silence
energised
by bliss beats
it is our being-ness
unadulterated and so pure
enlivening emptiness
wherein we rest
magnetised
peaceful
stirring
inside a rhombus,
springtime.
inside a triangle,
a blind
dog.
the rhombus and the triangle
keep
bumping
into each other
inside my twelve
by fifteen
rectangle.
there, on the clothesline,
sitting side by side,
chatting away,
are my wife's
sleeveless blouse,
my Bermuda shorts,
and my daughter's
ripped jeans.
by noon,
the triangle
slips inside
the blouse.
the rhombus
into the pocket
of my Bermudas.
and through the
rips and tears
of the jeans,
spring descends
into my twelve
by fifteen.
my wife's blouse,
my Bermuda shorts,
stare on it
astonished.
five sparrows
are playing
on the open terrace
of the morning.
Everyone believes in mental anguish.
Like seashells clogging everything nice.
Gruesome last bits of seaweed.
Blah.
Everyone is generous as they claim.
With their last life boat.
They want everyone to clamor aboard.
So that it gets weighed down and- no survivors.
Burden.
Unease.
As that little boat wheezes its last wheeze and starts to turn sick.
Everyone is on their last life boat, some days.
That’s either mental anguish or seaweed I’m spitting out.
When your life boat gets so full it’s like a gruesome cannonball.
No one is moving or even squirming anymore.
Burble.
It’s gruesome.
I left the curtains open for you
Just in case you decide to visit
If you ever decide you want to see how things are going,
I left the curtains open for you.
If you ever want to see how far I’ve come since we last spoke
I left the curtains open for you
The curtains are always open
But the window is locked.
And so is the door
I don’t want you to come back in
I didn’t want you to know you were welcome
The curtains are always open
Even though I doubt you’ll ever pass by the window.
The seagulls circle me
They’re swallowed by their own greed;
I can’t trust them
They’ve been picking away at my appetite,
I’m starved.
I haven’t wanted to eat in days.
They’ve taken everything from me.
My lungs hold air no more,
The seagulls have punctured them
All I can do is lie here
Skin on bone
They picked at my heart.
It aches
All it does is ache
It hasn't stopped
Every beat pumps me with dread
I feel sick
I feel like throwing up every word I've written about you.
It's your fault I'm here
You gave me the bird seed
And I trusted you enough to listen when you told me where to stand
Now I'm lying on the ground.
The surface of my flesh is uneven.
There are pieces missing
I tried to stand
I tried,
I really did
Swaying,
Unbalanced,
I fell back to the ground
I give up
I'll die looking at the sky
Full of seagulls.
My organs are plagued with a sense of longing
My heart pumps a venom that kills my liver
I am constantly unbalanced
My head is on a swivel too fast to stop;
My stomach is flooded
I am filling slowly from the inside with tears
Assuring there is no more room for you
I am the ailment
You were always the cure.
The corners hold a murmur,
a breath against the pane,
a low and restless rustling
like the whisper of the rain.
They gather where the light grows thin,
along the quiet wall—
those shifting little whispers
that seem to fill the hall.
They echo through the quiet rooms
where busy thoughts collide,
a restless tide of words
with nowhere left to hide.
Yet even in the heavy dusk,
beneath the murmuring tread,
there is a quiet, steady voice
that lives inside my head.
to see if I could be
quiet enough for the barred owl
or the pileated woodpecker
to turn his beaded eye
towards me
I wish I could
do more than type keys
that stand for letters
that add up to words
that tally up to meaning
in the early evening,
surrounded by browning leaves
as I also age
on solid ground
Play 'Stay'
by Jackson Browne
for sentimental reason
at 2 AM when I don't want to go home
This is living in 'Our Town'
by Thorton Wilder
Emily's monologue
is always worth a listening crowd
"Good-by to clocks ticking....
and Mama's sunflowers"
Don't forget "hot baths"
because if you never had one
you just wish for water
She may
have won
but she
still lost
control
of her
own bowels
and
endangered
so many
others
all for
the love
of
sports.
Note: That nasty Hyrox lady should have been disqualified.
And if the stars
no longer gleam,
will memory
enough suffice?
And when the Sun
its last beam spent
will heaven be nice,
reconsider its withdraw?
Indeed, blame man
for Light abuse! Indeed
blame man for lack of
truce! – the wars go on.
But never blame yourselves
for man’s Free Will Darks,
and let flawed fools retain
at least a small grace of Divine
Sparks.
They told me love was gravity.
Something gentle with a terrible pull.
So I fell-
into your hands, your warmth,
the little red universe of your heartbeat.
And for a while
I thought this was it.
The house.
The ring.
The photograph
where we are both still smiling.
All those beautiful things we are taught to want.
I held them like petals,
careful not to bruise what I loved.
