Middling Poems | Examples

Waxing Nostalgic

     A middling pudding on the table
        flies hover in the livery stable 

    Mud-covered boots ascend to garrets 
        frowzy days London inherits     

    Dickensian scenes to rive your heart
        by urchins, street vendors torn apart  

    Yankees delight in their ‘good old days’
       Englishmen sniff the rot of decay

Middling Mild

Ducks are up in the air,
it is early - too much
a middling.
Nature lures,
leads us on,
the weather is wrong.

Icy licked stems
are surprised.

Defrosting ants and marmots
patch and mend,
loggers lean on buzz saws.

People take pause,
store bobble hats
and puffer jackets.

Today, to the contrary
the snow is heavy,

any hint of avian romance
is indefinitely delayed.
© 48 mins ago

Winter Tidings

Midwinter - means
transparent ice walls
pressed against shrinking skin.

Dead-eyed horses are revived
only by the steam of their nostrils.

No one predicts a beginning or an end,
'mid' is a frozen idea
in an ice-locked fountain pen,
it will not write even in warm hands.

Killer clowns' shelter behind
their fixed, blood flaked grimaces,
the whites of their eyes
reflect pinpoints
of a dawning apprehension.

Roads decelerate,
creaking through knuckled hands.
Chilled mounds toboggan off rooftops,
dump malformed snowmen
through unmeasured backyard graves.

At the hazy horizon of each grinding day.
midwinter blurs perspective.
This is the middling 'Mid'
a middle where the mind stops flowing
up or down.

Bedroom divorce before of bride and groom

One bedroom for two seems old hat,
And some bat for the separate—
One far right meant for ‘she’,
And one far left for ‘he’,
Middling, if mood is made for that!
_________________________________  
Happenings (Cameron Diaz, Bedroom Story) |09.12.2023| marriage, love

Middling

In middle America — a small earth tremor,
not enough to scare the cat,
the cat felt it, and it told the mice
who lived in the walls.
"It wasn’t us", they said.

A mess on my desk;
the glass inkpot has toppled,

has spilled deep blue ink
on a sheet of white paper 
printing upon it a smudging form,
 — moth shaped,
and in the middle
a human figure– a man-moth.

I thought of ripple effects,
how all things run to the middle
when danger threatens.
I thought of Rorschach cards
and the anatomy of meaning.

Across the mid-point of the rug
the cat has fallen asleep.

The ink-image 
tries to weakly crawls away,
its wet wings drooping.
I gently nudge it back to the middle,

eventually the ink dries and stiffens.

This Is Life Poetrix

just the clarity of existing
within the relativity of being
it is life, we discern this middling

Something To Say

In an old briefcase
capsuled for years in a corner
of the shed, I found a rolled up wad
of poems, stalled, still looking 
for something to say, frozen 
in a futile gasp for air. 
I should have thrown 
them away. 

There was also an old plane ticket,
a beer coaster from an Antwerp cafe,
and a few photographs taken
from a bridge across a canal
in Bruges with three nuns wearing
starched white cornettes 
stretched out like enormous
butterfly wings perched atop
of their heads.

And tucked in a side pocket,
were letters from my mother
written more than thirty years ago.
Long dead, I could almost hear 
her voice read each word.
In one, she told me how 
she scored an A for English 
in the HSC exam she sat 
when well into her sixties.
She could recite Frost's  "Birches" 
off the top of her head. Stevens, 
for her, made no sense. Mum liked
plain language pared down
to bone.

I am not sure why I am writing
these words about such 
middling matters, much less trying 
to shape them into poetry. 
No matter. 
Sometimes just ordinary things,
like those found in an old briefcase,
seem to find a moment
to have something to say, 
at least for me.

