Long Unheld Poems
Long Unheld Poems. Below are the most popular long Unheld by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Unheld poems by poem length and keyword.
Helplessness seeks help in despondency
When resources slip out of porous hands
A tacit realization of innate inadequacy
Devours the dregs of impaired self-esteem.
The feeling sinks in the pool of pale psyche
Averse however to breathe the air of truth
Lies there unfelt in suspended animation
A state assiduously unaccepted by the mind.
The hostile wrecking winds are thwarted
By the helping hands morphing into shield
The needs are quenched like the arid thirst
By the cloud burst of benign magnanimity.
Time turns to flow in the course so desired
The legs that couldn’t walk a foot forward
If and whenever the hands are left unheld
Become boat sailing smooth in waveless sea.
Tides of time inundate the changed ethics
Latent self-respect floats on flood of sense
The bruised mind gets busy digging channel
For the repulsive memory to flow to oblivion.
The meagerness that created helplessness
Turns to debased maze of inferiority complex
A psychic makeover wangled by innate reflex
Produces odium and derision for the helper.
The helper then wonders in state of conundrum
If unvalued effort and dented intent are mislaid
On the ungrateful and the undeserving of help
For helplessness helps breed contempt in the end.
July 21, 2021
Contest : Word Play Poems With Play-On-Words Raison D'etre
Sponsor : John Anderson
The poet had said :
The world is a stage.
The stage
First Scene
Flood of spotlights
The actor in centre-stage, walks straight
The eyes looking up to the sky
The hands intimately hold, and held
The footsteps close, walk alongside
The figures liked, stay on
Others float around unwanted
The breath strong
The presence demanding
Cares for none.
Middle Scene
The actor runs around
A clock in hand
Pushes people on the ground
The stage is small.
Hits the wall, waits
The prompter says,
Say the line : 'time is short'.
The actor throws the clock
Doesn't care.
Last Scene
The spotlights dim
The actor bent, alone in the back of stage
A stick in hand
The eyes fixed on the ground
The hands don't hold, and hang unheld
The footsteps walk out of sight
The figures fade out.
The breath weak
The presence desolate
Searches for care.
The curtain drops
I enter the stage
The actor on the knees
Rises, and becomes my shadow.
July 14, 2017
Contest : All Yours (Jan 22)
Sponsor : Brian Strand
"a heartbeat pulsating as living light
free from each and every limitation
I Am that dwelling in unbound delight
the source wherefrom arises creation"
I study the void
conclude it is light it craves
become lost within my calculations
dimensions unspurl
spirals catastrophise
until
spinning
cancels
itself out
and I am still
within my stillness I seek
seeing no ground
having no anchor
it is me that craves
I fear I am the void
should I internalise the vortex
walk the line dizzy
with hand unheld
gamble on transformation
to the entirety of light
see myself
reflected on the outer edges
not through another lens
let the doppelganger
drop away
what if that
Is there happiness in the finite?
Of course not.
How could there be?
Like a cup too small for the ocean,
like a clock chasing its own hands,
like love letters
crumpling at the edges,
their ink fading into longing.
Happiness—
if we must name it—
lives in the spaces between words,
in the breath before speaking,
in the silence between arguments
where something endless seeps in.
It is not in holding tight,
but in letting go.
Not in keeping,
but in losing.
Not in the answer,
but in the ache of the question.
And if you still seek it,
do not look outside—
go inward.
Happiness is not in your title,
not in your house,
not in your body or mind.
It does not wait in grand achievements,
but in small, quiet moments—
in a thank you whispered to the breeze,
in sunlight warming your skin,
in water slipping through your fingers.
It is there—
in the unmeasured,
the unheld,
the undone.
In knowing who you are
beneath all the names
you have been given.
I scrubbed the shame from under my fingernails,
as if guilt could be washed like dirt.
Cold showers never baptized the ache;
just gave it discipline,
a neat little collar for the beast inside.
They called me godly.
I stood on pulpits of silence,
hiding my hard truths in folded hands
and stitched lips.
“Virtue,” I said once,
like it was a sword I forged from purity.
But truth?
I was celibate because I was afraid.
Afraid that my hunger would make the church tremble.
Afraid of the moan
that would betray my masculinity,
that would out the softness
under my well-pressed sermons.
You were my fifth year of Sunday bests and unwashed bedsheets,
a ghost in my room,
waiting for me to touch you
with more than doctrine.
“You’re mistaking sexual sparks for soul,”
I told you once,
coldly, like I had never burned for you.
But I had.
God knows,
I choked on the fire every night.
You slammed the door with your back turned,
spat,
“The sex only felt euphoric because I was starving everywhere else.”
Your words landed like psalms of rebellion.
And maybe you were right.
Because in my celibate kingdom,
I reigned alone.
Hard, holy, and unheld.
They told me it was wisdom.
That lust is a devil’s whisper,
not knowing it’s also a scream of aliveness.
But is virtue still virtue
if it silences the body
just to please the soul?
I have loved with my eyes shut tight,
and prayed the ******** away;
but my prayers stank of fear,
not faith.
Let’s not pretend,
that choosing not to
makes me cleaner than the one who moaned last night
with the lights on
and the shame off.
This is not
an altar call to purity culture.
This is not
a hymn of repression.