But petals fall.
And red fades.
And somewhere between reaching and holding too tight,
I became the moon—
always turning, always returning,
giving you
the light side of me while something darker grew behind my back.
It’s cruel really, how something so profound can be so gentle
I still love the life I imagined.
I still love the person
I imagined beside me.
I just don't know how to keep the dream
without losing
the girl
who dreamed it.
The Rebel
Evening flames falter and die
Suffocated in the night’s cool embrace
A bed of sleepy orange embers
Gradually give way to blue ash
Beneath the hush of silky starlight
A solitary glow persists
Holding against the encroaching dark
Refusing surrender
In daybreak’s velvet breath
Veils of ash, like petals, drift aimlessly away
While the ember defies obliteration
With subtle inner-warmth
In the gall of yesterday’s ruin
It burns for promises never spoken
What remains, quietly transformed
Exhales and ignites something new.
9/17/2026 - For The Rebel Poetry Contest hosted by Unseeking Seeker
offstage reflection
ideally astounding
simultaneously
brainwash outwards
censurable stairway
impracticable undress
(Weekly Magnetic Poetry Challenge • September 14–20, 2026)
I'm just living a life of an one-eyed AuDHD dude,
Always repeating the cycle every single day
As folks think I'm acting like a robot,
And always having an undisciplined heart.
They say it's not always seen from the outside,
With history and video games is all I think of
Yet they see me as a young Sheldon,
Thinking being smart is a big blessing.
But I still look like a nerd
As if they see me as a nobody,
I'm still a spud in my eyes
As I'm too different for anything.
Eric's on the road again, another show just around the bend,
Guitar in hand, and his aviators on to avoid the glare of those stage lights in his eyes
(they're so blinding otherwise)
He'll be singing his heart out from somewhere tonight
and he loves it when he gets people singing his songs,
he always does his best to greet them with a smile,
they can chill with him like friends and family
for a while
Whether their lives are going great or wrong outside the walls of that concert hall
By: J.N.R Dutton
Introduction
At a line ending, a reader experiences two impulses at once: to pause over the words just completed and to continue into the unfolding thought. That small tension makes this collection especially rewarding to browse. One poet may build crisp, self-contained lines; another may let syntax spill forward, making each break a moment of suspense. Some poems may rely on audible pattern, while others create order through image, repetition, spacing, or shifts of voice. The pleasure lies not only in what each poem says, but in how its language becomes memorable through arrangement.
Reading these community poems side by side reveals the breadth hidden within the shared label. You may encounter intimate lyrics, narratives, meditations, songs, comic pieces, dramatic speeches, or experiments in visual pacing. Length can range from a concentrated utterance to an expansive sequence. Tone may move from conversational ease to ceremonial intensity. Because verse can support both highly visible patterning and subtler forms of organization, each poet must decide what will hold the poem together and what kinds of expectation the poem will create.
Read beyond the first example and compare how different writers manage beginnings, pauses, turns, and endings. Notice which poems invite the speaking voice to lead and which depend more heavily on image or sound. A single poem demonstrates one solution; a collection reveals the available choices. Browsing several interpretations also sharpens appreciation: recurring subjects begin to look different when one poet compresses them into a few charged lines and another gives them room to develop through scene, reflection, and return.
Reading Guide
Approach each poem as an arrangement of attention. Before deciding what it means, notice where your eye slows, where your voice wants to pause, and which words remain after the first reading. Verse can organize experience through many kinds of pattern, so comparison is more useful than applying one expectation to every entry. As you read the community poems, ask how each writer turns ordinary language into shaped language and whether the poem's choices of line, sound, sequence, and silence deepen its subject.
- Examine the line endings. End words receive extra visual and rhythmic weight, even when the sentence continues. A break can complete an image, delay information, or briefly create a second meaning. When comparing poems, which line endings feel inevitable, and which seem merely convenient?
- Listen for a governing cadence. Read aloud to hear stresses, recurring phrases, changes of speed, and deliberate roughness. Cadence affects whether a voice sounds intimate, urgent, playful, solemn, or incantatory. What kind of speaking or breathing does each poem ask you to perform?
- Follow syntax across the poem. Some writers align thoughts with lines; others carry sentences over several lines to generate momentum or uncertainty. This relationship controls anticipation. Does the syntax encourage measured reflection, forward rush, hesitation, or surprise?
- Track images rather than isolated descriptions. A strong image may return altered, gather associations, or lead to a contrasting image. Such development gives the poem an inner structure. Which images change meaning as the poem progresses, and which remain decorative?
- Notice repetition and variation. Repeated sounds, words, or sentence shapes help establish memory and expectation. A small alteration can then become emotionally conspicuous. What does the poet repeat, and why does the changed occurrence matter?
