Short Cautionary Poems

colors green, yellow, red
boxed candy just out of reach
cautionary signs

Brian Johnston
August 15, 2014...

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A Cautionary tale 
trail and error 
Wasted years of
Needless drama 
ups and downs 
Failed attempts at
Reversing damage done...

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Do

What you must

As long as

You know what

You are doing..

Which can and

Cannot be known..

A Cautionary tale......

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There was a chap from Queens
Who loved big bowls of beans.
He ate them with delight
Both morning and night.
Blasting a hole backside his jeans....

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Dinosaur-bird bones:

Dark, cracked stone wings splayed in flight;

ground to a halt, still;

victims of cruel, heedless time;

cautionary timelessness....

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Passions are a slowly burning fire
Keep them steady and certain
But once excited, stand guard
The blaze will engulf.

A cautionary tale
From a not-so cautionary male....

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Trust
true, unwavering
confident certain absolute
belief shattered, changing views
Strength...

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Words are the crumbs I leave along
The trail of my thoughts should you
Want to follow.  Some are rhymes,
Some are signs, one is, cautionary. 
Equal, too, the unmarked post
For without mystery there can be no discovery....

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There was a girl called Polly Esther,
the fastest girl from downtown Leicester.
Pre-packaged food was her sole fare,
For healthy meals she had no care.
In the tum for food there's room.
There plastic wrappings end in doom...

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Ditsy blonde mother of Red Riding Hood 
Sent her little girl alone to the wood…
Once upon a present time 
That would be a heinous crime, 
Mom and grandma for neglect would be sued. 

February 25, 2022

Syllables count: 10 and 7...

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Today a Poet needs to cast
  a hook with many tines

To reel in those who’re lulled to sleep
  with cautionary lines

These days a Poet needs an edge
  much sharper than before

To cut through all the excess flesh
  —that blocks the metaphor

(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2018)...

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Fake diplomas granted
Fake universities,certificates printed
Without academic trace.

Agents weave tales of degrees 
Selling fake papers for lakhs

Fraudulent degrees
Learnings sacred ground defiled

A tale of Delhi's academic fraud
and elsewhere in India
A cautionary tale 
Where credentials are 
bought and sold...

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Paralysed with fear I awoke
surrounded by vampires feasting
Diabolical, my eyes provoke
Normality is decreasing
Now an alien abduction
Whisking me aboard a spacecraft
Blood pulsating introduction
Halloween alcoholic draught
Cautionary trickery dawns
Reality hangover yawns





Date 10/23/20
Halloween Challenge Poetry Contest
Sponsor Emile Pinet...

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An ethereal specter
adorned in starlight
and bearing 
celestial
globe
of 
star-essence
appeared to me
and 
revealed
the future...

A warning angel
bearing a cautionary 
scenario
regarding
human ego
and
Earth’s fate
at the hands of
human-created
androids...

“Imperfection
cannot create
perfection”, 
she warned
and I wept
at the sight
of the
indiscriminate
bloodshed.

...

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My brilliance is finite
Like my will to live,
I’m running out of light
 as sand falls through a sieve.

And as a life i fail,
My wicked blood runs black,
A cautionary tale
In a second hand stack.

My cries will cause a flood,
Giving proof to my old fear,
That between the cracks seeps blood;
Even mad ones don’t come near.

For a shattered self repels
And a sorry self denies,
Mirrors show no parallels
And none reflect my cries....

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Forget the cautionary calls for restraint —
this world doesn’t need saviors.
It wants hands that claw at the roots,
Sick fangs that grind old ideas to dust.

Ideas aren’t soft; they’re detonators,
charged and ready to shatter the silence.
You don’t repair a broken machine
by merely shining its rust.

The absence of thinking is a pandemic—
eradicate it like a disease.
Smash apathy with a hammer.
What we create afterward
is in our hands....

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Grandma what's a fairy?
A wee little person who has a passion for play
Every day.
They're cautionary
Not imaginary
Swift and gay.
Grandma what's a fairy?
A wee little person who has a passion for play.
Flowers sweet in our back field around the lake
Is their sanctuary.
Grandma do you think we will see one one day?
Anything is possible Shay.
Let's see if there are any in the rosemary.
Grandma what's a fairy?
A wee little person who has a passion for play....

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Halloween’s Drummed!

Alien vampires hunt around the block,
Seeking abduction, plus feasting on prey
No trickery  with haunt,  just a soft shock.
Serious tracking to Vampires it’s play.
Delicately preparing this blood day
Striking their juglar rewarded a whiff
Cautionary. silent.. draining til stiff.
Slightly paralyzed delicately numbed
Halloween vampires come for a short jiff
Diabolical? Some say its quite drummed!

Jeannie Flinn Furlong
Dizain
October 16, 2020...

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Solomon Grundy, Solomon Grundy,
sniffer of glue, when offered, on Monday.
The Tuesday was hash, a whopping great spliff;
on Wednesday took coke, a generous sniff.

For Thursday some crack, the dodgiest brand,
and Friday’s dope needle was quite second-hand.
When Saturday came, a massive OD;
on Sunday it ended, this hedonist spree.

In spite of the blurb you find on a packet,
right up to the end, he thought he could hack it!

~



 For Debra's 'Nursery Rhyme' Competition....

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I climb and climb,
This mountain seems to have no peak,
No peak in clear vision,
Though I tread forth-
Letting the stone support my wide feet,
I have waited my whole life-
To get as far in height-
As I have already achieved,
This mountain offers cautionary signs,
Cowards back down making vile excuses,
I silently force myself on,
My body is withering like a rose lacking water-
Though I have so many reasons to continue the climb,
Success is a mountain,
Do you accept the challenge?...

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