Long Sharps Poems
Long Sharps Poems. Below are the most popular long Sharps by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Sharps poems by poem length and keyword.
1.
A red helium balloon
I float above myself,
Watch the ritual unfold:
Gather the sharps
Lay them out
Roll up the sleeves
Enfold the world in silence.
Then, with infinite concentration,
The Not-Me begins:
Draw the lines
Open the flesh
Let out the hot red
Pain and Poison;
Inscribe another testament
To survival.
Then the balloon drifts down
Sleeves roll down
The Not-Me steps into the balloon
And floats away,
And I become myself again,
Purged and Whole
Until the next time.
2.
A wraith,
I live on air
Insubstantial as the Winter's mists.
I am colorless
Blank as perfect ice, as cloudless sky
Yet I command all appetites,
Control my ghostly shape
Against all outside assault.
My Will is wind,
Invisible and Absolute.
A reed,
I bend but never break.
I may be fading, fading...
But the steel rod within the mist
Shines true and will not yield.
3.
Peel back the flesh
The flowing flesh,
And see the Void within.
I am large but I am empty,
Hollow as a gourd, a husk.
Tear me and the taut surface
Will collapse upon itself.
I hunger, ever hunger
For the things that fill others up
To keep them satisfied.
And so I eat.
I eat Love, Acceptance, Self-Confidence.
I eat Hate, Loneliness, Rejection.
Ultimately,
I consume myself.
After all,
Who else could stomach
The taste of me?
In a high rise block in Toxteth lived a Jazz clarinettist called Joe.
His fans in the Jazz club worshipped him and flocked to every show.
And night after night in that smoke filled club, his fingers weaved a spell,
While the audience cheered to the echo, unaware of his private hell
For, every night, in his tenth-floor flat, before he could play again,
He injected himself with Dutch courage to deaden the inner pain
It began with soothing cannabis, which the law doesn’t class as abuse
Just so long as that stash in the biscuit tin is purely for personal use
It can’t do any harm, they said, to smoke the occasional spliff;
Then the drummer introduced him to a line of white powder to sniff
It was just an occasional habit he wasn’t dependent upon
But he found that his music lost its edge when the buzz of the powder had gone
His dealer had something better at an introductory price
He wouldn’t become addicted if he tried it once or twice.
His music got better and better and the audience howled for more
But now he was hooked on heroin and stealing in order to score
One Sunday he didn’t turn up at the club so the band was reduced to three
Who thanked him as they pocketed a larger slice of the fee
When they tried to ‘phone on Monday, his mobile wasn’t on.
The neighbours hadn’t seen him and thought he might have gone
They found him three days later in his squalid tenth-floor flat
When they forced the front door open past the junk mail on the mat.
“Death by misadventure”, said the Coroner’s report.
“A tragic waste of talent,” he told the crowded court.
The church was overflowing on the chill November day
As they gathered to remember him and send him on his way.
A host of jazz musicians and a multitude of fans
Joined in celebrating the life of a gifted man.
His own band followed the coffin as they took him from the nave
Out to the wintry churchyard to lower him into his grave.
They have a new clarinettist now but, although he’s very good,
He doesn’t have Joe’s magic; well nobody ever could.
He lacks that extra something that no-one can define.
But the drummer’s offered a helping hand – in the form of a thin white line
Baby birds, it's said, are born not knowing
their notes. They learn them from their mother's
throats in the way children learn their ABCs
at parental knees, muh muh muh becoming mother,
da da da, daddy; cheep cheep cheep, a cantata.
That being so, do poets find a poetic ear
in the sphere of their predecessors?
Young, with island sand and salt my milieu,
my concerts were the calls of shorebirds,
the forlorn foundling cries of gulls, the staccato
siren of a tern, should you carelessly venture
too close to her nest; the stuttering dance-step
of sandpipers, miniscule but mighty. Then,
there were the rest: foraging land birds, seeking
fare left by the incoming tide, their darkness
incongruous on the purity of a beach.
There was a time, walking to my garage
when I found a songbird dead in my driveway;
its small body supple, still warm to the touch,
not ready to die just yet like all of us. I
placed it in a box (ashes to ashes, bird to sky),
laid it to rest under the fig tree in my backyard,
and not knowing its persuasion, I
fashioned a cross of sticks over the fresh
earth, believing we shared the sanctity of
simple beauty, the brevity of life.
Near a lake where I live now, sibling to the sea,
briny by proximity, birdsong is rampant
in early spring. I have heard the 'death bird',
he of the shrill one-note filled with foreboding,
who heralded the passage of a dying husband
in an interminable summer of illness. Here,
there are the sharps and flats of ordinary
choristers, and one whose mother was surely
a coloratura soprano in a former life.
This one whose concert halts me spellbound,
turns me to stone (not salt) with his serenade of
couplets, no two the same, some so comical I laugh
out loud to the absent cars and senseless concrete
of my parking lot. He sings and sings, never
abated, nothing by rote, and I? I wait, heart in
my throat, should he be the songbird from
under the fig tree, reincarnated.
