Long Waifs Poems
Long Waifs Poems. Below are the most popular long Waifs by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Waifs poems by poem length and keyword.
Standing in the frigid wind outside the bus stop doors
She seemed lost and lonely as the cars past with a roar.
Waiting for my only child the son whom I adore
I couldn’t help but wonder where was she headed for?
The prodigal returned through those same two frosty doors
But though the night was getting dark no one came for her.
Stopping right beside her, the radio blaring a Christmas score
We asked her if she needed help could we do any more?
Her wind burnt cheeks rose with the smile she wore
“Thank you, no.” She said. Her eyes they did explore
the warm interior and the street stretched out before
My folks are late but coming soon at least I’m pretty sure…
We left her there before the door yet still my heart implores
How many lost and lonely waifs are left standing by the door?
*Monorhyme is Sonnet form using slip or half rhyme.
Some good deeds go unaccepted.
As my eyesight dims
nature's colors fade in shaded whims
books treasured, now unread,
may not forge the future ahead.
I would give the words away
but I know too well today
how few of them would find a place
where the messages could flow safe;
Walden, Leaves of Grass, the Caged Bird, Beloved... and others
now considered prohibited, forbidden, anathema, waifs to be rediscovered
in the minds and eyes of spewed rhetoric burned,
seeking out of ignorance of lessons learned;
but history is written and swirls
not always in books or in archives of the world,
wise men speak and hold sacred
truths that will always be heard.
If nowadays we have become so wise
And are proud achievers
Who have explored the world from our cradle;
If these days men would hear with their eyes
And men would speak by their actions
And would prefer to reason with their flesh;
If today you see chicken gnaw bones
And billy hunt and prey on rodents,
Do not stand to stare or wonder,
For these are the last days!
When a day's old child would stare,
When teens have now become bachelors;
When at twelve you have known
Men and women and fulfil God's injunction
To procreate and litter the earth with waifs.
If at twenty six your name goes
With the scholastic print of Ph. D.
And when at thirty sitting at your verandah
Having coloured teeth from tobacco and kola.
What else are you waiting for my friend?
Do not wait on what the earth has to offer,
Prepare your bed and die,
For these are the last days!
If nowadays we have become so wise,
If today we are proud achievers,
We are like the young child, Umu,
Who sighted a ripe mango amidst dozens
Of unripe mangoes up in the tree.
He detest the burden of climbing
And would never think of waiting
For the mango to fall to the ground.
In his excitement, he pulled up the young stalk
Of a healthy peer tree and
Threw it up at the mango tree.
He threw it up again and again and before
He could struck down the one ripe mango,
He had plucked and emptied dozens
Of unripe mangoes to the earth.
He picked the one ripe mango
Among the others and left in triumph!
If nowadays we have become so wise,
If today we are proud achievers,
When an infant would reject
His mother's breast because he has no time,
Do not stand to ask why or wonder,
For these are the last days
That shall give birth to a new era!
Relatives hanging out of every orifice, window, ledge, and lawn chair
Hands out, the two starving children beg as people walk by, ignoring them.
In Great-grandma McCormick’s teeny tiny farm house, during family reunion.
No more bowls of rice, no more bread, there is nothing left. Hunger sets.
Laughter wafts from the barn, behind the shed, and especially the kitchen.
Their mother hung on as long as she could, but she died of flu yesterday.
Too many women are in there, some wearing aprons, all of them in the way.
Those who took their mother’s body away left her two small children, knowing.
The men are hiding out in the pasture, barn, beside tractors, sharing stories.
They had their own unfed waifs, they could not worry about these two.
Sixteen kinds of pies and two cakes are trying to find a place on a shelf.
It is expected they will die soon. They probably will be gone by morning.
Beef, pork, chicken and fish that prances in would feed three or four armies.
Two urchins are resilient and refuse to die easily; they are alive the next day.
New Mexico bears the burdens of its once-sleepy past--
when awakened to join the current century at last.
To give birth to the fledgling Atomic Age
It still wears the perfume of fusion and sage.
They must go to the land of fiestas, Indian bread.
Shaken from sleep to design moments of dread.
Muddy roads carried scientists, from land and sea,
to the top of a hill clothed in springtime's majesty.
Where, after a summer's welcome downpour,
bloomed lavender verbena and wild irises galore.
Where sweet-smelling sage and rain-splashed pine
competed for mistress of passions unmined.
Placed in wooden boxes they learned to call home
were unsuspecting families, the secrets unknown.
The wives joined together since numbers are safe;
their children becoming the desert's new waifs.
Some became friends with the Indian maids
who helped to restore sense to the masquerade.
They bought Indian rugs, turquoise stones for their hands;
visited their pueblos, learned about their proud lands.
Many a morning, when water wouldn't flow,
they sat in wonder and watched the town grow.
Soon there were horses to ride up mountainsides.
With friends, life was doable, they could abide.
Then finally, when the blast trembled the Earth,
they understood the conspiracy needed in fission birth.
Some called it a monster, some called it a friend.
At any rate, their journey there would soon end.
Some departed, some stayed on The Hill
still smelling the sage but recalling still.
the sound of the blast sounding thru time,
Smelling sweet pines, watching peace decline.
Dad, born into white-hot poverty
eldest son of an adulterous drunk
abandoned
man of the house at five
white privilege.
His stepfather, also a booze bunny and bigot to boot...
