Long Site Poems
Long Site Poems. Below are the most popular long Site by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Site poems by poem length and keyword.
This poem was inspired by the interviews by Earl K. Pollon and S. S. Matheson conducted with native Sekanni peoples who were negatively effected by the flooding of their communal homelands by the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. “This Was Our Valley” tells that story of injustice. 640 square miles of riverfront and hunting territory would be flooded to form Williston Lake. The Sekanni peoples were driven from their ancestral homeland in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and dispersed.
The Shopping Cart Injustice
People, place and spirit
All were our relations
Biopeds, quadrupeds, winged or finned -
River language told us so.
Fishing rocks spoke the run
Where the riffles and the rapids talked.
Ancestors, dead and alive, told living stories where
Running the river banks, the children played.
The land was a book written in forms.
We made our mark with love, community
Fishing weirs, aspen dugout canoes,
Hunting trails, camps and sacred sites.
Always traders, we traded furs with
White settlers when they arrived
On the rivers Parsnip, Finlay and Peace at
Finlay Forks, Fort Grahame, Fort McLeod.
We added pack trains, teams of pack horses
River freighters, flat bottom ‘longboats’
For supplies and for mail delivery.
It seemed that we could live together.
Then one day a government agent said
That shopping carts were coming
They would flood our world
Water rising everywhere
Shopping carts with electric can openers
Full, fast to check out,
Shopping carts with electric hair blowers,
Full, faster to check out,
Shopping carts with electric air conditioners,
Full, fastest to check out
Shopping carts with electric stoves.
Check out, check out, check out.
They would make our rivers into a lake
We would move or drown.
Our elders did not believe it.
That was the only consultations!
Soon Saskatoon berries all under water
Next, the banks sloughed back to graveyards
Next, cliffs crumbled, and banks fell into rising lake
Houses of the villages slipped and floated
Coffins, bones and bodies strewed the shore
Where tangled trees, debris and more
Eddied with flotsam in the wind.
We wept for our ancestors!
We weep for our children.
We had to flee the destruction
Caused by tree grinders, D-9 bull dozers
The dam construction.
Now they want to take more
Another dam for more shopping carts.
Please stop Site ‘C’.
Thanks to you all
Thanks to those who come to
poetrysoup.com, practise poems,
write, read and share poems
and comment on others
Thanks to those who read my
writings, do comments, follow
me, avoid my poems, block
and ban me from their list
Thanks to you all
I’ve no eternity here, all of me
from least to chest, best to edge,
sharpen blade of new paddy leaves
jeopardize my torn nib of ink
in the field of writings graph
Maybe I couldn’t write any word
for beauty and stunning young girl
in comprehension, in passion and
in my fashionable heart
Maybe I couldn’t write charming note
of flower’s petals, striking fragrance,
in my perpetuity lake of quills
Maybe I couldn’t draw the sexy body of
rose, lotus, tulip, sunflower, orchid,
lily, daffodil… etc in my vulnerable
reef of poetic expression
Maybe I couldn’t draw the colors magic
of rainbow in my infatuated fallen
soaked feathers with November rain
Maybe I couldn’t inscribe the nature
the cosmos, the solar system, the ocean,
the black hole, the space, the sky, the stars,
the planets, the galaxies, the meteors, the
gravitational power…etc in my slumbering
wings of writings
Maybe I couldn’t plant the meditational
tree into the pure heart of words, I couldn’t
select the seeds of immortality in my
ascetic madness and magma script
Maybe I couldn’t greet the autonomy flying
of Cockatiels, Parakeets, Canaries, Finches,
African Grey Parrots, Budgerigars, Cockatoos,
Conures, Macaws, Poicephalus…etc in my
unintelligible incarcerated language
Maybe I couldn’t hail the abode for Labrador,
Bulldog, German, Poodle, Beagle… etc and
Maine Coon, Egyptian Mau, American Bobtail,
Ragdoll…etc in my materialistic
harvesting terminology
Maybe I couldn’t sleep with power of poems,
dream to be a finest classic or modern poet
in my kingdom of pen, paper, ink, writing
table-chair and lamp
Notwithstanding all these, I thanks to those
who come here at least one time daily,
erratically and read, write, share own
thoughts and comment frankly
Thanks to you all a lot. Thanks and love you
all. From me always ready the rose without
thorns and love for you all, although you bleed
my heart by thorns stinging
-November 14, 2018 Chattogram
////
DEDICATED TO POETRYSOUP.COM and ALL POETS-POETESSES OF THIS ESTEEMED LITERARY SITE
(Continued from Bill's side 10“)
"Never mind that. I know you well enough to know you know what you’re doing.