- Study the turn and the ending. A poem may pivot through revelation, contradiction, tonal change, widened perspective, or a return to earlier language. Closure need not explain everything, but it should alter what came before. How does the final movement reshape your understanding of the opening?
After reading, revisit two contrasting examples. Comparing their handling of the same craft element often reveals more than judging either poem against an abstract model.
Writing Tips
Begin by deciding what must happen to the reader, not by deciding how poetic the language should sound. A verse draft needs an organizing pressure: perhaps a voice struggling to admit something, an image changing through repeated encounters, a story compressed around one decisive moment, or a cadence that intensifies as it proceeds. The chosen structure should help create that experience rather than serve as decoration.
- Choose material that benefits from shaping. Look for a subject containing tension, recurrence, contrast, or transformation. Material that can be stated completely in one plain sentence may need a more revealing angle. Ask what lineation, sound, or sequence can disclose that a prose summary cannot.
- Establish a governing principle. Even a flexible draft gains strength from an internal contract: recurring sentence shapes, a sequence of images, a controlled beat, alternating perspectives, or strategic returns to a phrase. The principle need not be announced, but readers should be able to feel its pressure.
- Make every line break earn its place. Avoid the beginner's habit of writing prose and cutting it at roughly equal visual lengths. Break where a word deserves emphasis, where syntax can produce suspense, or where a temporary ambiguity enriches the next line. Do not sacrifice clarity merely to create surprise.
- Let pattern serve expression. Regular sound or rhythm can create confidence, ceremony, comedy, obsession, or confinement. Irregularity can signal disturbance or release. If maintaining a pattern forces padded phrases, reversed syntax, or approximate diction, revise the pattern or the sentence rather than keeping empty compliance.
- Build a sound world. Read the draft aloud and mark places where consonants snag, vowels flatten, or repeated sounds become accidentally comic. Sound does not have to be musical in a pretty sense; harshness may suit the subject. What matters is that the audible texture feels chosen.
- Use images as active elements. Prefer details that affect the poem's thinking. An image can contradict the speaker, embody an emotion without naming it, or return with altered significance. Remove descriptions that merely decorate an already explained feeling.
- Protect the individuality of the voice. Elevated diction, generalized wisdom, and familiar poetic phrases can erase the person speaking. Test whether the poem could plausibly belong to anyone. Specific attitudes, rhythms of thought, and surprising but accurate word choices give shared conventions a distinct human presence.
- Develop toward an ending rather than attaching one. A closing line should arise from pressures already present. Avoid summarizing the lesson, repeating the title without transformation, or introducing a grand abstraction at the last moment. Consider whether the poem needs resolution, complication, echo, or deliberate openness.
During revision, make separate passes for structure, sound, imagery, and sense. Then read the poem aloud to someone who has not seen it and note where attention weakens or expectations become confused. Finally, inspect the page silently: test alternative breaks, remove explanatory lines, and confirm that the ending changes the reader's relation to the whole.
Interesting Facts
- The broad label can conceal very different reading experiences. Two poems may both be presented as verse while depending on entirely different sources of coherence-cadence, narrative, visual arrangement, repetition, or argument. Comparing several community poems reveals which organizing force each writer trusts.
- A line ending can briefly create two meanings. Before the eye reaches the next line, the final word may appear to complete a thought that the continuation revises. This momentary misreading can produce wit, unease, tenderness, or revelation without additional explanation.
- Irregularity becomes expressive only when readers sense an expectation. A sudden short line, broken cadence, or missing repetition carries force because something has prepared the ear for it. Without that preparation, disruption may register as accident rather than emphasis.
- Silence has several forms on the page. Punctuation, stanza space, sentence endings, and line breaks do not create identical pauses. Skilled poets use their differences to control breath, hesitation, transition, and emotional distance.
- Length does not determine intensity. A brief poem can feel expansive when its images imply a world beyond the page, while a long poem can feel compressed through rapid syntax or recurring motifs. Development depends on the relation among parts, not simply the amount of text.
- Performance can expose hidden structure. A pattern that appears faint on the page may become obvious aloud, while an attractive visual arrangement may sound shapeless when spoken. Reading both silently and vocally gives a fuller account of the poem's craft.
- Shared conventions make individuality easier to see. When several poets address similar material, differences in diction, pacing, restraint, and closure become especially vivid. Read beyond one example to discover how many artistic decisions can exist inside the same broad practice.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and verse technique continually reshape one another. A theme does not arrive with a predetermined treatment: grief can be restrained or overflowing, nature can be observed or symbolic, and love can unfold through declaration, dialogue, memory, or silence. The possibilities below are literary affinities, not statistical rankings of the collection.
