Staggered Poems | Examples

The Athens in August

The Athens
August in Athens is always confusing
I spent the evening looking at a white wall the moon had lit up,
waiting for the movie to start.
Staggered into a church where bearded priests handed out bags
of yesterday’s cake.
The elderly lady behind me got none, it was her second time
she had been in the line
I gave her my bag and felt good about my act of charity.
In the deep shadows of the park, I found a grotto displaying
Jesus in he looked like a sleeping angel, one painted by Caravaggio.
The painted Jesus opened his eyes smiled like an urchin
selling himself to a paederast.
Behind me, the nuns giggled and I fled this religious horror.
Came to a lone bar run by a horse that had fled a Russian circus.
As Alice Walker said” horses make the landscape more beautiful.”
I drank ouzo, she had hay.
At midnight we rode through the summer night.

Slag and Dirty Rags

A good thought conceived in the soil of positivity
making its way through shard and slag
finding its way home into the heart.
The slag is cleverly staggered and thickening
filled with thorns and snags and dirty rags
The good thought forced to play pachinko 
with a venomous society.

Battered, fanged and chipped
the good thought's ragged journey end
has it found its way into the honey hole
will there be much of anything left.

Shaken Not Stirred

Mister Milligan Funk

A Dad and a Deacon

Went on a massive drunk

Relatively speaking

He staggered to and fro

From bar to bar he went 

But soon he had to go 

With all his money spent

Talk about unlucky

As he was heading home 

Passed out in Kentucky 

But woke up drunk in Gnome

Halos In the Mist

Halos In The Mist 
Golden rings of dim lights. 
Soon to fade after dawn from night. 
Cobblestones staggered down a crooked path astray. 
Halos in the mist acknowledge a mystery. 
Haunted places with roaming ghosts. 
Halos to lemon quartz allures. 
Fluent lights circles. 
Take a stroll in the abandoned dark. 
Just pondering past vivid shadows. 
With loneliness all around. 
Do you ever look up and wonder? 
Maybe halos guide us in the dark.

Reach for Eternity

      Reach for the eternal urged my brain
         Beauty’s a battle; kisses, marathons
       
      Butterflies flee their cocoons, wings wet in June
         A love song’s a tease, waning with the moon…

      Shouts surreal overwhelm eternity 
         ~ staggered by uncertainty

Tilting Decks

The year I became seasick
I lived in a bungalow on the edge
of a wilderness moor.

The sky and land
grappled together
for supremacy of my soul,
Inner dogs whined,
my eyes were portholes
where cats watched
the turbulent dance
of garbled mind waves.

I had to leave a wife,
but knew I could not swim,
couldn't drown, nor float.
I stumbled across high wind-woven gorse,
ghosts crying through my hair.

in the end,
the crashing sound of breakers
smashing against cliffs
made me vomit, I staggered
choking still
into a pathless night.

A cloud garden had to
wither and bloom,
toes had to learn to grip
ever shifting sands.

Time whittles,
it sharpens the bones of your throat
until you can consume
the stale and the fresh,
while riding a moon crazed
rocking-horse.

Palatable Unpalatability

Are my thoughts too loud,
Does the breeze of my breath graze your skin in the heat of summer?
And my hands cling too tightly that your palms sweat,
And you count the seconds until I notice?
Do my words come out staggered and awkward-
Far apart and yet too close,
And do I linger far too long for hands held too stiff for an applause? [one that won’t occur]

Do you like me kinder, sweeter and quiet?
Am I preferred to lie in the heat of battle, 
And to falter at rejection? [Whilst known I did]
Is it not okay to stand too quickly, [After being paddled down]
Or am I meant to bow to the sun whilst turning my back on the moon,
Meant to favour right over left,
Sand on my blistering palms instead of the fields used to roam,
And thank the lord that I have hands at all.


When my skin starts to peel, [Under pounding heat]
Are my lips then parted justifiably?

When my eyes start to dry,
And my throat starts to ache, [Parched, unlike before]
Are my rights there undeniably?

Is there proof of humanity,
Under rubbled buildings?
Are our bones a remnant of life
Or do we lie there undefinably.

I HEARD DEATH WHISPERING MY NAME

In the shallows of junkyard avenue
Where fiery-red stallions are mounted by devils
And desolation is your last cigarette

I staggered from the weight of her kiss
As distant cannons sounded
And angels sought shelter
Fear is often the lonesome traveler
And I drank from her cup, hungrily, thirsty

She was my sustenance, my manna from heaven
And I courted her with both wine and sweet song
I lived in her dead embrace
And never tired of her hot breath on my flesh

A man can bookmark his soul with a thousand
wounds
Yet never own a dream
I left her a rose and words that I can no longer
remember
In the hidden places; on the darkest of nights
She whispers still

Blue Cheese and Old Pickles

I fought the good fight, yet still I lost
and you stood in brackish silence
with bitter reward in briny eyes
proffering spiny frowns
shoulders crumbled with aging ache
and brow dimpled with sour failure
I staggered dragging the last crumbs
through the madness of a blue funk

The trouble with me

The trouble with me, besides what you've seen
is the way I get drunk on your eyes and slit my
wrists to the way you smile in your sleep.
Should have known this love would be my
damnation.
The passion behind every kiss were figments of a
jaded imagination.
So I play my music on this old dirt road,
While I smoke something dangerous.
Anything to take away this hopeless rose, once our
love that's wilted and fallen on to the pavement.
I'll forever remember those moments where time
somehow stood still.
The way my heart would skip beats,
Such a euphoric thrill.
Suffice it is to say I've gone through a change.
A metamorphosis made in a patchwork of rage.
Tired of playing these games I call it a day, drifting
off to the abyss in staggered and dazed.
Maybe to see a path to a better future the next time
that I wake.

Its too much

I could  be your clown
if you wanted me to be
tell you a joke on a rainy day
Id do anything for a laugh
Jump up and down
make funny faces
Tell you Nursery rhymes in Spring
Build you a Snowman in Winter
Id even swing on the washing line
I could be your best friend
Life is sad
Its too staggered
like butterflies wings
in air turbulence
it is too grievous

Untitled

there was a young man named Dennis
who staggered from a pub in Ennis
he thought he boarded a train
but woke up on a plane
and found he was headed to Venice

A Drunken Journey

Drunk and kinda tipsy, I stumbled lost and
into the enticing embrace of a fair maiden.

She enchants me with her sensuality—
Oh, my total surrender is inevitable now.

Captivated by her luscious lips
Entangled in her aromatic tresses
I staggered across her twin jutting hills
through lush rolling meadow
past her passionate plateau
leading me down a ravine 
to her warm well of life
from which I drank to my heart’s content…

By and by, I came back to my senses.

Summer Never Mattered

     Limp from the sweat 
       of a sweltering Summer
     we staggered into Fall
   
     fanned by cooling breezes ~
       Summer never mattered at all

Family Tree

Looking past and long ago
trails of names come trickling down
down they come
through the annals of time
their names defined
neatly arranged, in staggered lines.

Forgotten lists of greats and grands
silent, as their memories stand
in the past, immortal bands.

Family trees are carefully writ
down into the logs they go
mothers, fathers reap and sow
bearing children, they bestow
offspring issued in straight rows.

Trailing down to you and I
here we love, we laugh, we cry
living, breathing, this our lives
mortal we, until we die
adding to the rows inscribed.

• Short Staggered Poems
• Famous Staggered Poems
• Best Staggered Poems
• Read Staggered Poems
• Long Staggered Poems
• Staggered Quotes