Just stick with me and keep me informed especially on this one. I’ll give you as much
leeway as I can. I got a hunch this case is going to be rough in more ways than
one. Get me? I’ve been around a while. I didn’t come with this morning’s milk. The
Captain and I already been discussing this one with the Commissioner. This
vigilante thing is dangerous and already out of control.”
Bill still didn’t know where this was going but at least so far he hadn’t been
demoted to walking a beat. His hope and nerve was picking up. This Griggs guy
was tough and had a rep for no bull. “Yeah, that’s wha ….”
“Just shut up and listen, Sgt. Lipton. The Captain doesn’t want any part of that
vigilante case. He wants a good record for an upcoming political agenda. That’s no
secret. He doesn’t want anything to do with this case because he’s afraid it won’t
get solved and his record will be stained with it.
You just stick to what you’re supposed to be doing and keep your ear to the
ground. From experience I know that vigilante.. if it’s just one,... isn’t going to work
out his issues in just one precinct. Keep in touch with what’s going on while you’re
on and off duty. If you got to check something out off the cuff, you are to ask me
first. Get it? Mums the word to the Captain. If he hears anything about our talk I’ll
deny every bit of it and you’ll be left holding the bag. Do you get my drift here Sgt.?
……… … .. …. “Cat got your tongue?”
“No sir, I just…uh …yes sir I mean ….I get your drift.”
“Good , I enjoyed our conversation…now haven’t you got someplace to go? It’s
knock off time. I believe your up for mounty duty tomorrow.”
“Yes, I believe I am. Is there anything else Lt Griggs?”
“Yes, close the door on your way out.” Bill took his hat up off his knee, stood up and
walked the three steps to the door when Lt Griggs said without looking up from his
paper work on his desk, “Bill…?
“Yes sir?”
“ Glad to have you back“, he said with a more relaxed tone, “Now get outa here.”
And he went back to his case file.
Bill smiled, went to his office, traded his ball cap in for his Stetson and left the
building mulling over what the Lt had and had not told him.
(to be cont on Richard Pickett poetry site)
This is not a poem, this is a message for those who only come at my page to see flaws in my poem and in me, so they can make foul verbal comments. I'm not referring to my fellow poets here. I'm referring to my ill- minded compatriots.
Some even comment that its not me who makes my poems. But you can't really know or comprehend what it takes to be a poet and to make a poem if you're not a poet yourself. As Bob Dylan said, "don't criticize what you can't understand." It makes me smile to hear nonsense comments, like those saying that I copied works from other people when the poem is all about me or my situation, even containing personal details about me, especially those who comment that I plagiarize everything, including a short prose or a simple poem. You cannot apply your level of thinking or situation to that of the poet.
As you can see, every poem we make here are copyrighted the moment we make it, and many if not most of them are made for a specific competition under specific criteria set by the judges, so there's no way we just take poems from somewhere and place them here, especially if our intention is to place in the competition.
One thing that you should understand is that every poem is unique, because the condition under which it was written cannot be exactly duplicated in another time and another place. This means that except for competitions with open themes that may accept poems that were already written, poets write based on their feelings, emotion, state of body and mind, prevailing inspiration and other surrounding circumstances the time they write, which make them the only person who can explain the exact meaning of their poems. When one plagiarizes a work, he only copies the lyrics but not the essence of the work as when it was made by the writer, and definitely, the skill behind the making of the work cannot be plagiarized. That sets the difference between the person pretending and the real maker of the work. So there's no point in copying works from other people because there is no essence of self fulfilment in it.
Every poem here is open for everyone to see. If we'd be putting plagiarized works here everyday, we'd be slapped with countless charges. Besides, the admins of this site do not allow plagiarized works to be placed here. This is a site for lovers of poetry and not for haters.
