Short Splintering Poems

Swinging Like Tarzan
Splintering into my vein
The Poison Oak vine


By Robb A. Kopp...

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Forever Dreaming,
Crystal Dreams,
Shards like glass,
Splintering as they pass,
As I wake,
I wish to take,
One final plunge,
Into my Crystal Dreams....

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Heavily, darkly, cracked by light and
 splintering shadows, cracking,
   scratching out thoughts like
     sandpaper grit,
       popping on the creases of my mind....

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slamming
shut the door
again

reverberating
in my heart
again

splintering 
all my love
again

locking
the front door
again

opening
to my forgiveness
again...

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Falling embers

Splintering lives and

Piercing memories

Rage begets rage.

Weeping mothers

Enraged brothers

Martyred fathers

Widowed sisters

Pushing ideologies

My way or no way

Twisted metal

Territorial markings

Of a beast....

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rain caressing limbs
transforms into crushing ice
duplicitous destruction

enveloping trees
splintering Appendages
suffering spiral fractures

winter rhetoric 
cracked branches screaming in pain
imminent amputation...

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Screaming whistle
.   Start! 
Puck drops.
Clattering sticks,
splintering on ice
Crowd roars
Skates scrape, 
Sweat stinks
Ice sprays, 
Blood splatters,
Player down!
Ear splitting whistle 
.    Stop!



a different kind of vignette...

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Holding on to a sliver of hope
That the day will bring good fortune
Though I fear I'm at the end of my rope
And the fall below is grand.

Eye to eye with a final thread,
Splintering into sinews.
I've wasted my time to stay ahead
and dealt my own lost hand....

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Womb starts bulging oh no
Like a balloon you look on
As it bursts into life

Splintering my weak nerves on no
Pressing my nervous muscles oh no
Melting my bones oh no I say

Oh no, just not yet for this
Oh no, just not yet honey
Children are a gift from God!...

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 Lost in a hidden cave
inside this little shell
banging on the walls of glass
creating these deep splintering cuts
can't judge the person hiding
when you haven't seen
the tears that hide behind these eyes
hiding inside the broken shell
of a broken heart ...

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Starting

There is 
an experience of
inner luminosity in
 each of us..where
we need to start..
All out there colors
but does not change
our starting place..
Starting out there
starts with splintering
endures as suffering
and endless searching
for that hidden
way to Start......

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This bed’s supporting limbs
			do not sleep like the log
			they were cut from.
			Dreaming of that splintering
			they mourn when I move,
			remembering leaves 
			and caressing breeze.
			Now down for the count
			and holding a heaviness
			of flesh and bone,
			they can only moan....

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The sound was  unmistakable: 
   glass   splintering   
   on the tile floor. 

T'was my  heart  
she   slipped away  again
   breaking into  innumerable
slivered   fragments of love.

perhaps
one  should have
   a plastic  heart 
   that would  not shatter 
from Death’s  hard  blows....

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The splintering sound, the shattering
      of my drinking glass
     This put paid to my sleeping beauty as
      gloss
      But it was only my relationship that was 
      poorly broken
      Even though my heart had me earlier 
      fortoken
      But I have since gathered myself to avert
      more loss...

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Tomorrow marks the 
first day of fourth grade
We head to the doctor
We get weighed
At 40 lbs, I am in the fifth percentile
that's a good score, right?


My sad life poems have been compiled into a larger series
The sad life series is followed by 
Healing and hardships
The OK times
Splintering
Return
School
School and covid
And finally into 2023...

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The Path to the Road ...

... I have walked, barefoot,
the gravel splintering my soul,

I have crawled, naked,
the thorns piercing my heart,

I have fallen, broken,
the rain slicing my mind,

I have stood, bearing,
the weight on my twisting back,

I have reached,

finally,

the path I must travel,

to reach the road that shall lead 
me to you ......

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Window viewing a wall
knows no world other than
brick square against nothing;
laundry blows in the yellow
tinged wind. Flaps mimic
birds flying. Bras trapped by 
wooden pins, splintering. Grey 
points piercing smoldering
dust and fiber on its way
to the refuse below. A push 
from an unseen hot whisper
of foul breath smashes it
into a window viewing a wall....

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Sleep, Lord Poseidon,
Deep, everlasting sleep
While sailors watch with bated breath

Old planking creaks -
The pitiable, splintering sound -
Old planking creaks

Old sailor,
Splintery-kneed old sailor,
Keeps his watch

With ever a thought of life's futility,
Down deep,
Where dolphins stay

But Lord Poseidon never sleeps
And dolphins play.....
And play...

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Rata -tatatat, rata -tatatat, rata -tatatat
the sounds pierce the cold laboring day air.

Around corners and up stairs  they come.
Rata -tatatat, rata -tatatat, rata -tatatat
bullets pierce splintering wood,
and shattering glass, turning the snow red,
as bodies fall.
Off with their heads with a wood ax; 
accurate with every shot, a sniper's success.

5/13/2022...

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Thor's hammer strike sheds
bolts of jagged sparks, 
as misty clouds weep
and howling winds wail.

With thunderous booms
heated air fragments;
splintering the skies
with forks of lightning.

The heavens open,
and an outpouring
of torrential rain
plummets to the ground.
 
Despite the storm's rage
and ferocity;
amidst its fury
Nature's thirst is quenched....

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My broken words lie in tatters
discarding all that matters,

echoing the splintering sounds,
of this heart when it shatters.


Im floating down the sewers,
lynched by unknown skewers,

tossed and flung away,
into the bowels of today.


Still I refuse to beat my retreat,
despite the sting of the icy sleet,

and through the slicing rain,
I will sing a hopeful refrain,

picking myself up to stand again......

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Placid surface
looking glass
still water
 
Silence but for the cries of ducks
silverfish
minuscule reflections
of an almighty orb
casting its omnipresent being
onto rippling water
 
Undulations
varying patterns
splintering the smoothness
heartbeats of water
 
Boatman
ferryman - 
a carrier of souls
across Styx
deep water
 
A pathway to netherworlds
rough water
 
Copyright Deon J.H. Burger 2014...

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Familiarity
Can sometimes be
A chisel
That slowly chips away
At human souls
Stripping first the aura
Then splintering
The shiny, pearly shell
To finally bear 
The red, raw meat
That often brings contempt.


Sandra M. Haight

~4th Place~
Contest: Pierced
Sponsor: Rob Carmack
Judged: 03/06/2015

Based on Quote: “Familiarity Breeds Contempt”
Written by Lucius Apuleius (c. 125 – c. 180) was a Roman Philosopher...

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You always repeat the moons
in your eyes.
I will not drop my lids.

I was talking to myself
about the perversity of skimming
the sperm, throwing black rocks
on milk white daisies-
to protest against the fields
not ploughed deeply and scattering
the seeds in wild jungle.

One day panther will die
on his own, head down,
swaying, leaning on one side
and then collapsing.

No pheromones will come out
from the spent body.


Satish Verma...

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A Piece of the Miracle

I could barely breath for seeing
the light on glass splintering
what I knew of her. A bird on 
the wing, cracked glass.

She lay on the ground in the garden,
beak gasping for last breath, small
tiny breaths; an ending to a poem.

And the dog being held back as
he reached for the small feathered thing,
unaware that we watched a piece of
the miracle overlaying our world.

© Judith Vaughn 1/22/21...

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