Long Pawned Poems
Long Pawned Poems. Below are the most popular long Pawned by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Pawned poems by poem length and keyword.
Emerging from the shadows of the mission’s broken wall,
The moon falls on her shoulders like a ghostly silken shawl.
She wears a chain of silver and abalone shells.
Her eyes as bright as emeralds, her voice, like Spanish bells.
She wanders past the courtyard, the potter’s earthen jars,
The lights of the cantina, the lullaby guitars,
To step beyond the threshold of conservative affairs,
And let her dark desires be the focus of her prayers.
She conjures desperados burning ranchos built of straw.
Her reckless indiscretions led to brushes with the law.
She’s broken her piñata and found herself beguiled.
Her heart was always restless, but now she’s running wild.
She glides among the canyons like a ghostly vagabond,
Her freedom the expression of the innocence she’s pawned.
She wraps herself like water around the un-carved stone.
It’s easy to imagine, but hard to let alone.
I look for her in turquoise that mirrors desert skies,
The wind that sweeps the mesa, my lover’s sleepy eyes,
The haunted midnight pueblo, the cool adobe dawn;
Though mountains rise between us whichever side I’m on.
Maybe it’s time I spoke my mind.
Tell me, what’s the punchline?
The world is upside down.
So my smile becomes a frown.
Spending these dark nights
Alone, under these streetlights
With a plate of alfredo.
I sleep without you.
My friend is gone to Pennsylvania,
The rest drifted away.
I’m in love. It’s mania.
Wish it would stay this way.
Too late, you're a creep.
Pawned, manipulated by one.
You drove away the rest.
You gave everything but the best.
Everything is falling out of scheme.
Lines
Are breaking out of place.
Shattered.
Interactions flew by today.
The world is grey.
Day by day,
“Let’s play the funny guy.”
Let’s look at the upside.
Will you be my guide?
I’ve run out of ash and string,
And I’ve burned everything.
I took a trembling island by the hand—
Barefoot children, broken streets,
A people shamed by foreign tongues,
Their dignity pawned for crumbs of aid.
I did not wait for the West to love us.
They called me tyrant,
Because I silenced the noise
That kept my people in chains.
They praised democracy—
Yet their own hands were stained
With centuries of empire and greed.
I chose order.
I chose sacrifice.
I chose silence over slogans.
And with it, we built a future
Brick by brick, law by law.
Do not ask me how Singapore rose.
Ask how long we stayed awake
While others slept under the weight
Of imported promises.
O Africa—
Your rivers are rich, your soil divine,
But your minds are colonized still.
They teach you to vote,
But not to think.
To speak,
But not to build.
To borrow,
But never to own.
Each time I see a hungry child in a land of diamonds,
I weep.
Not from pity—
But from rage.
Because I know:
With discipline,
With iron resolve,
You could rise.
But they keep you dancing to their tune—
A symphony of sabotage.
I made my nation clean not with prayers,
But with prison cells and planning tables.
We bled in silence,
So our children could shout in joy.
Let the West call you names—
It is better to be feared with dignity,
Than pitied in poverty.
The West said it was impossible.
But I said: it is possible.
We did it.
Now—will you?
Third floor over west lookin out the window Watching the lines form corner to corner for that dope
In those lines use to be my mother giving her last just to get through her day just so she could cope
Eight Ball a day blew her mind away But,her daughter still had hope
I didn’t get to see or talk to her much
When I did it was short but such an emotional rush
People don’t realize the levels to the highs
Until you are the one next to the hospital bed as they take their last breath and your crying Goodbye
I knew it was always her own choice
I never once blamed it on the coke boys
It was still her request ,his money,her voice
Her body,her choice
Pawned everything valuable,Even her children’s toys
How could her children have any joy
Twelve felonies by the time I was seven
Her choice lost her time with her children now she is peacefully in heaven..
I always wondered what life would of been like if only she never turned to drugs to numb all of her pain within
Would I still have a family here especially my sibling.
I pawn my prayers for a handful of hunger and the clerk calls it salvation.
One's halo's on hire purchase cracked chrome still sticking on the devil's desk.
I trade mercy by the minute marked down,moth eaten!,mislabeled as hope.
My heartbeat haggles with hell drumming debt into my desperate dawns.
My tears come with interest,each drop a receipt stamped *Final Hell.*
The Spirit goes AWOL on paydays,replaced by plastic faith and payday psalms.
Heaven's door has a coin slot but my pockets cough only dust.
I'm a ghost on consignment groaning in gospel tones for one more breath of grace.
Angels appraise my agony and cry,"too used,too human,too late."
I sing in chains proud and penniless,a prophet of pawned redemption, my soul on layaway.
Her story ends in a storage unit;
she wrote it quickly in-between bottles of Liebfraumilch
- her life so far,
an autobiography hard to imagine
could have been told in any other way.
