Joints and tendons ache
Water works partly block
Teeth; gums you forsake
In the mix, the odd rock
Nobody prepares you
Suddenly, the decline
Friends not foes, few
You want to only recline
Like yesterday's news
You are now quite stale
Worth very few views
Repeating a woeful tale
Your pals drop dead
On goes the count
Next obit to be read?
As health events mount
We live together, but we live a separate life
We are more like friends than husband and wife.
There is no intimacy like there was from the start.
On the day we got married, I gave you my heart.
As the years rolled by, your love turned stale.
It was easy to see our marriage would fail.
I worked so hard to save what we had, but everything I did just seemed to make you mad.
You started going out; you said with your mates.
Then I found out you are actually on dates.
But I still loved you, so I turned a blind eye.
When alone in our house, I would break down and cry.
Always the last to know that you love another, but how could this be my wife and our children's mother?
I asked for the truth, but told me more lies you couldn't even look at me in the eyes.
You walked out that day with a new man and a new start.
But I can't move on because you still have my heart.
I married you because I love you, and I still really care.
If you ever need someone who still loves you, I will always be there
Lonely leaf afloat
Along the muddy eddies
Swirling, stuck endlessly
Its full of bankers and bunkers.' Tunnels are
Like holes in some cheese, it could well be
Emme-mental.? Or signs of a deeper disease?
Can i name it bunker nutrality.? Only if they don't play; in other regions politics.' Be they oh
So far away.' I get shivers just thinking.? Of
Whats on the map.? And whats being hidden
Do ever you think like that? Are you ok with
The clockworks.? Is tik-tok your scene.? Or
Do you smell a rat in the cheesefactory wow
That cannot be easily seen.' I've heard such
From Hoody.' And John Larter too.' I think it
Needs to be 'flushed out' now its over to all
Of youse.'
The first door I believed in boasted of the things it had, and I didn't.
The second one only wanted to show me how much time I had spent in a Polaroid.
Another door was nice to me but the nuts were badly screwed.
The bravest move was taking a chance on each door.
That any one of them could have been it.
And every door was knocked.
The next door might welcome me with the brightest smile.
But I just might have been the only one there to knock.
He starts with the natural order of things,
thinks
wash bedsheets,
been pushing chores aside -
that's just natural.
Done with saccharine,
from now on
teaspoonful of honey
at least until
the year-old jar
stops oozing.
Corn flakes gone stale,
the days fall out of sleep
way sooner than they should,
and that's hard to do - naturally.
Order comes and goes.
Mold grows blue bread
nothing last as long as fungus.
It's the predicable
that catches him unawares.
Nature chugs along,
small birds stop singing by noon,
maybe he forgot to hear them,
natural orders arrange
his face
for all the foreseeable day
then bored with its cosmic game -
leaves him alone.
My knees held tightly to my chest,
I thought the storm clouds were miles off in the distance,
Of someone else's distress.
But morning came, and the storm remained.
No water nor washing could wipe away the stains of sorrows
And restlessness from my covers-
My detrimental haven...
I could rot away here, the irony being I already do.
What treasures can shake me from my trance?
Little seems to speak to me anymore-
I have become stale.
Finally, my blood began to coagulate.
Disoriented; from all that’s bleeding through.
Trying to grasp the hand of my soulmate;
I notice a heart that’s receding too.
And now, one heart beats where there once were two.
In life or death I see no love that’s true.
Queen's gambit, denied
Life is like a game of chess
Waiting for a mate
Beat of the heart showed no rhyme;
vibrating without some sense.
Its voice sounds like a cold clime;
saying statement sans intense.
Note: This form is called Tanaga, a traditional short Filipino poem which is only a quatrain, having 7 syllables in each line. The rhyming schemes may be aaaa, aabb, abab or abba.
Why ask questions? When there are no answers.
Dismay that I am so blithely uncouth
As to bluntly say what is on my mind,
So, I shall blame the stale vermouth.
Dismay that I am so bitterly uncouth
To go through life with this sad truth,
It is necessary, I admit, for me to find
Dismay that I am so blithely uncouth,
As to bluntly say what is on my mind.
written October 15, 2021
Been running like the devil with his pants on fire.
Tearing up a rutted road with no spare tire.
Racing toward the sunset in a reckless mood
While the tension turns my knuckles white
And I grit my teeth, got no time to waste,
‘cause I’m still a quarter mile from a stale green light.
My baby called to say she needs a big, strong man.
I need to get there fast, you’ve got to understand.
Skidded ‘cross some black ice on a hair-pin curve;
Almost took a short domestic flight,
But I can’t let up, no I can’t slow down,
‘cause I’m still a quarter mile from a stale green light.
It could change to yellow in a heartbeat.
A change to red just wouldn’t do,
But my baby has me colorblind.
I’m comin’ through.
Her mother’s getting slapped around.
You know it just ain’t right.
The ******* she’s been with is goin’ down tonight.
Ain’t no Sunday driver. I’m a man on fire,
‘cause I’m still a quarter mile from a stale green light.
Stale the ale
Rancid the memories
in my pail
Bruises, injections
bloody reflections
A life thrown away
no more to say
Inhale Stale Ale Without Fail
without any fail
when much ale you will inhale
always seems so stale
Jim Horn
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.