Staving Poems | Examples

the winter blues

the winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight 
   Its icy tentacles wrap around me and squeezes
   freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite 

   staving off the cold is a battle, an endless fight
   it brings forth an assortment of nasty diseases
   The winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight

   these grey days cloud over the sun, having no light
   as the icy chill roam wherever it does pleases 
   freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite 

   my blood flows like a frozen berg of ice
   and into my bones the air seeps, then freezes
   the winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight 

   frozen raindrops form like dripping stalagmite
   and the wind blows hard, never letting up or eases
   freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite 

   thunder roars. then the dark sky ignites 
   distant are the summer days of warm breezes  
   The winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight 
   freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite

A Wardian Case of Coruscating Light

Preternatural beauty dense and thickly lush 
elegantly displayed requiring very little gush 
A terrarium bottle garden in a growing rush
staving deep with vibrancy and gentle hush; 
A wardian case of coruscating light, forever plush 
inside a menagerie of green plants falling afresh 
the intransigent resilience of this herbal flesh 
is both, a healing balm and a lovely garden bush.

Heading For the Hospice For Crystal

She’ll be leaving soon I see
The ambulance has arrived,
Waiting for another guest 
To take a long, hard ride.   

A malicious, microscopic serpent 
Invaded blood and bones 
Leaving this sweet young lady 
Ravaged, scared and ominously alone. 
 
Looking out her window now
At the roses she planted and pruned  
Hospice is her final stop
Before sailing past the moon.

She takes one final, languid look 
At her weeping bedroom walls 
Before they load her listless life
She does her best to stall

Those made to come and carry her 
From her house of torment and tears
She bows her head and genuflects 
Fighting back the fear. 

Knowing the end’s inevitable
Yet staving off all she can
Smelling the roses wafting scent
Of a magnificently more preeminent plan.

Postscript:
The young lady left this world today
Floating far beyond sky blue; 
Now nothing more to do or say 
Except God bless, “Adieu.”

Nostalgic Groans

Once I remember, I was pupil a decade behind
Nada flowing in my gist,but parent rememberance
Who toured, Pearls me a day and infinity
To be onto twinkle today's milieu
Oh a nibble was a villager of its effects!

Abhorring schooling with silence reactions
While genders groaning for being with
And therefore,crowns shelves eyed at a stage
As the dreams of their series term
I became limbo for the school-edges, frozen claims as the student
Wandering my precious days on deplorable doors
That couldn't goddess my further steps
The crowns-burden retired, which led them down.

Still nothing to en masse , instead of calm
Edged,my sphere swirling darkness the serenity
Because of my battering crown's words
Blacken moonlight mournfully to drag me out of it's aura
Hopeless,the crowns bedded off from the globe.

Letting me rages between ridges
Further mirth,astrocious astray beside the scenic colours
Where the screams is?
"Nostalgic groans would never refill
The hungry staving thy intestine
Dance down and shelves:for rosy you ascertained paths"
Alas!firmed should be I and flicker on your stamped!
For the next of my ghost-days.

Blues Therapy

BLUES THERAPY

She’d had a tough day,
her aging mother struggling
two siblings wounded and worried,
a gray day with snowfall, darkness
early and long
The husband knew what she needed
and when she started on dinner, staving
off decisions for yet another hour, he put
on Bonnie Raitt, you know, the kind of 
smokey blues singer that helps a long-haul
trucker through the mountains of Pennsylvania,
off the Allegheny Plateau, across Interstate 90,
and up Route 81, the NAFTA run to Montreal
in the hours after midnight, gears grinding hard
on the endless up-grades, wrestling the heavy
load on the downhill curves and through the 
lake-effect squalls, the tires, and the groaning,
and the roaring of the diesel playing dark back-up
music to the righteous redhead with the big
silver streak who carried his wife through
the sad, and the bad, and the good sure
to come
Smokey blues therapy on a February night
The Hunger Moon hopeful!
Winter wearing them down!

Note To Self

Encamped in the local IHOP patio
Doing reconnaissance on the butter pecan syrup
I discern its malicious, aggressive intentions: 
To march defiantly down Mt. Stack
And wage a ruthless attack on
Defenseless over-easy eggs

Acting quickly, I wield my fork 
Digging trenches in my pancakes
I flank the enemy, staving off 
This unprovoked act of aggression
Victory!

