Long Hoofbeats Poems

Long Hoofbeats Poems. Below are the most popular long Hoofbeats by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Hoofbeats poems by poem length and keyword.


Premium Member Looking Glass Labyrinth

You're navigating life's jagged labyrinth. 
Filled with clutter-a million things to contemplate.
There's no turning back; the nest of youth is sacked.
At the end of a journey lie life and its twin brother, death. 
      
For the first time you feel the hoofbeats and the snorts.
With every blind turn there is fear, in all its white-hot forms.
There's a minotaur who wishes to gore your destiny.
To cheerfully glean the cherry picker from the cherry tree.
      
In the blue distance you gaze upon that golden mist. 
But turn away, for it's just the smolder from the burning ID.
In the shadows lie smirking angels and smiling thieves.
The glow of truth makes you light, but deception chains the feet.
     
You're growing weary now, all paths trodden, save for one.
Upon it sits the minotaur with horns stained with your blood.
Walk boldly on -walk boldly on-for it's nothing to dread or fear.
It's just the phantom of your doubt holding up a funhouse mirror.
Finally, there it gently lies; is it what you've always dreamed of?
Is your virgin spirit the perfect fit for its destiny?
Form: Rhyme


Premium Member Fading Drumbeats

Long past war’s fading drumbeats 
And beyond the miasmic mists of time
Run undercurrents that displace peace 
And fancied futures hoped sublime.
Once staccato beats of war drums abate  
Far from war graves and their dead,
We find loved ones’ dismal fates 
And lonely lives now filled with dread.

Soldier’s sojourn in the dash dividing 
Dates on their eroding tombstones
Remind us that their lives, though exciting,
Ended not with hope but love unsown.
Once draftee’s dreams become forgotten 
And their past romances are long since lost,
All that remains is what God left them  
And scars they earned at frightful costs.

We too, wonder what will become of us 
And we hope to pass our test divine
Once life’s abating hoofbeats leave us 
And we’re enveloped by the fog of time.
Who will remember who we were? 
Who will proclaim, “I KNEW THEM WELL?”
Who will stop and silently ponder 
What our tombstone epitaphs fail to tell.
Form: Rhyme

Rise Up

It really puzzles me when it comes to how 
humans process and react to circumstances, 
for instance, 300 girls are kidnapped by 
lowlife cowardly terrorists,  while the world 
community sits back and says, " oh what a 
shame". Well im sorry words of outrage do not 
take action, people who care take action and 
deliver on their words. Their is current 
technology that can find these cowards and 
expert soldiers highly trained for extraction 
missions, and precision snipers who can kill 
up to a mile away, yet bombings, kidnappings, 
and threats from these cowards continues so 
blatantly its like they are laughing at the rest 
of the world. If i was a younger man i would 
go myself and do what i could, but the 
pounding of my hoofbeats for a sixty year old 
man just wont cut it . 
 When is enough enough, when will people 
rise up and quit voicing and start marching. 
When Hitler tried to conquer Europe and 
slaughter The Jewish nation the world 
declared war on him. He was a terrorist. When 
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the US 
immediately declared war and took action. 
Nobody wants a war but war is necessary 
when you have tyrants and terrorists who 
think they can have their way with no 
consequences. Write your MP, your member 
of Congress and tell them enough is enough. 
Do nothing and things will continue as they 
are. Rise Up!
Form: Narrative

The Midnight Ride of Dawes and Prescott

A retelling of Longfellow’s The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride too long unclear,
Not one lone horseman through April’s gloom,
But three who galloped with freedom’s doom.

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five,
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers well that fateful quest,
When liberty’s riders rode out to the west.

He said to his friends, “The signal’s near,
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the road will be ready to ride,
To wake the towns through the countryside.”

Then Dawes took saddle, a westward track,
While Revere turned north and didn’t look back;
And Prescott, waiting, would join before dawn,
When the British patrols pressed fierce and strong.

A friend in the belfry, tall and still,
Hung the lanterns high on the hill.
Two lights gleamed from the church’s tower,
And the riders were off in that midnight hour.

Through Charlestown streets the hoofbeats rang,
Past Medford farmsteads the summons sang,
Till window and door flew open wide.
“Up, ye farmers, awake!” they cried.

“Arm and gather, for war draws near!
The Regulars march with sword and spear!”
And the country folk, startled from bed,
Seized their muskets with faces red.

But lurking in darkness, the redcoats came,
A mounted patrol to end the flame;
And Revere was taken, his journey stayed,
Though bravely and loudly, the call he made.

Yet Dawes broke free with his steed still fast,
By wood and meadow the night he passed;
While Prescott vaulted the orchard wall,
His horse leapt high and out sped them all.

Onward he sped through Concord’s gate,
Shouting the word before ’twas too late:
“The soldiers are marching, the foe is near!
To arms! To arms! The time is here!”

From lantern’s glow to the farmyard’s cry,
The news went racing, mile on mile;
And farmers gathered with powder dry,
Their hearts aflame, their spirits high.