The editing took many toll-taking years
decades that squeezed themselves into her soul
fearful of being overheard.
A tell-tale flotsam of hurried escapes,
the litter of abandoned rented apartments,
dockets of disarray, a tally of wrong choices,
unkept residue locked away for a better day.
Among the put-away, a ‘little brother’ manual typewriter
in a suitcase marked ‘mine,’
one edge crushed by a jumble of household items.
Various chunks of collateral clutter,
now stricken in a clamshell of dinge,
objects acquired when the idea of a ‘household’
had a life raft attached to it.
Perhaps one day she will be in place, perfectly set
and equipped to fit somewhere,
but as yet she finds herself unable to write
about certain uncertain matters.
Could have pawned the typewriter.
Could have found less impoverished lovers.
Could have paid the storage bill
before it was emptied,
Should have retrieved the typewriter,
would have then rewritten her life
from a muddled manuscript of memory
forsaking all other versions.
A certificate of deposit love's purchase to prepare
Penning love's earnest with liberal flare
Inscribing title and documenting deed no meager fare
Tapping into literary vault of esteemed relics your assets to pare
Initiating votive contract no trite chare
For with your appreciating qualities can none compare
Each cuddly rhyme; each sentimental stare
Bonds my pen; binds our charming affair
Each bartered simile your value lays bare
Every metonymic expression love's affadavit will swear
Each titilating allusion; a lien your affections to ensnare
Each pawned metaphor our liabilities will pair
Every allegorical kiss my life's lease will square
Every affable alliteration increases your stock a share
My hyperbolic soliloquy your dividend will declare
My epilogue tendered, 'my devotion exchanged for your care'
Game Playing
by Odin Roark
There was this time…
When his drunken ambition
Made him take a seat at the table,
Ante up his meager self,
Bet with stakes he didn’t have,
And hold his “dare you” stare for luck.
There was this time…
When joining the game
Meant playing by the rules,
Winning a few,
Losing a few,
Walking away once in a while.
And like his shadow forever stretching
Across his personal walled-in self,
The one possession he hadn’t pawned,
All vanished.
He sees different now,
20/20 honesty having risen.
The games no longer appeal,
Someone else’s rules no longer matter,
Winning has lost its luster,
And his inner-solitaire provides.
Occasionally…
He wanders out from his world,
The honest one,
And peers at the fashionable one,
Remembering there was a time
When that was him,
The someone they dared to win,
To play out life's game their way.
Returning to his discovered home,
Being who he really is
Not someone they said he was
Is…
Well…
Truth just keeps getting better.
Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day. After centuries of relentless struggle, are women happier today…? Can’t say! Despite all claims to equality and progress, women are still at the back seat struggling to balance between her work and domestic chores. Alarmingly assaults on women have skyrocketed in our land than never before, especially in some of the Asian countries. Some thoughts on this ‘great day’
She dies a hundred times,
In the throes of spite and neglect
In the agony of betrayal
In the shame of defeat
Yet alive with charred spirits
And deep burns that shall not heal.
Shut in the cage of servitude
She lives an ugly duckling!
Fed on taunts and threats
Drunk on slander and slight
Smothered by age old mores
Manacled by custom and tradition.
A door mat under crushing feet
An expendable commodity
Bartered away,
Or
Bought at the highest bid.
A toy to play with
A curio wrapped in folds
To be disrobed before feasting eyes
And torn apart by man’s beastly lust
A chattel to be pawned and pledged
A chalice to be cast away
When emptied of its contents.
Yet, she is silent
Mute like a dumb animal.
Oh No! It's time to break this silence....
However, nemesis will take hold.
Please know, there lies an ember
Down beneath the dying hearth.
As the wind veers around,
The smoldering charcoal would blaze
Growing into a wild fire,
With tongues of flame leaping into the sky
That would ravage the Earth
Leaving nothing
But,
Heaps of coal
And piles of ash!
This latest theft, stole more than just my money,
It took my soul and left nothing to spare.
With little remains to even fight back with now,
My defeat is final; the white flag is in the air.
Any strength once known has been exhausted;
Chains of despair are left hanging to drag aside.
My new companion is known only as poverty,
Rarely sharing much to diminish the pride.
Looking inward, I seek to learn any lessons,
That could prevent this from happening again.
Although my next thought dwells on any value,
Since my recovery is so unlikely to even begin.
Could this be a lasting piece to the puzzle,
Where survival rests upon those who steal and take?
As if this culling would thin out those weakened,
Leaving those strong enough who want to stay awake.
This may be the greatest hardship that's unseen,
When those can steal what they don't even see in the heist.
So while this theft isn't pawned or even brokered,
The damage is often beyond what is normally priced.