No such lifeless heat-pulsed void
Nothing inhabits.
Whose unimpeded view flits
Screechy hazed away!
And mistake not those ripples
Creeked and grassed a-gleam
For a wind's own stepped cheer-beam.
Eel and snake out-splay.
There is a voice that wakes before the sun,
Not loud, not proud, but patient as the dew;
It does not shout like crowds that bruise the air,
It speaks in pauses—asking what is true.
It tells you when to stop before the fall,
When something bright is wrong though wrapped in gold;
It asks you to be gentle with your strength,
And brave enough to leave what makes you cold.
The voice does not command you how to live,
It does not flatter, threaten, beg, or lie;
It will not build a throne out of your fear,
Nor promise heaven just to pass you by.
It does not curse the world for being hard,
Nor teach your hands the pleasure of the blow;
It does not silence tears that need to come,
Nor rush the heart where it is not ready to go.
It matters because silence can be taught,
And quiet minds can be trained to only obey;
A voiceless soul will take the shape of chains
And call it peace at the end of the day.
But one small voice—unbought, unowned, awake—
Can stand against a thousand marching drums;
It matters, yes, because it keeps you yours,
Even when the dark insists you are none.
I am no bird—yet once I sang in cages,
Feeding on echoes, crumbs of borrowed thought.
My feathers learned the grammar of the ages,
My heart forgot the silence it had sought.
You built your walls from kindness, then from fear,
And called them love, or duty, or despair.
But winds remember what the stones won’t hear,
And names dissolve in unrepentant air.
Now, from your threshold, I unmake my chains,
Not with revolt, but with remembering—
That will is not rebellion, but remains
Of some first dawn, when even God took wing.
I go, unowned, untamed, still incomplete,
But whole enough to walk on my own feet.
Orders descend like sharpened hail
each shard cutting language to ribbons.
We learn to swallow pain quietly,
to bow our eyes before the flag of silence.
Walls do not need ears...
fear builds its own cathedral,
where every heartbeat kneels
to the god of obedience.
Children are taught to trace straight lines,
never to bend them back into loops.
Curves are forbidden
too dangerous a hint
that what dies might begin again.
Even breathing is tallied,
counted like coins in the dark.
Still, a single breath slips past.
Unmeasured, unowned
a secret chord that rattles
the cage of silence.
From that small ignition,
the world remembers how to grow.
Everything
already is
immediately
not here
nor there~~
A
dog bark
seems to break
the silence
also the cricket~
and the silence is
nothing broken~~
Search is
the initiation of all
apparent movement
a never-ending story~~
Unowned
thoughts are
plentiful
and seem to
cover the gamut:
rock-solid beliefs
spiritual soarings
awakenings
I and me and
well~
owning a thought~
Thoughts
of nothing
are immediately
gone~~
Shadows linger like tendrils in my mind
Nobody escapes the fingers of death
Rooted in your soul, planted in your being
Seeing is not always believing, it's deceiving
Captured like a picture, photo of the truth
Manipulated into reality that lies the proof
The entity behind the scenes, conspiring
Life lived unowned, the robot is tiring
Shadows never shade, shadows of your grave
The tendrils of evil are so well misbehaved
And nothing is all you can do...
After they have taken
everything you still have
a stray, unowned patch of sunlight
finding its way in and spending
a little of its time keeping
you company, playing around
your feet.
The things they discarded
on their way out have already
broken into bloom
and even the empty spaces
have become polished pools
waiting for the moon to bathe
its image in tonight.
But don't get too smug.
Tomorrow they'll be back
with a bill for services
rendered by the sun and moon.
Then, just when you think
that will be the last transaction,
they will issue you a bill
for each thought you have,
calculated on gestation time
and its estimated weight.
There will be no escape
other than to become a ghost
incapable of thought,
twitching inside one of their
computers, lost forever
between one and nought.
