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Best Poems Written by Andrew Foreman

Below are the all-time best Andrew Foreman poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

Summer's Apple

the apple tree
in my grandmother's yard
low branches
secret shade
our place to steal
time from the world
safe from others
with their gin and regrets
I remember you
so young with pink ribbons
clambering up on rough branches
cursing your shoes and clean dress
shining smiles down on me
invitation so sweet
daring so bold
me shy and earthbound
I make low limbs my perch
you laugh and swing over
robins startled and scolding
grabbing apples so fat
our warm summer rubies
carelessly tossed down my way
so eyes closed I bite in
loving that crunch
a little taste of forever
but glancing up into yesterday
with a last slice of memory
your dress now only sunlight
bright patches dappled on branches
and looking down
I'm surrounded
by fallen apples

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

I Heard the Owl Call My Name

I heard the owl call my name,
like a backbeat in a child's voice,
etched in shadows of a father's grave,

lonely echoes on a frosted night...

at dawn I'll be immortal again,
renewed by a workaday 
and the frigid fiscal year,

my soul stays leafless in damp moonlight...

do we end days defibrillating 
in hospice and parchment or
under foreign suns twitching and fluid,

while kestrels dive as doves take flight...

why only in the dark hours,
the soul's midnight,
can we see farther, deeper,

nightdreams wander like a restless wight...

experienced or just imagined,
dreamt but never realized,
conceived yet unexecuted,

an inner eye begs keener sight...

as yellow eyed and dark skinned children, 
play with tattered banners,
laughing at rusted armor, bleaching bones,

and history cries that might makes right...

as I, stale pilgrim of no progress,
catch faint odors of war,
in the molded root cellar of my mind,

as hope catches wind like a child's kite.

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

Plastic Fantastic

Man, it just doesn’t pay to try and live in the day. Crazy full up, crisper, sharpest with an undepleted uranium core, burning burning burning, knowing it’s all shit and nobody pays attention, “quiet desperation,” hell! I just want to run in circles, scream and shout, play a one-man game of crack the whip, and fly down the lea flopping into a deeper briar patch of blooming wild irish roses and gin blossoms! As I pass through muted crowds, so full of noise and bustle-hustle, I get that itch between my chakras, that tightening of the fruit, stooping with a sly look around me, a faint paranoiac whiff of parallel worlds at a titanic event horizon, slamming together, slapping bellies like a $2 whore... shadows fighting archetypes of shadows (or is it more like the agony of waiting for that goddamn second boot that never gets dropped on the floor in the apartment above, Jesus Christ, does Ahab live up there?! But more like living a Gilliam dystopia, never feeling completely at ease with anything or anyone, until even the sewer urchins are out for your blood...my God, their dark eyes!) and, passing through the crowds and stores full of purchased attitude and 4G networks, everyone’s hands full of their adult pacifiers, texting a friend sitting next to them, I get cooler, like passing through a near dawn mist roiling off a boneyard, and realize we’re all starving pilgrims on a road to nowhere, begging bowls filled with moaning woe and ironic suffering as we’re denied entry into Lhasa (we had a PC instead of a Mac).  Do I bow or curse now at knowing I'll have to slide past a window and hide under the stoop with a paper bag full of fortified liquid forget-me-for-now and growl away the ice weasels? But as I wander, backtrack through that plastic-fantastic crowd, hitting the door and dark like an expelled sigh, I wonder what became of true heroes? For with my disdain, rapier sarcasm dripping with cleverly crafted metaphors... I’m not one of them.

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

In a Sleepless Silent Fog

and in a sleepless silent fog
memories burnt out in faded sun
ossified bones shape quaker guns
the past a needle of deeds undone
dusk another skirmish yet unwon

and fogbound in silent sleep
hypnagogic gagged and bound
susurrous floating low and 'round
inducing visions, throaty sound
form the stranger, kundalini found

and silent in a foggy sleep
drop the level, slip the drum
slackened grip, faintly succumb
a final twist with nasal hum
shadows cling like spirit gum

and now asleep in fog and silence
quelling heart and stifled brume
nestled deep in cotton's tender womb
dawn burning off chimeric gloom
hearts in morning burst abloom.

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Salmon Cinquain

inland 
crimson instinct 
natal streams beckon home 
from the great turning wheel they come 
bears wait

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Defeated In Sleep

it follows that 
     sharp slivers of time 
warp like wild geese reflected 
     across still water winging 
faces sway'd as wheat seas 
     pitied not by thresher's flail 

rictus hidden in a camera's eye 
fetus, elders left to die 

teach and learn as life grows short 
     moments gulped in forgotten days 
sun rays down 
     casting men without shadows 
tragedies in bildungsroman 
     of children innocent but heartless 

folded parchment in dustbins hidden 
blossoms thrive in ancient midden 

justice, honor, paean to the gods 
     distill down to cold control 
foreign tongues with open hands 
     empire's wall breached wide within 
and so, with prosody quicksilver fled 
     small words swallowed by larger mien 

I, deep sigh, with agon's leap 
fall back defeated in dreamless sleep...

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

Mount, Saddle, Weapon, Rider

final dismount, final ride
pasture waits for dappled roan
girth mark of the lonely byways
lather from the battles flown
dew eyed weary, spinal backed
stumble step'd and nostril blown...

stirrup brass with bugle hung
faded strap and leather worn
bridle twisted, crackled spur
broken packboard, blanket torn
carbine scabbard, saddle sore
salt and stain wrung round the horn...

cosmoline and splintered stock
powder burned and pointed lead
flashpan crusted, blackened sight
ramrod tamped and barrel fed
faceless names etched in the action
thunder echoed, eardrums bled...

now the rider, less the man
mustered out a thousand suns
restless eye and palsied hand
scattered mind behind the gun
drumbeat sigh and breaking heart
no true glory grasped and won...

in the world
of the world
in joy's cascade as much as grief
season turns
while seasons end
wind blows down the autumn leaf.

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

Sangin Cinquain

whisper
afghanistan
pomegranate tasted
another childhood sour
dry tears

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Helmand Night

dusk falls
war and often
stars above watching men
hide fears held close behind a gun...
move out.

Details | Andrew Foreman Poem

I Understand the Animals Now, Frank O'Hara

I'd almost forgotten what we were like
so many thens, so many "do ya remembers" ago
the days fat with warm summer
dripping off golden smiles 
melting like wax in the sun

it was all just a race against time
each tick a heartbeat lost
each sunset crash'd like foaming waves

but we had it down
a rhythm method to laugh in the face of the moon
tearing the days off cheap dime store calendars
using Tuesday and Saturday to roll our stale cigarettes

it seemed so simple then
in my complicated now
smiles + lingering touches + silica crusted toes 
= the sight of you in my peripheral vision forever
but now an empty divot in the bed
your perfume on a stranger walking past
the formula unraveled for

we made kingdoms from sand and sargasso
terns our brave paladins
wheeling gull the court's fool
your hair my burnished pennant
snapping in the breeze

I never wanted the earth to turn
cooling air can't turn to black
as shadows fell upon your face

and the sea stole our castle back.