Long Shifters Poems
Long Shifters Poems. Below are the most popular long Shifters by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Shifters poems by poem length and keyword.
It’s the circle of a trickle sliced from snow
at the mountain’s very top.
Widening and lengthening, it gushes and grows,
and at the steepest slopes it rushes - cascading
as a froth of diamonds
sparkling in sunlight.
Splitting where big boulders sit,
it splashes on its drifting way.
Shifting - ever shifting - it tumbles
over countless stones and gravel
or meanders with susurration until at last,
it is a river.
Broad or narrow; shallow or deep,
it can be tempestuous at times,
while other times
it’s as placid as
patches of mellow moonlight spilled from sky.
At last it flows to where, estuarine,
it melds with the destiny of other river shifters -
Oceanic.
June 23, 2021
for The Shape Of Water Poetry Contest
Now for 'A Brian Strand July 2' Poetry Contest
Sorceress Polgara ascended above all warriors;
Fought wars against mighty kings and came out victorious...!
Remus Lupin, into a werewolf magically turned;
As great professor, taught thrillingly and his living earned...!
Count Dracula transformed all great and small into vampires;
Threatening and killing others, he founded his empires...!
Mystique, fictionally filled whole American comics;
With her strength, speed, stamina and super economics...!
Mei Lee and Ming Lee and the evil queen of Turning Red;
With wisdom and wit, turned celluloid, bed of joy and dread...!
All these shape-shifters, like clowns, do not merely entertain,
They're ideals! They give ideas to every young brain...!
26 May 2022
Shapeshifters and Shapeshifting Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anthony Biaanco
Back in ancient matriarchal time
Divine inspiration told sacred stories
of epic journeys
for creation and birthing re-creation
and against death and degeneration
Around fire-circles
for cooking
and cleaning
and keeping wolves
and shape-shifters at bay
away from form-drifter nightmares.
These were told
and retold
like a wealthy creolizing river of DNA codex
speaking in four gospel prime voices,
And only then
began to become more patriarchal orthodox
as written down
in fundamentally evangelical missionary monoculturing
monotheistic Bibles.
Yet, even so,
what were they breathing in
while divinely expiring out?
As if DNA diversity
would be more self-regeneratively fluid and effective
when labeled in LeftBrain deductive networks
growing more pathology free
through authoritative cross-referenced liberty to read
Codex Either/Or
with Both/And double-bound
in-between binary binomial bilateral ingenuous integrity
of Left secular commodification
with Right sacred unification
co-operation
Dipolar co-arising
Left scientific Right sacred co-evolutions
of ecopolitical empowering/disempowering
scripture telling
Original multicultural matriarchal outside CreationStories
inside deep ecologically wealthy Voices.
Back in ancient matriarchy
timelessly understoried
warm womb of Time our reborn effluent selves.
Devils and the like come in many forms
They can be invisible or a behemoth
In the flesh or of the spirit
Rooting into the foothills of the mind
Spreading and climbing like a dead rose.
There'll always be devils in our lives.
Replacing confidence with doubt
love-with disdain
clever they are = shape-shifters supreme...
Prolonged depression means a devil is chewing
the pulp of your being.
Your every failure is their victory.
Your every victory is their failure.
Never become complacent; they always circle back...
When they troll your space
they'll splinter tranquility
sprinkle burning monkeys over the mind
and scorch the soul every time-
Five hundred years Giovanni Fontana had the notion
To rope gears to wheels and put it in motion.
One hundred years ago an idea came to Baron von Drais
Horses had been killed, ploughing required other ways.
Two wheels, no pedals, all made of wood
You had to push through the field, but still did some good.
A Scotsman added pedals, to the rear wheel
Maybe to celebrate, his friends danced a reel.
A Frenchman made the "boneshaker", which lived up to its name.
Ahead of its time, though reasons to complain.
It vibrated horrendously on the bumpy roads
Rattling teeth, rattling nerves, rattling loads.
Then England's "Penny Farthing" led the attack:
A five foot wheel in front, tiny wheel in back.
It was hard to climb on, and to keep a balance.
Every mount was a test of acrobatic talents
If you fell off without a helmet, it was hard on the brain.
Inventors went back to the drawing board again.
Radial spokes came in 1870, ball bearings 2 years later.
Progress is a goddess, love her or hate her.
Caliper brakes, multiple gears, shifters came fast.
Still too bumpy to have a blast.
Societies of bicyclists lobbied for roads paved and smooth.
Women started riding, old attitudes moved.
Across the pond Thomas Stevens rode a trans-U.S. ride.