He runs around
Cleaning up her mess
Secretly wishing her
To let down her dress
...and stand
She follows him to death
Making him pay
Holding her heart
While he prays
...to god
They submit to rules
Acting like fools
Let someone else take the wrap
Comfort lines their beds
On satin cases they lay their head
As colored pegs line the map
...of a world
Unowned
Written by Trudy Schrader on 05-28-2022
Tom is stealthy and sneaky
He feeds first and ferociously
It may be his only meal for a day or two
He likes this porch; people leave out kibble
For their spoiled prissy stuck up feline
She is a pretty thing, but not to his taste
He is a Tom Cat; he prefers the more feral felines
They are much more to his liking
They understand the importance of living life loudly
For tomorrow is not promised
He is a Tom Cat, he is strong, he is street-smart
He is unowned, unencumbered,
A shadow that lurks around at night
Eating from the bowls of the prissy spoiled owned cats
My journey is no longer mine
Owned by
Deceptive roads deceitful milestones
And friends who turned enemies
Also enemies who never became friends
After so much of living
Even death is unreachable
But I've sternly decided
To enter the last mile with a breathless poem
With whispering pine-trees clouds and rivers
I'll seep into soil like rain wearing my tuxedo of dark verses
Wet in tears of joy and sadness of a few
Whom I loved with overflowing hurt I caused
Before I do that
I want to sell springs
Wrapped in shivers of winters
Except the volumes of autumn I've packed to carry along
For unlike the rest
There never was a moment where heaps of dry leaves
Had ever unowned me
Petal of limpid life veils the naked eye,
shadow and spoil refrains the question ideal;
asking not within,
without ---
dark night shines,
while day grins ---
The answer unowned,
unowned by us the source of impeccable enquiry;
seasoned for patient resolve ---
tempered and unafraid,
in fortitude stone,
alone,
yet the voices of many
(lead us home)
****Written in 2000, my very first sonnet****
B52s above the Aleutians?
It never was a Red Dread global mission.
Fidel was just Galician patrician,
and Ho and Mao were scholarly Confucians.
They wore those uniforms like horsehair vests,
to carve from abject nothingness an entity,
a national and regional identity,
ingredients which only coalesced
when nascent nations donned that soviet skin,
abhorrent to the blinkered Baywatch mind:
unowned, untethered, boundless, non-aligned –
but with Kalashnikovs airlifted in.
As Mary Jane moved in on moonshine stills,
the five-year-olds rehearsed their fallout drills.
Three words comprise the frame my son last made:
his soft "Hey, dad" to greet me on the phone,
his single, loving "Papa" with our last embrace--
and in between?...just Mark, the man to fill
a thousand frames invisibly in love
that clings unbound to arms, to blood, to tears...
who threw his hisory away unowned
and paid for it with memory alone.
Eleven years are here to testify
the sweetness in the settlement was not
enough, that though the picture glows
with spirit timelessness, it shuns the touch,
the laughter, the uncertainty that spears
the mind, seizes on the unexplored,
and must rejoice inside the now.
It is for you who read, to intercede
in the rejoicing...I must let it go
a little while, although I know
there is no need to pray
that Mark and I will follow through
within the morning's deathless day.
~
Three words comprise the frame my son last made:
his soft "Hey, dad" to greet me on the phone,
his single, loving "Papa" with our last embrace—
and in between?.....just Mark, the man to fill
a thousand frames invisibly in love
that clings unbound to arms, to blood, to tears...
who threw his history away unowned
and paid for it with memory alone.
Sixteen years are here to testify
that sweetness in the settlement was not
enough, that though the picture glows
with spirit timelessness, it shuns the touch,
the laughter, the uncertainty that spears
the mind, seizes on the unexplored,
and must rejoice inside the now.
It is for you who read, to intercede
in the rejoicing...I must let it go
a little while, although I know
there is no need to pray
that Mark and I will follow through
within the morning's deathless day.
~
Played into this, was anything ever felt that meant.
Betrayed since beginning, layed in ur tracks is how it went.
Spending these moments, were never spent, its meaningless.
Backwords, background, let's pretend, ill give u what u wish.
Pretending to be played, let's forget, I didn't c her much suspense.
Think I'm in the wrong wasn't. It, not guilty, no defense.
Victory, already spent, unowned, thought u knew, fine priint.
Contract broken, hope u was hopin, hope its quenched.
Gave you all of it, left me twisted but I had sense.
Thought u had it all not my all, not my all, this is it.
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.