This is me,
uncloaked,
a sinner in skin,
redefining holiness in the mirror.
Touché,
you said.
And I bled truth
for the first time
without guilt.
No Imposter, I
Should I once ignore your smile
Call the undertaker
For I be dead unless I be
Imposter fraud or faker
Yet should I be, blind to thee
Even should a fraud I be
Interloper still would see
The beauty that resides in thee
Never shall I stay your kiss
Nor from your hug extract
Nor fail to stroke your flaxen strands
Never shall do that
Should we walk with hands unheld
Call the lawmen in
Tis not I you walk beside
But someone in my skin
Never shall I aim to roam
Nor draw another's eye
Change not I, lest I die
No Imposter, I
19 November 2018
On a frosty opaque day in windy winter
I, an old defoliated tree denied the sky and the soil
by the young aggressive ones spreading branches,
walk out of the green forest in sheer desperation.
Crossing the contorted contours of the barren badlands,
I go across the pallid plateau to a city quite far,
where I could see no sun shining with survival panacea,
so I couldn’t soak the rays to get my lost foliage back.
I could neither find sustaining soil of bonding sympathy,
so I couldn’t stand upright in the storm of strife.
Dejected, I then morph into a human figure without roots
in the remote corner of the concrete forest.
In dismal unkind desolateness my heart soon breaks,
and the forsaken fragile hands hang unheld,
picking up pining the strewn shards abandoned,
from the cauldron of a smoldering summer day.
Disillusioned, I walk back to the forest I once left,
and burn the essence of humanity in the forest fire.
January 29, 2021
Title used : If I Were A Tree
Contest : If I Were A?
Sponsor : Mysytic Rose Rose
Broken wings
slurred speech
cracked halos all around me
Shattered heart
unmade plans
fake apologies and unheld hands
To many hurt to many gone to many kids continue to be taught wrong
It's said many ways blamed on many things
defended and looked down on its offensive to us all
just another something to blame individually for the failure of a creation made by us in unity to treat smaller groups of humanity the way hindsight and afterthought can be used to divide us using established demographics
but first it must be tested and talked about
and comply with marketing and editing rules and regulations
to be ready finalize the timing for best effect and proper warning to media outlets to preach to fools
We are not meant to know hate or judge
We are meant to grow and love
Teach and be taught accept We can not
And live by the wisdom inscribed in our hearts
It's not that we can't but we won't
Everyone's got some bad
But all say they don't
This is because possessions and wealth create a false since of self
but your luck in a world of help where no one has value without help
most are lucky few truly smart but either way we will end as we start
having nothing just silence truth and a spark
Brought given or stole
It won't matter as much as the story told
The problem was not the creator
It was a virus in the code
to many belief-based facts not enough fact-based beliefs
this is the kind of world we prayed to never be
yet droves of people stand in line to be fed lies and given wreathes
to hang on there door and spread the lies they were sold
without a second thought without verification and they will
let go of any around them that refuse to be told and will teach their kids the same
Its the thing that gets me that they used to preach the motto of our country
to make sure we avoid these things but for some reason they took it away
as well as the class that taught us how politics works and laws were made
now one more time lets just say "One Nation Under God Indivisible' That last word is the one we need to understand because today division is the campaign plan
Every day I awake in a place where the sky
is a mist mourning sleep. I stumble on a tower—
leaning, broken, alone. Its stones call my name
like someone trying to rouse me, like someone
who’s rung before.
Roots coil up its cracked sides,
ivy’s thin fingers drag me forward,
pulling at my steps like they know where I should go.
I can feel it—something’s waiting at the top,
something shifting in the shadows and growing
restless. As I climb, the stones are cold and quiet,
the kind of silence that wraps around you—
heavy as the grief of an unheld hand.
Near the top, the fog lifts just enough—
reveals a room I don’t know, but the smell
of damp earth makes it feel like a memory.
The walls curve inward, as if they’re listening.
In the corner, a chair rocks—
slowly, creaking, though there is no wind.
I step closer and hear a whisper.
Sit, it says. You’ve been here before.
The air is thick with mildew, it feels like breathing
through cloth, too dense for this closeness.
I don’t want to comply, but my feet move anyway,
toward the rocking chair, toward this place
where the strange weight of morning mist
is still rolling in.
The whisper turns soft, almost gentle:
You’ve been lost here for so long.
The words settle in my chest, next to the truth—
I am the whisper, the stone, the mist.
That’s the gist—I am the one who called myself here.
The one who long ago left, but never let go.
I want to scream, but my voice is a ghost.
I close my eyes, and I fall—
back into the fog,
back to the beginning
where the tower leans in the distance.
It began as tone—
no origin,
no end—
a chord mistaken for a world made whole.
A held vibration gathered into shape;
harmonics thickened into edges felt,
and silence filled with structures made of sound.
A pattern looping through a field of noise,
hoping repetition made it true.
Desire tuned the body into pitch,
insisted on a key, a fixed resolve,
refusing dissonance its right to pass.
But slowly, the will releases intervals;
resolutions drift without a home, and rhythm slips its measure into air.
Overtones collapse to quieter threads;
no struck glass shivering into light,
no instrument remains to house the sound.
No echo left to gather into form
only the unheard,
unstruck,
unheld
a silence
prior to all music,
where nothing ever
needed
to be shaped.