Long Welts Poems
Long Welts Poems. Below are the most popular long Welts by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Welts poems by poem length and keyword.
" Some can never go home"
The house is now empty
and the walls painted in mildew and mold
It has a musky breath of unforgiveness
The wooden floor, once a place of refuge,
is now buckled, broken with rust stained nails
Footprints are measured in silence,
a path to the angry door
Memories disturb the cobwebs and dust
covered windows
Voices float in my head, trailing off
appearing then disappearing
Trying to scratch the scar of my mind
opening the anguish from yesterdays
Where flowing blood was a badge of honor
and love was a hug from welts,
caused by a razor strap that hung
on a nail buried in the wall
A wall now silent, still holding the screams of innocence
An ugly world, where pain was cut across a small body,
from anger and hate
I still remember the tall dark figure,
with hand raised holding my wrist
slobbering over the intrument of my disillusionment
of what a parent should be
And when my body tires of me
I lie beneath a chestnut tree,
rolling among the broken burrs
where solid sleep rarely occurs
Waking up is the toughest part
when I've never slept to start.
I fear no place except the bed;
where pillows weigh upon my head
Memory foam gives no assistance;
insomnia thrives on resistance
It waits til eyes are almost closed,
never unconscious, then reloads
'Neath the tree is more appealing
than tracing welts upon my ceiling;
each one reflects a calloused lie,
the burrs tattooed on my naked eye
drilling dread into tomorrow night,
a future where there's no respite
This bed has worn me to the bone,
or have I worn its frame alone?
No dreams arrive; the lucid stays,
a consciousness that only strays
far from the tree l'm primed to be-
or not to be, ‘mid autumn debris.
# # #
I’m tired of the chestnut tree’s shade ~
being gentler than the bed I’ve made
Sudden snakes in my brain
what a waste are my inaudible cries
mental welts I give myself
because I made you leave
now you hate me
screw my life
it's all just too hard to believe
Inaudibly I crumble and fall into the dirt
don't bury me, just leave me here
dead inside, inert
I died the day you left me
I'd never felt so hurt
Hope in the shape of Zoloft
just doesn't do the trick
I read our chats over and over
and the flogging bud of failure
knowing how much I lost
leaves me feeling sick
you said I was toxic maybe that's true
I only know
I've never loved anyone the way I love you
my mental mosh pit, my hodgepodge mind
I feel so much, but I'll never say
and the snakes in my brain
will probably never go away
*Image of Love Pairs Two by Pixabay.
When Love Was Paired To Blossom
When love was paired to blossom,
'twas lost words in a song,
Oaths and dreams didst fill the air,
'tis distance true and long,
Thus foolproof days fleet away,
September launched to June,
Paired love hath cared to blossom,
pray two 'tis best be soon.
When love was paired to blossom,
petals had strewn its ground,
Barren branch stretched on its own,
flowers no longer bound,
Time nor nature's caused compelled,
wither welts take its tolls,
Love that was paired to blossom,
adorns entombed paired souls.
2022 February 11
*1st Place*
A BRIAN STRAND RIME
~~Brian Strand: Judged 2022 February 22
Some Day I’m Coming Back
The things that made us who we are
aren’t written in a book
nor do the things they gave us
equal what they took.
Hands that rocked the cradle
soon left welts behind
the harshness of their laughter
made it less than kind.
Priest at Sunday dinner
guest at a meal he’s leeching
washed down with Irish whiskey
and the ******** that he’s preaching
of the sacred and the pious
and all the souls he saves,
bite your cheek and do not utter,
kiss their ass though they are knaves.
Walk the streets in other’s clothing
knowing that it once was new,
bear the brunt of other’s laughing
at the coat and not at you.
Grit your teeth and sheath your anger
for you must be kind and meek
when just once you’d like to give them
the beating that they seek.
Harden heart and nerve and sinew
refuse to knuckle under
protect whatever’s left
from the hands of gods that plunder.
Savor freedom’s single breath
view escape through dungeon’s crack
holding tight to rage’s mantra
“some day I’m coming back”.
John G. Lawless
for Vicky Tsiluma
contest – I’ll Be Back
Before my wife and I
Broke out of our shell
For spring break in Miami
Just the two of us on our first vacation in 30 years
All our kids wished us well
Though I detected an ache in their voices
“Next time!” one of my boys said in a farewell text
Next time, I said to myself
I’d love that, a next time
My oldest, Hannah, said she remembered a lightning storm
Raging over the evening ocean
From our beachfront condo balcony
And the Goodyear blimp
Swallowing our entire wall of windows
With its silver billow and pilots waving
Face to face
On a sunny day
To us
In the condo we had no business renting
Those long ago times when I was still Daddy
And Kerri was Mommy
Worried about footprints in the sand
And where to hide the Marlboro Light 100s
Remember them?
