Somehow, the deluge of cloudburst
unwraps my flesh pallid, as if to spill
holy water--maybe thickened dew—just
to give a name to lapses of my unheard cries,
while an insolent breeze fails to listen
as I howl in utter despair of life's requiem:
The thistle of wet soil chains my feet
anchored unto the swell of memories' bend;
remaining distant in an unknown,
vacant cemetery nourishing a loneliness
only vagrants like me could bear:
A scream of rain compels a thirst
to feed on abrasions of ghastly pang...alone,
isolated from new moonlight's lodging
my solitude, my invisible frame starts to sigh
behind the roughest of rain's marbled stone---
How can fresh mornings be so darn bleak?
Categories:
vagrants, bereavement, death,
Form: Dramatic Verse
Maybe I’m too simple
or too shallow
but I’m not angry.
What’s wrong with me?
I was trying to think
of someone I hate,
Jews, CIS guys, republicans,
palestinians, blacks, democrats,
the left handed, authority figures,
central americans, parents, vagrants,
the usual suspects, but I’m coming up empty
Things aren’t perfect
don’t get me wrong
I’ve got a pug nose
a flat chest
a giant forehead
and too much work to do
but I’m trying my best—
Worse yet, I’ve no plummeting anxieties
no obvious neurosis
—that one could be a misdiagnosis
no painful hangnails
no sad life tales
no addictions to defend
or hated ex-boyfriends
I have no emo hooks to pin my verse.
no current melodramas to cozen and coerce
between you and me, I think I’m off the rails
It’s really no wonder my poetry pales.
Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with me.
.
.
Songs for this:
Gee, Doctor by Dimie Cat
Sweet Lovin' (feat. Anna-Luca & Iain Mackenzie) by Club des Belugas
Categories:
vagrants, humor, poetry, political,
Form: Free verse
Flames licked the dumpster on First Avenue
Firemen arrived, so did the men in blue
Four vagrants were all aghast
Burned to a crisp, their repast
They'd fired up the bin for a barbeque
Categories:
vagrants, fire,
Form: Limerick
Inflation keeps on rising it never seems to stop
food prices going up in the cheapest shops.
Winter fuel payment stopped for the weak and frail
people who speak out and protest being sent to jail.
Veteran's are sleeping on the streets in the freezing cold
vagrants have no age they are the young and old.
No room in hotel's or hostel's and houses in short supply
can not rent a private house the rents are to high
Doctors over worked nurses in short supply
no beds on hospital wards left in corridors where eventually you might die
YOU seem to be hell bent of bringing this country to its knees
JUST STOP LOOK INTO YOUR CONSCIENCE AND DO SOMTHING PLEASE....
Categories:
vagrants, anger,
Form: Rhyme
I love you dearly, in ways your little foibles can never deny,
With your laugh, your smile, the bright twinkle in your eye.
But when I see your clothes strewn all askew,
Perhaps the smitten, has bitten off too much to chew!
The dishes pile up, the socks are everywhere.
The clutter expands to chaotic mayhem in which I despair.
Your shoes live like vagrants, begging on the stairs.
Your papers, like confetti, cast litter over tables and chairs.
So here's my plea, my love, a fear I must confess.
I love you dearly, but not your lovely mess!
So let's tidy up together, or hire a helping hand!
While rocking, rolling, jiving to our favorite band.
For while messiness is a sign, they say, of a creative mind,
Mindless mess does not feed my mind to be creative in kind.
Categories:
vagrants, love,
Form: Sonnet
Abandoned
on the road of distant sorrow
mile markers bloody from the vagrants
it has claimed
All names
inscribed with crimson warnings
on devil written
eulogies
Their cries
entombed within an
eastern wind
— that blows away the dawn
(The Devil’s Highway (666): June, 2002)
Categories:
vagrants, death, life,
Form: Free verse
whirling, twirling, swirling clouds in a liquid sky
mother says be careful dear, have some tulip pie
mongrels, thieves and vagrants dream of life beyond the sun
daddy says he's coming home cuz war was too much fun
cats and dogs and lizard things are raining all around
grandma's flying toward the moon and won't stay on the ground
truthful lies and purple skies, chaos at my door
dragon kings and pigs with wings search for evermore
comets crashing, sinners flee as rivers turn blood red
candy canes and chocolate drops, everyone is dead
dreams and schemes and vision quests, reality's a blur
am I sleeping or awake, wish I could be sure
* This one won first place in a poetry contest at the local library some years ago
Categories:
vagrants, confusion,
Form: Free verse
I’m a poet devoid
of Cliff Notes
dissection
not my thing
Don’t ask me
to explain my words
I’d rather hum
and sing
Explication
penniless
in ghettos
of the word
Where vagrants
pull and tear apart
what only should
— be heard
(Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania: January, 2024)
Categories:
vagrants, writing,
Form: Rhyme
Last time he checked the Gate remained locked. Verdant shadows reflect soft running steams falling into still pools. Rushing to hushed sounds abated in calm. Evergreen foliage radiant, vibrant, waiting.
Forlorn crosslegged perch resumed atop faded grass just outside, four steps distant, an already rusting landscape. No travelers left, yellowed path away, parched for nourishing spirit dew, solemnly abides.
