Notches Poems | Examples

Museum of my Mind

I would make a museum of my mind
Fill these musty halls with all my people
Every girl who has walked my corridors 
To write her piece and paste it on the walls. 

Every plaque together, a mosaic
Of all personas, memories, and thoughts 
Together an image, reflected back 
Informative of me, an auto-school.

Blowing out the dust of unused ballrooms
Broom cupboards and and the back stairs, each its own
Room for machinations, revelations, 
Fed by all those who reside within me

My lonely people, aimless wanderers
Floating through the corridors room by room 
Their homes are these clustered, open cloisters.
Endless is my palace of passages. 

I am dissected in a thousand cuts
Each slice a living, pulsating breather
Warm and soft against my cobblestone floors
Balance of life and rock, they people me.

Voices low and laughter cheerful, I hear
My population all internally
All beings that are me, graduated
Notches on a scale, all playing their part, 

Like cogs and wheels they move in tandem drifts
Here in this exhibit they gave me, of
Balustrades adorned and turrets revived 
I transformed: a museum of my mind.

I Have Seen the Jackal and His Friend the Crow

His scrunch snout looks me in the eye
His deathly ritual is nigh
They wait and wait for the prey
And I am his, today

As walk with him
Down the path, so dim
He stops before it can end
And says hello to his friend

The melancholy Crow sits away
On a tree branch, to stay
She watches and watches
And the earth, it has notches

The Jackal wants me
The Jackal can’t have me
He wants to lead me
He can’t lead me

The Crow says it’s not time
The distance up comes daytime
The Jackal argues with the light:
“She should be in the night!”

And in the end,
That’s when I met the Jackal and his friend

When Summer Is Gone

I searched 'ere the dawn, where could it have gone,
for now, it possesses me, as a mystery, till dawn met me.

I've no rhyme or reason that a loved entity goes awry,
having to comb with despair and melancholy choking air,
hence, I must cease or I will be deceased. I choose to
be, than not to be, mid the numbers of worth--counting.

Now that I've deduced the severance of said company, 
to be amiss, or, lost as in unrecoverable. So, I will forge
ahead, much like this climbing star training its new day
as it's backpacking a whole quarter welcoming--it's Fall.

Oh my, much ado has gone awry, high and low, 'neath a
crooked sky. My thorough efforts abandoned my fruit of
labor, with harvest ripening fields, and the forests crispy 
hues. I have forsaken a driven entity that proposes life.

A ray of hope, beaming from a drifting star hovering over
the lost, now found. There is still a sliver of time enough.

I must tighten the notches so that its stretch will be of 
favor to the distant ones who'll all rise across the seven 
seas, for I am the soloist. The powers that made me, an 
Indian, task Summer to stay awhile to hear my drumbeat.

Oh Jim

Jim was suave, sophisticated, two notches above debonair
his appreciative entourage band followed his lead;
bevy of giggling ladies followed him from town to town
trying to grab his saxophone

Intimate Truth

p a u s e s
spaces in your words like notches on wood
endearing stillness
till a sprawl of irregular "I love you's" spill truth like a stream
                                                                                   run full
a tear-choked gaze in a sighing-room 
                                   tugging us to earthy touching

our commitment
inhabiting green-garden parts of a world
tireless in its defining
pushing past preconceptions
snared by the peace of pressing one to one
fluorescent part of gifted chemistry, 
                                              claimed

no soft need to nudge it
no drift to sullen limbs
a saga of expansion 
                  like a coal mine burning underground
where we live
an intimacy even in small tallk
truthfulness finding its bounce, prized like existence
                       still shaping days in words we share
                                                                       and heed
                       in words that pull r e c o v e r y 


Poem composed May 10/2023

Walking Cane

I take this cane with me
everywhere I go
It travels with me
from bike path to the open road

With my knife I add a notch
at each milestone
It is quite adorned now
for ways of only I would know

My cane knows that I travel
with the sorrowful blues
I strum it like a guitar
and belt out some notes, a few

You could say this walking cane
define me
But I say it's my friend
from what I can see

As for the notches...
they are my angels and my demons
speaking to my walking cane
over all the past seasons

Sunday, May 7, 2023
Poem inspired by Joe Bonamassa's song Notches

The Most Popular Beverage In Spiceland

Can you name the President of Guatemala
    How 'bout the islands off the coast of Sahara
  Would you happen to know the currency of Iceland
    And what about the most popular beverage in Spiceland 

  I myself have forgotten last year's Super Bowl Winner
    Not to mention what I ate last night for dinner
  As for my wife's birthday and our anniversary
    I quickly mumble something far too cursory

