Nub Poems | Examples

Toupee

Toupee, or not toupee,
that is the question:
whether 'tis nobler on the head
to suffer the slings and arrows
of outrageous alopecia
or to take wigs against a sea of baldness,
wear them as a buffer,
the whips and scorns stem,
and by opposing end them.
Ay, that's the nub.

With apologies to William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Synthetic

Micro-Nano Particles
Superior To Native Sand
In Resolve And Integrity

Settle In Every Vacant Cavity
Gorge In Every Innocent Orifice
Buttery Fill Every Nookity Cranny...

Until All The Natural Organics
Have Eaten Their Own
Down To This Giant Nub...

Fossil Reality
Modeled Strong-
To Outlast Desire.

-Gray Squirrel

06-19-2025

Trees of Existence

A Tiny seed,

Planted inside of Me.

Long Before I Grew to be,

This branch of reality.

Anchored in Eternity,

About to come out.

A Tiny little Sprout,

Being tossed about.

The winds of Change,

Strengthen the Core.

Lengthening its story,

Exploring it's territory.

Roots Replenishing,

Nurturing Within.

As little leaves,

Gather their green.

Experiences in the breeze,

Reaching with Ease.

A little tease,

Arising Ideas.

Abstract and real,

A nub is revealed,

Sealing the deal.

The path is real,

Energy returns to It's roots,

Matching up the Truths,

Found in its trunk.

Tossing the Junk.

Returning,

winds start Churning,

Leaves twisting and turning,

Branches Contorting,

Reporting back to Source,

Then back up to resume its course.

Strengthening it's Existence,

Like Trees In the distance.

Just A Little Absurd

Spending our time 
in life’s wondrous rut
hoarding the good times 
like a squirrel his nut
hope sagely nourished 
by ideas not yet born
the endless dilemma 
of the truly forlorn
the heartbreak and anguish 
of unlived dreams
deeply buried 
in our unleashed screams
spontaneous passion 
that dies in a flash
selling our soul 
to that demon cold cash
doing something good 
every now and again
appeasing and nourishing 
our innermost Zen
the yin and the yang 
the up and the down
sometimes a prince 
and sometimes a clown
rolled up together 
and melded as one
when it’s finally all over 
and we’re calling it done
the upshot of it all, the nub, the rub
the truly last word
will we look in the mirror and say to ourselves
“It has really all been just a little absurd”

The Wellspring Within

Water is the essence of me.
Without water, who would I be?
My wet milieu, a sea within.
Water is life's matrix for kin.

The ocean is life's wellspring hub. 
My cells are bathed in saline nub.
A bag of sea within my skin.
Water is life's matrix for kin

I live beside the sea, and swim, 
To worship water with a hymn.
Welcoming each day to begin!
Water is life's matrix for kin.

To and From Lips

        On our lips from the start
              to a nub that we seek,
                 first our mother’s
                    then lovers’,
                and others repeat.

         On our lips in the end
             to the One up above,
                through our lips
                   in a whisper,
       “Take me home, God of love.”

Mittens and Gloves

It seems some are smitten
with long-fingered gloves,
while others have love
for warm woolen mittens.

Like puppies and kittens,
cute gifts from above,
you’ll give ‘em a shove
when fingers get bitten.

A gloved finger’s fat,
not very precise.
Ungloved? Bad advice ~
frost bites like a cat!

But a mitten’s a club,
a stump of a hand,
a digit remand,
a prehensile nub.

No, I say what’s finer,
much better than both,
A techno-outgrowth:
thermal silk glove liners!

The gloves can get peeled;
those mittens can too.
Fingers don’t turn blue
with liners as shields.

----------

for the Of What Use Are Gloves Poetry Contest
sponsored by John Lawless
written on 12/19/22

Chewing At the Press Conference

Let’s give him the nickname of Sayles.
In suit, he does chomp at his nails.
Preoccupied schlub
gnaws down to the nub.
A shame as he chews at details.

7/14/2022

Wow! True story!

Trees Weep When I Write

Trees weep when I write
knowing they pay a price
for each word, each line
each crumpled thought.
They cry as pencils,
worn to nub-like points
are cursed and banished.

Recycle barrels are not impressed
for racoons do not read poetry
fail to grasp the metaphor
of transient words
the alliteration of rhythms drumbeat
nor does the alley cat
serenade the windowed house cat.

An itinerant wind
may carry my poetry
crumpled in its pocket,
drop it somewhere
and by chance
a passerby take a peek.

