Long Listening Poems
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living with a ghost is easy
sometimes scary
a bit hard on the nerves
at times but lovely too
I have been doing it for years now years I tell you
ever since grandma went or should I say didn't
you see I inherited all her things sadly some got sold
but I kept many including
her old favorite chair
an antique china cabinet
with her tea cups and collectibles
oh how she loved her collectibles now be gentle dear
I recall her saying to the little girl that was me
all
those
years
ago
after grandma's funeral ( I read the eulogy too)
I felt a presence in my nest my home I really did
but brushed it off . . .
then one day a friend who thought herself a physic
visited
she stood in the center of my living room eyes closed
for the longest time.... I wanted to say are you okay?
turned to me suddenly and said you have a ghost
I gulped I DO! . . . NO, she said you have TWO
she walked right over to the grandma's chair
she is right here watching you and she has a cat
A CAT? ... I said yes, a calico cat
I did not know what to say
you see... my cat patches who recently died was calico
well, I was not that shocked as me and grandma
had a special bond always
now often I will hear the china cabinet open (at night)
and in the morning the tea cups and collectibles have moved
sometimes the chair will creak and was that a ghostly meow
but I love my ghosts both of them I really do
and would have it no other way . . .
sometimes, I bring the chair a cup of tea
I even talk to it (never sit in it)
I know that sounds silly
but I swear, she is listening
NOT THE CHAIR grandma-
_____________________________________
June 5, 2016
Poetry/Narrative/Living With A Ghost
Copyright Protected, ID 16-797-557-0
All Rights Reserved. Written under Pseudonym.
Submitted to the contest, Any HM Ever
Sponsor, Laura Loo
Second Place
____________________
For the contest,
I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost
Honorable Mention
Listen to the rain. It sings. It whispers.
Listen to the rain. It heals. It covers.
I lay in the grass. Thinking. Wondering. The rain falling, splashing on my cold pail skin. Splashing on my hair. Dancing on my dress.
It's falling all around me. Covering me. Protecting me. My body. My heart. My soul.
Healing the wounds. Covering the scars.
I close my eyes and feel it's cold touch. Drop by drop. Sinking in my skin.
I listen to it fall. I listen to it whisper. I listen to it sing. I listen to the wind. Blowing screeching. Screaming. Pounding the rain against my body. Against the grass. I lesten to the thunder roll. Roar. Growl. I listen to the lightning crack and slash the dark sky.
I'm thinking. Wondering. Hoping. Hurting.
I'm thinking about you. Wondering about you. Hoping for you. Hurting for you.
I miss you. I need you.
The pain is unbarable. I can't stand to be away from ou. I can't stand not feeling your touch. I can't stand not hearing yur voice.
So I lay in the grass. I listen to the rain sing. I listen to it whisper.
I let it heal me. I let it cover me. I let it cover the scars.
I listen to the rain. It hides my tears. Washes them away. The wind carries waya my worries. My doubts. The thunder hides my cries. My sobs.
But the lightning brings you. Brings images of you. Brings memories of you.
I can't help but smile. I hold you dream catcher and tags tight against my chest. I hold our picture.
Another crash, another stike. I get you for one more night.
The sky gets darker and darker. More and more memories of you flash through my mind.
The rain grows harder, the lightning grows longer.
In the grass I lay, smiling, soaked. Clutching our picture. Clutching your tags. Clutching your dream catcher. The last memories with you.
I will meet you again. I will see you again. I will be in you arms again.
We will make it.
The wind dies down and the rain slows. The thunderstops, so does the lightning show. My show of you is over.
Sad once again I lay in the grass. Listening to the rain sing. Listen to the rain whisper.
I look at our picture. A tear escapes my eye.
I miss you. I wish I could be in our arms again. I wish you could hold me. I miss being with you. I miss hearing you.
Another tear added to my growing fear. My growing saddness.
Another tear for you. I miss you. I need you.