So when at the bridge the dawn was red,
And the first shots of the war were sped,
’It was Dawes and Prescott, whose midnight quest
Had summoned the people from east to west.

Therefore, my children, remember well,
The truth of the tale that history tells:
Not Revere alone through the dark he rode,
But Dawes and Prescott, who bore the load.

By Rick McGrath, Ph.D.
Form: Rhyme

Virus's Identity

It springs like rain on mown grass
Winds murmur over quiet pines
No hoofbeats of horseman lost
No limpid water from deep springs
oasis lift from arid sand.
Barbarian rides past towers without watchman
Deep thunder in mountain thrown up
Footprints of the darkness
stone like starkness
Harrowing & unhalting.
Grand inquisitor, earth's jailhouser
coverned deep and iron ringed
submerged in auto-cage of steal
Far from end and near to nowhere
lifting our heads to the light of God:
Spare my family and friends, thou great
keeper of souls
In its direness and darkness
footprints of light, our bodies taken,
our self retaken,
wastelands of ruins heaped with ash

mea culpa, mea culpa
Form: Imagism


Bend Or Break

People may not always be able to see our black and white stripes;
Others may not be able to understand our triumphs and fights;
We deal often with debilitating chronic pain day in and day out;
We may have to remind people that hypermobility isn't what it's all about;
We may seem "normal" on the outside, and no one seems to see;
That we desperately want a better life - a life where we can be free;
We undergo surgeries, physical therapy, and don't always like the final result;
But we have to remind ourselves that no one deserves to live this way and it's no ones fault;
Was may cry tears of frustration, anger, and sadness when things get tough;
Sometimes we may want to just give in and yell "enough!!"
People don't seem to understand that we are trying our best to live as normal a life as possible;
But we may need a reminder that our dreams may be high - but not impossible;
We may not always like the hands we've been given;
And we may feel powerless of how our lives have been driven;
aWe have spent years searching for answers and begging for doctors to help;
We've been told "it's all in your head" so many times, maybe we began to believe it ourself;
Sadly, for some of this community, help came too late;
Many of us desperately want a diagnosis so we don't receive the same fate;
Sometimes we feel lost in this world that we don't know what to say;
But, everyone knows that if you need help deal with your emotions, that's okay;
We may wheel our chairs or limp with crutches as we fight a war we battle;
There are millions of us around the world - we're all a beautiful dazzle;
We may feel alone sometimes, but we always have each other;
Some of us may go as to say we're all sisters and brothers;
"When you hear hoofbeats - think horses not zebra's" are what doctors say;
If they didn't fixate on that - imagine how many zebra's they'd discover someday;
Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders may change our fate;
But, please remember, "we may the fragile - but we don't break"
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member TEXAS RAIN

Texas rain arrives with its own slow truth,  
slipping down from a sky that remembers everything,
touching the land like a hand on a fevered brow,  
cooling what the sun has burned into silence.  

Old stories rise with petrichor and scent of wet dust~ 
hoofbeats, wagon wheels, cattle drives, and children’s bare feet~
each droplet carries memories of this vast land,  
releasing them into the open air.  

When the storm finally drifts away,  
the ground shimmers with secrets it never meant to share.

accompanying memoir vignetted at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/secrets_of_texas_rain_13713

Premium Member Recipe for Eagle Meat

We've used our gifts to watercolor disease
potter haloes of love into horns of hate
knitting the fallout of nuclear dreams.

Evolution is unwinding at the speed of light.
DNA is strung about on the vine of the ID. 
America the beauty, sounds like the death rattle of Rome...
Veins of freedom clogged by the cholesterol of ego.
Our elders sounding ever more unhinged...
In front of the world, they squabbled about nothing.
While her adversaries make recipes for bald eagle meat.

We've chained our children to iPhones and robots.
They have lost any semblance of an attention span.
Struggling with constructive criticism and compliments.

Everybody's pointing dirty fingers, only to be chopped off.
Black hearts and bloody fingers are everywhere.
From the White House to the churches of our God.

The four horsemen are approaching,
Albeit in the thin shadow of sundial time.
Feel their hoofbeats, clacking against cobblestone minds.

Premium Member Lest We Forget the Horses

Watching old newsreels sadness washes over me 

Highstepping horses, gentle eyes transformed in fear 
valiantly charging under men that could not yield

Amid the noise of cannons, over the death-filled  battle-field ,
sides flecked with foam,  so far from home,  
somehow they know how desperate is this final charge
hoofbeats pounding, hearts bursting, falling in their stride

Now the faded image shows a glory past and gone
Yet we must remember them and how their courage shone
Lest we forget the horses, or the majesty of them
In solemn re-enactment we must remember them
And grant a special place in paradise where they can roam.

Written for the Australian war  horses that went overseas
and never returned 


Some Paradise Where Horses Go Poetry Contest
Michelle Faulkner
Placed 4th.
Form: Ballade

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