Long Matchsticks Poems
Long Matchsticks Poems. Below are the most popular long Matchsticks by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Matchsticks poems by poem length and keyword.
I’ve asked you for love, but my heart
Is a playground of pains like matchsticks & veld,
I’m a broken-pieced soul.
I prayed for success, instead all I see
Is them whammies in numbers of mega bus,
All tight up blocking every hole to breathe.
I asked for this dear life but in it I see tears pinning my cheeks.
I’m inches away from crying such blood left in me,
Momma is with no degrees,
Father left in the ages of storm
And the shelter I have pours water when it rains.
My friends, the ones I grew up with, changed with lanes ‘cause
I fail to even get handwork to make a living in me.
My hair is greyish not by mistake,
The world I live in favours the sons and daughters of the rich,
Without connections I’m just moss in the middle of the Kalahari.
When I try to keep up, they are dragging me down
Like a prey impala on the canines of lion, why me?!
Why do I have to feel pain all emotionally, physically
Like I was bred with it hereditarily?
Why can’t I just get a hold of myself once?!
Guide me please!! I haven’t lost faith in you.
folding the trees, branch by branch;
rolling the leaves.
slender sticks play eye tricks;
fat and juicy ones’ carried downwards.
small branches gathered;
large ones, heave ho.
these matchsticks aren’t lit,
and I don’t know
how my small forest thrives
…and then a sound
an engine near, grinding
through my Winter lookout,
across the way, creating empty space
for kids to safely play.
the trees are stressed; and relieved
as the roaring stops
at the edge. on edge
they want to dress their best,
in Spring’s verdancy -
it seems an emergency
to get on with it; buds
will show up after the tempest,
for survival of the fittest,
at least that’s the way
the wind blows now
…then silence.
Time kisses each upon a cheek with timeless teeth of smile.
Even hungry mice as we, who walk in other’s shoes a mile.
Along the empires’ ridge we stroll with nighttime sky, engaged.
Impoverished, as our brethren watch, with hearts aflame, enraged.
Stories we disguise in different form, atoms shifting in chaotic dance.
Clothing manifested from our storm, a destiny some see as only chance.
Slim silhouettes of matchsticks burning, one or in a pack.
Knots untying, unifying all the envy that we lack.
Broken, born, or lost as halves; to be or not to be,
Whatever cost to make each other into whole, you see;
Solutions searching randomly, ingredients like dust
Upon a chalkboard scribbled fierce, as snow-white rust
Or written clear, on pages here,
And then erased.
Up in long bands of gray and white
angry clouds are whirling,
fingers stretch downwards to the ground,
faint traces of swirling.
the farmer sees it and suspects
what nature is unfurling.
Glad at least it came in the day,
not stole in come evening,
he locks the barn and heads downstairs,
in basement remaining.
The air moans loudly when it starts,
vortex boldly roaring,
snaps tree-trunks off like they’re matchsticks,
Sends the branches soaring.
Birds fly off in a panicked flock,
much too scared for crowing,
the wheat flexes, and flattens low,
disturbed from its growing.
A mad chaos, its motion blurred
by the rush of spinning,
if any storm-chasers lived here,
you know they’d be grinning.
But alas, this is not the plains,
with their F-5s looming,
oh no, this is upstate New York,
and those hills aren’t moving.
The block the flow, they interrupt,
winds are quickly fading,
it barely lasted three minutes,
the dark whorl abating.
I had a brain like an old motorbike,
I rode it back and forth
just to get laid by whomever, and that strange one
who kept cats under her long skirt.
Truth is a marmalade calligraphy.
I yodel blood-songs
prophets have stitched to my flesh.
Truth sleeps under a stone.
No one can number the stones.
I dream of Macadamia and Muscadine
of pretty girls all in a row.
Truth throbs.
Marimba music and matchsticks,
Why all these M sonics?
Mango
mildew, marmalade ghosts.
Why not?
Miss me mother?
The bike ended up in a heap -
Its motor whines on.
Truth is whatever’s left over
after the counting of things.
