Long Roughened Poems
Long Roughened Poems. Below are the most popular long Roughened by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Roughened poems by poem length and keyword.
Work roughened hands
Gentle like a heart
Who bends its ear, listening…
Whispering kindness
Coloring the morning songs
In laughter, smiles
Love that abides inside one
Who is more than kind
He is like a knight in shining armor
A sincerity, a breathless hope,
Awareness that there really
Is good in this old world
Wrinkled and graying
Promising his affection, his grace
To the small heart who echoes
His words, his smile, his thoughts
Through eyes twinkling,
Shimmering with imagination
Delight and insight
Into the wonder of his amazement
His pleasure pours out
Across the pages of her spirit
Writing his love in praise
Inspiring his light to awaken
Soaring, breathless, on optimism
Faith, never failing, always willing
To listen to her tales
Her intimate gifts, her miracles
No one else on earth
Can take away all his hurt
The way she can, with only a look
A smile, so sweetly freed,
Unrestricted and published
In the moment
When her eyes meet his
And the reflection of love
Pours out from her spirit
Willing him to give back to her
A part of his tenderness
Affection that comes alive
Like liquid hope…
Flowing, moving, stirring
Up the waters of marvelous
Love, a miracle
With joy overflowing
His senses fluid, watery
In a love that is melting away
Every hardness, each doubt
All the worry he can’t figure out
With her, he knows the way
Back to a place he might have forgotten
A place on the edges of grace
Where only her laughter erases
Years of darkness with a light that sprays
His heart in breathless faith
A promise of joy that will never fear
With her, he is rich beyond words
He is fruitful and productive
He is wise and never reluctant
To give her the hugs, the stardust kisses
The sincerity of love that always wishes
To give her more than she can dream of
More love, more hope, more life…
But never more than she has given
With her sparkle, her grace, her tenderness
The love that abides in her spirit
Swelling up a pride in him that can’t be measured
A satisfaction that can never be given…
Without the love that makes life worth living!
July 4, 2022
My love is like a worker's gloves grown old.
His hands are leather, roughened now with age
and years of work in weather hot and cold,
yet through the many years, he has grown sage. . .
My love is like a builder's pair of boots.
He's dusty and fatigued and still he walks
while trailing mud, but now his attributes
shine through despite life's many stumbling blocks.
My love is like a pair of jeans much worn,
a pair of socks with holes that have stayed warm.
Though time and all the trials he has borne
have left him frayed, he wishes no one harm.
To write a beaming sonnet would not do,
but threadbare love (in some ways) bests the new.
Daily there were clothes to wash
The load count was always five
Then there were the meals to fix
So her children could survive
She swept the floors and dusted
And washed dishes mountains high
Back then no conditioned air
In the hot days of July.
With a needle and some thread
She mended family clothes
And as she sewed she rarely thought
Of sorrows or of woes.
Grocery shopping was another thing
Of her chores each week
Always she wore gingham
In a dress way past antique
The hours they turned into days,
And the days turned into weeks
As the weeks went into years
They brought lines onto her cheeks
Her roughened hands and furrowed brow
Put gray steaks in her hair
Then, her children grown and gone,
She found her rocking chair.
And as she sat there rocking
Looking backward at her past
She knew she’d done God’s calling
And her job was done … at last
The creaking of the rocking chair
Was music to her ears
And daily she relived the life
Of all her prior years
She had lived life fully
From childhood through her prime
Right up to when
The chair claimed all her time.
No more mounds of dishes
No more mountains’ clothes
And with a smile in a rocking chair
Her life came to its close.
A flamed anguish gathers in a bleak cellar
of gray nights pounding on my veins,
steaming through a roughened flesh;
that in my days I have lost passion’s luster
and solitude is the only elixir I rub for now.
Yet in reflection, the breaths find out how
this darkness can shed a glow upon excretion
of angst: the allowing of heart’s root begins
to sprout in dewy, fertile mornings.
I roam along cafes where flavored kisses
once bloomed in July: your turn now
to beg for a second chance, oh much too soon.
For I have reaped moments of lush joy,
of christened peace ,as new blossoms ripened
from discoveries and friends to feast;
till goblets of life sparkled like oozing champagne
while your face turned old from stubbles of time.
6/18/2015
Olive Eloisa Guillermo’s Sweats and Sweets
I inhabited a small house near the shore
where the fishes of men hauled their nets,
in dawn’s waters under boats
of wood sheltered by thinning masts.
Time was when they were like kin of god
Trying to feed the hunger of men;
with bodies burnt by a merciless sun
as hands, blowin' free,
allayed 2,000 souls or more.
Riding through for many hours, to catch food
They now pray for bounty when nights break,
While we strum guitars, " The king will come",
That would supply our children’s bowls.
Our trawlers arrive and throw the sword
Weary from roughened winds, leaf, and streams
Yet,I watch them smiling under a darkened cloud,
Looking like apostles of our tiny harbor.
