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Best Poems Written by Renee Willier

Below are the all-time best Renee Willier poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Bleeding Color

My blood runs the shade of every man
For the colors of other men are mine
And this, being the longest-standing truth
Is the closest I'll ever get to the Divine

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Something to Survive

I couldn't see it
Blame the way the viscid blackness
Of your soul
Exterminates the sunlight
Couldn't feel it
Sinking in your tar like sand
And blowing bubbles
Like a boiling child
Not loved enough to understand 
That living
Isn't the same as having something
To survive

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Ash

Your eyes once struck like lightning
Down winded limbs
Splayed out 
And sparkling
From just a flash

Now you look like charcoal bones
And boiled veins
And lungs
Of skin
That's burned to ash

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User Response Poem: 51st Street

Someone saw me digging through the trash this morning
And gave me five bucks
The embarrassed gin-mace of the nursing home volunteer
Plastered to his face 
For the three seconds I could see it 
Before he looked away

Everyone is more human than you'd imagine in these streets

So I bought two Blacks and a Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar
And I watched the candy wrapper blow into the drainage ditch
And I picked up a lighter someone had dropped on the ground
One those cheap, translucent ones that will melt 
If you keep the flame burning too long
And I made my way back to the place where I sleep

Everyone is more human than you'd imagine in these streets

At the intersection, I run into Mike
Flying the, "Hungry" sign that I'd watched him make
With some recycled cardboard and a jumbo Sharpie
On the floor of my abandoned-building living room
Because he was hungry
And KFC hadn't thrown away anything edible in days

Everyone is more human than you'd imagine in these streets

Wiping my fingers of my snack's melted remains onto the cutoff denim
That I've been wearing for six days
I round the corner and see J trying to shake off the cops
That have him pinned against the security fence around our camp
Ryan tells me he has a warrant and an eight-ball of speed in his pocket
Sucks, he was supposed to see his daughters tomorrow

Everyone is more human than you'd imagine in these streets

When it's safe, I slip into my sparsely insulated corner of a Texas July
Sweating from the core-heat I've trapped against a discarded mattress
And remembering that I used to look at us
The way Five-Dollar-Dude looked at me this morning
Before I learned the hard way that we're just seeking some of the comfort
Enjoyed by the very condo-dwellers who frustrate our ability to obtain it

Everyone is more human than you'd imagine in these streets

And I'm not saying everyone out here is a saint
But I am saying if you need a dollar or a cigarette
You've got better odds asking someone camping under the overpass
Than someone with one hand on the door of their Lexus
And the other one smoking a Marlboro Red
And I think when you don't have anything, that Marlboro can tell you a lot

Original Poem: poetrysoupdotcomslashpoemslash51stunderscorestreetunderscore1599123

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The Ants Go Marching

It isn't easy to save the world 
With your back on the asphalt
Crawling with carpenter ants that
Yes even they
Want you out of the way

I'd head home to the building with no AC
Bring my friends back with
A trail of sugar cubes
But I tried it
Even the insects won't go inside it

I think I'll close my eyes, here in this parking spot
Until somebody asks me if I am okay
And I'll, groggy, tell them "Yeah, right,"
This is just what I do
But probably, neither are you

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Saboteur

If you're not a well-paid saboteur
You should look into the job
List me as a reference on your resume
And on the day I get the call
I'll tell them all about your
Inability to accept responsibility
And anti-social personality disorder
Never met a man so talented at torture

If they worry whether you might cave
Under the pressure of an inborn moral code
I'll reassure them that it's almost like 
Your phenotype's been altered by 
A point mutation in your DNA
That eliminated every bit of it
And that I've never seen you give a s h i t

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The 15th Law of Power

The 15th Law of Power 
Forbids mercy during an attack
For the enemy who's life is spared
Is the one who lives to fire back

So if you've aspirations
To take the crown off of my head
You had better keep that trigger squeezed
Until you're damn sure that I'm dead

If you are not strong enough 
To go in for the kill
You can make a bet on your last dime
That when I rise again, I will

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Simple

They call me simple now 
Because I have less
And want less
And talk less

After the sting
When my cheeks and mind had cooled
I hoped so

I have been washed up on the sides of shallow streams
And whipped around on white water rivers
And up to my shoulders in alligator swamps
To my knees in heavy mud
I have been enraptured with the false promise of the bay
And thinking that I had reached the end of hope
I have laid my limbs down around the buoys
And bobbed my time away

If there is an ocean after all
And if I am nearly there
Well good

All my broken canoes
And the shoes I left buried in quicksand
Will meet me here
Where the rain comes back to the sea
And ten thousand currents coalesce
To be simple

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Sartorial Self Portrait Poetry Contest

What's this we have here?
Second hand?
No, worn out? Eco friendly.
Sure, the color's fading some
But for the grade
It's not too spendy
And it's versatile
Though it doesn't change
Not affected much by where it hangs
Around
Been through the wash a couple times
So I bet if you take it down
You'll find the fiber's tough
Despite the gentle feel
Threaded thick enough to warm you
While being cool enough for mass appeal
And thus often a-ddressed
Though I think you'll find it’s just as satisfying
To give it a rest
(And I'm sorry for the rhyming)

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Yesterday's Wishes Poetry Contest

Yesterday's wishes 
Were born in yesterday's brain
From yesterday's promise
And yesterday's pain
And if you aren't careful
Then one of two things 
Could occur:
First, your insistence on things
Which are no longer true
Might become just the thing
That's begun stopping you
From evolving
Or, two
You might compromise so much
You forget who you are
And in your transformation
Deviate far too far
From the aim
So forget and remember the same