Ashburton School Memories and Lies

you gave me assuredity
you're more than a building
you're a memory
you conjured a spell
each teacher worthy fitting
quality in those days

Later I learned I was deemed opinionated
Jackie Letts in a School Reunion
a quarter of a century said so
I question the reliability of memory


Obviously we have a different account
I was a near to do
only one GCE
swimming in a sea of CSE's
in the middling classes
but I wasn't amongst the dyslexics
maybe I had been cured
like a herring

A Middling Nowhere

Where are the magpies?
Where the ruined cathedrals
where are the birds
that once made their homes
in the hollow heads of saints?

Here all dwell in the new or the old
the days between are bulldozed,
the waste rubble resold.

Crowds seek out boarded-up exits
other crowds construct entrances
for new homes
that when assembled resemble all other's.

I need a hill to howl upon.
The land is flat, even the water is flat.
Mountains are small or not at all.

Yet there are midnight Magpies,
there are crows cawing in woodland churches.

Mythical back-eyed catbirds roam
from home to home. Many places are
not condemned to the newfangled
and yet still unoriginal.

Some magpie nests and appear almost near,
just under the eaves of a middling nowhere.

Start Sharing a Smile

I'd be more than happy to endow my beam to you,
equally, I trust you'll impart with your own smirk too.
That is a proem forward into world harmony,
A prized seed with extremely useful whimsy.

I will endow my food with a smile,
And I'm confiding you'll nod in your style.
This feast is middling for two persons,
It is possible if we could deter arsons.

This majestic tree dispenses shade,
Nature has conveyed us with a unique cascade.
For everyone who needs to take it easy,
Let us enjoy it all around, indeed... globally!

I'd be heartily risen to relate my entity to you,
For every one of the dignities, we are apt to do.
The season minds about us, today,
While lavish panegyrics pave the way.

Accordingly, share a smile; this is a start rally.
An extraordinary beginning's blissful inventively.

1st Place Contest Winner

Written: March 6th, 2022

World Peace Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori

Taste, Middling Mediocre

Words that do not speak to me
       Fine poetry may very well be

     My taste, middling mediocre
       No literary bona fides
     ~ This wild card's a joker

Living In a Big City

I live here in the city
   step on what was opened
   I pray for my longing
   my laugh that was released...

   people here ignore
   any gesture, of humanity
   spreads bitterness that demonstrates
   neither being able to have sanity....

   I live middling without socializing
   I live well or badly just for living...!

Rita and Peter and Sue Too

Let me tell you all about my friend Rita
She fell in love with a guy named Peter
He made his living as a panel beater
To Rita there wasn't a guy any sweeter 

So Rita and Peter went into town one day
Happened to meet Sue along the way 
Both of them asked if she was okay 
Fair to middling is what she did say 

Peter was a cheater and had a roving eye
If ladies were about he certainly wasn't shy
When Rita found out she started to cry 
All she could say was why Peter why

Balance Between Life's Extremes

Ah middle octave's musical note C,
Balancing left-right hands, a resting point,
And marked white all over the central key-
Piano players do as it appoint.
 And beginners' first lesson, middling joint ,
Watering hole for fingers to return,
To, a lesson of a lifetime to learn,
That life's opposites tend to dwell extreme,
A rudder that wont let life wide off turn,
Buddha's midpoint of poise rising like cream!



10.13.2020

Railed Heart Sieged Karbala Fame

Thy mouth dripping with drool.
North blisses and quick-witted doth unfool.

Thou shalt seclude from middling teenth.
Plummeted into a hornet tool.

Wailed as eerie as a panicked fetus.
Didst thou stay fed in the crumbs of mool?

Times beest tough about shimmering graves.
Grumbled, tucked, hadst a mischievous lol. 

Thy lure hath evil jagged, full of witch writhes.
Thou began to shake, shrieking by the bleeding pool.

Squirm bosom disheveled and screeched with fear.
Whispered oddly and burst the sweet aroma of bool.

Unison of hoof drank fluffy white icing scream.
Scraggly faith and toothed heart not cool.

Haunted and rhyming a couplet kills.
Sirrah and the mistress prayed to the zirrahed hazrat tool.

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