Short Stiffly Poems

white sheets
  stiffly fluttering~ 
summer surrenders...

Read More

crust on water's edge 
stiffly standing cattails 
resting ground for geese...

Read More

Lying in bed
Streching limbs
Slowly sinuously
Gently

Snow is falling
Forecast is bad
Budget Day is here
Reality intervenes
Anxiety filters in
I get up stiffly
To absorb it all...

Read More

There on society’s 
stage of
social standards
stiffly stands 
a man timid
and tense.
With his mind lying  
in a world
that had never 
made sense .
Bounding him under 
the brittle 
bones of a 
broken system....

Read More

Stiffly staring
from a faded
frightened far
is a sullen
silken star.
Scornfully
scattered behind
it’s skittish
skin of scolded
scowling scars.
Youthfully
yearning
for a life
contentedly
cleansed in
candlelight....

Read More

There was a disabled musician
Who stiffly played every audition.
Now recording with care,
Strumming from his armchair,
On youtube he’ll post each composition.


20141113 for limerick contest...

Read More

A white out
A snow bomb
Homes snow blanketed
Whited sepulchres
Cars abandoned
Stuck in snowdrifts
An arm sticking stiffly out
Above its embedded body
Deep in  its shroud of snow
The wind howling and keening
The banshee's delight in its kill
With the thaw 
will come the count...

Read More

Six simpering thick-skinned shifty spinster sisters stiffly sit
Stitching sticky skid-marked scivvies of sixty sick stingy sailors.
Six sick from stitching scivvies of sixty sick scrimping sailors
Stickle over nickels; those insistent six thick-skinned spinster tailors!


For Joe Sandler's Tongue Twister Challenge Poetry Contest...

Read More

she's awake
                                    when she dreams
                                   a mistake i've made

                                               me                           

                                       just an old oak
                                       stiffly standing
                                      against the wind...

Read More

My poor dead frog
what has happened to you?
Jumping happily and eating
swimming the waters deep
you laughed and loved
dodged the cars and children
leapt on your lily-pads, smiled
you were complete
then I found you, free as 2-D
smashed and dried
lying stiffly in unmoving hands
on the pavement where I placed you
Snap! My camera says
You are dead but immortalised...

Read More

mermaid wrested her breasts on the edge of the dish
Her powerful tail gave one tremendous swish
Be open to new people, her inner voice said.
Who are you? Mermaid asked, fluffing her hair of red.
Little girl carrying calico kitten stiffly walked by.
Can you please get me out of here? Mermaid asked, her head held high.
The little girl snickered and the cat gave a sniff.
They rolled their eyes as if to say “as if”…....

Read More

not through the tongue and its wind-spray
or the booming chest
but through broken wings
whispers of ruined things
crushed
into a wordless tongue

here is a sparrow corpse
this is his poetry
catacombs of grubs
a wing bent stiffly up
the other
pounded into utterance
spirit riddled by flesh
blown through
a blare of broken lungs
not salted
on the suds of speech

but in the ruined breath
of a shattered prayer...

Read More

The men of clay, mouths dehisce wide
     Voicelessly pass 
Arms at their sides; feet stiffly tight
     Perception dull
No meager light softens their skull
Inside my head their voices scream
     Nightmarish dream
The words conveyed I try to hide
Menacing threats infuse my ears
     Two bare knees 
Oblivion, morass of grey
Lethe embraces. Here I will stay.

***

May 22, 2017
Copyright © Darren White...

Read More

In nineteen fifty one, brother Nigel 
died while mother gave him birth.
Folks didn't to talk to one another,
but bore their trauma deep beneath.

"Best less said," her father's words 
standing stiffly by her bed. "Press on,
my girl, forget the past and 
make the best. Nothing to be done."

Each year 'til our dear mother died
she talked of Nigel' s death.
She said she'd never even cried,
but did what father said was best....

Read More

A hollow whisper in my ear,
a voice that I alone can hear,
the soldier seen in camouflage,
a ghostly desert storm mirage.

I feel the cat jump on the bed,
but cannot look, too filled with dread,
people glimpsed and then not there,
vanished, gone into thin air.

The doctor's hands are stiffly steepled,
when you say you've seen dead people.
Are all these visions in my mind?
psychic/psychotic: such a fine line.


©Danielle White...

Read More

not through the tongue and its wind-spray
or the booming chest

but a soul moved by broken wings,
the whispers of ruined things
crushed by a cosmic tongue

here is a sparrow corpse
this is his poetry
catacombs of grubs
a wing bent stiffly up
the other
pounded into utterance

Rumi's spirit is riddled by flesh
it is blown through
the blare of broken lungs
not salted
on the suds of pious speech

but in the ruined breath
of sky shattering prayers...

Read More

Out in the rain the restless winds
now moan as winter's pale rescinds.
The flowers at the window bay
are silent bells that stiffly sway
while marching on the roof begins,

a riot of a billion pins
that shatter all my disciplines.
I clasp my hands as if to pray
out in the rain.

I feel the breath of pardoned sins;
on tenterhooks this mid-March grins
its unborn promise.  I'm away
to spread my arms in gleeful splay
and echo tales this cloudburst spins
out in the rain.


3/12/18...

Read More