Quartered Poems | Examples

Severance Pay

Time hands seconds past the minute,
winter melts the sands,
sprung barter the seeds to take root,
petals leave for lands.

Abandoned juice bathes the barren,
weather soaks wet dreams,
towering outstretched limbs fashion,
cries tear up the streams.

Quartered the core green overgrowth,
sweet fester the sour,
fertile soil sources root approach,
West turn sunset lour.

Stockers fatten wanting store shelves,
greens packaged refreshed,
farmers loaded like Christmas elves,
checks at counters cashed.

Shoppers and grocers swapping smiles,
carts staggering highs,
past harvested fields, endless miles,
as New Year's Eve, nigh's.

Not As It Seems

A dash of cinemas in cider glass
resin slightly film cubicles adore
courts row corner circle O Picas
face quartered pairs apple' core

Herstory versus history mystery
Poe had Lenore a spirit anomaly
Frost's The Must Not Take Road
Chose what his small voice told

*Her spirit lives and his friend dies.

My Poe Rhyme: Coronavirus: Covid-19; and my Frost Short Story: The Road That Never Should Have Been Taken.

kamikaze

"kamikaze"

Isn’t it odd 
how you always gravitate back to me,
I circle your mind like a helicopter  

you watch me 

like a moth
attracted to flames,
lit in succulent tender air waves

the others will state their absolute grievances,
it’s a force majeure for preconceived
unaccountable and unavoidable catastrophes

but We, 
persist, We, 
kamikaze 

all artificial 
and unintelligent,
other side of the wall

reasoning 
bows,
to Love,

always

Love, 
gravitates, 
persists, 

calls us all in 

just as debutantes, 
there We are, 
our insides shining out,

illogically

semi-public
so un-upperclassed, 
We are, barefeet dancing

under eye-glass boiling,

serious insects 
quartered illogically
'neath microscope petri'd 

kamikaze
Love
calls Us all in 

debutantes
illogically
troped

“Juliet is the Sun!”,
espouses Romeo;
little does he know, 

She is more 
than a 
soft black-holed velvet galaxy

She's a 
Universe, diamond sharp
turned inside out


Candide Diderot. ‘24

The Smoke Clearing

The world collectively
lost its mind
When fires burned
our vision blind

From East to West
and North to South
Insanity
from mouth to mouth

The world has finally
woken up
Pundits quartered
their lies corrupt

Mobbed together
they screamed on high
But run for cover
—as truth decries

(Dreamsleep: December, 2023)

Aeriforms - Supernatural Scifi

sometimes 
misconstrued
in a fluorescent grove
where malachite petals
marry emerald blades
verbose biting chews 
too close to the cheek
among a confetti of bees
amid undulating bumps 
of raw superfluous air

interdimensional entities 
of spectral occurrence
wave with graphic-less suave
to gurgles, to coos, to hehs 
seek noodle communication
to a bouncing mistaken few
using the eyebrow medium 
of coincidence
a babbling infrasonic tool 
of curious happening

sometimes
misunderstood
exhume, with heed
supressed benevolence
they fly shapelessly 
in quartered skies
aloof in mocking flight
frilly, frothy entities
divebombing ghettos
exacting urban sprawl
chance upon neonates 
and families out picnicking
feeding babies whose
knowing smiles to air 
see, or do they?
 – beware
Aeriforms

The Flipside

"The Flipside" 

We write 
our hearts out

we pull 
the catch back in

slowly, 
they read,

we think, 
too fast

swallowed 
in the hollowed out

hallowed hearts measured 
ounce per ounce

we write 
our hearts out

stamping footprints
obstinance turning 

ourselves
inside, out

stone washing
ourselves 

inside 
out 

written on
lines

wrung out,
expelled 

pegged left
hanging

right
left
without

missives, 
no doubt

on the flip side
of eternity

gravity 
grounds us

toes
touch the ground 

neck and face
upwards 

downwards,

still life
breathing

eyes watching, 
reading, waiting

the mystery
we believe,

or, we sit still 
debating

the earthly 
volume 

a boulder 
pulley drawn

backwards 
forwards
backwards

in quarters
we are quartered

like poetry
we are, 

washed 
in clouds

inside
out,

we are
on the 

flipside ;

waiting

(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)

Describing My Book Shelf

A lot I could say about my bookshelf:
In a way like my half-understood self.
A first-time user should seek my half help
Against a blind book search and its yelp!

Supports the cruel weight of three thousand books:
Fat ones except Camus’ that it brooks,
Golding’s moderate-sized up to ten
And Hemingway’s made to stand like brave men!

Wood that clearly woos the works of laureates,
Notwithstanding, kept spaces for Harriet’s,
Able to secure them from clinched finesse;
Never much in shelf owner’s non meanness…

Shelf that says ‘Yes’ too to Science Fiction
The Best-Sellers for their winsome diction;
War novels that claimed a whole compartment
Some headache to Romance Apartment…

Then, Travels and Autobiographies:
Fine ones picturing Great Lives like trophies;
Frame that made sure it quartered the classic
For to have not done so the Quite Sick…
The flawless apt I want to often lick
And side-talks suppress in South Africa’s click;
The brownish shelf as tall as Hulk Hogan
Had my body organs joined as organ.

