Let me not be such an excellent I
That to the best of poems clap can’t I.
If I can’t be such a top-talent I,
Let me be like an ant diligent I.
To grind day long to remedy day’s wrong,
Drinking darkness of night, mendicant I.
Were raging fires of life to consume me
To ash, let me strive still, the remnant I.
O let me light up someone’s darkling night
Than be on my present, jubilant I.
_______________________________
Ghazal | 14.02.2026 | poet, prayer, wish/desire
barefoot mendicant
tears of gratitude in eyes ~
gifted pair of kicks
summer’s sweetest swill
intoxicating fuddle ~
merry mendicant
(June Full Moon – European)
Footwear and a mendicant
After going to several shoe shops, I found shoes that fitted me
happy, I walked along and saw a woman sitting on the pavement
begging, she looked old for her age severely marked by poverty.
I stopped and looked for change; I didn’t have any, the woman
waited, what to do now?
I could not walk past, like not noticed this wretched soul
I gave her a note of ten euros and cursed myself, but it triggered
a memory from my childhood.
Mother had gone into a shop she had stamps to buy woollen socks
nylon socks were for the rich; a lady walked past, saw my holed
tennis shoes my brother had outgrown.
She went into a shoe shop, came out with a pair of black shoes
gave them to me, they fitted perfectly; I couldn’t wait
showing them to the children on our road.
Mother came out in her hands had the woolly socks,
I showed mother my shiny shoes; take them off, she said and
put the tennis shoes on the new shoes are for Sundays only.
Stange World must Change world-poems.net/ TWITTER/ FACEBOOK/ LINKED IN/ IBEau/ SB/ BRK/ G
Hatred is wide prevalent
Heart has become insolvent
Kindness, none wants to invent
Human tongue is a real serpent
People love to be highly vehement
Affection is totally here absent
God's presence is fully irrelevant
Bullet is given as a present
To make the receiver non-existent
Modernity is growing unpleasant
To be truthful, almost all resent
The guilty wants not to repent
Being cunning is damn intelligent
God is no longer an invisible agent
Chaos prevails one hundred percent
To help others, all are reluctant
Mercy is a forgotten lubricant
Holy Buddha turned a mendicant
He was truly an honest applicant
May God protect us from a militant.
To touch a leaf upon a tree and watch it shiver with delight
and when the sun comes out to play to watch it swing and sway
To gaze at shades of verdant greens intoxicated by their light
anticipating hugs of warm from arms that want to go away
this druid girl has had enough of cloud filled skies and endless nights
To bow to nature like a Queen and serve it like a Regal King
and as each thought of poor old me releases gifts of sympathy
I will bestow on Mother Earth my mended piece of broken wing
Perceptive with psychometry and mendicant telepathy
this alchemist of touch and smell will tip the balance of I Ching
To seize that moment of arrest when all the stars of heaven's pyre
are plum content to glow and shine above a sky of April wine
To fall in love beyond the hour with tenderness and deep desire
to take what has been given sure and leave behind what isn't mine
this medium girl will walk the marsh and swim across the Mystic Mire
Oct 10 2022
Sponsor L MILTON HANKINS
Contest Name THREE STANZA POEM IN QUINTAIN (SICILIAN)
He doesn’t remember
his great grandfather
who passed away when he was five
He can’t recall the wooden heart
he painted in a kaleidoscope of colors
that his father helped him to place
carefully in the casket
His developing brain at some point
over the past decade
determined the record of that day
and of the man himself
he'd hugged before leaving the hospital
when last he saw him alive
who had existed on this earth
for eighty one years
to be dispensable
superfluous
It doesn’t matter who we are
mendicant or movie star
Someday no one will remain
who retains memories of us
It is not only our bodies
that decay into dust
Its my birthday every day just because I awoke to see another day
a new breath an extra hour beneath my belt, I am God's living ray
Defying all odds I am still here stumping the experts with my drill
dancing in the sunlight like a dervish mendicant ascetic, no pills;
I remember being six and blowing out the candles on my frosty cake
mamma asked me sweetly to make a wish before the first snowflake
I wished to live forever so I could find the secret of a well lit firefly
and summer after summer I watched them as they lit up the sky
It is my birthday today, every hour succinct to the next I like it this way
twirling like a wild baton in a parade I bang my drum and I sing all day
A new breath an extra hour beneath my belt, I am God's special girl
a Mystic soul that refuses to lay down and die, while the stars unfurl
I'll lay on the freshly mowed lawn and watch the stars shine from on high,
while I recall mamma's birthday cake and the fireflies that once lit up the sky.