December 23, 2023, PST, SPC
...It was from an old colleague of mine,
in southern Russian working a new dig,
of Proto Indo-European tribes,
he believed it would be something big.
Wanted me to come out and take a look
at the artifacts they had found there,
claimed they had found religious writings,
the pictures he sent of it made me swear.
Writing should not exist that far back in time,
but the etched stones that they found proved it did!
A text speaking of a long-lost religion…
was so excited I bounced like a kid.
A week later I was flying out there,
my assistant Tommy Bains at my side,
we flew to Moscow then rented a car
for a very long and exhausting drive.
The site was out in empty countryside,
there were more cattle and sheep them men,
we expected to see bustling workers,
but we approached and saw no sign of them.
It looked as if they’d just abandoned it,
all of their gear and machines left behind,
there was no note, and we could see no cause,
I felt nervous, unsure what I would find.
After looking around for thirty minutes,
I came across a large plastic case,
it had the word ‘Artifact’ printed on it,
like so many others left in this place.
I did not know why, but I felt I had to
open the box to see what it held,
what I saw in there haunts me to this day,
you’re the first people that I’ve dared to tell.
It was a stone tablet covered in a script
that I’d never seen, all alien and strange,
and then, before my astonished eyes,
the letters all seemed to just rearrange?!
It now was many rows of English text,
what I saw broke all natural laws,
the first line I read, sit imply said:
‘All who read this, these are words from your god…’
My mind did reel, as anyone’s would,
but I felt no disbelief, and no doubt,
as if some power confirmed it was true,
and there was no time for messing about.
My eyes just could not be pulled away,
I could hear a deep voice within, and it said:
‘I left these words so you’d know why you’re here,
and what awaits us all going ahead.
‘You see evolution is the only tool
that can do this in the time left to me,
I’m dying and have but a billion years
to give rise to the next deity.
‘This may seem utterly strange to your mind,
the mere thought that an almighty can die,
but I’m not the first god that there has been,
I was much like you, way back in time...
CONTINUES IN PART III.
Dear Reader,
Greetings! I hope you are having a wonderful day, or evening if you are just reading this.
No, really, from the depths of my soul, my spirit waves a double-handed "Hi!" to yours.
Come, bring your philosophical coffee cup or tea cup or cup of whatever your favorite
beverage is and sit beside me, across the e-ther. May I ask why you are reading this? You
want to read poetry, I understand, and this is not really poetry. Or is it? Could this
count as free verse? I would not call it a sonnet or a haiku, except in the loosest
possible definition, in the way that drawing outside of the lines can be a drawing and a
de Kooning painting consisting of a chunky orange paintstroke can be considered to depict
a woman. But what makes poetry poetry, or art art for that matter? The medium? The
observer? The intent? Surely Warhol's footage of people sleeping would never be considered
art except for the presence of the camera and the eventual distribution. A man sleeping
miles from a camera or canvas would not likely be considered art, so does the camera
serially produce art? Most people would not consider home movies to be art. So is art
merely a stamp that we all carry around in our frontal lobes? Is life a form of art
regardless of what we call it? In this day and age, in which all rules seem to be broken,
rewritten, broken again, stretched like an old t-shirt, ripped, worn as a new fashion, and
then broken again, have we evolved to the point where we see rules as artificial labels,
something outside our own world that no more exist than the square root of negative one?
Is this letter a poem in spite of itself? What do you think? We may never know for sure,
and if this entry gets deleted from the site, I suppose the answer is a thunderclap "No."
In fact, after thinking it through, I am fairly confident that this is actually not a
poem. These labels are an earnest attempt to creates links in the world, without which
this entire treatise would make no sense. What would Petrarch have thought? What would
Warhol have thought? Or Andy Kaufman? Either way, I guess this is probably not a poem. But
thank you for having read these thoughts of mine, swirling like pagan revelers around my
head. Thank you for reading my non-poem which may actually be a poem but isn't. I bid you
a wondrous and blessed day. Or night.
Yours,
-Michael
(note: The site restrictions don't allow long epic poems, so I have split this into 6 segments, each should run straight on from the previous one.)