Yearning soul, half scarred, half charred, singular nature revealed abruptly, scuttled unwittingly. Eternal truth circumcised nascent pair, to their despair. Vagrants now, celestial estate forfeit for .... one pomegranate?
endless fallen trail
darkness rails against light
man walked from
Eden
Categories:
vagrants, father, lost love, word
Form: Haibun
alkali streets
bleed with the dreams of
humanity, angels in
bootlegged Blahniks
flutter wings of
dubious intention
a silent wisdom of the gods
spills empty pockets ...
gilded pillars of
Olympus, brought to
ruin by pushcart
pariahs -
the tattered pages
life scribbles on -
a cursive profanity to rub
each nescient nose
sawbucks for
flesh by the warm
handful - strains of
the night, bound
sewer vents
puff their vile breath
as vagrants bask in
putrid warmth ...
every horrid
tale plays out
in actuality
and yet, ABOVE ...
the precious,
resplendent heavens
witness …
ALL.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, November 6, 2022
Categories:
vagrants, america, angst, appreciation, beauty,
Form: Free verse
It’s always sunny in the city where you feel your brother’s love
Like a shiv that someone’s thrust into your side.
Guess those Quakers let their sourdough turn rancid over time.
Now it’s hard to shovel s**t against the tide.
Who wouldn’t shower Santa Clause with snowballs and abuse?
They'd had a losing season, after all.
There's more to what it takes to live in Philly
Than some documents from Independence Hall.
Saw on TV, over Cobb’s Creek, there’s a standoff with police.
The cops intend to turn some vagrants out.
A spark on Osage Avenue might liven up the night.
Just a taste of what this City’s all about.
Categories:
vagrants, allegory, anger, anti bullying,
Form: Lyric
Jack the Ripper has not mended his ways
Continuing search for unwary prey
This time around, his weapon is poison
Extinguishing lives of poor, his mission
‘The weak must perish’, Jack the Ripper says
Homeless vagrants at food bank, to God pray
Oblivious that blue skies have turned grey
Their food today, prepared by a demon
Jack the Ripper
Panic sets in as these weary souls sway
Each falls to the ground and there they do stay
Mass murder most foul, against God, treason
Yet the man who did it, not in prison
Criminal feels what he does is okay
Jack the Ripper
30-July-2021
Panic at the food bank poetry contest
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Categories:
vagrants, dark, murder,
Form: Rondeau
Cloaked in Their Untruths
By Sy Roth
Behind a cloak their little secrets roved,
Like silent, swishing vagrants eluding the truth
The darkness so thick,
A wall of impenetrable secrets built around it.
Leaving the unclosing to callow youth
Senseless in their wasteful trepidation,
They took no time to explore their truths
Dressed in slim, tight gabardine their desires arrested.
They had no need to validate,
No desires to explore.
Lost opportunities heaped into a morass of speculation
Until the voices of the antecedents were silenced.
Screams of loss as the span between life and death widen
They find in their own selves no validity
Only a vacuity in a tale filled with inconsistencies
That are bungee cords flipping them hither and yon unbound.
No way to make whole the person in a sere fabric
When the stories are filled with imagined realities.
They erect their own corpus on a land of falsities
Left only with mislaid dreams of not taking time with the whole cloth.
Categories:
vagrants, youth,
Form: Free verse
Many would question the errant journeys,
Without direction or focus in their claim.
Yet some explorations might similarly be described,
Though varied sponsors and fortunes are to blame.
Unsettling as the drifting often seems, there's a
Cause to reflect upon the migrations impact.
Where idle gossip looks to nomadic shadows,
Even when rooted in fiction, not fact.
While roaming open roads or back alleys,
Seeking resources that few others would find.
They could often see value in what's discarded,
Quick to re-purpose and give thanks to the blind.
It does appear that there's greater sensitivity,
Towards those without a home, and possibly lost.
As those roving aren't simply itinerant vagrants,
They were neighbors and friends . . .
That couldn't pay the final costs.
Categories:
vagrants, humanity,
Form: Rhyme
As the Dime Store sirens flared
bolts of irradiated invite,
my query was denied.
Their pimp-striped pilots only moaned,
their lust fueled by encapsulated
stench carried only by toothless carnies
from the canyons. Canyons o’ Crazed Confliction.
And behind… the dull dynamo hum.
I screamed for the Kelp Queen to come to me,
her tresses woven wave-like in the wabe.
My demands were simple.
The scars of the trucker's she must carry
(as war carries death)
for inbreeding has tainted her line.
“Can Omaha be far?” she pleaded
and tugged at my inter-ache
as tin balloons tug with time .
“For you?” I replied in a
flatulent belch.
The boiling madness was by now
beyond the horizon but kept in check
still by the neon dogs crouching by day under the interchange.
It is they who will now stalk the disease plagued ports
I sailed from so many
days
and
images
ago.
Until her kleptic crew of vagrants and priests
sprint with me in postpartum harmony.
Hipsters for TRUTH.
Categories:
vagrants, dream, fantasy, imagery, nonsense,
Form: Narrative
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