To escape, he went to vocational school
as all the poor waifs did back in the day.
white privilege....
Married too young, a couple of sons...
was promised a job out west,
By all of people, the adulterous drunk...
3000 dreamy miles later.
With two small boys swirling in the prospectors' pan
but all the gold had vanished by then
white privilege.
He managed to make ends almost meet
with shovels for hands, soul of concrete.
white privilege
We survived in a one-bedroom, converted chicken coop.
At the age of twenty-two, he was crowned the king of desperation
Supported all of us without any complaint, including the deadbeat, my Uncle Frank.
White privilege.
Divorced, he lost custody of his doves.
Months beyond broke, he staggered back home.
Into the embrace of, you guessed it, the same drunken bigot.
White privilege.
Deadly happenstance brought us all back together again.
For forty years he wore the burning wreath
of back-breaking gigs on cinderblock dreams.
2 steps forward, 2 and a half back
One foot in the grave, the other on a snot rag
His ledger, never in the black.
White privilege,
Four decades, he earned the right
to hang up the shovel and pan.
The concrete settling into the joints
of his bent turtle hands.
Willing us away from poverty's fangs.
White privilege.
Soon after he retired. Mr. C arrived.
For three long years he battled and survived.
With Veins still flooded with benzene rings.
He had a blind date with open-heart surgery.
White privilege.
Old battleaxe versus scythe, he fought off the reaper.
Only to bury his mom, whom he loved very deeply.
The next to go was his beloved son.
White privilege.
He's not quite out of that shadow.
But I think he'll make it back to reclaim that glow.
I'm honored to have known such a bright angel soul.
My Privilege.
’Tween hither and thither while wending our way,
skipping, dancing through sand dunes in seascape croquet
and woven in waves watching dolphins at play,
I first tasted her lips in the ocean’s wild spray.
Mystic moonbeams, suffusing clouds’ shimmering sails,
then unleashed us and whisked us down sensuous trails,
soon evoking the trills of untamed nightingales
as our passions pervaded green valleys and dales.
Being specters of splendor in wanton sashay
we mastered our meaning in love’s matinee –
sultry breezes, in passing, slowed down to survey
blazing bodies embracing youth’s blooming bouquet.
With the wind as our wings, chasing rainbows we flew,
two gypsies on junkets through dusk’s residue
sometimes following pollen to everywhere new
beneath the empyrean, painted pale blue.
Rising higher and higher, the sun lured our sleigh,
teasing time was our temptress, night ’n day after day
as we gamboled and gambled, two waifs led astray,
with our shackles afire, our anchors aweigh.
Yes, we’ve drifted, like dreamers where sprites rendezvous
having stars in our eyes with all time as our view,
and feasted on laughter and sipped morning dew
while rambling forever as one made of two.
/Locks and Clocks
We change locks
like we change clocks,
as flippantly as daylight dims,
as easily as days grow slim;
we try to bolt the sunlight out
with combinations masked in doubt
to shorter hours, as if we could
feel like the conqueror who would
shut out those close and dear to us
who used to be the ones we trust.
Clocks and locks are both the same
as tokens in some wordless game
to keep out fear and trusted waifs;
our meager souls no longer safe;
the locks have failed and so the trust
is gone and turned to flaking rust;
the moths have eaten through
those things we hoped to keep brand new;
again our dark night will descend
and we will once again offend.
Like locks and clocks we change our friends
(if ever we could make amends
for things we did with ignorance in place)
and do not receive the coveted embrace
from absent friends who come and go
as night to day diminishes its glow;
where hope runs true within,
returns to come around again
to lengthening days where suns shine bright,
and will dismiss the darkness of our night.
Dark and Mystical
The darkness of a moon shadowed star
covered my world in a filament of doubt,
awakened beings from a slumbering peace
to roam the ethereal plain of life’s edges.
Worms danced in the dampened cool
entranced by the music of the mist,
coyotes bristled at the unknown
stilled by a presence yet unseen.
Fairies, nymphs, demonic succubi
adrift in passionless desire,
shapeless beings, homeless waifs,
wandering in search-less seeking.
Lovers of the flimsy heart of night
in delicate submission to its fate
succumb – because they are
the darkness of a moon shadowed star.
3/29/2014
for Shadow Hamilton
Dark and Mystical
"Hurry up!" yells Mom, "the hack is coming 'round the bend!"
Another torturous day of school, won't this agony ever end?
With a fried egg sandwich in my Roy Rogers box for lunch,
I climb aboard to join that gloomy and sullen bunch!
What a disgusting horde of waifs each morn I must face.
Unwashed mugs with bits of breakfast showing a little trace!
The bus reeked of fried eggs, oranges and other exotic things.
What an unkempt and uncultured mass of little human beings!
The only ray of sunshine in that long and wearisome ride,
Was when my puppy love asked me to sit down by her side.
The other highlight of the day was when we were homeward bound;
A more exuberant gaggle of kids on earth could not be found!
Mr. Frank had driven the same old bus for years and years,
But still ground steel as he double-clutched to change the gears.
When getting stuck in a three foot drift of snow,
He would rock to and fro in his seat to get the bus to go!
A special treat that made us kids so very happy and gay;
Mr. Frank gave us a bag of candy to savor on Christmas Day!
Long forgotten rides on trains and planes were quite a thrill,
But memories of school bus rides remain with me still!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)