THE EYE OF THE SEA
Or
The Rime of the Ancient Kubla Kahn on the Road to Mandalay
There washed ashore a devil’s whore
Who claimed he’d never been paid,
Near dead from Sin, or weatherin’
Yet feared to loose his blade.
We did our best to ease his rest,
But our experts all were vexed:
The Old Wives College exhausted their knowledge;
The doctors cursed their texts.
Wracked with pain his life had waned
His eyes were growing dim,
His final words were barely heard:
Everything looked grim.
With chicken pills we cured his chills,
For strength we gave him broth,
His brow was mopped, his temperature watched,
We swaddled him in sailcloth.
Then from afar with strengthened heart
As if ‘twere heaven’s game
His mien changed, he had regained
The pilot to his flame.
In heartened mood we gave him food,
And bade his tale be told;
And so he spoke for the price of a toke
And a butcher’s bag of gold.
“ ‘Twas in the port of Herringford,
Where all the cows lie down,
A skipper talked, he claimed he sought
A crew of great renown.
The wind was high in a sunless sky,
The waves were barreling in,
And word got round of men to be found
That night at The Mortal’s inn.
At eight o’clock the bolts were shot
And all were locked within,
With muttered words of rumours heard
And lubricant of Gin.
The Captain coughed and glanced around
For conversations shed,
With laser gaze and aged malaise,
In a darkened voice he said:
‘Into the storm at the crack of dawn
We sail on the morning tide,
Let no man here betray his fear,
His passion or his pride!’
The aim of the endeavour was legend’ry treasure,
The fabled crystal ship of the Prince,
Lost years before off the Straits of Nepal,
And famously quested for since.
Our boat, ‘The Eye,’ was a Barquentine,
Just a quarter league in length,
She sailed as sweet as a sackful of eight,
With grace and speed and strength.
Twelve good men without pretence
Agreed to the journey ahead,
But the cheery tales of places sailed
Belied their inner dread.
The crew we got were a hardy lot,
Experienced one and all,
But none were fools and caution ruled
When it came to signing aboard.
Continued on The Eye of the Sea part 2
A new dawn,
Unveiled hopes and surreal ecstatic.
The smiles on their faces,
Heralded news,
The folks were delighted.
It was worth every ounce of struggle.
Though, a dilemma.
Afraid of separation.
Yet, desperate to experience the journey.
The ambience compelled me.
I was finally seen off,
I was on a voyage to satisfy nature's balance.
Now I learned the way of flying.
They had fed me once, now the tables had turned.
The man I was had been called a coward.
They celebrated my bravery now.
Decorated badges shone and made them proud.
I lost one and two things to earn it.
Was it really worth it?
The grasp of my anxiety grew.
On a bright sunny day,
I was summoned by a great war.
The fallen heroes' cries haunted me,
They never let me close my eyes.
Though I dodged death,
My mates did not.
When consciousness returned.
A stream of blood filled my sight.
Decapitated bodies, blasted arms,
Eyes bulging out of their sockets,
The fallen were the luckiest.
One who lived was burning in hell.
Men begged me to put an end to their agony.
Our eyes shed blood,
Tears dried out.
I wished to shoot my brains out too.
The nefarious haunted site was too much to bear.
"I couldn't" I cried ....
A bullet shell dropped beside me.
I had killed my own man, or had I helped him?
His heart wide opened, and my shank.
My shin mangled, my eardrums burst.
"Medic! Medic! Medic!"
A few men rushed and took me away.
I only saw them talking but heard no word.
Certainly they would cut it.
The pain fainted me right away.
A chunk of metal cost me a leg.
What would a hurt man do?
Run away to his folks.
So did I.
The smile on their faces now faded.
They hardly talked about their dream again.
Blames encompassed a loop.
Still celebrated as a hero.
The shell-shock and vivid imagery of the war,
Ran through my mind every now and then.
I never slept again.
Trapped inside a war I had never waged.
It had now changed my periphery of life.
I despised it.
The fallen were the luckiest.
I couldn't even stand on my own.
I barely opened my mouth, only to be fed.
There it hangs, my greatest achievement,
So the folks claimed.
