Long Gnaws Poems
Long Gnaws Poems. Below are the most popular long Gnaws by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Gnaws poems by poem length and keyword.
Celebration of Wind and Fire
Celebrate the unseen face of God’s eternal Spirit
Embracing all before creating light;
Action word of the eternal dance
Hovering over the chaotic genesis of creation;
Leading exiles out of exile through empty seas with fiery pillars
Feeding wanderers hungry for heavenly bread at dawn;
A living shadow pushing away the shadow of separation
Planting salvation’s seed deep within the sanctuary of a young girl’s yes;
Wearing the face of a dove descending on the Word
Leading anointed redemption into the empty desert place of prayer;
Driving wind and flames arriving on a festival morning
When fearful souls stood up to speak the languages of the world gathered;
Raising up a new tower of adoration reaching Heaven’s ears
Uniting with eternal words no longer babbling;
A fire, that never burns, burns through dust of days long past and now
Still hovering, descending, overshadowing, and dancing;
A sacred nudge delighting in coincidence
Filling up the thirst that gnaws for serendipity in surprises;
Inspiration birthed by the invisible hand of holy mischief
Inviting ambivalent, wavering, steps to roads of rightness in quiet whispers;
Lowering mountains, preparing highways now made straight,
For pilgrim’s feet gathering flowers in wild wastelands;
Caressing, prodding, in moments of a-ha ever evolving -
Timeless mentor of universal innovation;
Handiwork of the restless holy leaping up in wild fire
When old hearts dream dreams and young eyes see visions;
Laughing, dancing divine whimsy pirouetting through stars and galaxies
Never the same when touched by the Spirit dancing.
12/2/19
Original Contest: Holy Spirit
Chantelle Anne Cooke
On the plain of oblivion, where dreams lose their color under the leaden sky,
Our country stretches like a canvas of memories unraveling in the wind,
Here, where politicians are the shadows of extinguished times, without echo,
We have witnessed a theater of the absurd, with thieves dressed as saints,
Minds bright only in the selling of illusions, while dignity withered away,
Deputies who traded their words for the gold of smuggled dreams,
And in the grand hall of history, we shamefully failed the test of maturity,
Under Europe's cold gaze, we were just a land of scoundrels, a whisper among shouts,
Neither the enemy's armies nor their fierce cannons brought us down,
For the disease that gnaws at us comes from the depths of our weary souls,
A silent epidemic of moral meningitis that has taken our luster and hope.
In the silence of the night, when the moon casts its gaze over our desolate fields,
I feel how the heart of the country beats faintly, like an echo in an abandoned cathedral,
We collapsed not under the weight of our enemies, but under the burden of our own betrayals,
For this disease is unseen, yet it consumes us from within, a cancer of the spirit,
And yet, among the ruins of lost dreams, there still flickers a flame,
A longing for rebirth, for cleansing, to find the path back to light, to ourselves,
In the midst of this epidemic of forgetfulness, to find the strength to rise,
To heal from the shadows of the past, to rediscover who we truly are,
For under this leaden sky, there is still the hope of a new dawn,
A silent call to regain our dignity, to rise from the ashes,
To be more than a minor country, to become a tale of courage and light.
It’s okay to carry the weight of your fractures -
to let the world see where light fights
to escape the jagged edges.
Let them witness the uneven gleam;
perfection is a story that never breathes.
They say strength is silence,
a face unmoved by the tide,
but I’ve found courage
in the ragged pull of air,
in tears carving rivers
through words left unspoken.
It’s okay to unravel,
to crumble in the places
you once called unbreakable.
Let the pieces scatter freely.
You’re not a puzzle to be solved
but a mosaic,
stitched with scars and glints of gold.
Feel lost. Rage wildly!
Scream until the echo finds you -
proof that darkness cannot
swallow you whole.
It’s okay to not be okay.
Wear your wounds like constellations,
maps that shimmer toward
a truth untamed,
a self still becoming.
And when the weight gnaws at your chest,
know that somewhere,
someone bears the same shadow.