Run across the fair fields, as fast as you can run, the fields your grandmother ran as a young girl,
Over long lush dark green grasses, whipping your knees, soft spongy turf springs each new step,
To stop where fast flowing streams rush and dance to the wind, a sweat breaking out on your face,
All out of breath kneeling by the bank of a brook, a stitch in your side, corn waves like a gentle sea.
By the brook with childhood friends enjoying sweet company watching spring as her beauty unfolds,
To walk across wet water mead’s, seeing glades in their finest clothes, to a meadow, in full flower,
Rolling in grass making camps sitting legs crossed as warm summer breezes temper-sweating brows,
Making sure you sit next to the one you care for most, nothing will be as good as this day ever again.
Playing in the meadows where your grandmother played, picking daisies, making very long chains,
Holding buttercups up to chins to see if they shine, then laughing, shouting out loud when they do.
Playing kiss chase, slightly slowing down, when the one you want to be kissed by is chasing you,
Under old pear blossom trees, flushed rosy red cheeks sitting next the one who is your first love.
Laying in high grass chin in cupped hands, it is so special this lovely day will be yours for all time,
Just staring at friends, full of innocence and so happy, this romantic time can never be repeated,
Unplanned moments where beautiful things just happen it’s your youth just enjoy the here and now,
Where everything is brighter has more colour, smells from the meadows become a memory for life.
Laying on your back staring at turquoise watery skies, listening to the silence, a perfect sunny day,
Heaths meeting small woods surrounded by greenest carpets only seen by a child’s pure innocence,
Give your heart and soul to this day enjoy natures gifts, your end of days will recall these moments,
Falling asleep in the December of your life, this last dream your friends will be there waiting for you.
So gather these thoughts, tie them up in a bow, put them safely in a corner of yesterday’s thoughts,
And walk again with your dear young friends in those happy times golden hair fluttering in the breeze,
Back to days of cotton dresses and turned-up jeans with baggy shirts, nobody noticed or even cared,
Hold your sweethearts hand once again and run across the fair fields where your grandmother ran.
Our beauty is hidden in our words!
Rumi (M. Mafi, trans.)
Our content in contentment
hides within commitment toward integrity.
Our beauty is hidden in our words
said only toward ourselves.
Barometers of mental health
for how we are and are not feeling
beautiful,
good,
fair,
balanced,
just,
harmonious,
confluent,
content,
graceful,
like good mentors without external hypocrisy,
and sometimes not such good mentors.
Mentors with words redolent of harmonic peace,
or maybe sometimes too much non-violent peace,
passive aggressive surfing, searching back and forth,
or even violently imagining unworded diverse futures
of yourself,
those around you,
generalized economic and sociopathological
and therapeutic
States and Species of thrive or demise,
and planet Earth,
and our Universe,
sometimes a metaphysically closing system,
sometimes more beautifully opening
although with considerable stress
tipping points,
trimming tabs and scissors,
adjusting balance, halves of ecologic,
within our internal voices of environ-mental health
as hope for cultural beauty.
Humaned nature adds economic
and cultural
and psychological freedom to evolve
kindness of mutual subsidiary intention,
an active love of peaceful mind.
Nature is only limited by absence
of regenerative orthopraxis,
caring and nurturing,
economically and politically powerful values
exercised within the classroom of each day.
Ecotherapeutic voices in our nights
and days of reconnecting consciousness
create our daily practice
of natural systemic design,
this song of synergy,
creative universal intelligence.
Cooperative kindness and competitive unkindness
are capacities coincident to all of nature,
a polar range from regeneration through decomposition,
from synergy through negentropy,
Kindness and love self-optimize as "Truths of Beauty"
when we freely choose sufficiency of contentment,
with full will and ecojustice intent.
My words surf my beauty and hope and synergy,
in and out,
back and forth,
listening for my listening gracefilling bicameral heart
and comprehensive consciousness,
discovering contentment within my content,
form within my information,
ecobalancing function within form,
fractal frequencies within bioregenerative
self-optimizing function.
Surfing echo frequencies,
Earth's words of microwaving grace.
