Rectangles Poems | Examples

Gray Blue

Gray Blue, by Lisa Norton

Gray skies. Gray cement walls. Gray gravel. Gray emotion as I lead myself single file into the long line that yet again stands before me.

Yellow shirts. Yellow skin. Yellow anxiety within the veins. How can it be so lonely in a place so full?

White pads. White eyes. White teeth. Nothing is so white as when remembered. Purity lost. The white cloud has long since passed.

Brown plastic. Brown squares. Brown rectangles. Their corners are soft. The delivery of process is rude, yet the sentiment is understood.

Pink Polish. Pink nail. Pink singing on the neighbor’s radio. There is never silence. Silence offends the slightest offender.

Black print. Black boots. Blackened hearts. At least I pretend. No point when all advantage is taken of remote beauty here.

Red eyes. Red sun. Red uniform. Everyone face the wall. Don’t look. Do not make waves in this red sea of animosity.

Blue spirit. Blue thoughts. Blue as LeAnn Rymes sang. But he told me, “the skies are bluer”. Ahead, the clarity is awash. Blue days.

Poetic Podcast Episode 39

The feeling of a target on your back 
and a thousand tongues waiting to scoff. 
That’s how you feel being a square 
surrounded by a family of rectangles. 
You’ve got to be courageous to stand out,
you’re already locked in your reflection. 

Ever been the only one in the room? 
It feels like every eye is on you. 

The longer you sit those nerves stand up,
feeling simultaneously alien and awkward.
Minutes multiply your heartbeat spirals,
you want to run out but that’s too loud. 
Is it even worth it? 
Hidden tears begin to tease mascara
blinking back weepy warning bells:
This fatal audience will see you fail. 

Ever been the only one in the room? 
It feels like every eye is on you. 

Breathing through it is all you can do.
Have courage, smile, and just be you. 
We’ve all been self conscious, it’s okay.
Hold you’re head up straight and tall
Let them see you as the star you are,
shine on in the dark be the spotlight. 

Ever been the only one in the room? 
It feels like every eye is on you.

Leftover Wool

When my knitting queen aunt
Feels that needlework pull,
She starts knitting some squares
Using leftover wool.

They’re rectangles, really,
With colorful stripes,
Their patterns and stitches 
Of similar types.

Then when there are enough,
Using needle and thread,
She will sew them together 
To cover a bed.

If no blanket’s requested
By someone she knows,
To a charity’s stockpile
That handiwork goes.

Though some unattached pieces
My aunt did produce 
Found their way to my granddaughter 
For a new use.

Now her dolls all have blankets,
Two interests in sync,
Crossing ages and miles
In such a sweet link.

CLERIHEW tribute MONDRIAN

Colourful Piet Mondrian
clean clinical lines the panne
Outlined rectangles &squares
displaying bold colours with much flair

Shapes

How can we be expected to "think outside the box" when so many of us have been categorized, neatly labeled, and perfunctorily "stuffed" inside one, and have little or no idea what "outside" is like?

The world is full of shapes
That have no place in nature:
Circles,
Triangles,
Rectangles,
Squares.
Circles are pointless;
The triangle 
Is the only
Stable form.
Squares and rectangles
Comprise the obstacles
And set the limits
Imposed by the world
And mold the very shape
Of one's identity.

Please Limit Poems Posted To 10 Per 24hr Period

What kind of policy is this?
Who is posting, constructing or transcribing more than 10 a day?
There must have been a culprit to enforce this policy.
Some PREMIUM member was it?

I've had
A gutful of this
I'm going to triangulate 
My findings and then triangulate 
My toast
Mother used to cut it into 
Rectangles

Foxy Roxy
And some real whiskey banter
Amazing milkshakes 
But no 
Electricity at night
The contents of my brain

Delivery

Another package of books arrived,
Another cardboard box to tear up
Or stow away in the basement
If it can be used again.

Story after story,
Big loves and medium-sized affairs and small trysts,
I try to find the way I felt before,
Yet nothing seems to compare.

So I take the knife and cut away,
The cardboard resisting my effort
Not wanting to be shaped into
Useless sorrow.

Confused I keep wondering why all paper
Resists me so,
For when I take my pen to white pages,
The same thing happens.

My anger rising
I force it
Trying to make it understand,
That there were some nice parts too.

Water glowing in flamingo pink and tangerine shades,
Little tables in bar alcoves covered in spilled wine,
Sunrise in a quiet room with eyes droopy with sleep,
Desperately trying to sound convincing.

Out of my trance I see that I'm left with
Plain brown rectangles of cardboard.

That'll teach me to stop
Letting these thoughts consume me
Restrict me to only what could have been
Or was.

Until the next delivery.

I Feel I See I Am To Be a Mathematical

Prisms faced in circle squares
Forces preeminence geometrics spheres
Watts the matter scientific wares
I see have no measurement 
I feel numbers and letters
I see not letters and numbers
Just keep composing, and developing
I see squares circles in square pegs
Shelters for the freed
and prisons for the lead
I feel circles in squares, triangles in rectangles
I see whom am I to judge
I see have no measurement 
I see numbers and letters
I feel letters and numbers
I see just keep composing, and developing
Squares circles in square pegs
Sciences masses circumspect -preeminence
Am I a mathematical
What math whiz genius came up with this?

