Long Least(a) Poems
Long Least(a) Poems. Below are the most popular long Least(a) by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Least(a) poems by poem length and keyword.
In the West…
Wild animals show up in daylight.
Color shouldn’t matter,
but it does.
Some teeth I know.
Some pale, still sharp enough to bite.
Shadows slip along the ground,
Blood moves faster than thought.
The sea carries voices
from beyond the waves,
and home murmurs beneath me.
Animals are still animals.
Feed them, help them--
they will still show their teeth
and someone else feels the impact.
They fight for Color,
for Pride,
for what was already someone else’s,
and it hits the wrong person.
Shadows side by side,
Blood moves before thought…
nothing changes.
Their eyes meet mine.
A quick flick - nothing said.
I already know my place.
With the pack, or outside it--
The earth is loose where you stand.
White with brown,
Brown with black,
Black with white.
They move as one, careful.
Most stay in shadow.
The real shapes show in only a few.
The nightmare comes back again:
Faces I used to trust,
Whispers in corners,
They talk.
Nothing straight.
Smiling as if it’s easy.
In that place,
they talk about being good.
They repeat it often.
Still…
I watched
how small they tried to make others
just to stand higher.
I remember the split tongue.
It sounded gentle at first.
Worse than a snake--
at least a snake shows its teeth.
Venom spreads silently.
Not in the flesh.
In your name, in trust…
Mostly at night.
Young or old,
it shows the same way.
The tongue splits.
Once you stop gripping it…
it softens.
They tried to break my name.
They went after the quiet I carry.
My soul stayed where it was.
I walk Alone now.
Wind in my face.
The ground not always steady.
Here.
Mine - even so.
(Pema the Pug, 2025)
I’m retired so have the freedom to choose.
So often I choose to sit and read a book
And inevitably at least a few of my five dogs
Choose to lay around with me,
The small pugs beside and on me,
And inevitably something happens to my plans
And I get both distracted and soothed
Into a soporific daze
Or should I say, contact low, from the sleeping dogs.
Nothing like having a small warm living lap blanket
To keep you from getting up
To do something more productive.
Eventually I’ll get around to finishing that novel
After I finish these thoughts.
The dogs after all show me just how easy
And good it feels
To put off doing what can be done
Another day.
But the older I get
I think that other day may just end up being
Another life.
(11/13/25)
The bare branches of the tired old tree towering tall
above me creak in the frigid whistling wind
coated in a covering of frosty snow
glazed over with a sheet of ice from
the freezing rain that followed
I have not reached the age to hear such sounds
emanating from my bones that have not yet grown
brittle and easily broken
I still have time
At least a little
Though I know the sand slips through the hourglass
with every second I stand here
I don’t look or feel old yet
Even so my life is likely already at least half over
My mind is as agile and youthful
as it was twenty years ago
How can it be that I see myself in that tree?
It is not what ascends upwards from the ground
but what lies below that is a reflection of me
its roots rendering it resolutely immobile
From the time it first sprouted
it has persisted in its position
It will do so until it dies and is cut down
I who once envisioned myself gallivanting across the globe
do not even possess a passport never having had the need
A prisoner in this place that has never in my heart felt like home
I should be across the sea where my bloodline began
Where my ancestors abided
In the land where they take time for tea
and the Thames flows fluidly past parks and palaces
where kings and queens held court
Perhaps someday I’ll have the opportunity to uproot myself
Transplant my body where it truly belongs
before my own branches begin to creak and groan
under the terrible weight of time
Please, tell me, for you, it was not a total waste,
Thirty two years of our souls entwining.
Tell me there was warmth and joy you embraced.
Like the love of our lives , our precious two,
morphing four into one, without even trying.
I wish I had their strength but I don't think I do.
Tell me for a time, for at least a short moment
that your heart beat for me and your smile was unerring,
Tell me your words were a fervid investment
not hollow discourse just meant to appease me,
or placatory sentiments of habitual murmuring
expressed without meaning, an embittered plea.