Let your fractured voices converge -
each step,
each breath.
You are the flicker,
the unbroken ember,
refusing to burn out.
A harmless question one might say,
Yet for some recipients
Once muttered,
Will send them on a never-ending quest,
For the answer.
It spawns countless questions of its own,
Never sleeps, never lies still,
Reaches every nook and cranny in the brain,
Has no off switch,
And its sound cannot be muffled,
They can never be unheard.
It throws doubt on relationships,
Where it never existed before.
It gnaws its way through to the heart,
And causes an itch that must be continuously scratched.
For which there is no soothing cream,
Or known herbal remedy.
If you, touch wood,
Should ever form a question out of these three words,
"Are you happy"
If you are lucky the following three uttered immediately after,
May prevent any long-term effects,
'You look happy"
So, I am told.
Form:
In dim-lit rooms where shadows choke the air,
She rains down fists like thunderbolts unchained,
Her tongue a whip that strips his flesh to bare
The walls absorb her screams; the world remains untrained.
He stands, a battered oak in gale-force scorn,
Each bruise a secret map beneath his skin,
Her venom seeps like poison through the thorn,
While silence carves its canyon deep within.
Yet when he turns, seeks refuge from the flood,
The spineless swarm descends like hungry crows,
“Coward!” they caw, their mockery a bloodied rod,
Defending her while dragging him below.
These brothers, armored in their twisted chivalry,
Forge iron shackles from their shallow pride
They guard the viper’s strike with loyalty,
While he, erased, bleeds out where none abide.
The silent abuse gnaws marrow from the bone:
Not only her wrath, but men who claim the throne
Of enablers, crowning unaccountable queens,
As broken kings are left in shattered scenes.
The first thing to unhinge is its lower jaw,
the skull now (sometime in your future),
gnaws the recollection of its bygone face.
It must use the roaming poems of restless winds
as its surrogate voice.
When you are no longer its hands, pick it up,
kiss that sad dome, where its forehead
once pondered upon the meaning of meaning.
Your own eyes are now the very wellsprings
of a hidden depth, which was always the
unsolved mystery of you.
Now here in your illumined hands,
you cradle the foolishly grinning remains
of what you once called God,
yet you were not wrong
for even God moves on.
When we first met you carried him in your pocket,
Strange ugly little thing, tied to a string.
I thought it odd that you would carry such a pet,
Yet who was I to say what you could do?
Later he grew larger and you put him in a box,
He'd make funny noises while we cuddled neath the moon,
Neatly hidden as our love progressed,
Who was I to say what you could do?
We married and you tied him in the yard,
In the back away from public view.
He bellowed like the Devil in the night
Yet who was I to say what you could do?
Sometimes when you fed him, you'd come in,
With bloody feet and torn clothes.
I salved and bandaged all your wounds,
For who was I to say what you could do?
You spend all your time now in the yard,
Alone I watch you out the window and I pray.
While He gnaws at your body and your soul,
Yet who was I to say what you could do?
Now I can hear you crying in the yard,
I see him as he starts to eat you whole.
Oh why would you want him as a pet?
But who was I to say what you could do?
Blemishes
My body’s mistakes
My wounds of disgrace
Injected by faith
In science and progress
Flogging myself with second-guesses
I have given myself away.
to uncaring men, pressed jackets
white jackets, packets of sympathy
baskets of fruit set upon the writing desk
in solitary confinement, padded walls.
haunted halls, bathroom stalls with locked doors.
Linoleum floors
Poor, poor pitiful me
Cherry pick my favourite reasons,
depending on the season
Why do the patterns keep repeating?
serve them up on a platter!
for delicate devouring
and just desserts
some things are generational.
inherited
bestowed
I cradle my worth.
In my own wretched hands
Once delicate
Here I stand.
Not stolid
Nor stoic
I am not put together.
Not sorted
I am apart.
Electrical currents running through the pieces,
stringing them together
Making a woman out of angst and energy
The sheer will of being.