The day you abruptly went away,
My heart became frozen and my soul grew shades of gray,
My little eyes watched as your cadillac pulled out,
After listening to all those screams and foolish shouts,
The driveway was vacant, the house became dark,
I knew at that moment we would never again go to the park,
When I got home from school you would not be there,
I prayed to God that you would still some how care,
No one explained to me at seven years old,
That I would have to watch so much unfold,
Depression set inside that vacant place,
I no longer had that bright smile on my face,
The tire swing we built together fell apart late that June,
I would now have to learn way too soon,
How to fend for myself and take your place,
I had to fill your empty space,
I tried so hard to be like you,
Even built a tree house in honor of you,
I learned how to fix things around the house,
I even protected mom once from a mouse,
But no matter what I did,
It did not make up for me not allowed to be a kid,
Other kids got to see their dads, even when their parents got divorced,
But that wasn’t the case for me of course,
All I did was think of you, my first love had been devastatingly untrue,
The events that happened after can’t be written in just one poem,
Only God could possible have the right size thread to have sown
The chunks that life took out of me,
All because my daddy never came back to be
What every little girl desires
The protector, provider, the one who inspires
All grown up and it is now bitter sweet
For now I help other little girls whose dads caused them to have years of defeat
One day when I have my own
I will be able to set the right tone
I will be able to feed my inner child
Embrace her and enjoy what you so freely defiled
We either repeat are parent’s mistakes or do whatever we can to prevent
That generational cycle from becoming like cement
Braking it now and forgiving you
Was the best thing I could ever do
For I harbor no resentment and I have no anger
I just know that not having a father put me in a lot of danger
But I am blessed to have had my heavenly dad
He was the one who was there when I was sad
He was the one who protected me from strife,
The one who taught me how to reverse my life,
I can live free because now I see,
what you did in the end, hurt you more than it did me.
By: Sabina Nicole
Written 9/6/11
When I feel compassion
with my positive needs
for love
health
trust
safety,
When I feel compassion
for my fears
wounds
negative fortress wants
to overpower perceived threats
against my egocentric compromises
with ruthless capitalism,
soulless patriarchalism,
strategic genocide,
extractive ecocide,
smug and heartless anthrosupremacy,
aggressively diseased LeftBrain dominance
inside my ruminating self
as schizophrenically viral
outside Those Evil People
voices
without kind choices,
When I feel compassion
with my healthy integral potential
and for my pathological capacity
to do more harm
to further wound EarthTribal consciousness
to militarize my fearmongering
and anger repressing words,
When I feel compassion
as the guy who loves listening
to friends and family, and even foes
excited about our multigenerational attachments
to multicolored
and fabulously gay designed
exotically sexy fragrant flowers
Is also the coempathizing guy
who shares DNA
and bicameral neurosystemic flow structures
with Vladimir Putin
and those who voted for him,
with Adolph Hitler
and those who voted for him,
Donald Trump
and those who voted for him,
Mitch McConnell
and those who voted for his Straight Corporate Man Party,
and possibly even Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene,
and those Georgians who voted for her
bad blond self-image
Which is decidedly not Green
in any feminist compassionate
organically cooperative
and co-empathically engaged way
and means to truth
and healthy resilient life
Maybe,
as I have sometimes whispered,
not-green Greene is a toxic infestment
machine
planted by an alien aryan planet
When I feel compassion
what do I need?
want?
crave?
CoEmpathic cooperation
and healthy co-investment,
experiences of win/win strategic game playing,
celebrating our resonant
positive
social neurological systems
for restorative health
for cooperative
long-term
EarthTribe safety.
When I feel compassion
for my engaged side
AND my dark and ominous potential
to fail in my own indigenous
humane
natural/spiritual development potential,
Then I can at least laugh
with my own creative conspiracy theories
and against my own tragic Earth-degenerative
Mutually Assured Destruction,
MADness that might take out humanity
Or,
even worse,
eradicate Earth's wild
and domesticated flowers.
