Long Spans Poems
Long Spans Poems. Below are the most popular long Spans by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Spans poems by poem length and keyword.
I seldom look in
the mirror anymore,
my razor-blade with an
edge of jagged rust –
gave up “Creature features”
with my early need to scare
a girl into my arms at the theater
a shower a day takes care of
most else – but when hairs, none
left on the head, become the
household's main blight, an old
barber's scissor in my wife's
scepter-ed hand, make my beard
a bit less~ the unkempt sight.
The best of me has long been
my dabbling in art and altruism;
Ila and I, two of a kind in these
respects – likeness ending there
for she has always been the Fashion
Plate, while unkind neighbors
have often whispered, why on earth
did she choose such a common
looking mate?!
Poetry is a religion I think,
priest and priestess of words:
like the tunnels of worms and
the wings of birds our spans
high and low, depending on
the inspiration, composing both
gems and turds.
Though my body has
slowed – the downward inclining
normal senior trend – my spirit
seems yet, most times, to be rising,
though audibly creaking its upward
arching positive bend; myself long of the
opinion that the sun is a bit more concentrated
when in an old poet's/poetess's experienced
capable hands, expressed in his/hers well seasoned
perhaps overly cured, highly distilled flatulent
eyes, with just minor joint-less joint-sighs,
I dutifully pen heartfelt lights –
writing new, lustrous dawns over all
my frequented restroom, therefore only
somewhat restful golden nights
The Sacrifical Child
Llandudno Wales 980 BC-1846, Sierra Leone, Congo,
Niger, Peru, India, Pakistan, Russia, China & Philippines 2013
Chapped, scabbed skin, dirt encrusted, blue-pallid in the moonlight;
the stars still glow radiant light when they rise, a wolf howls midnight.
Insects stir on scratched skin in tangled hair massed
naked, as born, they rise; the bore hole calls, days task.
Cracked like a seagulls eggs, the cave opening call.
The gold-red-green copper, a metal's worth it all,
child moles, mother moles, dwarfs small, crawl;
between the narrow crevasse in the knocker's wall.
The entry three hand spans wide, a mere two foot tall;
oil burns in claywells, soot coats on dirty faces, as they crawl,
through rankness they squirm, their hands on bone awls;
naked children, and women mine in these places, these hell falls,
for raw metals to make the weapons of man.
In before dawn, baskets full, haul........
out at dusk, human moles get no sun at all....
others melt the metal, make, and maul,
The warriors claim its for our defense
yet hunger gnaws, this makes no sense….
Grease fills the air beyond despair
stench fills each heinous vein;
contorted forms, of those small, helpless, born
fill in the shunts with continual pain.
From the dawn of time, this drama still plays,
more than one hundred and fifty eight million children; slaves today.
Women and children sacrificed so men can get paid.
Poet: Debbie Guzzi
This farmer’s porch wraps up the house,
pitching shade along all four sides,
with simple posts and long, flat spans,
and pressure-treated floor-boards, wide.
My wife may have gotten closets,
decorated the inside space,
but this long porch is my retreat,
I’m better in an outdoor place.
The north-face has a clear-cut slope,
an open spot amongst the trees,
the west-side features my kid’s yard,
and often catches zephyr’s breeze.
The south faces road and river,
a rock-chocked stream with flowing sound,
the east-side is close to tall trees,
an ideal place for cooling down.
On rainy days I sit out here,
enjoy the mists but don’t get wet,
on sunny days I sit out here,
avoid the sunburns some folks get.
With hammock and chair here and there,
I can relax as things pass by,
have read Tolstoy out on this porch,
and westerns where the bullets fly.
It may seem quite bizarre to some,
to write of pleasures a porch brings,
but the more I sit out I see
that life is made by little things…
Honeysuckle breathes in the shallow wind,
Life's lapel, with a side of ground scouting gopher.
Great rusted machines peak the interest
of the flower children who blossom
in their fields of hope and family.
Goliath Oxen and Thunderbirds
that burdened in oils and toils of heaven and earth,
lay there like ships fused with shoreline,
brought down by an angry sea.
"The follies of Men",
thought the Owl,
as it lubricated itself and shuddered a cowl,
admiring it's prototype as it flew by
in a curtsy dip and brotherly slant.
Sister chant.
She gave a little dance and reperched her stance.
Wondered about the Ai Owl
in Jason and the Argonauts
of magic and her sister, romance.
"Well, things are back to normal,
repopulation, the dinner bell,
down to earth things."
The eyes of the Earth are beautiful,
periscoping from the comfy nooks
to survey the land,
enjoy a little morning television.
The bones are solid and suitable
for the labors of love.
"These wrinkles are the folded fabric of time,
the bark, no different,
as it loosens it's cling,
old age has it enjoying last caress
on my earthen womb,
before Mother takes it home,
to be born again.
My seas and Mountain Dens,
caverns and open spans,
ready to deliver all over again."
In the city, there are benches
Placed where people might
Relax and take a load off,
Which is everybody’s right.
They’re either made of metal
Or old-fashioned painted wood,
Found in parks and promenades or where
They’d do the utmost good.
Most bus stops with a shelter
Have a bench for those who wait
And in playgrounds, there are benches
Where the nannies congregate.
My apartment building spans a block
On quite an average street,
Without a bus stop or a park;
It’s nice, but not elite.
Yet recently, a metal bench,
Three seats’ worth, with a back,
Was placed to give my home address
What other buildings lack –
A place to sit, but no one knows
Who ordered such a thing.