The good old days
When we were an octopus coordinating seven days
From sunrise to sunset
Those tiny four lives fit to the scale of our hands
I don’t think we ever quite got it right
Nudging our kids through the tide of time
Soaked in salt and sun
And their little drooping bathing suits
Throwing a red ball to the fetching gloves
Of the turquoise waves
Plastic yellow shovels and pails
Hung from their hands
Mimicking the divinity of their very flawed parents
Told them the story of when I was a kid
Down here
My mom and dad let me swim
By moonlight in the ocean
(This is the pre-Jaws era)
And when I came out of the water
A Man-O-War was wrapped around my leg
I screamed in agony all night
My mom saying, I don’t know what else to do
I don’t know what else to do Bobby
So now I remember the welts of the electric tentacles
That storm over the ocean
Dug up from Hannah’s own memory
I could see it too
My wife and kids’ huddled faces
Peeking through the curtains of clouds
The six of us
Sunburned and tired just before bed
Framed forever in that upper floor of windows
The bolts of lightning
Streaking down to the shore
Striking
The turtle shell of the tumultuous sea.
I try day in and day out to escape this hell
Im living a life not mine and nothing you can do can help
You can say “I feel for you, I can only imagine what you're going through,” and well…
Every time I hear that I feel more enclosed in this cell.
Do you know what it's like to feel like a turtle in someone else's shell?
There's no word to describe the things I've felt.
I hurt and the cause is my own fist giving me welts.
How do I save myself from myself?
That's a rhetorical, nothing can; not even wealth
You say things are jokes as they are ripping my skin off my scalp and going straight at my mental health.
I don't want seen, I just want to be able to get by with stealth
But im seen
God cant you just go away with that snarky tone
You look down on me like a king on a throne
After the things that I've shown
Id think you'd have known
That the skins covering my body doesn't even belong on my bones.
Its like im taking skin from the bank and calling it a lone
No matter what i tell myself ill always feel like a drone
Im wires and components put together to create something you can see as your own.
The only person i can relate to is Sisyphus pushing the stone
I hear these people telling me I've grown
But I still see myself as the scared lost boy who couldn't feel comfort in their own home.
There's no escape of this hell, no savior for this earth, no sisyphus for this stone, no hair for this comb, No garden for this gnome, no parts for this drone, no king for this throne.
I am
Alone.
We were warned never to share “our business” with anybody
Especially the social workers, nurses or school teachers.
They were the enemy and would “take us away”.
Our terror was the idea of what strangers could do to us.
At least our mother was always sorry later.
She loved us, right? We knew not to touch her stash.
It was important to not get in her way when she was angry too.
She brought lots of new daddies home.
They were of various shapes and sizes.
Some of them brought alcohol, this made her happy.
Once in a while they would bring the stuff that went up her nose.
This made her happier, until she came crashing down.
One thing for certain, most of these daddies did not want us around.
We could get locked out for hours while they were there.
We knew to never expect anything good out of them.
One or two pretended to like us, but we knew better.
Every once in a while we would get one who would bring food.
This made us happy, but it would not last usually.
Knowing this, we hid food away, for later.
Sometimes there would be dancing and laughter.
These were the good days.
As long as we kept quiet
And kept our “business” to ourselves
things would be okay. Bruises and welts heal.
As long as we are not taken away, things will be okay.
you …
sweetly spun me
like sugar into cotton candy -
from a dizzy bobbin
to ornament for a spring willow …
no lament avowed,
for there is a demon in your eyes
whose night blade feeds …
he stalks me -
spurious spear in his grasp
not near as lethal as the shimmer
that winks me from those depths, abyssal
or the tender tendrils, oily black
reaching from the unfathomable fathoms
to sunder my forsaken heart
and turn my marrow
molten … melting …
flesh burning for your arrow -
welts of passion that thirst
to weep crimson
yet not even you can pierce that
hermetic husk …
hardened by casual care,
another’s name,
and the tear-tempered steel
of your bewitching …
gaze.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, January 6, 2024
( painting by Bruno Barreira taken from public domain files at Saatchi Art )
Carpet patterns
and the swirlings of grain
in wooden floors were maps
to me of exotic worlds,
portal holes for a child
to enter and explore
places edged on the
furthest reaches
of the fabulous.
Even today, as an old man,
I saw a landscape
in miniature when morning sunlight
came through the window
and crept across
the room, illuminating a map
in the knots and welts of grain
rolled out on the pinewood floor.
I found myself off on tour
swept into the detail
along its ravines
and imagined trails,
into its wild inland,
the unfenced territories whose
vast subterranean caves
well far below what
can be seen, the dank
dormitories of dream.
And then,
above the underworld,
dry plains paused
by rocky outcrops
of doubt, the long silences
that stretch for miles
and curl up in corners
when evening falls.
The star pitted dark hung
with mystery, morse
for the mystic,
until a sober perspective
shrank the sublime
back into a smaller space
to fit ordinary sight
and became
the comforting familiarity
of a well trodden
wooden floor, aged, uneven,
basking in the morning's
honeyed light.