And knowing this
I still write to sate
the insatiable appetites
of a guileless muse
for she knows not of the trees
or the oceans
lest I explore them for her
with her, because of her.
For we are lovers
of places only we can go
feelings only we can share
moments spent alone
exploring the blank pages
of poetic wondering.

John G. Lawless
©3/3/2020

Mother Is a House

Father is a stump grinder,?
a heavy planter. Shovel fingers?
bulling through onions and leeks.?
Truck-hands lashed to maroon suspenders.?
Head in the dirt, a blue exhaust?
trailing from grub-working teeth,?
hefting clumps and yellow ***-ends,?
raising clammy clay blooms.?
?
Mother is a house,?
most of it closed.?
Sometimes an upper window opens.?
net-curtains fly out of gray eyes.?
A girl-ghost locked in a bottle,?
?
She lifts me up on a dangle?
of faith to her bedroom.?
A mahogany night-dresser?
tucks away her dreams.?
She has closets, drawers?
where lovers doze.?
She whispers, less they all awaken.?
?
Outside, father crashes through turnips.?
Mother bleeds bitter-root?
from nub bitten fingernails.?
She pushes her child into rooms?
called 'buried-lost, buried-found'.?
The dead are everything –?
she copes not with the living.?
?
Later I listen to father grunt over her,?
as he spades a blinded moon?
between her broken fences.

Poetry's Grub Senryu

                     (Rhymed Senryu)

   
                         Poetry's Grub



                   Tired, worn to the nub
                   Part of a poetry hub.
                   Soul food is our grub!
 


                           9/4/2021

Grief

The sunset sets in sullen silence of solstice darkness.
It looms my thoughts, writhe with your absence.

Nub of anger and tears, it binds a maze existence.
It looks to take tenure of my heart, while rose thorns prod
longing your essence.

I'm so desperately reeling, it won't withdraw allowing me
to breathe and be whole, inching away thoughts,
the pleasing awe as you used to skim and feast on my soul.

Grief has no ending, it won't let me go; it's dragging me off
into its undertow.



4/25/2021

Grief In 12 Lines Or Less Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Line Gauthier

For Everything There Is a Chosen Time

For everything there is a chosen time:
     for everything, too, there is a season;
now in mid-life, and past my former prime,
     I seek to probe life's heart, to draw reason
from its nub; and demystify its rhyme.

     There's a time to live, and a time to die;
a time to be young, and a time to grow old;
     there's time to be far, and time to be nigh;
a time to weep, and a time to feel joy.

But most of all, there is a time for Time:
     for its fore-ordained length has a hidden purpose
that the Creator gives, a plan sublime
     that must be sought beneath life's outward surface.

To plumb life's rhyme and reason, such great depth
demands time which devours a whole life's breadth.

Hedged In

They are under the hedge, the elderly,
the silver whiskered. Threadbare possums,
frail chipmunks. The feeble,
squeezed into narrow parts of the day.

Her apartment is hedged in.
Her telephone is black, silent and Bakelite.

A groundhog comes out to gaze at the sunset,
some myopic sniffing, then shuffles back
with that stout rolling gait of his.

She forages in her living space.
From a window she blinks at the moon,
only yesterday it slipped from her purse.

Once she bought tickets, visited the young.
Once relatives parked new automobiles
under her sparkling windows.

They are settled, tucked into socks and pockets
seeking foods
unprepared for the present.

Paws hang soft.
Pills pend under bedroom lamps.

Some of them are under the hedgerow,
some unsnarl the threads of bundled quilts,
together they gum at a nub-end of twilight.

They will stay here knitting hours together
until the long forgetting finds them.

Mother Is a House

Father is a stump grinder,
a heavy planter. Shovel fingers
bulling through onions and leeks. 
Truck-hands lashed to maroon suspenders.
Head in the dirt, a blue exhaust
trailing from grub-working teeth,
hefting clumps and yellow ***-ends,
raising clammy clay blooms.

Mother is a house, 
most of it closed.
Sometimes an upper window opens.
net-curtains fly out of gray eyes.
A girl-ghost
not yet locked in a bottle,
waves above my head.
She lifts me up on a rope
of sunshine, to her bedroom.
A mahogany night-dresser
tucks away secret hugs.
She has closets, drawers
where lovers doze.
She whispers, less we all awaken.

Outside father crashes through turnips. 
Mother bleeds moss
from nub bitten fingernails.
She pushes a child into rooms
called buried-lost, buried-found.
The dead are everything –
she copes not with the living.
She is a draining board.
I am a basin.
Mother scrubs with red knuckles,
until I pour and curl
by her porcelain sink. 

Later I listen to father grunt over her,
as he spades
a reluctant moon
between broken roots.

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