Long Northwestern Poems

Long Northwestern Poems. Below are the most popular long Northwestern by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Northwestern poems by poem length and keyword.


Premium Member Second Time a Charm

second time a charm
   and a while between visits —
      i was her out-of-towner grand.

sweet Grandma, even
   the sound of her lovely voice —
      from Northwestern New York.

second time a charm
   and much careful was I,
      wanting her to hear.

i miss her even in her wheelchair,
   though i’m glad she’s out of it
      and sitting at Jesus’ feet.

second time a charm,
   she asks me again —
      did she forget…

i love how’d she’d roll out noodles
   and bake poppyseed bread
      and Hungarian coffee cake.

second time a charm.
   i’m like a surgeon
      holding the apparatus tight.

Grandma in her rocking chair,
   tissues in her sleeve,
      surrounded by ceramic roosters.

second time a charm.
   this time i don’t break
      Grandma’s hearing aid!

no longer in use when I’d remember
   the Grandma i’d nearly forgotten —
      the kind and compassionate soul.

second time a charm,
   she smiles and hears my voice
      and draws me near.

Grandma, widowed with kids still at home
   a beautician, a factory worker, a greeter
      at McDonalds, costume and all.

second time a charm —
   the after life fills her arms
      with all the life she lost and had.

Grandma, I cried for you, two hours —
   unexpected. and i believe she came to me
      as i closed my eyes; opening them i felt her near.

3/10/2020
Form: Verse


Premium Member SEATTLE DAY 3

Today we visited the Farmer’s market in Ballard.
It was a beautiful sight to see…
Booths that stretched for two whole blocks….managed by people of all diversities…

On our way to the Farmer’s market…
(I love when we discover surprises out of our control)
we happened upon one of Thomas Dambo’s six Northwestern trolls.

We also visited the Ballard Locks…
where we could actually see
the wonder of their engineering…a testament to ingenuity.
  
I’d love to say these are the reasons we went to Ballard..
for as terrific as that would be….
the truth is we heard Ballard has a Danish Bakery.

The troll, the Farmer’s Market, and the locks were amazing 
we truly loved all of these….
but…they paled in comparison…to a danish filled with cheese.

Another highlight of our day…as our trip to Seattle comes to an end
was having lunch with Alison…a dear old high school friend.

One of the things I love about visiting an old friend…
is the smile that stirs within your heart
when you realize how a friendship can endure
no matter how long you’ve been apart.

The time it took to eat our lunch….
like all time, unfortunately, flew by in a breeze….
but lunch with an old friend brought even more joy
than a danish filled with cheese.

Which brings me to what I love about these last 3 days in Washington:
After all we’ve seen and done…I know
from now on we’ll be taking a little bit of Seattle with us…
wherever we may go.
© Jim Yerman  Create an image from this poem.
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member Blueberry Festival in Sioux Lookout

Blueberry Festival in Sioux Lookout

Travelling north (on an adventurous drive)
Off the Trans-Canada on King’s Highway 72,
In Northwestern Ontario,
I crossed the bridge at the Frog Rapids Narrows
Of the English River system
And entered the town of Sioux Lookout
On Pelican Lake, “Hub of the North”
And gateway to Lac Seul.

Legend has it, as told by the elders,
That in days past, a mountain lookout
Was established by the Ojibwe for them
To scan the horizon
For oncoming Sioux warriors
Who had unfriendly intentions
And intercept them
Before they could storm the camp.

While I was in Sioux Lookout
During the “Blueberry Festival”
Held in August
To celebrate the Creator’s abundance,
I wandered about the town,
Enjoying the sights and sounds,
And noticed the sadness
In the faces of the Anishinaabe people.

I stopped to admire a native mother
Attired in a skirt with jeans underneath,
And who dressed her pretty little girl the same,
Both of them wearing embroidered jackets,
And I thought how out of place they looked
In today’s world of modern technology—
The younger, with a sparkle of curiosity,
And the older, less spriteful, melancholy.

Gone are the traditions!
Gone is the culture!
Gone is the respect due one to another,
And it’s heartbreaking to know
That the Europeans are responsible
For these deviant behaviours,
And I cannot keep from thinking
About the residential schools.

The town begins the celebration
With a community blueberry bake-off
Followed by the weeklong list
Of sports activities and music festival.
The mornings begin with blueberry pancakes
Topped off with maple syrup and side entrees
Of bacon or sausages, followed by picnics of hot dogs,
Hamburgers, steaks, and blueberry desserts.