Tell me, please, through our contrived, inane reasons
you must have found cause, at least some simple thing
that kept you next to me, for so many seasons,
for the hope of renewal as the time slipped away,
more than our passion and more than just clinging,
until the feelings faded from fact to cliche.
Tell me it's not true as we sit in this room, without malice or greed,
the judgement is final, dissolution of marriage,
"Best of luck to you, with your divorce," he decreed.
The words yet linger like the executioner's bell.
Fourth floor, section B, room 2, where we were kept hostage,
until we stepped through the door, as our past we expell.
11/26/2022
I dwell in what seems like a hopeless hell,
filled with frustration I cannot abide.
Often feeling as if I'm serving a sentence of solitude
brooding over the want of you.
Angst crashes over me as waves in a storm tide
as I continue to hide secrets in my soul
that have me stumbling in the shallows of a shoal.
Sullenly, I sulk like a mourning dove
whose blood spills from being unloved,
dying with a secret yet untold.
If only I had the courage to be bold
I would speak the words long held in my heart
of love and longing for you, I dared not impart.
Sonnets... I've inked at least a tome or two
about romantic notions I've always had of you,
but most lie crumpled in the trash,
until I burned those verses in the ash
for I fear if my secrets would ever unfold
you would take flight, leaving my heart cold.
Tormented and troubled, I cry in shadowed night
feeling you will never see me in love's light...
crazed from the yearning need of you
as if I am the asylum of your aches.
My wounded heart would surely break
if I taste your truth of being spurned
never having a kiss from your lips
or the tender touch of your fingertips.
I would wish for beauty to catch your eye
or angel's wings so that I may fly
across your view in a silver moonlit sky,
collecting prisms of stardust, so rare
that you would see me as someone to love...
one you would welcome with all of your heart
and from my side, you would never want to part.
If wishes could only make it so...
I would ask for a paradise
where happiness is found on every plateau.
An elysian garden, where orchids grow
and your eyes follow me wherever I go.
There, I would feel your heartbeat with mine
and find that I'm trapped in your pulse,
forever a part of each other
in a world so gloriously divine.
If my wish would be granted true
I would hear you whisper, "I love only you."
To Andromeda I would serenade, even in sleep
for no longer would I have reason to weep
and never another soulful secret to keep.
Show a gesture of warmth to all you meet
If not, offer them the least- a pleasing smile!
Every one can give it absolutely free of cost
Smile reflects your inner joy, begetting a cordial feel
When many wallow in gnawing despair
Tell them stories of those who have dared and won
That will mend their hearts needing urgent repair
Filling them with hope, yet with more to be done.
Lend your ears to what they have to say
Having no one to share is the greatest bane
When you listen, their frustration you allay
And rid them of their scalding, inner pain
Visit someone who is left desolate and lonely
Show them that they are cared and loved
Such a gesture will be counted as godly
With such acts, many hearts can be touched
Gravitate others into the orbit of your joy and cheer
This world prospers by man’s sweat and toil
But it is lighted up by our kindness and care
Love kindles hearts even amid the greatest turmoil
Fallen in the middle of circular array
no way to be flown from there
Certainly there’s at least a single hole
if properly equipped up with care
No other animals can do that
there’s a magic in elephant’s bowl
How to be out from such circular array
many times it does without any foul
Elephant swallows wood apple
consumes total creamy soft buddy
Seen without breaking its shell
leaves ordure wastes from its body
I sometimes reconsider
all our politicians
and economists,
Not as party-line teachers,
or even dogmatic preachers,
instead as future forecasting,
co-infesting deep past
and present listening
with compassioning
co-empathic
therapeutic intent
to laugh and sing.
Who is not
at least a private health care politician
seeking to empower our heart-felt constituencies
and not to disempower?
What responsible adult
is not at least a personal wealth economist?
Praying for divine enlightenment
and not so much
inhumane
depressing endarkenment?
