Long Narrowing Poems
Long Narrowing Poems. Below are the most popular long Narrowing by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Narrowing poems by poem length and keyword.
The greeter-teacher,
the smirkier at the door.
I feel his gimlet eyes at my back
and though it is 5o years later
and his mouth is now plugged with dirt
his leer can be traced
in the brown water stains
of mottled walls.
A female slave-unit whose name was ‘Miss’
I cannot recall her ever speaking to a child directly,
only through the thin lips of her personal intimidator
a third level teacher who spat into her ear
as if sexually lubricating her fears.
I am put right by a serial wrongdoer.
A second tier maniac with a lust for rhetoric.
His large hands flay like wind-sails, they
slap books and heads.
On, on,
through narrowing corridors and echoing rooms
counting sadists, ticking off
a long mental list of ghouls
all dead and gone
except for the abusive drills.
One dead grinning fish-head
even opens a door for me
as I leave forever.
Some sense it
a tipping point being tilted.
You step back
into your mind's eye,
survey the present climate
sensing a dire change,
a new darker wind
stirs your thoughts.
Something went wrong,
something got too damaged.
In the stateless moment
where we were once unified
by the same dream
there is now a lack,
a narrowing of opportunities
for peace and harmony.
What you once loved and honored
is being dismantled,
its parts being carried away
by political gremlins.
The Great Divide is here
it rumbles under our feet
it pollutes the very air we share.
You want to run to the nearest hilltop
and shout:
"broken arrow, broken arrow!"
Alas ears are now blocked
and hearts sundered.
The rocking scale is off kilter
and a torn veil has fallen
from our eyes.
Cats go out then cry to come in.
A runt-end of shade wilts.
We feel the pull of a Lunar tide,
sense the off-center mewing,
of a dissonant aria.
Trembling dogs hide their body-bones.
The air is strained through fisheyes.
A clammy light gnaws,
while white-faced mice scurry
on twilit paws.
There will be an end of sorts,
a draining away. First, there must be,
this ailing after-glow,
an infiltration that wounds
the tender skin of reason.
A mad moon had broken lose,
from the cellular jails of fitful thoughts.
A dead Siren rampaged,
in a cold rage of silence.
The day may heal, a new dawn,
defeating all spectral trails,
all night-walking fears.
Until then we must watch
a pall-bearing dusk
depart on crumbling stilts,
observe from a dwindling distance,
a naked crone wanes,
turns in ever narrowing circles,
as she seeks for her life.
Pages turn thin, thin as the plot thickens
Thinning knowledge as ignorance quickens
Spines crack from hunger, hunger for minds
Cracking under pressure of different kinds
Books starve for attention, attention spans wane
Starving for readers in this digital rain
Covers collect dust, the dust of neglect
Collecting cobwebs, respect they collect
Words go stale, stale on forgotten shelves
Staling wisdom as society delves
Into shallow feeds, feeding on quick bites
Feeding frenzy of memes and soundbites
Chapters close, close before they open
Closing doors to worlds unspoken
Stories wither, wither on the vine
Withering away, leaving no sign
Libraries fast, fast from funding feast
Fasting resources as budgets decrease
Volumes shrink, shrink from public view
Shrinking access to both old and new
Bindings loosen, loosen their hold
Loosening grip on tales untold
Leaves fall, fall from tomes of yore
Falling silent, voices we ignore
Ink fades, fades like memories lost
Fading faster at literacy's cost
Margins narrow, narrow like our scope
Narrowing pathways of reason and hope
Bookmarks slip, slip from neglected pages
Slipping away, the wisdom of ages
Fonts grow small, small in our esteem
Smaller still as we lose the dream
Endings hunger, hunger for new readers
Hungering for minds to be thought leaders
Bibliophiles crave, crave the written word
Craving stories waiting to be heard
So let's feed these books, feed them our time
Feeding our souls with rhythm and rhyme
For books may go hungry, hungry for touch
But starved of books, we lose so much
Digest these words, words ripe with meaning
Digesting slowly, our minds reconvening
With pages that yearn, yearn to impart
Yearning to nourish both mind and heart
Let's feast on books, feast like they're our last
Feasting on futures, presents, and pasts
For in this banquet of bound delights
We satiate our appetite for heights
So don't let books starve, starve in the dark
Starving for chances to leave their mark
Feed your mind, mind the feeding call
Minding that books nourish us all
I recall my having saved something: A special sized box … a uniquely colored rubber band … an old, old hat … or a million sundry other things, thinking that sometime in the future I might find a use or application for whatever it was.
Looking back, it seems like I was traversing a universally large area, without dimensions or size, and occasionally thinking I might need some item I saw or held, sometime in the future, so … I’d save it. I’ve been doing that for nearly eighty years now. And, it suddenly dawned on me this afternoon: I don’t have a long-term future any more.
The limitless sized “room” I have been traversing, has been narrowing, shrinking, lessening in size and scope while I have been paying attention to “things”. The arena of Life I’ve been living in has all the while been diminishing, and astonishingly, I’ve just now come to that realization: Sometime in the not-too-distant future, all those “things” I’ve been “saving for some future use”, won’t ever be re-initiated inside whatever domain I had, at one time, envisioned they would be.
That realization made me remember, when my mother passed away and I and my family members wandered through the collection of her belongings, began to fathom just how many “things” she had collected for “future use”. They were contained there, where she had left them in drawers, closets, wrapped in plastic grocery bags or newspapers. They never realized the “future” she had foreseen for them. They never would. The things that were her important “usefuls”, became just discarded items once they were voided of her
imagination of her future needs. Our dreams and aspirations are of the same ilk, just as our well-meaning “intentions”. Once we are gone, those intentions all evaporate into an invisible void. Maybe one of the saddest, empty utterances of mankind is: “I was going to …”.