The air in the North is refreshing,
Void of that smell of congestion,
And the space is wide open;
Unlike the city, where people are confrontational
From the anxiety associated with daily living,
The traffic, and the pressure!
It was nice to escape city life and enjoy
Sioux Lookout’s Blueberry Festival.
Form: Verse

Premium Member Hedonistic Hate

When we compare the numbers
and percentages of innocent,
trusting lives lost
in significant part because of Christian
militarized
capitalized
patriarchal 
monotheistic judging fundamentalism,
punishing Afghanistan
and other Islamic cultures
over the past four or five decades,

To the number
and percentage of innocent
economically and politically trusting lives
lost in significant part
because of Moslem militarized
capitalized
patriarchal
monotheistic vengeful fundamentalism,
punishing the U.S.
and other NorthWestern Christian cultures

The outsized scale of human
and darkening environmental casualties
in brown Afghanistan
does not redeem Bin Laden's terrifying success
on 9/11.

But, this difference in chronic ballistic stress
does suggest why
a well-capitalized terrorist
was able to garner so much economic
and political support
from those already too familiar
with sudden
tragic
violent loss of family
and friends.

This is not to say U.S victims
and non-victims (should there be any)
asked for vengeful death
nor deserved such tragic
excruciating loss,

But 
these same losses
may remind us
we, as a democratically healthy
responsible wealthy nation,
a polycultural society,
could have listened with more extensive
bilaterally compassionate ears
and mass mediated eyes,
to the rapacious horror,
loss,
trauma,
fear,
anger,
hate,
chronic anxiety,
post- and pre-traumatic stress disorder

Perpetuated by militarized
capitalized
patriarchal
monotheistic
dogmatic
RightWing
LeftBrain dominant privilege
elitism
supremacy
autistic autocracy
greedy kleptocracy
dissociative denialism

Doubt in cooperative polycultural powers
of global compassion
love
actively provoking hope,
healthy trust in win/win 
global resolutions.

Within these powers
of seasonably healthy reason,
perhaps we could have heard,
as Albert Einstein
so impatiently exhorted,
to do more of the mighty same
of what is tearing us terrifyingly apart,
is our distressing height
of straight white anthroprivileged ignorance.

The Middle Ground

You have been walking on that ground since you were a child and you still have not examined the broken lines, you have been playing on that field since you start crawling on your knees and still you have not figured out how to mix lemon with honey.

You have been playing on the middle ground since you were three and you should know the turns like ABC. If I bend my back and cross my knees you will receive a letter from me; some mountains are hard to climb but strategy will save you just in time.

I lit a candle and wander around in the dark searching for that spot where I will meet with the lark, it is that little section around the bend where the crucifix meet with the troublesome heavens, and the clouds keeps turning about and the elements in the sky start to run and shout.

The universe with its ultimate proportion finds the exotic rhythm and starts sing, and I stretched my ears beyond the plane to block out the terrible shame and align myself with the ground for that is where the mystery is found.

The stars and the planets are sealed up with the Gods and the Indus Valley lay bear waiting for something dynamic to share; the Bronze Age of civilization is welled up in the northwestern regions of Southern Asia, cruising from corner to corner and from three thousand three hundred BCE to thirteen hundred BCE, they have been baking a giant cake for you and me,.

 The ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamia family have been searching diligently for me they are one of three early civilizations of the Near East and South Asia and they have built an empire out of the diamond and gold and place it in the center of my soul. 

The ancestors have paid the sacrifice a million times and when the time is right you will break through the gate and collect the golden plate.

The center ground keeps moving around and the birds keep flying from town to town, the side bars are easy to slide and a miracle is waiting by your side, study the field once more before you walks through the miracle door.It was built specially for you, just to make your dream come through.

When you are in the middle, they attack you from both sides so girt your waist with extra pride and extend your right and left elbow on both sides to scrape up all the prize. The middle ground is hard to find; the middle ground is where destiny abideS.
Form: Narrative


Greetings From Schwenksville, Pennsylvania Today March 1st, 202

Greetings from Schwenksville, Pennsylvania
today March 1st, 2021

I dashed (off the enclosed poem) yay
while safely secured within
white horse open sleigh
after reading following
pray lemme know if ye uttered oy vey.

Profound insights divulged 
during our most recent family zoom
Approximately seven hundred
and fifty four months since exiting womb,
yours truly (sole son
of late Boyce Brandon -
yes she named him
after paternal grandmother
Sadie, her mom's Yiddish name
Basia Brana or Brandla)
me currently ensconced within unit B44

analogous to catacomb
amid Highland Manor Apartments
I dwell - our livingsocial hole in the wall
among grateful dead residents
facility likened to metaphorical tomb
each stone individually moved one at a time
courtesy hearty and hale archeologists
resident to *Qom
(a city in northwestern Iran -
place of pilgrimage for Shiite Muslims)

to imbibe on spiritual succor
and become comfortably numb
acquiring appropriate trailing appellation,
yes a USDA, FDA, B Corp... and
Pink Floyd approved nom de plume,
which feeble poetic brainstorm
begat within mine
sixty plus shades of gray matter,
which exhaustive mental effort
induced silent but deadly ka-boom

one Matthew Scott Harris
rent asunder vaporized to smithereens,
hence each his personal possessions
cherished as prized heirloom
no trace left behind
regarding pulverized lovely bones,
nevertheless burnt offerings
specialists did painstakingly exhume
where Ashkenazi temple will bloom.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
*My humblest apology for lame rhyme
with previous word similar to crypt
yours truly deserted and he gypped
thee while crawling
across Sahara during nighttime
dehydration subsequently
found me tight lipped
I called Uber, but could not get a lyft.
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member I, Mustang

I, Mustang, am the stuff of legends
               Roaming the Northwestern badlands 
                Of the United States in small herds.
                I'm poetry in motion when I gallop, 
              Propelled forward by hinterland winds!