Try as I might,...I could not get it right
My small fingers that fumbled over the ivory whites
While scowling her face with that crabapple frown
One, two, three, four...one, two, three four...., her eyes looking down
"Try once more..." she repeated, and I would struggle, so hard....
She would point at the notes, with a yellow Number 2 .....
And circle the flats, and would circle sharps too
One, two, three, four......one, two, three four...
Don't bother to look at the exit or door
The room was too warm..." I keep the thermostat at eighty she'd say"
It helps old bones, , rhumatism, you know..it keeps the aching away"
A scent of Vick's Vapo Rub when she leaned in too close
"For my horrendous allergies".... she'd boast
A Kleenex all waded, a ball in her fist,
Her glasses hung from a nose,
That constantly dripped
One, two, three four,...one, two, three, four...
Oh how I wanted to run straight out the door
"Now, try it again", she'd say, as I glanced through the glass
Out to the sun and the summertime grass
With the sidewalk so ripe, for my playing 'neath trees
For some hopscotch, or jump rope, or roller skate keys
A day, ...not for Mozart, or Bach, or Beethoven...those guys...
What could those grim, long dead, wearing wigs in disguise
Understand of a little girls heart? One, two, three, four....One, two, three, four,
Oh how I wanted to run out the door
But now................My dear teacher....I wish you could know
How I grew to love music, and remember the days
When you gave me the knowledge and spirit to play
This beautiful gift, which I cherish today.........
One, two, three, four.....
May I play you a melody?......
And then, if you don't mind...
I'll be happy to play you one more....
__________________________________________________________________________
Miss Ella Mae Engle.... Rest in Peace, God Bless You, and Thank You From My Heart
I hear a chord
It resounds so deep in my ears
It feels like the secrete chord
That David played to please the lord
This chord resounds ding dong in my head like slow-bells
A harmony more resounding than symphony
Emanating between 12 keys of blacks and whites
Hidden in one lock held by Touch-keys
Pounding those vibrating strings
His fingers bleed between keys
As crying strings elicit feelings
And stir up my imagination
Hmmm!
This sound rocks like a classical jazz
Mixed up with some blues
Just to manipulate a soul
Quietly, my head tilts up and down
My nerves hum various melody lines
My feet tap slowly but steady to the beat
And my heart glows in ecstasy
Cause, every note he strings raptures my soul
Takes me out of the terrestrial
Ignites sensational feelings in me like soul
And then leaves me in the celestial
Together,
Let’s make the music
But first,
Roll out the drums with some strokes
Strut in the fret with callused fingers
Exhale the flute like a whistle
Touch those keys like Touch-keys
Hold that mic with some style
And unleash the psalms
Let the music flow through you like a stream
That flows even in your dream
Let it hit you where you’ll feel no pain
And stimulate your every hidden note
For the power of your melody is your own
Cause, your melody lies in your soul
No one can hum it
No one can take it
Because, our life walks in our song
It only takes a whole tone of faith
To master our piece
But we must first learn;
To embrace our sharps and flats
And still don’t B-flat
Take a semi-breve to think before we play
Never stop at the bar-line
And never let the bar-line stop us
But always utilize our seconds
For our time interval is as short as a half-step
Layers upon layers
Batter after batter
Larger than life creatures
live
Beneath my bed.
My pillow whispers lie.
There are times
when I flip it over.
I prefer my lies served cold
shaken and stirring...
foul breath smelly bedding.
Lies, like dust mites do bug.
Update 10.2 improves clarity.
Lies have an app for that.
Crystal clear connected lies.
Disconnected clouded lies.
And, of course
Lie
Lies Lies
Lies Lie. Lies
A pyramid of lies
Let us remember the periodic table of lies.
White lies
Colored lies.
Taste the rainbow of lies.
Infectious wasted lies.
Toxic waste is a buried alive lie.
As lies add up like hazardous garbage, lie's flounder.
A green sticker has a tongue in a divided circle.
A red bag has some more circular labels of lies.
And in the men's room, I see biohazard sharps containments.
It's typical when urine lies on toilet seats.
People recycle lies like buffoons that refuse to use the truth;
those are all lies too.
And they even sell lies for five dollars per balloon.
Toss it in the trash and watch it disappear every Wednesday.
How would you feel if you were thrown out like trash with your lies?
Better yet, just throw it all in the fire pit.
Burn rubber, burn gas, burn Mother Nature...burn.
Plead with your conscience about these lies.
Glorify lies . . .
Justify lies . . .
Then again
Glorify and justify more lies,
then romance your newfound ignorance.
Believe me,
it'll burn too . . .
Trust me.
2-18-17
As my closed eyes open and the dream of my calves playing among the corals curtail,
I realize that my body is contiguiting the earth,
perhaps the shore,
because I can feel the sharps rays of the blazing sun puncture my tender skin.
Yes. It is the shore.
I have beached myself,
for I can feel the grains of sand resining to my throat rooves.
Ouch! There's a sudden ache in my rostrum.
OH those goddamn Dioxins and Furans!