I have nothing to live for
Only these words
Hospital gown flowing in my rage.
Windswept, like a mage
In the middle of casting a spell
A sorceress in distress, in peril
Fighting to remain
In the moment, present and tame
But wild fear presents itself at my feet.
The wolf is ready to eat.
I stay indoors to hide from the chase.
But at the end of the day
When night falls to the ground
I heard the call.
I wish to respond.
To howl back at the crack of dawn
Rolling in the sun with my wild baying, panting, praying
But I stay put.
I hold it back.
Inside my skin that cannot contain
My ancestral blood
This is the flood.
The flood
I drowned in the flood.
The wolf is not only animal.
But avatar
for gods too abstract to see
with the naked eye
It growls it snarls.
It bites my legs.
It promises peace.
as it gnaws on my pride
the alure of freedom,
teasing me to leave my comfort zones
knowing it will crunch my bones.
the first chance it gets.
when I trip over my intentions
into mud
face first
ruining my escape
I do not outrun the wolf.
I do not outsmart the gods.
I do not escape the flood.
I fall—
not like a heroine,
but like a relic dropped mid-ritual
mud in my mouth,
bones in the wolf’s grin
the spell unfinished
The door still locked.
the howl still inside me
rotting sweetly
like fruit on the desk
He walks alone, a shadow cast
By memories too fierce to last,
A warrior once, now lost, betrayed—
By time, by fate, by war's parade.
His brothers, bold, now rest below,
Their blood, their courage, still they glow,
In Valhalla’s hall, where feast and song
Echo the names of those who’re gone.
He’s left behind, the living scar,
The weight of grief a constant war.
Guilt gnaws within, a ceaseless ache,
For those he loved, for those who break
In battle’s grip, their lives forfeit,
But he—he lives, alone, unfit
To join them where the mighty dine,
To sit at Odin's table, fine.
No glorious death, no final cry,
He wonders if he even tried—
To die a soldier, fierce and true,
Instead of breathing, pulling through,
The weight of days, a burden great,
A soul betrayed by twisted fate.
The Valkyrie don’t call for him;
He’s left to fade in silence grim.
He hides his pain beneath the mask,
A hollow face, an empty task.
No family close, no friends to trust,
He’s walled himself in quiet rust,
Each day a blur of hollow fight,
Against a world that knows no night.
Around him laughter, life, and light,
While he longs for one last glorious fight.
The battlefield, his home, his kin,
Where death was certain, pure of sin—
He yearns for it, though it’s too late,
To walk that path, to seal his fate.
But still he waits, and still he pleads,
For death to come and end his needs.
To die a warrior, proud and tall,
To join his brothers at Odin’s hall.
So he moves through life, a quiet ghost,
Drowning in what he loves the most—
The battle cries, the blood, the pain,
The longing for a final gain.
And when his time has passed, he’ll pray,
That Valkyrie will lead the way,
To Valhalla’s feast, where none will fear,
Where brothers wait, and joy is near.
Until then, he carries on, concealed—
A warrior’s heart, forever healed
By hope that one day, in the end,
The battle will come, and he’ll ascend,
To dine with them, beneath the sky,
Where guilt and shame no longer lie.
For in Valhalla, free from pain,
He’ll find his peace, and there remain.
It blows all around us.
Zigzagging in front of the eye.
A million bits of lemon-dipped confetti.
Tapping on the carapace of a life.
Fawn dappled-silver maple leaf- days.
Spotted leopard-howler monkey nights.
Everything summed up in gossamer skin.
Infinity licks the newborn's fresco face.
The asp of life threads the eyes shut.
In a generation or two tombstones are forgotten.
No more granite tears meeting salty stone...
or plastic flowers flanked by crows.
The whole damn thing just a paper bowl
filled to the brim with put-on.
Life gnaws at the neck with lion teeth.
Sad pitter patter of an actor's eulogy...
Sugaring stumps and bitter moons
every word twists in the air...
Like cancer riding a stream of confetti.