With that kind of bike, a reason for pride.
Then pedals to gears got linked with a chain.
Derailleur was the next step, and a drive train.
The Italian Army used a foldable during World War I.
Between incoming bullets, they might have had fun.
Like the future Mountain bike, it handled rough terrain.
But for that, California cyclists tinkered, got the fame.
So that brings me to the day that I was cycling on a country road
composing verses, humming, reciting an ode.
Overtaken by two cyclists on electric bikes from Preston
Were batteries cheating? I glumly asked the question.
I concede it's liberation, more folks in fresh air
Their efforts assisted, but still mostly fair
Causality doesn't focus on me, of course
I'm just a convergence, a bike over a horse.
But all this history made it possible, on a rural lane
To move on my own power, through really nice terrain.
Never write a poem about the sky,
she says,
that blue and blue and blue
interrupted by shape-shifters,
squawking crows, grumbling
aircraft.
It’s been done.
Besides, the day is tranquil,
disinclined to fuss.
The porch rails studiously etch
the sun into diagonal slats.
A silver spider practices ballet
across them
A chickadee chirps predictably.
If you could breathe and
see and know, she says,
all at once,
the glimmering line that bisects the air--
the one the spiders left behind--
the absence of wind, of wings,
of words—the morning itself,
woken with the slurp of ripe pears
and the ashes of a dream--
that would be your poem.
Man waits for his second coming, but is to blind to see
He came million of times before, but we didn't use our key
Each year, many millions of children, are born of his flesh
but, it's greed for riches and wealth, mankind does enmesh
Word's meanings, are tangled and stretched, to what end
with all this organized confusion, will mankind ever mend
His shape shifters still arrive here, as legends from the past
Will they lead us to his heaven, or keep us wandering aghast
Why? Our key is simple, all men must get on their knees,
Bow to worship and pray for children, and seek to appease
Their hearts and eyes, hold a true wealth, of riches untold
It can be seen in their spirit, outshining all of mans gold
Children are not just a resource, to be used and disposed
Born to us, his key, if we love, cherish, teach. It's enclosed
The gristmill of war leaves its dead frozen
to lay on the blood soaked crusted floor of time
lifeless bent shapes, the ones chosen
in wars, caused by twisted mind's of mankind
only mothers wash blood from time's threshing floor
and only hate fed millstones grind children to death
left for the shifters who seperate no more
the hand of man, the sickle that sweeps away breath
the dead are aligned like rows of bundled sheaves
beneath etched names in stone fields of green
the marrow of life is vanquished, soil recieves
monuments of stone vanish, as time intercedes
for time swiftly passes, and man will be gone
so will the madness of death man tasted
when he rose from the muck, in the paradise of dawn
with a passion for killing, and the souls he wasted
5/24/18 contest The Gristmill Poetry contest
Criminal
waste,
critical mass
materialized warfare
city dumps pile-up and fall
burnt offerings amid
clumps of Caesar salad.
Roman Empires of crud
that roam no more.
Walmart still spills over,
parachutes hung from pot-belly roofs;
air-drops from a plastic heaven.
A few old men
are found asleep at the wheel
of long buried cars.
Homeless are the pigeons
that carry a crusty canker
from pit to heap,
pitiful the pawing fingers
that pounce now upon
the once new branded,
yet more paltry
the poached mounds
of porch-pirates,
their petty ill-gottens
all unpacked alike as empty nests.
When the sooty dark
fumes and blankets,
then rust will clang
in the yawping mouths
of tin-cans,
aluminum bells that clatter.
Then the rodents,
the red-eyed night-shifters
will comb through the tangled beards
of threadbare dreams.
Then withal,
just as the ditched dross have fallen,
dregs shall rise again.
teardrops are shape-shifters,
changing the instant
they slip free~
tiny pilgrims
already seeking
what they’ll become next.
spiders collect some of them,
drinking them delicately,
then spinning our sorrow
into silver webs
that glisten like forgiveness
in morning light.
some harden into marbles~
miniature worlds of color
swirled from emotion~
grief becoming something
you can hold
without breaking.
some rise as pixie dust
soft as breath,
bright as mischief~
the raw material
of small miracles.
some drift upward as moonbeams
their heaviness forgotten,
their ache turned silver
as they join the quiet
of the night sky.
some sew themselves into wings
effervescent, glowing~
the soft architecture
of angels
who know what it means
to fall and rise again.
and the rarest tears
vibrate together~
a trembling chorus
that becomes stardust,
then dreams,
then the gentle light
that guides us home.