Must have corrupted me when I ate those planktons for breakfast.
I am now running out of breath,
the sun is too coruscating and I'm dehydrating at an accelerated rate,
and and I'm drying out.
I know it.
I can feel it.
Are these my last moments?
Is this my destiny?
With an overly-dehydrating body and failing organs,
I decide to take one last walk down memory lane.
Oh my charming lady,
my adorable babies,
never will I consign to oblivion the wonderful aeon I had with my mates,
travelling in pods to outlying, faraway waters.
Ooh! I'm getting worse.
My breath is quickening,
it's almost over.
I see someone walking over to me,
perhaps a rescuer.
Looks like he's got his little daughter along with him.
Under the dazzling sun,
the tears of the little girl dry up leaving stains on her trepidated face.
Anytime now.
The little human places her soft palm on my paper-like body,
and whispers something which happens to be the last words I ever hear.
"Fishy? Why are you sleeping?"
As my shutters close and the seagulls await my death,
I fall into a deep slumber.
From which I will never awake.
Spirited knights from a long ago age
Were transported to this century
Seeing as they had no foe to engage
They moped around aimlessly
Before their doldrums turned to rage
They sought out a job agency
That would strive to find them a good wage
Due to the knight’s urgency
But the hitch in this new age fable
Of which this story is based
Was the shocking headhunter’s cable
That proposed jobs in hazardous waste
It seemed they’d be worth their mettle
So their talent agent thought
Since they sported all that metal
Punctures would be less than naught
As their first foray in this career
Was not what they beseeched
Since hospitals for these cavaliers
Contained a plank with a leech
But they learned to remove harmful gear
Plus organs the size of a peach
And swabs and gloves and what others fear
Like sharps washed upon the beach
One day Galahad’s nose turned runny
Because his health turned frail
Yet what happened wasn’t too funny
When a needle slipped inside his mail
He cried out to his god
I think I’ve reached the end
There’s a germ infested rod
Dispensed in my rear end
Oh, for crying out loud
Yelled Lancelot to his friend
Stop acting so highbrowed
That little prick will surely mend
Yet while the knights gathered around
To strip Galahad’s chain link
They loudly sang to drown the sound
As that knight put up a stink
So the moral of this fable is
That lands on the other side
Albeit fences or era’s ‘tis
Not always greener far and wide
3/10/14
For Francine's Tickle My Funny Bone contest
"I don't see myself..." he began.
That's quite OK.
You can feeeel yourself.
We can see you.
We do see you.
(and we are trying to feel you.)
Let us in?
"...making it through the next few days..."
he continued.
That's quite OK.
There is nothing to make it through.
Time doesn't have a vessel,
you aren't a vessel
hurtling along, bumpily
racing along, perhaps lost:
pinballing are caroming along,
ploughing, skiing, skittering,
piloting, surfing, mucking,
hopping, dithering, meandering.
No!
Time washes over the ever-present
present.
A tide, or swath of sun
rolling over the shaded meadow.
Time comes to the immovable,
the unchanging. To know this,
locate your heart. Your Spirit.
To do this, seek another, serve another,
open, offer, extend, comprehend.
Touch, Listen, Grieve Unalone.
Smile.
"...without inflicting grievous bodily harm on someone,
much less the next four years." he ended.
That's quite OK.
You're quite OK.
Today, though
you're losing sight of
how you deeply are
and you are...
quite OK.
Turn, perhaps instead
to Beauty.
Seek Awe.
Revel in some Ridiculous.
The prickly-sharps you feel now,
are real, are true.
but feel, you're you.
Not them.
Let's them, too
be washed off,
be abraded,
let the Tides of Time
wash clean the
needly pokey stuff
let the Tides of Time
polish the youYou.
Let us help, too.
you ARE felt.
you ARE seen.
you are not OK.
You are OK.
-ShhDragon
(for Joe Turecek.)
MUSIC
The rythme progresses through me
Reaching to depths unknown
Leading me to another realm
Only I have ever gone
A place of solitude
Where I can be free
For my soul is the melody
To which I shall dance alone
And the beat is my life walk
Opening the walls that have never been shown
Oh how I love to sing
Especially when I hear that old familiar
That takes me back to the day
That I could just proceed along
No cares, no worries, just me and the world
Being free...... to my song
How many memories are wrapped up within tones
That have touched our lives
How many people can we recall
With just one sharp# climb
Or with just one flat fall
The power of our melody is our own
No one can hum it
No one can take it
Because our life walk is our song
We can take this empowerment as high as we want
Or we can take it to the lows
No matter how we play it
It still grows
With each and every encounter
Down our blessed path
The music follows
With our every step
So embrace your sharps and flats
Knowing that it is helping you
Through this turbulent ride
Sing it loud and don't be ashamed
For your song knows you are doing your best
Don't let the bar line tell your ending
Keep the melody flowing
Continue your lines without cares
And when your curtain rides low
And the rythmes come to a sway
Just look at the pages before
To where you started from
And to how you have become so much more today
Keep the music alive....even with a hummm