Long Laid Poems
Long Laid Poems. Below are the most popular long Laid by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Laid poems by poem length and keyword.
(“The Mothership”, 2024, photo collage of original encaustics)
The Hierarchy of Needs
In this world there is a hierarchy of need.
Of course it’s different for each of us.
Some just want to get ahead,
Some to get laid,
Or to score.
Some just want to be left alone.
I’m kind of in that last group
But I also have other priorities
And those are what comes after any hierarchy.
So what might those be?
The question really becomes
What is the nature of this world
And it’s natural hierarchies?
Food, sex, shelter, connection,
Self esteem and realization
But those are all within the pyramid,
That while leading ever upward
Never really leaves the ground.
What is it that transcends this sense of worldly need,
Transcends all we crave and strive for?
The word that come most readily to mind
Is space.
Space is what we find when we step off the top
And enter into that which is actually another dimension.
It may sound cool or far out perhaps,
But it isn’t.
It’s just what is when we step out of ourself,
Out of our mind, and
Into what has always been
Like the warm embrace of a lover
Or parent, or comforting scent of home.
Each of us are lost children
And each of us know that scent of home
Even if we don’t know.
The hierarchy of needs is what keeps us bound
To the wheel,
The wheel nothing more than a hamster’s habit.
Are you really a hamster?
I didn’t think so.
(8/31/25)
She left out of the store with several new garments in hand
Walking out the front door and now she's feeling pretty grand
And so down the street she walked smiling at each passersby
Rarely would one's eyes meet but some people did actually try
And about four blocks away nearly half way to her own place
She seen something that day something so hard to even face
But there the woman still laid on a box there at seventh street
In so guessing the reason she stayed there for the warm vent
She paused for a moment but then she started to just go past
With all the stink from the vent she started walking really fast
Finally she had made it by but maybe she needed a new way
A disgust she wouldn't admit but some of the things she'd say
That night as the girl slept she began to have this vivid dream
As all those fears had now crept or so for now it would seem
Laying there alone on that vent never again to feel any love
Except a few coins that were sent tossed down from above
Feeling such hunger and thirst and the chill upon her bones
Never had she felt worst in the losing of all that she owns
As there this girl had only slept but the pain was so deep
For she had even wept laying there upon that trash heap
When she suddenly awoke right in the middle of the night
Like her conscious had spoke putting everything into sight
The next day, still there, she took yesterdays bag of clothes
That someone still does care is what that old woman now knows
Spinning a Warrior`s Soul
In the long journey of life, we embrace
Our path may be laid with thickets and thorns,
Some may plant nails along to halt our pace
Others may hold our high headway in scorn,
Let`s not dread, but stay steadfast on our goal;
Some may try to rock the hull of our boat
Others to take the wind out of our sail
Some may wish to steal the shine of our coat
Others may seek from our path to derail,
Let`s not fear but brace our will as a whole;
Some may try to stab us behind our back
Some may try to steal the shine of our seat
Some may wish to deal us a severe smack
Without any speck of shame of their feat,
Let us not shrink but spin a warrior`s soul.
Noticing his neighbor’s young child
has laid a ladder against a tree,
determined to rescue a pet kitty stuck up there,
a middle-aged man crosses the street
and offers to help.
He STEPS UP the ladder
and retrieves the cat for his neighbor’s son.
A young woman
stands behind a harried mother
who struggles with a wailing baby
as she tries to take items from her shopping cart.
Without thinking twice, the young woman offers to help as
she STEPS FORWARD
to place the lady’s items on the grocery conveyer belt.
A teenage girl, eager to see a certain popular movie,
is standing in line waiting to buy her ticket.
She hears the couple behind her
speaking excitedly about this movie.
Learning there are only two seats left for that showing,
she STEPS BACK
and lets the couple buy the last two remaining tickets for themselves.
At a nursing home to see his mother,
a busy office worker is informed by his mother
of a lonely widower who never gets visitors
and who is feeling abandoned by his children.
Asking a nurse for the man's room number,
he STEPS IN
for a visit with the elderly widower.
A young boy who delivers newspapers
has noticed one of the older women on his route
is now using crutches.
Instead of tossing a rolled up paper to her lawn
as he usually does,
he STEPS OFF his bike
and delivers the paper to the woman personally at her door.
It matters not whether you are old or young
or whether the person you might see in need
is a stranger or a friend,
Don’t let opportunities for random acts of kindness
pass you by.
Whether it’s UP, FORWARD, BACK, IN or OFF,
just take a little action; take STEPS!
March 7, 2018 for Kai Michael Neumann's Random Acts of Kindness Contest
Calling at the midnight hour come my demons and my dreams, each with hope of casting colored skys of their choosing over the vast open regions of this restless mind.
The first come crashing in as an army of conquest bringing with them dark clouds of coming events and impending trials, raining cold fear of worry and concern….. though such trials have not drawn first breath of reality nor seen hint of stroke from Time’s brush upon his canvas….. yet they come,,, marching in their orderly disorder pointing as they do to the broken bodies of past failures which lay bleeding in fields all too close within regretful taste of memory’s edge.
The second may come as whisperers found floating within a breeze, heard perhaps as an infant’s cry in the distance,,…searching for one who might tend to every need and wistful desire. At other times these Dreams come with booming voices demanding finish to temples of self glorification that in their completion all just rewards and accolades be collected and laid at my feet in view of those who have eyes to see..
