Short Skittering Poems

Seems the train's as tipsy as me,
Skittering side-to-side on a ride....

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liquid little stones
skipping and skittering free
on shared umbrellas...

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brown head tucked

   'neath ruffled feathers

         leaves skittering by...

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skittering oak leaves
squirrels scampering about
seems winter comes soon

written October 30, 2021...

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My son runs like a deer;
Not the skittering evasiveness
Of a doe in danger;
Nor frantic frightened flight.
He runs like an alpha,
Prancing in perfect posture pride;
Like the ballet dancer he once was....

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Deeply   etched    crystal    doors
Stone arched mansion corridors
Family members country  estates 
Hounds skittering on marble slate
Clinging intoxicating rose perfume
Stirringly beautiful graceful redhead
Read invitation wide eyes little smile...

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shifting sands
riding upon the winds
gritty curtains

curtains billowing
like a ships sails
ghosts

ghost flitting 
on the horizon
dry leaves

leaves skittering
across the sand dunes
tiny lizards

ancient reptile
descendants on journey
living legends

...

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I feel I"ve lost a friend this night.
Released from her imprisonment,she has fled.
No longer a slave to this life,she ascends to a higher plain.
Without the weight of her burden,she becomes as a leaf in the wind,
skittering about care free.
Her laughter filling the air.
Sad that I can no longer hear it....

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It creeps

It creeps up and you pray it won’t stay
Behind me see it skittering my way
You wonder at its timetable 
What if it comes when I’m not able

It’s being following me as I remember 
And I feel eternity burning in it’s embers
So without rest it goes on and on
Smiling and humming it’s song.

© Paul Warren Poetry...

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Leaves are dancing in the street
Skittering with the autumn breeze
Something about this is very sweet
Leaves are dancing in the street,
Raking them, though, is not so neat
The limbs are now bare on the trees
Leaves are dancing in the street
Skittering with the autumn breeze.

Written September 30, 2022...

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I am 
A curious seahorse
Of copper and evergreen
Skittering past
Gaping jaws
Of a killer whale

An angry crawdad
Clicking my 
Castanet claws
At sandaled toes 
Gliding by

A scrambled message
On a cellular phone
With whirs and clicks
Baffling the receiver
But concealing an SOS

To look into my 
Stained glass eyes
Is to see the quiver
Of an empty heart....

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A whisper here, a snicker there
What harm could it do?
It's all good fun, there is no doubt
Except when it's about you

Be it skittering innuendo, 
Practiced subtle disguise
No amount of goodness or truth
Can outrun bald faced lies

To guard one's tongue is quite a feat
If you are often the kind
To join in a cabal of callous deceit
And possess a poisonous mind...

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Pebbles those thick drops of hard rain;  earth hail skittering
At the front of your mind growing, sloshing marbled and felt in your teeth
Scratching ache and unbalanced weight rolling forward to escape

Mud mouth soil that packed downslope; viscous vicious 
Damming down rivers the chest, collected tunnel tailings pressurize
Expanded space and collapsed place resisting to make face...

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Suffer harsh indignities
Draw your anger in
Implode

Lament not your condition
But instead your lack
Of strength

Recognize not your potency
But rather glorify
Your futility

Brutalize not your enemies
But the conditions
That bred them

Feed goats of iniquity
The putrid fodder
Of false pride

Accept yourself
As a failure
And your children too

Fuel blazing ambition
With fetid flesh
Of skittering neurosis

Die...

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Buttcracks and Bellybuttons

Buttcracks and bellybuttons
little people doin’ nuthin’
diapers drooping in the sand
stickysandwiches in hand
seagulls diving for frenchfries
children shriek at seagulls cries
skittering of sidewayscrabs
avoiding pudgyfingeredgrabs
sunscreen slathered Kabuki face
performing in a surfdancechase
sand and seashells, roundwarmstones
sunsetbeachdreams carried home


John G. Lawless
©6/2/2017...

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It has been a deep snowfall. Paw prints
and rabbit runs skittering on the white.
Ice blades plummet from tree branches
with a common sharp-tongued language.
I wonder what maps are used
when the tracks disappear
only to reappear somewhere else
as if the space in-between
had lost its way.
The crackle under boot prints
is too loud,
the sky retreats out of earshot.
Up ahead more tracks
and strangely they look like mine....

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dead-diddly-ed

you can't live in a state
of vigilance like that 
waiting
for it to pop up 

you'd die of stress

one of them was just strutting through
the living room
like it owned the place

i'm now sitting upstairs 

i yelped and dived out the way
the insects round here have been
losing 
their damn minds lately 

skittering around 

but i found the body of the gejigeji 
this morning 

it looks like i'll have to burn the house down now...

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Shoulders hunched skittering tiptoe on ice polished tarmac.
Racing down wind in tumble roll effort to rise.
Then rising in stem keeled soar of caught breeze
To sail in free wheeling swirl
Hanging ten on invisible wavering air currents
Laughing at still tied comrades all in fluttering applause 
While below a hundred others huddle
Waiting for a big one in cold November sun
A few scuttle away to hide in comforting bushes
Reliving memories of safer family ties...

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When the cavalcade
in all its bluster
surrenders a gasp
to mutilation,
demands for reason
remind the renegade
that independence in isolation
ensures despair

regardless of economy
or lifting diction
until cornered,
provoking the reactive dongle
to flair each lizard eye
of survival with fangs
or invisibility

while skittering
like scandal onward
to twist the
imagination of
every blistered soul

before finally
branding the fringe
of consciousness
in harmonic accord....

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