5/8/21
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2021©

Bookshop Bread

Mystique of mouthful aisle eats intrepid footsteps
Bespoke brick shelf scrapers muffle internet tweets
Eyes provide sole light source, borers of exploration 
Closed cover modesty encroaches on curiousity 


Timorous piled rectangles least represent symmetry 
Shifted to stained beige paged, folded back scars
Markers of importance boast creased corners torn
In enthused infusing, informed more with each turn


Tattered stacks of spines teeter, threaten to topple
Jostle in baskets bulging gloss tortoise shell crust
Quintessential bread for society baked concepts
Richly impacts soft butter, invites require no RSVP



       

       10th March 2021 
       Written for Contest: Bookshop
       Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann

Rectangle Pied Pipers

Technology holds us hostage
Putting us into rectangles
Our I-phones are our newest bosses
Deciding when, where and how we go

Technology directs our actions
Directs us hour by hour
Choosing our moods
Based on where he wants us to be

We read his texts, allowing him to choose our mood
Our feelings, our joys, out hurts, our passions
We are helpless baby mice
Led by our rectangle Pied Pipers.

Crimson and Ivory

tears 
on her pillow
refuse to dry
only her piano
                    knows her pain

sitting 
in her gown
her fatigued fingers
break her silence
                        as they weep
until crimson drops
                           stains her keys

yet 
no one
hears her sorrowful
serenade of  
                 shame

a fool for love
lamenting his
lack of loyalty

her eyes flood
dripping onto ivory
rectangles of regret

but 
they wash away
crimson blemishes
for her to play
                    vividly and vigorously

harmony of her hands
play away the pangs
                            of heartbreak

her heart knows
this symphony
                    could end in tears

but 
she smiles
believing there is
always hope for a
                        better tomorrow

Square

In school, in math, I learned a square
Had equal sides, so it was fair
To see it not at all the same
As shapes by any other name.

A rectangle was different since 
Two sides were shorter, glaring hints 
That it could never be a square;
Inside my brain that fact is there.

Today, though, in a class on Zoom,
I found out I cannot presume
That what I learned is still correct;
Somehow the dots do not connect.

I’d helped my grandson with his math
And led him down the wrong-choice path,
For rectangles included squares
When counting - caught me unawares!

Now math is not my strength, but still,
To alter what is mastered will
Into my credence place a dent - 
At least in rhyme I get to vent!

City Epilogue

Look closely at
the crows.
          At 9:00 p.m.
the highway ends
and hollow appendages
          of turning headlights
pet the tangled shag of the field.

          Dead-mute, perched in the
                   shush and sigh of wind through brush,
                         at the last turn-off.
                 
                   Background city crest
                   rectangles
                               are switched off safes.
                        Locked in
                                      dust,
                                              old exploitations.

Once this field had no crows.
Black women hung diapers off tottering
porches. Families
lived sandwiched.
Splintered door frames,
                      coal clouded windows
     and crooked bricks.

Now the crows are ebony raisins
of scrap dinner town
where only
         bricks of blight
           sunk among the weeds
                are
           cataracts
                in
                rain.

Published Black Buzzard Press - 1982

Pondering a Winter Dusk

I ride the bus...

Tilt a bit, balance-
ponder later. Yolk yellow 
and sky blue, chalk

grey paint. Steel
rectangles; winding parallel 
lines. Circles- Eternal.

Toothed horizons-
golden rose shaped sunset
tauten, its nectar 

steeps; blushes. Inks gnarled
columns of trees, dusky, their
limbs webbed crosses

open to royal skies like
birthing petals, feathery
in twilight of Spring. 

I drive a car...

Hyroid barriers.
Knavery fears. Strands cut like
shards. Glittering. Seamless.

Oily image-
tints of bereavement- becloud-
diabolus gullet. Shock.

Cruer pissades through
sea blue veins, weaving its course 
through the body. Left

turn, straight. Right turn. Stop.
Rotary-circus. Yield. Go.
Emblazen. Exit.

Sunlight through drops
shaking off of Summer green 
canopies-Diamonds-

imortally. Eve, 
Adam. Male, female- supreme. 
Insanity. Gods.

Brilliancy from 
inception of star clusters.
Time-worn. Creator.

To Delete the Programmed Brain

Awaking I find with a click of the eyes, 
Little rectangles all colors floating,
Floating and waiting suspended in my brain, so I
“Choose morning duties” – there’s an app for that,
A rectangle lights up, “Feed the cat.”

“Put on your shoes,” a link I click,
 “Go walking,” my eyes blink “, and I get my coat;

“Arrow down to ‘music,” blink (an app for that)
Scroll to “Vivaldi, Hum and be happy,” click.

Internal am I as I jog by and by, 
I see you--the eyes click “Greetings,” “How are you,”

How did I arrive in this awful tech state?
Trying to know all and be bright as you?

If I’m really smart, I’ll return to my heart,
Blink “delete all” and be free, and be true.

• Short Rectangles Poems
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• Long Rectangles Poems
• Rectangles Quotes