Long Shoestring Poems

Circumstances
Poem
Lionel Derbyshire

Circumstances leaves you few A chances.
No nick, no pick, no give me more.
Just a little sauce.
No custard tart.
You in shoestring circumstance
It's rough-and-tumble
In the orphan grumble.

All I can stitch together in memory is my big...

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Alarm clock screams, it's time to rise,
bye bye sleepy dreams, into the lows from last night's highs,
ready yourself for the line or the cubicle cage,
tell yourself you'll be fine, while you silently rage,
what new rules...

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How can I say what is on my heart
A heart that grew up on a farm day and night
It beat with respecting others
Our black neighbor was as loved as the white
What we are seeing today...

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I attended a large gathering and took some time
to observe the great assortment of shoes stacked on the racks
I saw new shoes, pricey shoes, and shoes not worth a dime
and shoes that seemed to have...

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*Not sure my relaxed attitude to rhyme and form is passable in this one, but I enjoyed writing it :) *

I've always loved to look through the jumble
Sorting the treasure from the trash
As a child...

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Anthropomorphic test device to explore
amply, cheaply tricked out 
with super tramping,
albeit unsophisticated trappings 
strewn ceiling to floor
available for purchase at Dollar store
(actually merchandise 
cost more than 100 pennies)
nonetheless unmanned spacecraft made
perfect landing upon alien nation...

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It don’t really matter   

If Plaster of Paris is not made in France
If Ginger and Fred never learned how to dance
If shoestring potatoes don’t grow in a shoe
It don’t really matter because I...

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Everyone does it time to time in each day
From your careless mistakes to a child at play
Sneaking the babysitter's cigarettes
Having that stray dog follow you home, then asking to keep it as a pet
A trip...

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Redemption from self
An invisibility cloak
And sharpened dagger 
No matter the tumultuous weather 
Hail , Thunderous,  Lightning 
Could tame
The pain never stop's 
Even if you stare at the tulips and the corn crops
Because redemption never...

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They don’t get it, bunch of fools
Don’t they see how the media drools
Over each and every tweet
Crafted not to be discreet.

Are they blind to my great skill
Of bending media to my will,
Time and again I...

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Buckfast and concrete slabs
Neds and rain and thoughts of dad.
Highflats, pigeons, pavement's hue
Subway makes me think of you.

City City City lights
stream on by
flashin neons reds and yellows,
and the bridge that takes me into town-
full of...

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Summertime, summertime
And homemade vegetable soup
This is no place for fruity loops
Only foods from the garden that rhyme

Oh! Give us soup in the summertime
One writes tomatoes, another squash
Another corn with peppers by gosh
End with dessert a...

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Fantasy woman tends the world for her man
As one they blindly walk gazing
Living within their paradise

Fantasy mans iron grip holding tautly
Latched into his very existence
Living within her eyes

Fantasy woman her outlooking precise
Each step measured and...

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His moustache was long and black,
silky at the ends, shiny almost,
slick with gel to keep the ends
turned up in a smile, even when
his lips didn't match.  They look
like shoestring ends, she thought,
all perfectly pulled...

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A    SPECIAL    CHRISTMAS

Families should be together on Xmas day
Some kids’ folks are wealthy
They work abroad, but they never 
Fail to come at Xmas for a whole week and see...

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My breath once scattered seeds of dandelions.
I stared in moments lost to grains of sand.
Walked among the nighttime stars in wonder;
Held golden leaves within my youthful hand.
Watched a shoestring dangle through the wide eyes of...

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They find me here, 
a flickering vestige,
under incandescent 
pendulum lighting 
that was not long ago 
strung up and tied 
to the center beam
 
of an old moribund 
shoestring warehouse 
with the guilty look 
of an...

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Who knew that I would need
shoestrings to escape rape?
I felt safe on a double date, 
the “safety in numbers” misnomer.

He came on like a ten-armed
octopus with suction cup hands.
The couple in the back seat
were obviously...

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#1
warehouse board and care
elderly housed in neglect -
ass kicking death camps

#2
inner city schools
vertical playing fields free -
only teachers taxed

#3
bigots block poor votes,
“limbo rock” the new dance craze -
politics of war

#4
war on drugs conceit –
prisons new...

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