It sounds real good, but there are several
Problems it could bring –
The detritus of strangers,
Which is quite a common sight
And perhaps some noisy revelers
To party through the night.
My street is pretty quiet
And I hope a monkey wrench
Hasn’t landed on it with the
Sudden placement of this bench.
A couple of ruins leave the cathedrals
nave and portico;
it is always molting season,
mice and beetles help
they nibble and gnaw,
wind-laborer’s, labor,
their whiplash backs bent,
to lever slates and all things loosened.
The sanctified, they guard their stony hearts
but the edges were made to crumble,
made to be returned to rubble.
The two twined ruins
exiting these ancient piles
were created to be spans and transits
for the upliftment of saintly figures,
no one will miss them, yet their
plinths, their buttresses
their embossments
until recently
held a small alcove heavenwards
a niche, that will probably
lose its faith soon,
toppling one year at a time
into an agnostic downfall.
The two ruins are so disfigured
as to be nothing at all,
but they are moving in mysterious ways
to where a tireless worker
will help them rise again,
but of course dust will stir up dust,
the mice and the beetles
will continue
to nibble and gnaw, however
the Maker will be ready
once more
to return dust to cathedrals.
There's an obscurity on the threads of darkness
dare I peer beneath the starless shroud of midnight's veil
as I walk through the misty breath that beclouds my vision
in hopes it leads me to the temple of your soul? My dearest
my comfort is there, yet I feel a quivering in the flames
beneath these gusts that prevail through inaudible voices falling
winded in the distance where these shadows walk between us
I feel discernment in memories as these bony fingers reach out
my heart shudders beneath the orchestra of night as it beckons
a samba from the angel of death as it spans its wings before me
I shiver breathless in its cold as the flames grow dimmer
yet this time love, I fear for you as dissolution ascends above me
Muddled mind ventures through vivid vales of scepticism.
Slowly subsiding to my knees under the shadow of moonlight,
crows gathers as helpless hands clench decomposing soil.
Sapless lips gasp for oxygen, shivering in illusory mistiness.
Death's harbinger stands before me, an uninvited hooded eclipse,
holding me prisoner, strangling my soul with naked tree tendrils.
In silent steps he walks towards me, I have no will left to fight.
He has no mercy, content on me kissing the mouth of the earth.
Words hidden behind metaphors, surface upon shores of regret,
flashbacks are like daggers, reminders of unspoken, unwritten words.
My love mourn for me not, as I fall into the graveyards of poets,
in death we still connect, as my words will always live through you.
A Collaboration with Silent One~
The Vanished Lineage
(Remembering eighteen million African enslaved by Arabs)
The sand remembers eighteen million footsteps in the heat,
Yet where are all the children of their weary, broken feet?
We trace the line to Europe, and to the Western shore,
But looking toward the desert, the descendants are no more.
A millennium of silence spans the ancient, trading hand,
From the seventh to the twentieth, across the burning land.
The trans-Saharan highway, the Nile’s deep, winding bed,
The Indian Ocean waterways that carried out the dead.
We cry aloud for justice, and the West must pay its debt,
But what of Arab brothers? Have we chosen to forget?
An empire built on raiding, on tribute and on blade,
A brilliant, cruel destruction in the shadows that they made.
The West desired the young men to till the heavy loam,
But the Eastern masters wanted the women for the home.
Three sisters for each brother, in the harems of the East,
To serve the hidden palaces where masters came to feast.
And for the captured brothers, the blade was cold and deep,
A legacy of castration that ensured they could not keep
The bloodline of their fathers, nor sow a future seed
A high and fatal torment born of ownership and greed.
They guarded rooms as eunuchs, they faded in the stone,
And so they left no children to claim what was their own.
No millions now to gather, no voices left to rise,
To ask for reparations beneath the desert skies.
Yet language holds the echo, Swahili on the coast,
A blend of mixed inheritance where sorrow is the host.
A sensitive and layered past that time cannot erase,
The missing generations of a stolen, vanished race.
The question what we seek, that lingers ist
The issue of reparation by the West and a twist
Will they return? Do they exist??
Where are they to the least, I do insist???
Reputation
I marveled the emeritus recognition
I felt compelled to sniff the reputations
Somewhat louder than the tradition
I crave the silent, staple self-respect
My tribute, I could not awaken
I crave the conventional, Confucians credo
A notorious celebrity - that notorious celebrity
Somewhat louder than the libido
I crave the ancestry, acclaimed aphrodisiac
Mine reputation
Spans beyond information
Forth wit my education
Sanctions my situation
Covering my operations communication
Be it far from the nation
Generation’s evaluations interpretation
Amidst generational interpretation
4/14/22
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2022©
His once smooth, light, tender hands
Now callused, rough and worn.
The veins that once were hidden now
Protrude as purple strands.
Baby skin, now savage wounds
Display how much they’ve aged
And scars with skin worn thin
Leave no beauty left to swoon.
Oh, the stories in his hands
Through years of serving show
How toil, work and suffering
Are engraved in wrinkled spans.
They are the final testament
Where blood once flowed
Whence seed was sown
And piercing oh so evident.
Beyond the seen are other scenes
Unseen by broken hands.
Hands that healed the ones he loved
At his expense, repaid all liens.
Born acquainted with grief and loss
He willingly gave his all.
Driven by love for all mankind
Left His hands upon a cross.