Only in that moment do I lift my eyes and notice 
A brood of young sparrows
heralding their hunger
The chevron of hang-gliding geese silently 
sailing to destinations unknown
Majestic Monarchs flitting 
stoically southward
And rival suitors:
An iridescent hummingbird and an industrious bee
Romantically pursuing myrtle blossoms

The canopy of cerulean blue
And all the life within its realm
Resolves my thoughts from war to peace

Note to self:
Don’t forget to look up

Bruised Hearts

nostalgia hovers in the night
candle flickers o so bright

bruised hearts craving serenity
for just an instance of infinity

bluesy melodies fill the room
staving off impending doom

a prayer in worship to divinity
in exchange promises eternity



AP: Honorable Mention 2020

Posted on February 23, 2020

Staving

staving off my sleep
it wanders thru the night
a mind of its own



AP: Honorable Mention 2021

Posted on January 27, 2020

Pot

In time we find light that was not so much a remembrance of character void, 

or a psalm of the heterogeneous unlimited focus-

or stance of staving off the news,

in the leeway there is no set mountain, 

or even the scuttled movement otherwise that allows the courteous to emote wisely,

topping out of something takes no drawbridge,

sleeping softly is no more calm than a stereo-graph printing interstellar onto a platform,

finally without the fives at nines going awry for our teller to debunk the checks we saw came late,

I hope for the favorite thing to be what doesn't unmake us-
but stays traveling down an endless moon at noon,

delicacy not,

rectitude forward-
yet always in knots, 

as we know we speak the language of our derailment of pot.

A Scraping of Shovels

When the snow arrives at night,
Blanketing the city,
All is peaceful, soft and white,
No longer gray and gritty.

But with morning, what we hear,
And there is no escaping,
Is the grating sound, so clear,
Of nonstop shovels scraping.

Sidewalks must be free of ice
And everyone so doing
Is not concerned with being nice,
But staving off some suing!

March 5, 2019

Cat Without a Hat

If I were a cat
I would sit in your lap
And need you all day long
For a cat is just that
But does not belong in a hat

A cats meow could mean anything
I want this or I need that
I will just lay in your lap
And make sure I get my hair every where
She sleeps all day and goes out at night

Hunting for her meal delight
Then comes inside and makes a cat box mess
Why didn’t she do that outside
She eats her food as if she were staving 
Hunting must not have been the best

Maybe I will stick this cat in a hat
Nope! She is the best

Nae Dinner Again

Nae dinner again 
Ah heard my ma saying 
Wit am ah gonna 
Gee the blimming wains 
We're staving ma the wains wid say
Shut yer mouths
Ave been trying to tap aw day .
Then in it stoats all drunk and insane
Dus ny even care about the stait eh his wains
My maw she's gone mental 
Shouting we'res ma dosh
Don't you even care ya bass 
They wains have had nae nosh 
All slumped in his chair 
He's drunk n doesn't care 
Wen he wakes up 
He'll even want mare.

Sleepless

Not so long ago, back when I could sleep,
I thought my life quite excellent, indeed.
Yet, now the task proves futile, for I keep,
staving off dreams where I cannot succeed.

And what has changed, you may ask; I will tell,
though answer quickly might be yours to see,
for, yea, it is true you have wrought this spell,
even if magic isn't known to thee.

So I lie in the heat of a blazing heart,
that drives me to craft with my failing mind,
writing words of distress that we are apart,
and words can't help wonder if I am blind.

Yet the fire itself is proof of one thing:
There is one of us two who know Love's sweet sting.

Written early August, 2017

Home

They painted masks to hide the lie,
A façade staving off an expectant eye
"It's who we are!" They tell themselves
A repeated prayer one seldom tells
And in the mirrors harsher glare
Are they disgusted standing there?
To play pretend with wine and gin
And faux aristocracy to blindly fit in.
Yet survival now is all they know,
Prosecco, lies and cheap Bordeaux.

There fear lies with the honest face,
Who though returned home is out of place
Adrift in this sea of listless souls
Who scream, "Wine!", "More shots!", And "#squadgoals!"
And under this fog a new day breaks
For morning joggers and their caffeine shakes
Dog walkers, fools, and 'ladies who lunch'
the ladz from the gym with a mortgage to crunch.
Living this high and middle-class life
Get a house with two kids, a dog , and a wife.

Perhaps I'm too harsh
Seeing survival as farce.
Yet resigned to its chosen fate
 I don't stay long in my visits of late.
Where once there was a heart and character
Now rings cold and empty laughter.
Again the banker takes control
Though better men have served us all.
I no longer wear my mask,
Why do you? I turn and ask.

Amy's Blanket Fort

Your castle has a moat
to mark for the unawares
the point of danger,
the change of rule.
My fort has a juice box

Your castle has a drawbridge
to allow in only those
who pass the "Hark! Who goes"
test and cause the chains
to move.
My fort has peak roof
for peeking out
and, on occasion
for peeking in.
But only for the Lucky Few
and only in the Lucky Few
moments when all is well,
for a spell. 

Your castle has 
both balustrade and colonnade,
meurtrière 'n its parapets
for staving off the storms
and againststanding and
withstanding arméd swarms.
My fort has a 
pair a pets:
this fluffster at my calf,
snoring and this stuffster
in crook of arm;
well-worn, with eye
missing but stuffed
animals see with squishy bits
inside, not these button eyes.

Your castle has barbican and portcullis.
My fort has a wittle wiccan.  Jealous?
Your castle has both crenellation and machicolation.
My fort has an introvert's narration and ceaseless cogitation.

Your castle has walls of
stone, long-charred by dragon
breath.  With dents by dint
of Minotaur and Harpy. 
My fort is cotton batting,
linen for winnin'
battles with monsters
greater than your gods.

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