Short Rueful Poems

Audacious
Unbeatable
Daring
Rueful
Affable



(Dedicated to Audra, in "Words on Fire" by Jennifer A. Nielsen)...

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Woeful 

Rueful 

Joyful 

Hopeful

Though he looked so woeful, rueful, pained
his music was joyful, hopeful, famed.

Composed 05/03/2017.


2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 9....

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Mine  is a wild  spring step,
shoe heels dash leaf strewn path,
wrinkled drivers sour mien,
from rueful rush hour toll,
as sluggish cars inch by,
my drained feet moult traction...

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forlorn
     woebegone
in
pensive
    musing

this
    yearning
this 
     longing

melancholy
becomes
a
   rueful
     pining
almost
   nostalgic
       contemplation...

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Mine  is a wild  spring step,
shoe heels dash leaf strewn path,
I spy wrinkled driver’s,
rueful rush hour grim mien,
from sleek chrome  cars  crawl as,
my drained feet  moult traction!...

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Hazel mirrors glisten

In pages of tribulation

Taciturn apparitions moan

Designing rueful brands of sin

Upon the shaken sands she weaves

As she is forsaken

To drink of harrowing memories...

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He Followed Her Tail

and there he was flying her like a kite
onto her blue skies with all his sleight
his face's a rueful glow
he dips her high and low
pulls her chords and watches her flight

connie pachecho

7/27/17...

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Low and lonely, but not to succumb
Through warring thoughts a pitfall deep
Ireful, rueful, contort
This speaker’s blunder deemed

Subdued with met solution
Devil’s plot decayed
Ruinous intent aborted 
Blithe courage keenly resumed...

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In Memory of a Former Fellow*

Impressed forever on my rueful heart
By your virtues' sublime and blessèd art,
You will remain and live on in my mind
Till doomsday even after I depart.
2.15.2021

* Ebrahim Edalat-Pishè



No comments, please!...

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There was a calm to the sadness
rueful rustlings of passing leaves
paying homage to listless limbs.
A feral-cat-like silence stalking
warily watching the wind
smooth away life’s traces.
Doves cooing in a tower
overseeing a sunset’s tears
promising a too late peace.


John G. Lawless
©1/4/2019...

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An escapade from thought parades
A blockade of rouge descent
An oeillade craved
Rueful indignance
A room full of insects

A jocose allusion
A lissome illusion
A querulous reality
I weep where you can't see

Streams of dreams
Melt slowly, spring snowman
Abhorrent print
Why can't I just speak casually...

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My rueful spirit was gowned in a silken shroud of white.
Was there no chance my penitent cries had been heard?
I searched his pensive eyes for the palest glimpse of light,
then he wiped my tears away. His heart had been stirred.


Four line poetry contest
Sponsor: Constance La France
Posted: July 27, 2020...

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Eyes of confidence
Naïve and hardened	
Advancing on the battlefield

Eyes of anguish
Discovering the horror
Spent upon the blood of war

Eyes of hope
Peace in reprieve
Hold fast to victory’s color

Eyes of benevolence
Engulfed within anguish
Rueful to the melee’s victims

Eyes of regret
A human understanding
Shoveling over another grave...

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What did I ever do,
to deserve the blessing
of finding you?

I have done some rueful deeds,
brought the lowly,
to their knees,
so why still,
the honey, to the bees?

Memories of the past,
no need to trace,
It's here, in my eye's,
It's etched
on my face.

And yet,
I've found a door
never opened before,
feel so, so vunerable,
a sense, not known before....

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Short Verse On Stupidity
By: Tom
3/17/2020

“Stupidity won’t kill you but it can make you sweat,”
stupid things in our past are unchangeable of course.
Looking hinder at our lives oft bring thoughts of regret,
over rueful matters hiding there we've no recourse.



“I am patient with stupidity,
but not with those who are proud of it.” 
Edith Sitwell
...

