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Best Poems Written by Ruby Kelly

Below are the all-time best Ruby Kelly poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Ruby Kelly Poem

The Bends

Diving deep underwater, mask on
To hide your face, conceal your oxygen.
You go deeper and deeper, not realizing
How deep you’re going.
Eventually, you come face to face with a marlin,
But you see them as a carp.
You can’t tell the difference between 
A carp and a marlin.
You don’t see the marlin, rare as he is,
And you mistake him for a carp.
Well, this carp has a hook.
A hook that will
Plunge its way through your heart,
Your soul, and your mind, and will
Take everything out with it and swim
As far away from you as possible after.
But you don’t even realize it, because
You’re not a fisherman.
You can’t tell the difference between
A carp and a marlin.
And that will be your downfall.

Details | Ruby Kelly Poem

Business Conference

There is a circus in town
Bright and colorful on the outside;
An exterior of flashing, blinking lights.
Inviting, happy lights.
A place I want to be,
A place everyone does.
But there is a building behind it.
A gray, metal building
Reflecting sunlight off its walls:
Not the beautiful kind of sunlight, rather
The kind of sunlight that blinds you
As it reflects through your window from 
Dozens of miles away.
I already know I’m destined to go.
Not to the circus, but to the building;
The gray, metal building
That I’ve convinced myself I want to be in,
When I know what I want is the circus.
But even then I don’t know 
Where my answer lies —
In the gray, metal building,
A corporate robot with nothing to my name;
Or the bright, inviting circus,
Still a corporate robot, 
But with all the attention in the world,
All the attention I’ve never wanted.

It’s a horrible world we live in, isn’t it?

Details | Ruby Kelly Poem

Football Fish Part 2

Waves flush my face.
I can’t go to sleep without thinking of 
what comes after and what happens during.
I can’t stop crying and I can’t sleep, either.

I wish I were a football fish,
lightbulb atop my head forever.
Guiding the way for me no matter
how dark it gets underwater.

Details | Ruby Kelly Poem

Football Fish Part 1

A wave hits a nine-year-old me
Boogie-boarding in Torrance beaches
with my father and my best friend.
It pushes my head underwater and shoves
a bucket’s worth of sand into my throat.

I wish I had the endurance of a football fish
at the bottom of the ocean.
Pressure great enough to suffocate, but
continuing to breathe regardless.