The detritus of a household of smokers was a joy to the young child, stifled in a family he believed he had outgrown. Matchsticks, by the score, he used to build magical castles with towers to climb or Spanish Galleons to sail away to places far. A live match found was a rare treasure, a pregnant opportunity to destroy--a secret power. The best were the small cardboard matchboxes with their slide-out tray, which he arranged like a chest of a hundred tiny drawers. Each drawer contained a precious item, a pebble, a penny, a bloodstained band-aid, a tooth, four-leafed clover, a tear-stained note, a lock of hair. . .
weaving
a smaller web
spider in a box
Like A Child Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Regina McIntosh
Date wrote: 4th July 2022
You try to make them civilized and grown-up,
but the words are infants,
they want to crawl around and yell for a bit.
You know that an eye is upon you.
watching you in that whelping room
where creation rearranges molecules
into a planetary system of speech
made of matchsticks and glue.
A poem is about to be splashed,
onto a speeding window of light.
Logic and reason must first
bash their bulbous heads together,
until their mechanical, self-winding brains
fall out.
The collective humming of incubators,
begins to lipread your silence.
A process similar to hand washing.
Eventually a swaddled indigenous form,
unwraps itself,
it begins to walk upright.
Matchsticks and glue
form readable fragments.
You begin to hope,
that someone inside that watching eye
will name what you have done -
even attempt,
to explain it to you.
School bus driver
Releases the squish of her air brakes
With a lurch from knees and chest
Clunks the bus into Park
Lowers her red head into the matchsticks of her dry hands
Rolls the meatballs of her eyes between her thumbs
And quietly says Help me God reaching for her cigarettes.
Out of habit she takes one last glance
Into her rearview mirror
Seeing the blond hair of a kid
Sitting in what should be the empty back.
The driver tears down the aisle to her own childhood
Kindergartner sitting with her precious hands
Balanced like tea cups on her knees
Her pretty dress that her mother picked
Is the color of bees teasing flowers
Her blue eyes dazzling
She has a worried smile drawn across her face
Squiggled there by dad in the morning.
She doesn’t speak a word
The driver takes her by the hand
And walks her to the garage to make The Call.
There’s been a terrible mistake
The driver’s boss says over the phone
To mom then dad both at work.
Watching it spin on an axis of shame
Collecting my thoughts in the cool summer rain
Whispering now cause I just can't complain
Well, it's the least I can do
Silvertone speakers that crackle with age
Finding the book but misplacing the page
Don't question why it is all of the rage
Merely just one point of view
Washing the sheets as the pillowcase cries
Shouting tomorrow, an early surprise
Gathering matchsticks, a sweet compromise
Turning my face to the wind
Cutting a rug even though I can't dance
Betting on four, might as well take a chance
Two could be better when thinking romance
Maybe I'll do it again
This might seem crazy, the phrases I write
Nothing too loose but some lines very tight
Not making sense in this poem tonight
All of the verses above
Here is the reason I wrote this today
Insane concoctions now put on display
Just blame my heart it has something to say
I think I have fallen in love
Where forests stretched for miles, and Spirit Lake
lay at its foot, there stood a rebel peak.
One day the earth beneath began to quake.
What havoc Mother Nature was to wreak!
The tremors kept occurring till the day
two craters which had formed began to merge,
erupting ash. Wise folks left right away,
for that volcano soon would surely surge!
Some met their death that eerie Sunday morn
of May eighteenth. The deer began to flee.
Then from the mount, a burst of cloud was born -
a mushroom cloud which bellowed boisterously.
It grumbled and it rumbled, rocketing
for fourteen miles to sky its ice and ash.
Land slid. An avalanche was covering
all things within the path of its mad dash!
By 10:15, a wall of water rushed
down to the river, tearing up the trees
along with boulders as the ash still gushed.
Destruction had been wrought with greatest ease.
The news said Mount St. Helen’s lost her head,
and trees, like matchsticks, lay upon the ground.
Amazingly, despite such loss and dread,
there is new growth of beauty all around!
Written Aug. 13, 2014 for Wordscapes Contest of John Hamilton