Short Chafe Poems

Society’s shackles
Chafe and restrain expressive
Visionary art
 

By Robb A. Kopp...

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Shackles chafe wrists ruby.
Bars break-up summer skies.
Sentries snub a pained plea.
“I’m innocent” chained cries....

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Remember when you set your goal
You can't rise up a totem pole!
Avoid the chafe
And play it safe
Inside your cozy pigeonhole!...

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When all looks safe, chafe is at the door
Breaching your peace like never before
Its gruesomeness infesting your mind
Its fulsomeness molesting you more...

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Do you still prefer
The memory
Of the things you were,
Nevermore to be?

Are you really safe
Inside the chain?
Don’t the shackles chafe
When you twist and strain?...

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Z-estful
H-eart
E-xactly
N-eeds

N-o
E-motional
C-hafe
E-mploying
S-mile
I-t
T-urns
O-n

Topic: Birthday of Zhen Necesito (June 20) 
Form: Vertical Monocrostic...

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SAFE
I am praying for everybody being safe
The world is many times just chafe
Sometimes I am just a purely waif
Let's pray again for everybody safe
Tr?n Minh Hi?n Hien Tran Orlando September 17, 2016...

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In its grip,
each bone to chafe and grind

All joints,
regifted vestibules of pain

Motion stalls,
as swelling wraps each limb

Sleep the angry victim
—time’s revenge

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2020)...

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as i gaze over
the soft granduer 
i'm drawn to rows of violets 
the nectar daintily 
dances about quiet scents
of calm breezes
chafe and yet tempting
while i rise beyond
the granite structures
industrial past times
gently i wave back at moscow...

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Promises shift like
windblown sand skids over the truth
[omission doesn’t count?]
     unspoken untruths rearrange rippled dunes,
chafe cheeks, bloody chins.

A place is saved for you, oh thief of honor,
at the end of a long line
     of perjurers.
You are in just company....

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I'm seeping back into that place,

That place in which it is unsafe.


This place that feels no sorrows,

but only hate.


No anger, only chafe.


I am seeping my soaking body into the puddle beneath the ground,

The puddle that is muddled with eerie pictures and thoughts of my dreary sounds....

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Devoted Eyes
 
let my devoted eyes seek
to see you once more
to declare a certain kind
of official fixed love
my conviction is of the true
and my heart is chafe
i will give you charter
over seeing my heart
weep a thousand times
over you
and when i can no longer cry
and when you can no longer
feel pity
forgive the last wishes of a dying heart 

(fixed)...

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he walks aimously about the galleys
calling to a sullen expressional nook
unexplained by raw humor
of the chastisement. of man's bitter hues 

crawling beneath a mother's warm hem
he bestows her beauty as
wonder and wrath his rapture chafe 
and yet crudely he sighs motionless

to his surrounding's a poshed 
good evening awakened
the soundless voice captured
in just one glance...

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In an age of constant movement,
nothing is more urgent than sitting still.

                                        —Pico Lyer

SEATING ASSIGNATION

The pick ax and the magazine it’s true,
The toilet bowl so white it’s often blue.
               Too soft paper litters.
     Chafe is not for quitters.
The bottomless vortex, a witch’s brew.

                   11/16/2020...

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fake
I snuck into the party with an ID I hastily made
and stumbled, out of step, into the poetry parade.

In this beautiful country club, I'm surrounded by my betters.
I wave my kindergarten rhymes to show the men of letters.

In the echo of the learned men who came this way before me
I hear the patterned minuets, that if followed, lead to glory.

I chafe in those traveled ruts and I long for something varied
and I hope to spark a unique verse, between school and the cemetery....

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