Who has been
cause-effect
effectively recausing
counter-culturally
exposed to Buddhist master laughter?
Meditation in silly groups
feeling nearly giddy
with short-term relief
from mountainous depression
valleys of despair
Surprised,
perhaps dismayed,
that such a fake
pretending dervish exercise
might portend more
than our species' economic
political
anti-ecological demise.
I further wonder
if all Earth's depressed
suppressed
oppressed
repressed muted muses
Silenced
stunned
sunk by political sadness
dispiriting badness
economic madness
of Earth's Great Transitional Pandemic
Might discipline our lonely
lethargic
neglected bodies
to dance
until our minds remember how to sing
and ring
ping and ding
a liturgy of sacred laughter things
together regathering
For re-empowering compassioned muses
enlightening sacred ecstatic economists,
co-investing companies and choirs
of moving
mindful
musicality,
harmony,
synergy,
win/win cooperative energy,
sufficient for eco-politically heart-felt
lung-filled integrity
To more reflectively reconsider
all our singing polities
and EarthDance economies
sanctifying dervish universal
universities.
CAT AND SQUIRREL
By Curtis Johnson
The squirrel was in the tree, and the cat on the ground. There was nothing special about that scene except that on this particular spring morning in 2014, there was something different about the encounter that I was observing. The squirrel wanted down, the cat wanted up, and the cat seemed to be saying, “Only if you can get past me with the fight of your life”. And the squirrel? Why, I suspect that he was saying, “I’m in no hurry”. So, as far as I could tell, there was no dummy in the tree nor on the ground. Though it appeared that each wanted to determine the outcome of this standoff, I witnessed a lot of patience above and below.
The cat seemed relaxed, which seems to be the stance of most cats that I have ever observed. On the other hand, I have never witnessed a squirrel that I would say was relaxed, and that is quite a contrast from the cat. It seems that squirrels are constantly in the "run for your life mode”. Their eyes are constantly on the lookout for what might be lurking to do them harm; and their little tails seem to always be in “a state of wiggle”.
I observed, watched, and waited patiently just like the cat and squirrel. I don’t know how long the two of them had been in this stance before I appeared, but I watched from the front roe seat of my living room window for at least 10 minutes, hoping to see at least a good chase. The cat jumped up the tree trunk a few times and fell back down. I suspect he was either too old to climb the tree, or maybe he figured the squirrel was not worth the effort. Every time that the cat made a motion in his direction, the squirrel would simply go higher or jump to another limb. The squirrel did not seem worried in the least, as long as he stayed focused upon the cat.
My wait to see some kind of wild kingdom action was in vain, because the cat decided that his patience had run its course. So he slowly walked away. And of course the squirrel was now free and clear to go on its merry way
cj08252014
The Sun rises...
I know the supposed science
of light,
bips and wavy lines of
pulsed propagation
like a heart
like emotions~
how human feelings start
and stop, the forward/backward of time --
the morning news
our repeated proclamations
stagnation and regressive
signatures, announced and printed
shouted over electronic airways
man’s modern-day gazettes
dawn’s transparent lush
on my face,
I admire and study –
the brushwork of gleams~
patterns of my traveled summits
and depressions indented
zebra primrose blossoming, in short
what love created such marvelous
striations? Say ye a God~ surely even
the moron
in glaring absence of other proof
would not guess less?
Him/Her? Our Blessed Hermaphrodite
of sentient-being creating, of morphing-realms
unending evolving
salacious advances of life mating,
entangling, imparting fond mysteries --
lips of roses unfurling, curling, inviting
nearer breaths for uninhibited exploration –
such exposure awakens and sleeps
yet we sense beyond-maturity
delve the wizard behind the curtain
all us Dorothys
trying to find a true way home
imaginable, at least a steady firmament though we
slip precipitously – My thought, to dust, clean and change
the sheets, as a new warmth attempts to re-freshen
recover nature’s veiled cycles our nightly often deeply
staining retreats