……. all the while lay I ,calling for peace between the two, wishing only for a restful sleep that tomorrow I might be more than a mere pawn in the games played within the hallways of my own mind.
Darrell
As emotion's embolism petitions
a mirror sea for endless blue transparency-
through oculat lens flare, an albionic estuary
garden variety of pleasures appears, obligatiry-
in full disclosure, for poetic reason- to be vetted
by replay of open book read cover to cover.
A commercial grade bewitching -
in season- laid bare, to pardon a dare
Vespers of ancient psalm, timeless tale
of the re-awakened takes abionce as a Seer to come.
Where Eden-welcomes, home
to it's Shrangri la- Sangria- wetnursed bosom,
full- of the Mother's milk of Elysium.
In center-folded trappings beside firelight screenings,
beneath the fluttered kiss of frolicked summer heat,
heart mappings deriving
wind aided fireflies serenading,
in the silence of a seraphic breeze.
The heart suggests an accounting
of lost dreams as they vie for clemency
and doth softly cry verdant reprieve.
In the Goliath peer of mountain cleft,
overseeing the caress of foliage
begueathed to the canopy of emerald green,
sun dresses honey bee chaperones,
drunk in lily while
bestowing a still of radiant beam.
Crowning chance adds a touch of dandelion garland,
tendrils of sentiments worn on the sleeve,
becomes the first snows virgin fleece,
onlooking tears of starry night, light bending the knee,
peers through immodest canopy,
altar ego ghosting as
mist soaked silver valley's pheromone stair,
married with the encore of fading light laying polaroid down aware.
Amidst the ruins of a broken dream mending a solar flare of Valkycries,
the fragments speak of romantic math,
mosaic of future memories bellowed love leaves
lanterns of light ascending over calm seize.
Her Emissaries of the wind caressing her foliage with
the palms and
apothecaries drawn from a crystal song.
A symphony of nature's tender wails,
creates the plumlines of this Great Hall.
But in the quietude of night's soft glow,
Hope blooms like a rose in spring,
A promise of renewal, a whispered vow, places it all.
In a world where shadows dance in preservation ritual
of first snow's pose of
virgin purity. kept chaste as pasts echo of prose.
We the People
Will disagree
On taxation and prosperity
On liberty and duty
We the People
Are every color of Christianity
Every Jewish prayer, every song of Islam
The puritans, the atheists and the Amish
Are neighbors here
We the People
Are Jamaican and Japanese
Swedish and Samoan
Cuban and Cherokee
Moroccan and Mexican
The Irish and the Inuit
And all shades of Africa
We are country hills and cityscapes
Suburban parks and downtown fire escapes
We are singers and stutterers
Daredevils and diplomats
Renegades and redeemers
The leaders and the lone wolves
The suits and the sarongs
We are the gun owners for gun control
The justice for unjust loopholes
We are the hands that struck the iron
And the backs that laid the tracks
Of trails of rails connecting
Sea to shining Sea
We are protesters and poets
The soldiers without peace
The nurses without sleep
We are the straight arrows and the skeptics
The gay and the god-fearing
We are Black Lives Matter
And we are the badges in blue
We the People
Are complicit and complicated
No freedom gave
To chains of slaves
We have conquered and colonized
Sacrificed and stolen
Pillaged and planted
To naturalize a nation
We are teachers of tenacity
Prophicies of pioneers
And the children of second chances
We the People
Speak for our land’s legacy
In every tongue, from every rung
On each stumbled stair, each crumbled chair
We demand democracy.
8/21/20
Poem of the Day
August 23, 2020
THROUGH FICTION OF SEEING TOUCHING
through fiction of seeing touching mind evolves
when mind comes in to existence
learns with the environment what are laid there in
becomes a being with in
what one is with in
choice speaks of the same
life is such that some one gets fame
and some one earns blame
From an infant to a grown man or woman
In neatly lined up pots in a row
Flaming red and purple balsams in clusters grow
A visual treat to adoring eyes
A haunt frequented by the bees
Do not need much care, but may fade
If not allowed a little shade
Flimsy they are of delicate stems
With light green leaves of serrated hems
Planted in my skilfully laid up yard
They invariably make me glad
Gleaming in the first rays of the sun
By their simple beauty, my heart they won
When the flowers wither, pods appear
In time, for self dissemination, they prepare
When fully ripe, the pods explode
And seeds fly as birdies from their nest to explore!
Thus Nature’s ways are so amazing
Even in plants is an inherent training,
For seeds to leave the comfort of their pods
And find their own space fighting all odds!
___________________________________
June.2.2022
~Placed First~
Purple Flower Poetry Contest
Sponsor – Nayda Ivette Negron Flores
O Death, thou art so vain, so proud, so cold,
Thou takest pride in what thy hands hath wrought,
Yet what thou reapest is but dust and mold,
For all thy power, thou canst not hold a thought.
Thou smil'st when kings do bow to thy dark reign,
But what is wealth when all is laid to waste?
Thy blade is sharp, yet hath no lasting gain,
For Time will turn thy fleeting grasp to haste.
Sometimes thou wait'st with patience, biding time,
In shadows deep, thou lurk'st with silent breath,
Yet patience, too, is but thy fleeting crime,
For love and faith shall triumph over death.
O Death, thy pride shall fall, thy power fade,
For in the end, thou art but Heaven’s shade.
Thou art the gate, but not the keeper’s key,
A servant still to immortality.
So boast no more, for thou art not divine,
Thy reign shall end, as doth the fading line.