So, beginning tomorrow, I think I’ll commence ridding myself of “future” stuff, lying here and there for no real reason. Oh, there’s no doubt, as I touch and pick up each of those former “future” pieces, I’ll stop to ponder what my original thought and vision had been for it to be placed, and still lying, in that dusty box.
It’s gonna be a long, memory-messaging day, I bet.
At one time,
(a time-scape so broad
that it knew no ownership),
the world was wide,
there were no nations, no distinctions,
just humans in a well clothed landscape.
Progress found a way to be prosperous,
agriculture could feed not just families
but many others
they built walled cities
to keep their prosperity safe,
and every wall was a demarcation.
The clothes they wore
became status symbols,
and so, not to starve,
the poor had to clothe the wealthy.
The world began to fracture,
the wide open
became the over-populated narrows.
until one side of a street
could wage war against the other side.
Free people still existed,
but they lived on the margins
surviving only at the tacit consent
of the crushed hordes
crowded into the narrows.
If a person really tried to be free
the people of the narrows
would make TV shows about them,
pretty soon
the free became curiosities,
trapped in ever narrowing images,
forced to be viewed
inside an edited picture frame,
in a landscape that was once frameless.
A picture postcard of narrowness
can now be purchased
in any city, while the few
who still live outside such walls,
with handmade knives, they whittle for pennies
the wooden effigies
of warring narrowminded gods
suspecting they are no longer free,
but only carving out
just another form of narrowing.
"The clock is a useless tool, measuring mortality,
narrowing vitality. Don't let it tick-tock away the waning moments
and fine components of your final days." (last stanza of Heather Ober's "Clocks")
A brand new day
Tick tock tick tock
You grow, you learn
You take that walk
To get your fine diploma
Fond friends get left behind
Blink one eye
To keep a tear at bay
Tick tock tick tock
You get a job
Or first you go to college
Find a mate and settle down
Tick tock tick tock
Surprises come
So soon your first child’s prom!
Blink both your eyes
Try not to cry
Tick tock tick tock
A grandchild’s birth
And then a whole lot more
Folks you used to know
Have passed away
Tick tock tick tock
Blink back those tears
Of joy and pride
And also tears of pain
Tick tock tick tock
Changes happen
For the good and for the bad
You must adapt
Or fade. . . . . .
Tick tock tick tock
Sit back in your recliner
And simply close your weary eyes
There will be no more tears
To blink away
For Tracie Edwards' Homage Poetry Contest
On a ledge, in trace of paths—
To incandescent tunnels, away from illusive digression.
Voices fade overhead into narrowing echoes of screams,
Amid the mild descent of depression.
I drown in shadows to escape
The mean pressure of society and peers combined;
A judgment of guilt and inequity
That seldom needs to be redefined.
Provocative words—full of rage and fury—
Flow, meandering through my pale ochre imaginations,
Like drizzles on a brusque morning serene,
Abrupt, with no opposing confrontations.
My body sways from side to side as I walk—
Perhaps my heavy heart weighs me down;
Hollow, with no aims to pin down
Failure’s momentum building beneath my feet.
Love keeps me crawling through shadows,
Leaving behind dreams I can never fulfill;
Yet out of the cave, the world opens wide—
A pool of light invades the dark around.
I hope my ascending calls for divine inspiration,
Brewing love, for in it I believe;
For I climb sable stairs to recuperate
Under burgundy solar flares where ambitions breathe.
So give me a rope, that I may ascend
A bit further, to see what lies beyond the Rhine—
Perhaps my chain of broken dreams
Rearranged in velvet swirls that entwine.
I saw something and stopped, a smile bloomed like a light,
as if I glimpsed the face of innocence, pulling with a force that turned me,
to keep my balance, not to get lost in that deep and pure gaze.
Imagine a flower gently tucked behind an ear, a fairy's touch,
her hair falling in soft waves, yet the flower stayed there,
more beautiful just for resting on that face that seemed sculpted,
a small ring in her nose catching the light, the silent center of her beauty.
A pause, a breath, for her eyes were like a vast horizon,
eyes that let you see your reflection wandering in their depths,
and beneath were the lips, perfect as rose petals,
their lipstick matching the clothes, as if everything was meant to be seen.
But it wouldn’t be right to speak only of eyes and lips, and not of the whole expression,
because when you gather yourself, after her hair, lips, and eyes, you see the face,
the face that made me stop, and the expression on that face...
a smile that could melt a heart, a subtle lift of the eyebrows,
a gentle narrowing of the eyes, as if carrying a secret too delicate,
her face wasn’t trying, it felt, it moved like a whisper in the silence of poetry,
you could see a world in the way it changed, not just beauty, but presence,
that presence which doesn’t demand to be noticed, but simply is, and I saw it.
I knew I saw something that wasn’t trying to be anything else, just... her,
innocence and beauty, as if fate had spent my luck,
to gift me this unique moment, which remains imprinted on my soul.
They're supposed to be good for you, gluten free,
but then a health record may not be a mystery;
now it transpires some may give you polymialgia,
narrowing of blood vessels, kidney problems, neuralgia.
We are animals, need meat and protein so they say,
where is the truth, we ask for proof along the way,
fresh fruit must be okay but eating sugar not so good,
we don't worry, disbelieve what's going on with our blood.
All things in moderation according to my religious sect,
the trouble is that you just don't know what may affect,
if it works for you then I suppose that it must be fine,
it may be too late, you're just too far down the line.
My wife is busy cooking a huge butternut squash,
I don't know about you but I'm not very keen on 'mush.'