I didn’t grow up trying to better anyone
but I bettered the bitter and discovered haters one by one
turns out it’s a lonely place when you’re the champion
everybody wants a piece everyday on repeat
you see them looking at you with the envy in their eyes
because I worked out while they sat eating all the pies
the effort and the discipline continuous developing
playing sport and at the gym
while they weren’t doing anything
they think that I was born athletic lucky genes they say
while they watch tv smoke and laze lacking energy each day
hours they spend dreaming about glory and achieving what they ain’t
while I compete in competition hard work starts to pay
living dreams the actual scenes and getting lots of praise
while no one ever notices the ones dreaming they are great
desperate for attention they start to label you that way
I don’t want attention I enjoy the sports I play
they look for ways they better you in any category
and then they talk aloud about it most assuredly
making sure that people know until they all agree
they’ve finally found the sweet spot they’ve found a victory
but then you go and win something and all the people see
then everybody talks about it and you are centre scene
and this just grows the hate resentment and the jealously
so now they will compete with you every possibility
behaviour fuelled by envy and it’s obvious to me
if you are lazy you’ll grow bitter and be a nobody
and you’ll become an empty shell who dreams they do achieve
desperate to be noticed by the whole community
and you will have to tell yourself just how great you are
over time you will believe it and see yourself a star
but that is called delusion you’re not who you think you are
becoming confident and cocky a reality apart
your happy days will be the days others suffer hard
you’ll kick them down and dance around and talk to them real harsh
entitled lazy liar horrid no empathy or heart
and this is how you will achieve as the narcissist you are
all because you sat and dreamed and smoked and drank the bar listening to winning stories of those held in high regard
and as your ego disappears amongst the mental scars
you’ll be wishing you were someone else hating who you
saying lots of nasty to people so high up above you
while they can’t even hear you they just laugh and shoulder shrug you
"Bat Crazy 5"
Some say
she was batsh** crazy
life hits the windscreens
in the labyrinth of life
that way
the foot remains pinned
to the metal, fast to the floor
full speed, left brained left hand
holding hard-gripped the gear stick
an upwards inflection, “You know”,
in the Queen’s Land, "all under control"
the open palm under the shaft
moving all the way up to 5,
reflecting on the mirror rearview
she watches the eyes
of her child
dreaming of open highways
the foot remains pinned
to the metal, fast to the floor
full speed, left brained left hand
holding hard-gripped the gear stick
never once moving from 5
the left all the way up to targa 5
right hand up on the wheel
left hand down right up to 5
windows spitting emeralds
like a baphomet
the two finger salute
the other above so below
watches on
"here we go again",
the 1 above it all
watches on
as above so below
that 1's long-suffering
that way, aghast, but resolute,
that 1 has never-ending reserves
of eternal patience
and watches on
perplexed
her mind geared on
how to kill off
a spider
and his sister, next
changing lanes
easier said than done
when you're hell-bent on
Freedom
the highway sign
Happy New Year
flashes ever onwards by,
foot to the floor
left brain baffled
at forgiveness
at Christmas
long gone by
right hand on the wheel
left hand down
open palmed
shifting gears
accelerating increduality
towards the accuracy
in the justice of karma
drivers sitting on both shoulders
inside the vehicle
holding the wheel
the internal speaks
to the universe
listening
for kindness
and answers
on a lost highway
Blue Sky
nods, as if in agreement,
that 1's always amused -
but never confused, that way
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
“Is it possible to switch dimensions?
There is currently no conceivable way to get to these if they exist, and they may only be possible, not actual. To travel between realities, they need to be in proximity. To be in proximity and not interact, they need to be incompatible. If it is a compatible universe you could travel to, it is already here.”
"Won’t you let me know,
if you made it home that night
Oh won’t you let me know
If our bones made it home alright..."
I've lain beneath this sugar maple before.
In fact, I know it quite well.
And it's seen me and watched me throughout the seasons.
And it has its own stories to tell.
In Spring, it would hear about all my wild dreams
for the months and the year still ahead.
And I'd watch its new leaves unfurl and spread out
for a canopy over my head.
I'd lay there for hours and hours on end
reciting verses 'neath a wet springtime sky.
