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Best Poems Written by Frederick Kesner

Below are the all-time best Frederick Kesner poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

ash in the mouth


You speak of vows like broken tools,
iron bent, still hot in the hand;
seeing the feast tipped into a gutter,
and name each grain of choice.
 
Dogs sniff at what was once a meal,
grass bows away from the teeth.
The wind carries scents you do not forgive.
 
There is a field where promises rot-
fruit collapsing inward,
sweetness leaking into the soil.
 
Some walk there hungry, some in disgust,
all with shadows long behind them.
You throw stones at the well,
hearing no splash. I lean over,
and see only my own face, wavering.

Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

The cupboard light


It was nearly midnight
when he slipped out of bed,
careful not to wake her.

The house exhaled its silence—
walls warm with sleep,
timber creaking
from the day’s last heat.

He padded to the kitchen
in bare feet, opened the cupboard
where li’l miss had hidden
a note for him the day before:
“I love you even when you forget milk.”
 
He smiled at that.
Switched on the stovetop light—
not bright enough to disturb,
just enough to see his notebook.
 
He scribbled under
a half-written poem:
“Faith is not thunder. It’s a fridge humming through the night.”

A creak behind him.
Li’l Miss in her tiny dressing gown,
one sock half-off, thumb in her mouth.
 
“You writing again?” she asked.
He nodded.
She nodded back, solemnly,
like a poet-in-training,
and padded away.
 
The cupboard light blinked once
and stilled. He returned to his pen.
The house listened.
 
 
 
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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

more than scribbles

“More Than Scribbles”

The pen does not speak—
it holds its silence in a chamber,
a reservoir where sentences
float unformed,
dark rivers stalled
before the mouth of paper.

Each droplet is a thought
waiting for gravity’s compunction,
a poem in liquid pause,
its capillary compression
held at the narrow throat of the nib.

The pipeline presses with pressure,
yet nothing escapes—
until the hand inclines,
and gravity leans through the hinge,
drawing futures downward
onto a waiting page.

There, a stained tributary
eddies downstream,
curling into margins,
its current carrying fragments
toward the widening mouth of breath.

A single line spills,
a thought becomes visible,
the poem begins to breathe.






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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

beyond the shackles

Once I was starling voice at dawn, 
A flock of chimed echoes on my tongue,
Wheezing whistles on choralled lawn,
Each verse a mimic so sweetly sung.

Now I’m a lyrebird lost in the brush,
Framing my solos in shadowed boughs,
With heart unfolding in trembling rush,
A lonesome lilting with hidden vows.

With cheeslets and flummox in my beak,
I sift the flock’s bright feathers from my core,
Icarus maps afresh a path unique,
A broken wing that yearns to soar.

There’s no rewind on a mimic’s mind,
No true home in borrowed refrains,
Yet in these feathers a quiet find,
A voice that’s raised beyond the chains.





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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

hearth of language

 
Set the table, and let the light fall, 
cut the bread, cost nothing but time. 
Read my face for the story— 
for and, or but, yet so— 
we keep finding ways to meet. 
 
A few laughs shared, 
a lot of pauses filled, 
twenty of those small gestures 
put us back in step. 
 
So often, many times, 
and always once more, 
my hand set beside yours, 
the rhythm unchanging, 
the word read aloud together. 
 
Not grand, not distant— 
just the steady cost of care, 
the hearth of language, 
the warmth of being here.
 
 
 
 
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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

outstaring a blank wall


You stand before a wall.
It waits, blank as withheld breath.

What hovers over you?
Drafts unpinned,
stories unspoken,
videos sealed,
pages chasing horizons
that never arrive.

Perfection whispers—
a mask for delay.
What if you placed
one imperfect mark?
What if you let motion
carve its shape?

The wall gathers:
crooked sketches,
half-born concepts,
awkward stretches,
jokes collapsing mid-laugh.

Chaotic. Messy.
Unfit for display.

Yet weeks later—
fragments draw together,
a shape begins to inhale.

Not triumph,
but a quiet forming,
a world exhaling
what ‘til now was withheld.




.

Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

Savannah Ink

This poem bares its teeth: a hyena,
laughter breaking in jagged bursts,
circling the margins,
menace felt in scuffling shadows.

From the dust it stirs, 
half-laughter, half-watch,
a shuffle of shadows 
breaking into frisk

rising upright: a meerkat,
eyes darting across horizons,
paws quick in sudden scurry,
a hesitant vigil before burrowing.

Between circling and scurry,
menace and play intertwine,
scarfing fragments into chorus
stretching across Savannah plains.




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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

over-shoulder weather


I’ve walked the length of my sentence
long after the gates unlatched,
counting the gravel underfoot
as if each stone might still accuse.

The years have grown moss over my name,
but transgression carved into memory’s vestibule
means there is always one chair turned away,
its back carved with the shape of my absence.

I’ve mended the fence,
stitched the torn sleeve,
poured water into the roots I once scorched—
but the wind still carries
a syllable I cannot unhear.

So I move,
but not without the weight of glancing—
a pilgrim with a mirror in his pack,
catching the ghost of my own retreat. 

And forward is a road
that keeps folding back on itself,
a loop of weathered timber and rain-dark stone,
where even the horizon
wears my shadow like a borrowed coat,
and the door I step through
is always the same vestibule.





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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

there is a room

There is a room
where names wait at the door,
stacked like coats
on a winter hook.

Inside, a chair holds its place.
Pages rest half-turned.
Ink settles into shape
on the desk’s quiet plane.

These are the room’s fixtures —
the things that stay still
so other things can move.

Then the shift begins:
a line adjusting itself,
a thought testing its weight,
a gesture forming

before it knows its purpose.

The room listens,
not for meaning
but for motion.

And when you step out again,
you sense the room
has altered itself
just enough
to let the next visitor enter differently.

 

 

 

 

 

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Details | Frederick Kesner Poem

nipping at your ghost


Nipper”


A small dog waits
beside the brass horn,
ears lifted,
body held in that soft readiness
only devotion can teach.

Once a wanderer,
he learned the shape of shelter
in the warmth of a single voice.

Now the room is quiet,
yet he leans
toward the horn’s bright mouth
as though a familiar breath
might rise again
from its painted metal.

Brush in hand,
he works the canvas again,
colours deepening
around the small dog’s frame.

The horn waits, bright at the rim,
and the dog leans toward it,
steady as breath before a word.

Nothing moves in the room
except the faint shift of his ears,
as though some quiet spark
might rise from the metal
and meet him halfway.




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Best Poems Written by Frederick Kesner

ash in the mouth

The cupboard light

more than scribbles

beyond the shackles

hearth of language

outstaring a blank wall

Savannah Ink

over-shoulder weather

there is a room

nipping at your ghost

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