flee the Nigeria he helped murder,
where criminals like him are strangely shielded by the same broken law.
Destruction has not paid its dividend; the ruin stares back at him daily.
He dares not walk the streets his regime never bothered to pave,
among the multitudes he defrauded and left in chains of want.
Men without vision, who stalled a giant with guns,
turned promise into mockery, greatness into jest.
Obstructers became our leaders through the barrel’s threat,
institutionalizing corruption like a dark, evil genius.
Systemic failure took root, and still it spreads its venom
in this same mess we stubbornly call a country.
Babangida, where are the guns that once ruined us all?
Are you happy now in your twilight silence?
Can you stroll freely among the ghosts of those you killed,
or do their shadows still whisper your name in the night?
Boneheaded barrack boys, drunk on docile masses,
apprentices without brains, idols of every profligate thief.
Generalissimo of morons, bearing arms against hope itself,
you looted the Gulf windfall and left us beggars in our own house.
Detestable men and their fickle friends, protected still by guns,
afflict this land till this very day.
In this groaning wreck, this mess we dare to call a country,
the destroyers live on, and the wound festers.
Continued From:
9. BTK Coming Attractions
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poem_detail.aspx?ID=195845
****************************************************************************
Billy
There are guns all over the country aiming at you.
There's a lawman on your trail who'd love to surround you.
Bounty hunters are encroaching all around you.
Billy they're just never going to let you be.
It seems that there's always some stranger sneaking glances.
Could he be some trigger happy fool willing to take chances?
Having a price on your head brings many threatening advances.
Billy, you're not in jail but you're still not free.
You're enemies and politicians want you to be put down,
so they've hired Mr Garrett to go and hunt you down.
He says he'll either bring you back alive or put you in the ground.
Billy, you're always going to be on the run.
Everyone says that Pat Garrett has your number.
So sleep with one eye open when you slumber.
Every little sound you hear could end up being thunder.
Thunder from the barrel of his gun.
Looking over your shoulder from sunrise to sundown.
Never being able to take root somewhere and settle down.
Billy it must make you feel even more low down
to be hunted by the man who was your friend.
****************************************************************************
I often wondered what thoughts and feelings were going on in his head
as he stood staring out the window next to his bed
watching the gallows being built meant to be his deathbed.
One can't help but wonder what was going on in the Kid's head.
Did he know at that time that his hanging would never come to be?
Did he know that before night fall, he'd once again be free?
Whatever his thoughts and feelings, they were interrupted rudely
by Deputy Bob Ollinger, one of his guards while in custody.
*****************************************************************************
To Continue Go To:
11. BTK Coming Attractions Part 3
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poem_detail.aspx?ID=195843