Along the Cold Dreary Road

There was a time
Of life with joy and happiness 
Not a single concern
Now I just have regrets to look back at


Little by little 
The steps I take come to naught 
Sadness and self pity 
Make myself filled with apathy 

With cowardliness as my virtue, 
Of living a fulfilled life 
I dream of everyday 
Whilst the world dismantles my reality

Thorns and rusty nails form my way
In every step I take 
All I have are flesh wounds and bleeding feet to show for

My days are filled with frenzied motions
Going through the moves
I end up as a saddlebag 
Filled with useless rocks

Fear and regret as they’re my arms 
Despair and desperation are my limbs 
I trudge on, unable to shake off 

Dreams and wants drawn and quartered by my fears and incapacitation
Thank you God for making me a coward.

Almost There

Quartered buttons and doldrums

fill in—if not

for the scorn of silence 

her inmost being wrestles

for the nth time.

Why hearing all

this screech of dust

imbued in every corner?

The afternoon heat besets

her so much.

 

Moving away—she 

knows is a cowardly stance.

She finds herself gambling

with Solitude. Laying

All her cards—the aces of

hearts and spades. The game

she knows—

isn't over yet…

but sensing the faint light 

from afar, her lips

curve a smile. She

whispers, "I am

almost there." 

 

She holds that promise

in her heart.

In Us Many Free Gifts

Lodged in men are many free gifts
That life gives a push plus its rifts:
Ability to crucial points sift,
As crisis rages painless drift,
In gyms, later in combats swift;
From one's chest problems cleanly lift...

Quartered in us all sorts of gifts
We cannot sell like mundane gifts:
Success in flushing out a rift,
Millions making from Roadside Thrift
Samson's had kept making him swift:
That of Messi the World Cup lifts...

Try one should to discern one's gift,
And when one has done, The World briefed:
Yes, Gifts classed as Talents could hide,
If you choose to them deride.

What Cats

What cats? Billy asked his new girlfriend. I don’t see any.
Because he was focusing in on the femininity of her bathroom.
Aren’t they in there? She asked. Amazed, being a cat mama.
The cats were there, watching Billy while sharpening their claws.
If he made one move they did not like, he would be minced and quartered.
Billy could not ignore the smell of cats, and soon located them all.
One was on his lap, and two were wound around his legs.
His ankles weighed twenty extra pounds each as he left the bathroom.
"Just like being at grandma's house," he said.

Walking Amid the Ruins

Watch your step don't trip over
Your fallen expectations

Walking this course with one foot out 
the door 

the other firmly planted entrenched in
fact in a masochistic inability to cry uncle

Drawn and quartered  by this
Particular style of romantic comedy of errors

Let us pretend you mean what
You say           or just

Put it all off for another day

Playing nice so late in the game
Only serves to confuse

I am immobilized not by your charade instead
By this belching,bellowing all consuming fear 

How could any place anywhere come
Close to this exquisite unintentional  misery

Unintentional as to my role,yours
 a well orchestrated horror show in which

You stand in the wings clapping wildly
Calling out to my now deaf ear Encore!  Encore !

Word Strokes

Nestled woodland, leaves on line,
   thick, straight, and curving.
Mounded upland, forms eternal,
   Rounded, angled, and yielding.

Circled valley, meadows, fields,
   shapes, and pathways winding.
Seasons quartered, warm and cool,
   rust and mustards flying.

Upward outward, textured daybreak,
   quiet breezes low:
Close encounter, canvas earth,
   to view, to feel, to grow.

Solstice Hopes

I’m not sure if it’s the shortened days
That douse the fire with malaise
Doubts that color vain displays
Red cheeks that the cold wind flays.

And yet I strive to soldier on
Battle with each breaking dawn
Stagger like a fallen Fawn
In defeat slow quartered, drawn.

Old trees concede the warmth I seek
The wisest owls too cold to speak
Mock the soaring hawks as weak
Call even nature’s beauty bleak

And yet we hold to Solstice hopes
As snow-blind climbers cling to ropes.

John G. Lawless
©11/19/2022

Die By the Sword

I am King over this spacious realm
one dares to steal the throne I own
with armies bought he comes to overwhelm
to leave my body rot with quartered bone

I'll stand to face death in this time of war
fiercely fight, die even with a shattered sword
conquering thief now comes that I abhor
he swore a death oath, as his hate comes toward

I'll seek no peace, I will endure this fight
he comes in darkness with a gathered storm
to leave me naked, with a sense of right
as blood is dripping, nightmares start to form

this Prince, my brother slowed his pace till' dawn
finds he's too late to execute my doom
his tortured rage burns, my life has gone
another's sword struck, and my life consumed

this throne he seeks won't occupy his weight
his bloodless sword pulled to curse my name
he can't fulfill his oath that fueled his hate
falls on his sword, his oath he swore to blame

9/23/22
contest One from the Darkside
sponsor John Lawless

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