Brian's Select A
Although I hold a trace of fading reveries
How quick it drifts like sand wiping out the glow,
My heels roam a barren land through ominous hours
Raked by self- isolation mercilessly; where grief
Could never become an option in this soddy-ruddy place,
When night erases me from folds of reason
That once honored wise and knowing thoughts:
A roughened ground is now sucked up from the earth’s clay--
The kind that's hard to siphon root to leaves,
And I tremble alone on mounds of wired briar and nettle…
Until a white hawk chants its desert tune,' whit, woo,' flinging
Ghastly shadows across a moonless sky; that in
Breaths of near danger, this heart gradually awakens
To wrap me in some sacred presence within eve’s oasis …
An intercepted light nourishing my thirst for hope, for courage
As if heaven bestows that shimmer I find
Through my inner eyes…just one more time.
For Edward Ibeh: I Wander The Desert Alone Contest
-----------
10/14/2018
You look at me and see a northeast highway after winter
Cracked, worn, roughened by conditions not meant to be endured.
I was once the most beautiful cobblestone pathway through a garden of ripe, unpicked fruit.
I was the apple whose sweet center no man could resist tasting
But you see affliction where held addiction.
You think my mind feeble, that thoughts slip through my brain
Like water through a child's fingers in a sudsy, post-playtime bath.
But I was once the network that ran every station in the steel-girded high rise
And ran the split level in the suburbs. I never needed to reboot.
A victim of time, still in her prime.
I look in the mirror and don't understand who that old woman is who gapes back.
I have long blonde tresses and eyes that rival Liz Taylor on her best day.
This, this is a shadow -- a black and white picture version of a colorful scene.
Inside I am 25, still as vibrant as the peacock whose feathers once graced my favorite hat.
I'm a tomb . . . of an ancient bloom.
February 14,2016.
In the beginning, so long ago
When the world was young, yet to grow
There stood the first men, brave and strong
With hearts fierce, and wills unyielding long
Their skin was roughened by the sun
Their hair, wild and woolly, undone
They walked the earth, unafraid and free
Living each day, wild and full of glee
The first men roamed the land without control
Far from the structures and comforts of the modern soul
Hunting and gathering, they made their way
Living in pure, simple ways
They slept under the stars, on the ground
Ate what they found, with no limits bound
The earth was their home, and they knew it well
Surviving with skill, no one could compel
Their spirits were strong, and their hearts pure
They lived each day, unsure of what would occur
For the first men, life was a grand adventure
Their stories and legends, still told with pleasure
Though time has passed and the world has changed
The first men's legacy forever remains
They were the pioneers, who paved the way
For us to live and thrive, each and every day.
Huge hands extracted heavy red clay lumps
gleaned from Edgefield's argil soil,
placing it
upon the whirling wheel.
Fingers roughened,
he formed, shaped, with master skill
vessels fit --
massive stoneware pieces, usable, rare.
Sinuous liquid clay upon black hands
like tortured blood from harsh slave-beating wounds,
dripping down dark skin,
branded,
cursed,
damned.
Unique old man, Dave,
a slave, literate --
in times dangerous for his kind to read,
he proudly displayed more than maker's mark.
In poems, quaint,
with shapely script, his creed
was carved upon the pots' serene shoulders,
then boldly signed with his own name.
Yes, "Dave" was inscribed
for the eyes of all beholders.
Forty years he worked for his white owners,
longing, like all enslaved, for freedom, dear.
He lived to see emancipation's dream --
perhaps never knew an accolade sincere.
Six foot under, unmarked,
no one knows where old Dave the slave
lies buried.
Sure enough,
his perfect pots are still discovered:
both he and they
were diamonds in the rough.
© Faye Lanham Gibson, June 14, 2014
Dave the slave lived near Edgefield, South Carolina, and crafted
some of the largest pottery pieces known. He was literate and signed
many of his pieces with his own name and also included on some his own
short poems. His pieces when sold command very high prices.
A coloratura rises
from the suede-edged shape
as the gnarled grande dame
comes to light.. a vision
draped in sweeping evergreen
and a pale cape of kidskin haze -
a beguiling soprano in soft-
focus fools the guileless sunrise
with a diva’s deception --
for in the vaporous golden hour
she can still be breathtaking
the age of change
is beclouded - softened
in gray’s cashmere atmosphere
where blending and bending of
over-ripened perceptions
are smoothed with a dewy smudge..
roughened boughs
and litter-fall is obscured --
unless, you get up close
harsh lines become artfully coy
in the bosom of the pearl mist;
a bedimmed dreamy blur of
Impressionism masks her reality
with the sleight of hand and a mockingbird’s aria
Susan Ashley
March 8, 2020
~ Third Place ~
Premiere Contest: Brian Strand Contest No 1183
Sponsor: Brian Strand
N/A
Contest: 2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 6
Sponsor: Mark Toney
*coloratura: runs, trills, and other florid decorations in vocal music.
A lyric soprano of high range who specializes in such music*
*aria: an elaborate melody sung solo*