Date: April 22, 2021
Sponsor Name: Charlotte Puddifoot
Contest Name: Open Poetry 3
I met a man on the road today
otherworldly, gamin, fey.
A gimlet look in his jaundiced eye,
he held my gaze and I questioned why
he wandered here,
a mendicant man of pleasant demeanour,
when, from his coat, he produced an ocarina
and proceeded to play a tune so jolly
yet full of pathos and melancholy
that my soul was transported to another place,
another dimension in time and space,
where I danced and dined and wined and made merry
with Fauns and Satyrs and the Juniper berry.
Great Pan himself held court over all,
and many and varied were held in his thrall,
as nymphs and faeries pranced and disported
my view of the world was skewed and distorted.
As mushrooms and toadstools were proffered and ate
a table of provender was assembled and set.
My pupils dilated and my eyes grew ever wider
and I promised myself to stay off scrumpy cider.
A prince born in the cradle of royal opulence
in the picturesque vale of the Nepal Himalaya,
Siddhartha Gautama renounced worldly life,
turned a mendicant, embarked on spiritual quest.
Striving to escape the mist of mundane illusions
in the mortal life of overwhelming ignorance,
mind intensely controlled meditated beneath Bodhi tree,
until awake enlightened to become the Buddha.
The tanets of his teaching seeded in the Gangetic plains
flourished as a new spiritual concept of awakening,
spread beyond the shores of ancient India
to emerge as a world religion, the Buddhism.
Distressed mind withdrawn from the sense-responses,
stilled in the quietude of mindfulness,
finds the beam of divine light at the end of dark tunnel,
the righteous life gets the insight of wisdom.
Unsatiated cravings open the floodgate of suffering,
leading to karmic cycle of dying and being born.
The Buddha, my favorite spiritual legend, showed the way
of liberating the soul to attain the essence of nirvana.
Written : March 11, 2020
Contest : Completely Your Choice (7)
Sponsor : Brian Strand
His oars (mind, arms, and legs)
were insufficient as propellers to earn a living.
In the underground´s nasty passageway;
or was in his life´s nasty passageway?
Anyway! There, he, like an imbecile, sat,
another torn mendicant, holding up his hand to indifferent passers-by,
asking for a gaze or just a word of hope.
Hope! What hope?
- The hope that remains as a candle into his heart.
the little flame that every day fights the Almighty forlornness -.
At night, unanswered the pray
the candle would shrivel;
and he became the symbol of a supplicant without faith,
hopelessly holding up among his hands,
and offering the burned out candle and misery of his life
to others indifferent passers-by.
There, at the underground´s nasty passageway.
Or was it his own life´s nasty passageway?
he huddled and covered with the black cloak of failure, remains sat
in the midst of despair.
Just till tomorrow.
Every now and again
you look at me from
the corner of your eyes
and give a teasing smile,
Are you playing with me
or falling in love?
Like a fisherman
reeling in his catch,
you have me hooked
and I thrash about
holding on to my last breath.
As the mist at dawn rises
and takes over the landscape
blurring the vision,
My yearning for you
is leading me astray.
Lost haplessly in your thoughts
I seek deliverance
like a mendicant seeking
enlightenment.
~A Brian Strand contest
An obscure dweller became a d r i f t i n g wanderer,
straying from all things of beauty and charm.
The depths of his soul reached nomadic heights-
DEEPER than hell’s reverie, HIGHER than heaven’s torch.
Inside this mendicant resided yearnings to travel-
a way to ease his mind and free himself from captivity.
He needed not the ways of a s e t t l e d life, just craved
an EXISTENCE of being a destitute vagrant.
In hours of confusion, he found moments of clarity-
for even being held inside a cave, he rambled and
s c r a m b l e d for a way to survive on his own. No man
could ever be such an itinerant VAGABOND…such as he.
Seeking remnants of days of yore, he realized his purpose-
to be a bum, a r o v e r thirsting for a prison to release
himself from. Even during days of remorse, he found comfort
in being a r e s t l e s s gypsy…lost in a world of the ESTABLISHED.
Form V - Verse Me A Poem - Poetry Contest
Sponsor, Broken Wings
September 29, 2017
Within the mendicant monolithic mirror
The fraudulent faces that are never nearer
For in the whimsical wonderland of Alice
Parasitic pretenders in the pompous palace
As we listen to the pretentious preachers
We give long life to the loveless leechers
For the masking mirrors regrettably reflect
Flamboyant fantasies of life’s nemesis neglect.
July.12.2017
Modern vanity
Sponsored by: Lewis Raynes
The thief had nothing
Darkness a foreign country
Desire made him bold
The moon a true mendicant
The thief a false supplicant
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.