Short Rootless Poems

Poker Friends

poker faces of those closest
are the last ones you will notice
but once you do
the friendship's through
lying dead and rootless

Rain Sprouts

RAIN   SPROUTS



Bus stop, rain starts

Lines of umbrellas sprout

Like mushrooms

Rootless, they can

Appear any place

After raindrops

Funny Gifted Grins

FUNNY GIFTED GRINS

Host
Post

lifted
gifted

prize
lies

beneath
buckteeth

face
base

toothless
rootless

grin
akin

smiling
styling


3/16/18
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. ©

Unsaid

moods unfurl
without ceasing,
back and forth,
rootless
trembling
transparent..yet
apparent:
ignited by a look
smile or word:
suddenly rising
to crescendo,
this maverick
who hides within,
ever longing
to be without

The Task In the Dark

Fill in the dark gaps.
                                                              
                                                             In face of adversity.

                                            You are rootless, too.

The Forest Gift

The tree was cut and roped by boys
Who brought it home to guard the toys
And treasures stacked up round its rootless base:
The pine has found an indoor resting place.

And underneath the tree are set 
The gifts of Christmastide for yet
Another year and tree have come to mark
His birth, with fragrant needles, cones and bark.

Stone

Migration

Generations from the past, sailed over seven seas.
   Leaving ancient roots behind, to thrive on foreign fields.
   Spreading wide their branches, formed worldwide family trees.
   Once welcomed mass migration, increasing harvests yields.
   Today like rootless tumbleweeds, war's made them refugees.

   1/ 4/ 2017.

    NA the day away  Poetry Contest.

The Roots of Time

Stone cracks itself when the immovable
is broken by pain.
Stone trees grow in stone locked caves.
All that is not stone wanders rootless,
yet they abide in that same furnace of time
that has long shaped the stones.
Stone outlives,
unlike we who walk upon it.
On that last day
stone will have outpaced
the bones
of the fastest horse.

Poets

POETS

Seems we be a restless,
often rootless, band
we poets.
Annuals
bursting forth
in fullness
only to fade,
blown away
on fickle winds.
Stringless kites
anchored
in the ethereal.
Voices adrift
on the mind’s
muse.
Tumbleweeds
in torment
pursued
by the winds
of our future.


©2/18/2018

submitted to – CONTEST NO 400
sponsor – Brian Strand

Empty Shells

Empty shells I find on the beach
     can be looked at in two ways.
 In one aspect, they are seeds of death -
    the only tangible remains of once-living creatures
        now planted randomly in the sand,
but also it can be said that
     rootless - they still blossom beneath the sun
with their beautiful spiraled patterns
         as flowers from the sea.

Living a Vagabond Life

Huddle in a corner of an opened boxcar
rolling through meadows and golden  crops
In the melting gloom sits a vagabond 
who's clothes are caked in congeal, odour, filth.

A wandering existence
a choice of rootless alienation
waves goodbye, goodbye to
smoldering embers of outrage.

9/24/2017


Form V - Verse Me A Poem
Sponsor: Broken Wings
Theme - 1.  Vagabond

The Unwinding Shroud

A tapestry lightly stitched,
a Turin shroud of time.

It is a vision of our birth and crucifixion.
a Jesus still ascending
while travelling our own via Dolorosa.
I glimpse of a Christhood rising
within both I and you.

Now the weave unwinds,
threads twist in a rootless wind.

Father, a spool of memories is unravelling
is it a nativity or an extinction?

Linen soaked in life or death
stains the same.

Sea Flowers

sea flowers
blossoming on beaches
gathered for use as decorations

sea creatures
rising up from oceans
drift on tides. . . dying on coastal land

seeds of death
are empty shells on sand. . . 
but how lovely their spiraled patterns

sea flowers
beautiful rootless blooms
remain so. . .  not wilting in the sun

Written 3/4/12  by Andrea Dietrich
for nette onclaud's 
 PARALLELOGRAM DE CRYSTALLINE Poetry Contest

Inklings

They are the “inklings”
Of a thought
Taking form
Faint etchings
Slowly scrawled
Scratched out
Born again
In halting hope.

A matrix of dots
Roaming an arid plain
Searching
For shape, form
and purpose
constrained
within edgeless boundaries.

Inklings,
Children of thought
Feeding on the rootless
Scrub grass
Of ancient strictures
Smearing their frustrations
On the castle walls.

John G. Lawless
©4/12/2023

The Lost Tooth

she is felt still

a tongue tip
recalls her grave
it speaks tenderly

i had her crowned
yet such a royal regalia
did not suit
her innate modesty

she was a tireless waitress
who served up
treats and sugars
with a candied Mona Lisa smile

a love lost is not rootless
yet it must speak from a hollow filling
the heart of which
turns upon cavities of regret

decades later
i eat
these empty words

yet still enjoy them

Voices

The wind has emptied its spectral graves.
Wingless birds sing.
Raccoons climb through trembling throats.
Cats no longer hunt but howl.
Lights flicker, minds darken,
Hands grow pale in the lowering clime.
Ghost are seeking, but what?
Perhaps they search for the root
of we rootless beings,
that ancient vine
that binds us to the wine of life
while the wind only sings
of lost and empty things,
chaff and husks
in the tempests mouth.

Rootless Freedom

Reflection of a past is lingering in mind
Illegal was religion and Gods were not so kind

So THEY demolished faith, put Churches upside down
and built a monster palace for a self-elected clown

As I kneel softly, slowly, on rootless Nature's beauty
To quench my thirst for Freedom hindsight's my heart's duty

To pray for souls of parents as they rest on roots of love
I clean my face with water, drink Freedom like a dove...

www.scripca.com

Traveller

Traveller camp not by me 
for the 
night
I am but a barren and 
rootless 
tree
Stranger repose not your 
bones at my site.
For the dream you seek out 
is not 
with me
The troubles you flee from I 
have 
my own
The warmth that you crave 
for I 
cannot be.
Move on for with me you 
are 
still alone
My shade you could take 
but I 
bear no fruits
Nor host bee hives to be 
victuals for none
Beyond are grapes and 
many shaded roots.

Sahara Doom Scape

I.

Whitening sands upmirror desert glare,
Glinting, underneath my mind’s burnt sun…
Paling, dream expanse.
And there I wander, rootless in some Netherwhere—
Mental vagabond, my trek begun…
Picaresque romance!

II.

Whitening bones appear by poison springs,
Dread oasis, tempting me to drink.
Shining, silver pool,
Mirage aglow.  A maiden floats on glassine wings—
Beckoning me toward the toxic sink.
Reckless, I sip cool
Blighted waters.  Thirsty fool.

Voices

The wind has emptied its spectral graves.
Grounded birds sing of wings.

Raccoons climb the sounds of trembling throats.
Cats no longer hunt but howl at nothing seen.
Lights flicker, minds darken,
hands grow pale in the lowering clime.

Are ghosts seeking themselves?
Perhaps they search for we rootless beings,
while the wind duets and croons
of lost and empty things.

Are we chaff and husks
in the tempests mouth - no,
it just feels that way

and this day’s voices speak of it.