Why did I live in guilt then?
Was it to hide my sins,
Or to make me feel proud?
The barrage of questions and bullets,
Never left my conscience.
I may have quit the war,
It still ran inside my head.
They had measured on close counts,
Before they began his dismount,
All flowers and scents were left behind,
It was only mud that came to mind,
He was a log of wood that had no use,
They were about to consign him as refuse,
They had measured on close counts,
And now had finished his dismount,
They all glumly looked at the innards of earth,
Dug apart so as to be his home and hearth,
They lowered him with care,
Some cried and other shed tears,
Such care they had never shown,
When he was alive full blown,
They left him but he could not,
In years that followed he thought,
And all thoughts were about and their's,
But he lay still there,
Not able to do much,
While lower insects ate him as such,
Twenty yards under the surface,
The earth weighed on him like a mace,
He had volumes to carry,
Every moment without delay or tarry,
In peace he had the quiet,
Under the forceful mud of his burial site,
He was largely unattended,
Only heard anniversary footsteps,
When his thought subject came tending,
There was lot of din,
As one day woke abruptly in,
He could hear the rattling and banging of hammer,
His peace was disturbed and began to stammer,
It was furious and fast,
He presumed it could not be just his nest,
But also his neighbors from first to last,
It was familiar yes very much so,
All the sound and racket on the go,
It was regular and incessant,
As if it was rain rampant,
Yes, clouds up there from above,
Were pouring over his grave,
They sounded angry and irate,
And were determined to drown all gates,
He felt secure under mud,
And there suddenly was a seeping thud,
It was really bad and water had come in tones,
His grave was all definitely drowned,
Now the water had bossed over the earth,
Pressing it hard for the inner most berth,
It was invading the twenty yards,
And approaching him fast,
And he thought will the dead also meet the flood,
The seeping thud was on the first drop,
That fell on his stomach,
He churned as eating insects scurried,
Soon train followed thud after thud,
And then it was a volley of scuds,
His cavity was being filled,
And bones getting viscid and humid,
A coolness spread through rotten carrion,
And went on to turn into a bath for the skeleton,
It bathed him till it was just soaking,
Was it he who had ascended to heaven,
Or the heavens came pouring down to meet him even.
This is now my unofficial Poetry Soup Blog.
I know you're only supposed to post poetry here,
but as far as I can tell,
I can blog here as well
as long as my blog rhymes poetically to the reader's ear.
So check back here now and then occasionally.
I may have announcements to share for all of you to read,
but I'll post these blog announcements poetically.
That should justify my posting a Soup Blog
in a space that is most strictly reserved to log
all kinds of styles of all kinds of poetry.
If I have any new news that needs to be released
I'll leave this web address posted on my last posted poetry piece.
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12/03/ 2009 -
I have deleted the following pieces from my postings.
Thank You Bird Of Prey & A Pale Male Tale.
I also have revised a couple of postings.
Pale Male's First Love & In Loving Memory Of Pale Male.
With both of those pieces I've eliminated the entire text
and substituted all of the text with a single web address.
Feel free to give them both a quick look see.
Do you think this is a good idea?
Your opinion matters to me.
In Loving Memory Of Pale Male> Site Under Construction
Pale Male's First Love> Site Under Construction
**********************************************************************
12/12/2009 -
This Is Not My Poem (Author Unknown) Parts 1 & 2
will be deleted at the beginning of the New Year
so you might want to give it one last view.
It's a special Holiday poem that you may want to read.
I posted it with the hope that a fellow Souper might know the author's identity.
I know the author's name now, thanks to one Mr A. W. Nutter, aka Anthony.
The author's name is Michael Marks. I'll leave his web page address before I leave
so that fellow Soupers who join in the new year can also give him a read.
Michael Mark's "A Soldier's Christmas"
http://www.michaelmarks.com/asoldierschristm.html
Here's the web address also for Mr Nutter's Poetry, aka Anthony's Poetry.
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poems_by_poet.aspx?ID=14459
This Is Not My Poem (Author Unknown)
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poem_detail.aspx?ID=185645
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To Continue Go To:
My Poetry Soup Blog, Part 2
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poem_detail.aspx?ID=192344