And sometimes I'd lay there for no other reason
but to ask the Universe "why?"
The maple, of course, would stand silent and still
just listening to my thoughts and my words.
It must have imagined "Just who is this soul
whose passions and dreams I have heard?"
In Summer, I'd lay on an old cotton blanket
and gaze up at the now deep green leaves.
"How beautiful you are," I would say to the tree
and bask in the summertime breeze.
Its shade would protect me on a hot July day
and guard me from the bright August sun.
Butterflies and bees and birds would swoon past me
like a parade put on specially for one.
All about, the clover would bloom and bloom
in a carpet of purple and then white.
And I would lay on my blanket 'til the sun would set
deep into a long summer night.
In Autumn, the maple would be changing again
from its green mantle to that of orange and gold.
And I'd find myself sitting 'neath it in the shortening days
whose warmth turned to darkness and cold.
I pondered on those days beneath that old tree
lingering in the quick fading light.
Its quivering leaves in the brisk Autumn air
seemed to shiver through the frosty Autumn night.
The gold maple leaves would fall by the score
into delicate piles and mounds.
And I'd shuffle through the leaves and they'd rustle and scatter,
then sit 'neath the tree on the cold ground.
In Winter, the maple would stand there exposed,
with limbs and branches all bare.
It seemed all alone, but somehow I knew
that it knew that I would always be there.
It stood in the storms, it stood in the rain
and it stood against the bitter and snow.
I'd look up at it swaying in the hard Winter wind
from the snowdrifts where I stood down below.
Yes, I know it quite well, this sugar maple tree
for it and I grew closer o'er the years.
And come nearer to Spring, the men would come tap
my tree for its sweet syrup tears.
copyright © 2019 Gregory Firlotte
Gonifs and gossips revisited
since originally being crafted
approximately half dozen
dirty deeds done dirt cheap years ago...
Abound and lurk
within every nook and cranny
analogous to some annoying pest
harmless though one reside here,
when off his meds goes berserk
here at Highland Manor Apartments.
They snatch and snitch packages -
meant for other than themselves -
think Grinch who stole Christmas
plus snoop, i.e. eavesdrop
big Dumbo ears as listening devices
(batteries not required)
or serve as rumor mongers
to don self importance
and trumpet "FAKE NEWS."
We (yours truly and his misses)
dwelled at aforementioned residence
July first 2025 will be eight years,
and no sooner did both of us set foot
on premises than hearsay
immediately promulgated
(metaphorically swirled about our heads),
and passed like greased lightning
thru the robust grapevine
purportedly wife of mine
brought in live snakes.
Oddly and interestingly enough though,
I never actually never heard nor saw
a fellow resident
talk (or whisper in hushed tones)
about me outright.
Rather than badmouth other feisty folks,
which leaves unpleasant virtual
aftertaste described as phooey zook,
thus comeuppance to reprobate recipients
I activate viz cluck
king silly reasonable rhyme,
(so keeps head up
for urbane adverse city slicker
you better watch out
(...better not shout...) just duck
and run for cover cuz poet took
effluvia enroute spouted by word huck
stir, he avoids naming
(chatterboxes whose lives
so devoid of meaning,
they figuratively kickstart tittle-tattle),
who vocally ramp up
some juicy tidbit with any luck
taking page from former president playbook
letting their lips uncontrollably run a-muck
totally oblivious to credibility factor being a schmuck
buzzfeed initial kernel of truth and truck
outrageous zingers suitable for National Enquirer,
tragicomical, cuz mistruths
courtesy tenants exhibit chutzpah to pluck
farfetched outright lies and innuendos
rolling of tongues of then occupants such as:
"Bible Thumper/Holy Roller,"
"Bingo/ Phat Cathy,""Crooked Old Man,"
"Curvy Girl/Thunder Thighs," "Frumpty Dumpty
"Mush/Smash Mouth, "Snaggletooth,"
"The Bodyguard," "The Fossil," "The Schvartze,"
"Winkle," and last but not leased "Zha Zha”.
Give me fruit flies, mice
and/or roaches any day,
or give me death!