  So now that I've been relocated from the frying pan to the fire
    My odds of living 'til sundown ~ two notches below dire

Level Worry

My current level is ceaseless worry
Unflinching doubt occupied state of mind
Wonders and what ifs whipped in a flurry
My current level

Features disheveled with nose to the grind
Nowhere to be in the biggest hurry
Just to get there and wish I could rewind

If my own view were a bit less blurry
If common kindness were a common kind
I'd dial back few notches from worry
My current level

Silent Contemplation

When a wise person speaks, just listen
don't waste candles while the sun is shining
inspiration we seek is already within

Pondering complete stillness
blackness in the ears
Aloneness no longer eased worries.

Embedded into our stud essence
reasons are being sought
away from the awful silence
weary, thoughtful
eyes gaze into the calm reflection
stillness soothes mental turmoil
soul shores are bathed in peace.

Alone in quiet awareness,
all blunders are forgiven.
In pursuit of greater consciousness
to unravel the untied truth.

When outward turmoil has subsided
echoes fade into quiet
resound with harmony
melodies create a peaceful symphony

Into the deep, deep woods
marks, notches, and scars
so many rings
and connected vines
a ripple of silence

still not a rustle of trees,
skewed the sound of the wind
where it used to be warm and satiated
now there is only stillness.

Hush is a faithful mate who never betrays,
in an inexplicable lightness
reaching the desired goal at last
touching souls requires stillness.

Written: February 15, 2023

You Select Again Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand

100 Community List

Someone has tinkered with the 100 Community List
And it appears that you are still at number thirty-four,
Down a few notches, I have not booed or hissed
‘Cos I’ve been much lower on lots of lists before!
In fact, it’s delightful not to have the pressure, you see,
Let others get “put down” for their success for a while,
For I get no thrill from checking where on the list I’ll be,
But seeing you haven’t come up a notch makes me smile.

Written October 28, 2022

To Peace

The notches on a butt of a gun 
Sometimes make peace difficult to find 
For some take it as a credit 
To take the lives of a hundred 

When will all mean realize 
It's not an honor to take life? 
We live no more in the wild west 
Nor in the ways of the ancients 

Better it is to make peace thrive 
And receive our compensation 
When our children will make a life 
That is free from subjugation 

For he who wields peace 
Will live without fears 
But he who seeks mess 
Will die without relief

Waiting In the Silence

waiting in the silence
for the energy to run aground
yet what flotsam the surf gives up
it will have to keep
i always jetsom, i never lagan
Humpty Dumty, friends with superglue
are not always reality
reality does not always adhere
reality does not care

your freedom, illusions of the amaranth
i have no simpleton delusions, imagoes
i am afraid death the anodyne
eventually, every star consumes itself

Nemesis, my knowing smile
Ate, your mentor
she is behind the mirror waiting
as all ephemerals, you bore me
i enjoy the diestrus
remembering the notches, using other's vanities
every Blackwidow deserves a prince
the Prince of Pandemonium

San Blas   92   The Patient Stones

Anniversaries and Such

Circled days
hide their faces
on the far side of the fridge.

Dates and reminders
clog the cyclic notches
on my prayer wheel.

Calendar dreams
wake up far too late.
Ducks fly across a fridge magnet.

I hear the distant quacking
of a missed anniversary
disappearing
over a dimming horizon.

Anniversaries and Such

It is time for the circled days
to hide their faces
on the far side of the fridge.

Dates and red letter reminders
clog the cyclic notches
on my prayer wheel.

The calendar dreams 
always waking up too late

I recall how fish in a bowl
forget every seven seconds.

It helps, but date sharks
still hunt me down
when I mess up.

Laudator Temporis Acti

Methinks all antediluvian Love was
Whiter than snows atop higher tors;
And with more troth dudes did kiss
Purer maidens for pleasanter bliss.

I deem Art shortly after Noah’s Ark
To have been of better-spun spark; 
And bards of far more sublime quill
Did indite with stouter metered skill.

Niftier lines which Columbus hymned,
On virgin voyages to terrains deemed
By soil-tilling mortals uninhabited yet;
Such ditties do dim both fear and fret. 

Tighter Calvary Faith as Bunyans 
Prisoners fell in Hades' vile plans,
Wet-toweling martyrs' spirits bold,
Felt saltier with truer saints of old. 

Daintier Oratory and Polemics alike
Did with indeed finer Lincolns spike;
Notches less finessed minions today,
Such steadily sorrier contrasts betray.

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