- Love and intimacy. Line breaks can imitate hesitation, breath, interruption, or the distance between what a speaker feels and what can be confessed. Repeated language may suggest devotion, longing, persuasion, or emotional entrapment.
- Memory and family. Verse can move associatively among times, voices, and sensory fragments without requiring a continuous chronology. A recurring object or phrase can connect childhood, inheritance, absence, and present understanding.
- Nature and seasonal change. Shifts in light, weather, animal movement, and landscape lend themselves to patterned observation. Cadence can echo motion without merely imitating it, while precise images keep reflection grounded in the physical world.
- Grief, death, and remembrance. Pauses and withheld statements can carry what direct explanation cannot. Repetition may enact mourning's returns, while changes in stanza or pace can distinguish recollection, disbelief, anger, and acceptance.
- Identity and inner conflict. Contrasting voices, self-corrections, fractured syntax, or changes in address can dramatize a divided consciousness. The speaker need not resolve every contradiction for the poem to achieve emotional clarity.
- War, injustice, and public life. Verse can place private witness beside collective language, exposing the distance between official statements and lived consequences. Sequence and tonal contrast help prevent large subjects from becoming abstract declarations.
- Humor, play, and everyday mishap. Timing is crucial: a delayed word, abrupt short line, exaggerated repetition, or sudden tonal reversal can deliver comedy. Concrete detail often makes humorous verse sharper than generalized cleverness.
- Music, faith, and ritual. Refrain, parallel phrasing, and ceremonial cadence can create communal resonance. Variation prevents recurrence from becoming inert and allows repeated words to accumulate new emotional or spiritual weight.
As you browse the poems in this collection, compare writers who approach similar subjects. One may rely on narrative detail, another on sound, and another on silence; the theme remains recognizable, but the verse changes how it is felt.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension here lies between openness and necessity. Because verse can accommodate many kinds of organization, a poem cannot rely on a category label to supply its identity. The writer must make readers feel why these particular words occupy these particular lines in this particular order. A technically recognizable arrangement becomes memorable when its structure seems discovered through the subject: the pace of thought, the pressure of emotion, and the movement of imagery all appear to demand the shape they receive.
Strong poems establish expectations and then manage them intelligently. A recurring cadence may embody steadiness until one disrupted line reveals fear. A sequence of images may seem descriptive until their order exposes a change in the speaker. A repeated phrase may begin as reassurance and end as accusation. Editors and attentive readers notice this reciprocity between craft and subject. Structure is not an ornamental frame placed around content; it is part of the poem's thinking, controlling what can be delayed, emphasized, remembered, or left unsaid.
Weaker drafts often mistake visible arrangement for achieved form. Arbitrary line breaks, mechanical patterning, predictable rhyme, inflated diction, and explanatory conclusions can signal an effort to look poetic rather than to make language act precisely. Another common weakness is insufficient development: the poem presents a mood or image, then restates it without complication. Conversely, excessive explanation may close every interpretive space. Effective revision asks where the poem genuinely changes-through discovery, contradiction, deepening perception, or altered tone-and removes passages that merely announce what the images and sounds have already conveyed.
Individuality remains visible through selection and proportion. Writers working with comparable subjects may differ in how much context they provide, how quickly they move, what they permit the speaker to understand, and where they place silence. One voice may gain authority through restraint; another through abundance, humor, fragmentation, or direct address. The best way to develop a reliable sense of quality is therefore comparative reading. Browse the community poems, identify each poem's internal promises, and judge how fully those promises are realized. Moving among contrasting examples trains the ear to distinguish deliberate variation from inconsistency and genuine surprise from novelty added for its own sake.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on an impression of what verse can accomplish. Compare how different poets handle the line, shape a speaking voice, develop images, control pace, and bring a poem to rest. When a piece stays with you, leave a thoughtful comment about a specific choice-an arresting break, a tonal turn, a recurring sound, or an ending that changed the opening.
Then try your own approach. Draft, read it aloud, revise its pressure points, and publish the finished poem on PoetrySoup. Your interpretation can become part of the continuing conversation among readers and writers in this collection.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 18656 Verse poems, providing substantial room to read across different subjects, voices, lengths, and organizing choices. A collection of this size supports close comparison rather than a single fixed impression of the form. Some poets may follow familiar conventions closely, while others may adapt or challenge them. Reading several entries helps reveal how each poem establishes its own expectations and how successfully its language, structure, and subject work together.
Verse Categories
Read wonderful verse poetry on the following sub-topics:
art, animals, christmas, death, dog, family, flowers, food, friendship, funny, halloween, kids, life, love, music, nature, nursery, parents, school, spring, sports, war, winter
and more.
Definition | What is Verse in Poetry?
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.
Related Poetry Forms
ballad, blank verse, epic, free verse, lay, lyric, ode, rhyme, song, sonnet,