Preliminaries Poems | Examples


List of Member Poems

Premium Member Whatever

Let it whatever, be!
You can't change chance!
Only conjure its preliminaries.
Cited in will, maybe!

Premium Member Halloween Night

Halloween night is supposed to be scary
Peopled by spooks and goblins, most of them hairy  
     But where I come from it's quite festive and merry
     Sugarplums dancing, accompanied by faeries

Then there's the time-honored custom of trick-or-treating
'Course, as any trick-or-treater will tell you, it's all in the eating
     But where I'm from we dispense with the preliminaries
     Just one thing on our itinerary -- confectioneries

Now as to the matter of witches on broomsticks, cackling high overhead
And the spirits and ghosts that allegedly rise up from the dead
     We don't subcribe to that spooky nonsense
     What we do is burn incense and sniff frankincense

Not to leave out the garish jack-o-lanterns' macabre grins
The eerie haunted houses with their swinging skeletons
     Sorry to disappoint you, but we simply dispense with that stuff
     ~ In our nudist colony, where tradition's remade in the buff

                          
                            October 23, 2018

Premium Member Happy To Oblige

Old Jackster's been bad, so what is new
Been naughty since way back when
Really not ashamed to admit it though
Kinda proud how I did it back then

Girls all clamoured for more, more, more
Was only too happy to oblige
Not long after the preliminaries were over
I immediately hit my stride

Ride 'em cowboy screaming like a banshee
Those were the days of my youth
Now all I can do is scream like a banshee
The sexual part has gone poof

Still works okay when I dream at night
Been a while since I was a cub
They say the seventies are the golden years
I'd rather be that handsome young stud

© Jack Ellison 2014


The Last Resort

We treaded beneath the harvest moon
cursing the viper beneath the hideous act
that had left a man gibbering "Ave Maria",
too frightened to predecease his age mates
he lay lifeless on his death bed
a cosy platform made of fine bamboo
and his eyes spinned as if in a hex

drum beats acclaimed our arrival
at the abode of Sango the wizard of wizards
of course we had with us a black heifer,
snout enough to entice the gods
we entered the rounded hut willy-nilly
and quietly we fell on a Columbus skin
the accustomed comfort for the doctor's guests

the famed hermit displayed his aptitude
arrayed in mysterious amulets he looked creepy
and sure  indeed our ticks palpitated
dancing in circles marked the preliminaries
before moving on to palpate,
his already awe-stricken patient
slowly the patient was made to gulp
a mysterious potion from Sango's secret recipe
which we all thought tasted like tonic water

that was one of our visit to a warlock
and sure enough it proved fruitful
for the patient -that- was lives to tell
of how magic had beat science

Preliminaries

Rendition into the past, the blood stained walls.
The patterns line the inner workings of the mind.
Making these dark days bearable, and detestable.
Filling the empty space with forgotten memories.
Freeing the mind from the lack of reason, taken.
Respond to florescent light with shriek laughter.
Needing a day off from the melancholy, the pain.
Maybe not the pain…it cuts the boredom…

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.

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