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Best Poems Written by Nathanael Griggs

Below are the all-time best Nathanael Griggs poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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A Vending Machine In Nashville, 2013

Head or tails is that your good side or the bad 
shiny, worn, new, old, smart, stupid societal
cash register?

We all get piled up.

Your denomination tells your class: two cents or fifty
indentations of personality ealge, flag, ego or in 
God do you trust? 

Fold a twenty the right way 

Now do you believe in hell? 

No. I know your type: the fake quarter the boy 
scored, poor and bored at the railroad tracks  
bashed, smashed, beaten, used. 

We all get piled up. 

God only collects the shiny coins.

Copyright © Nathanael Griggs | Year Posted 2014



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Current Periodicals

I sat down on the grass above you.
The dew drops drooping as I delicately 
	Drew my hand across 
Your stone head; 
the way I used to 
	run my fingers 
Through your dark hair.  

I, staring into your name, almost  
 Saw your green eyes shine 
	through the etched, gray letters.

“I owe you an apology and confession.”, I said.

“On January 5th as John the Revelator 
	was mistranslating your verse and 
carrying you to Apollo‘s gates; 
my cupid was misfiring his own bow.”

Copyright © Nathanael Griggs | Year Posted 2014

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Sequestration of the Soul

The dew has been banished from the grass
And the pups taken from the teet.

A drunk is lacking hard drink. 

Like a television without a picture tube
Longing stares itself in the mirror, feeling, but
Denying its very existence while arrogance

Wants to scream from within.

Copyright © Nathanael Griggs | Year Posted 2014

Details | Nathanael Griggs Poem

If Souls Were Rivers

I’m your life’s embankment; the wrong way street.   
You’re the mighty river: the containable rejected.   
Edging away my banks, indifferent to the cold or heat; 
you’re life is an erosion project left unprotected.   
You take a piece of sand here and a dirt clod there;   
engulfing and dragging it along to the mouth   
of the ocean; mixing me in with the debris where   
plastics, paper bags, fishing lures, all float south.   
Things once held in people’s very hands, thrown 
out in disregard, now unneeded, or just lost       
in the current by a false promise; a catch never known. 
I look upstream of your soul at your thoughts’ cost. 
I see your frustrations in swirling pools, vortex of mind; 
hung up on things that I, floating, am forced to leave behind

Copyright © Nathanael Griggs | Year Posted 2014


Book: Reflection on the Important Things