     The quintessence of beauty, grace, and freedom!
           I'm a social, wild horse breed; part of a herd
       Consisting of a stallion, colts, a harem of mares  
   And their foals. I mature sexually at the age of three,
                       And I mate from April to July.

                 As a male, I'm known as a "stallion,"
         The fierce herd defender. I group into a circle 
                Around the herd with other males to
               Fight off predators; chief among them 
                         Are wolves and coyotes. 

                 As a female, I'm known as a "mare," 
                   I lead the herd away from danger.
                      I usually give birth to one foal,
                      But sometimes I deliver twins.
                My gestation is roughly eleven months.

               A herbivore, I eat only grass and foliage
            I can grow up to 56 inches in height or more.
            I communicate by whinnying and whickering
                  To the herd. I loudly snort to alert 
                       Other mustangs of danger.

               Need I remind you of my perseverance?
               To withstand very harsh environments,
                   I can go for more than one week
                 Without water or food if necessary.
          My lifespan in the wild is about twenty years.


Date written: 09/03/2022

Premium Member Oil Spill

Note this poem was written some time ago but I was sick and deleted my site.  I have been patiently reposting my poems since 9 October 2000.

On November 13, 2002. The Prestige, one of twelve tanks burst during a storm off Galicia, in northwestern Spain.  No help was forthcoming and by November 19, the ship split in half.  20 million gallons were spilled into the sea.  


Beneath the heavy dark clouds,
the storm broke.
An oil-filled tanker sank
spewing black lakes of murderous slime.
 
What a giant "Prestige"!

Despite the roar of untamed waves
there was a deadly hush over the ocean.
A low death knell sang a purgatory of pain,
as contaminated birds of gulls, orioles, kestrels 
squawked their last dirge:

What a giant "Prestige"!

Too late men stretched their ingenuity,
a desire to save and spare
the livelihood of so many families
that sailed the oil-spilled seas,
where baby dead fish dotted the surface,
sands and rocks tainted with death.
Elsewhere engineers burned their chemical gases
and smoke escaped from the earth's fragile shell.
 
We all have our "Prestige"!

Written 2016

Premium Member It Feels Unfair

It feels unfair,
the doctor said,
to blame all pathological -isms
on LeftBrain dominating
NorthWestern enculturation;

Too geopolitically ecological,
too globally sweeping,
where my reason looks
for biological neurology,
more inside linguistic powers
more intimate.

But, both neurology and ecology,
both natural biology and spiritual theology,
these four each and all agree,
whether secular or sacred paradigm
for discernment,

Monocultural ecosystems
divest of originally healthier
polyculturally robust wealth,
resilience,
multicultural resonance,
harmonic compassion.

So it is with LeftBrain dominant egos,
monotheistic dominated ego,
securely enslaved servants
divest of originally healthier
multicultural
robustly cooperative,
and compassionately felt,
true polypathic wealth of empowerment,
multicultural enlightenment

Trusting
liberal cultural-istic phobias 
conjoin with 
conservative historical-isms
to regenerate more democratically robust
global ruminations,
discernments,
political  power and light dialogue,
cooperative investment.

Yes,
well,... the doctor responded,
racism
and colonialism,
and capitalism,
and sexism,
and anthropocentrism,
and ageism,
and bullyism,
and narcissism,
and even omnipotent monopolistic 
closed ego-systemic monocultural monotheism
of LeftHemispheric enculturing verbal dominance
feel too aggressively unfair as well.

Premium Member Toronto

On Lake Ontario's northwestern shore
sits a city of awe, beauty, and lore.
Toronto is where sports built the SkyDome,
and the Maple Leafs and Raptors call home.

Its renowned entertainment district lures
trendy tourists with its late-night bar tours.
And world-class restaurants offer cuisines
befitting the palates of kings and queens.

We built the CN tower to pierce the sky
one thousand eight hundred fifteen feet high.
And every spring, folks race up to the top 
for nature, and that's not going to stop.

Torontonians say please and thank you
and allow cut-ins when standing in cue.
And our city hall hosts a skating rink,
it sounds extraordinary, don't you think?


(Rhyme)


12/23/2022


Take Me There Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Margarita Lillico
Form: Rhyme

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