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You and I 
 Are here and gone 
 In the breath of a lie
 In the space of a song

 Overturned and reversed
 By the force of a spell
 In the lull of a curse
 In the toll of a bell

 Instantly changed
 Sown or dispersed
 Our souls rearranged
 In a rueful dirge

 You and I in the rain
 Without eye or limb
 Dislodged and deranged
 We move like the wind

 Written by © Raven Drake...

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The only 
lesson 
 I have learned 
is that 
everything
was meant 
to burn .
Leaving in 
it’s ashes 
the repeating 
rueful record 
that’s 
always stuck 
on one track. 
Puttering 
out those 
once persistent 
fervent feelings .
 Which makes you 
yearn for her 
in your 
arms again.

But love is just 
Like a record .
When it’s broken you can never
truly get it back
 to what it once was....

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I liberated each letter from your body, poetry 
Just to ask you to take me to my motherland.
No one is waiting though; nothing  left there
God will shower His mercy to my precious sand.

Darkness is only the absence of light. I am not Rueful.
Felt concerned about your carved face on stone. Fateful.
I know not your mind poetry; I know not your precious soul
All I see is a tranquil peace in darkness.The innermost earnest call....

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The tight-rope of salvation
Is a straining, wire-taut strand
You inch along on foot-chafed trepidation
Defying Satan’s law of gravitation,
God’s balance-pole inside your hand.

Below, the audience is cheering,
Your equipoise of faith precludes all fearing—
Your toes assert their knowing, nimble grasp.
The platform, once so far, now’s nearing.
Step upon it! Crowd gives out a gasp—
Satan curses with a hoarse and rueful rasp....

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The tight-rope of salvation
Is a straining, wire-taut strand
You inch along on foot-chafed trepidation
Defying Satan’s law of gravitation,
God’s balance-pole inside your hand.

Below, the audience is cheering,
Your equipoise of faith precludes all fearing—
Your toes assert their knowing, nimble grasp.
The platform, once so far, now’s nearing.
Step upon it! Crowd gives out a gasp—
Satan curses with a hoarse and rueful rasp....

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The tight-rope of salvation
Is a straining, wire-taut strand
You inch along on foot-chafed trepidation
Defying Satan’s law of gravitation,
God’s balance-pole inside your hand.

Below, the audience is cheering,
Your equipoise of faith precludes all fearing—
Your toes assert their knowing, nimble grasp.
The platform, once so far, now’s nearing.
Step upon it! Crowd gives out a gasp—
Satan curses with a hoarse and rueful rasp....

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I still remember that October day
how the wind swept leaves away.
The noon sun glorified raven hair
how it flowed how I had to stare.

Painful memories refusing to die
for many years I wondered why.
Why cruel winter rueful and gray
bleak and pitiless stole you away.

Yet constant as the crescent moon
remembrances of love are strewn.
Forever I think on an October day
how the wind swept leaves away.


(click on the pic to preview my poetry book!)...

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Occasionally I look at time departed,
And nearly always with a rueful eye.
Calling back days of steps uncharted,
Traipsing through days, querying why?

Times that found my heart hardened,
Ahead of God setting my domain afire.
Prior to my psyche becoming burdened,
I was merely a sinner reposed in mire.

But something happened in my life,
On the far side of minds forgetting.
Cancer and the Master Surgeon's knife,
Tutored me about another blood letting....

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Lately, nothing seems to be going right.
Sorrow spills from my heart every night.
Try as I might, I simply fail to understand
why my tears gather like grains of sand.
I'm hanging on for dear life, but how I miss
the love we shared. I've fallen into an abyss,
and in the distance I watch the sun as it sets,
filled with forlorn emotions and rueful regrets.
I've lost my verve for living and paying the price
for listening to my sad heart's quixotic advice.
...

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Like me, she loves the rain
And dances with twists of fate, 
Her past, also one with pain,
But she came into my life a bit too late.

I used all my poetry for somebody else,
To a specter haunting my dark rueful past, 
Then she came in with hymns of wedding bells;
Signs of dim hope that love will finally last.

There will arise a better day,
May it be with her or once again alone,
If this is truly fate's new cruel play, 
Mercy, for I'm already tired to the bone....

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