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Best Poems Written by Little Sperling

Below are the all-time best Little Sperling poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Little Sperling Poem

The Science of Silence

Silence is an art
Not mastered by all. 
The secret is to keep your mouth shut,
Even when your universe is in chaos,
To scream with your eyes,
But never your throat,
To write all your thoughts,
Instead of voicing them,
To make them think,
With the fewest words,
That you’ve bared your soul,
To watch and observe,
To listen and feel,
But not to remark,
To build yourself a box in which
To bury your words,
To sew yourself a mask
And wear it daily,
To make yourself another self
To wear when not alone, a self
That smiles and laughs
And talks without speaking.
Silence is not something that comes naturally,
Not to most,
Not to me, surprising as it may seem.
Silence is a science, a study
In self-control, in sadness,
In power, in humor, in observation,
In humility and pride, in love and hate, 
In movement, in stillness, a study
In opposites.
Silence is the science of music,
Of religion, of war,
Of peace, history, human interaction.
Silence is the study of beauty,
The science of thought.

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Bildungsroman

I teeter on the edge
Of a crumbling cliff, beneath me
Is nothing but cloud and indistinct shape,
A bird or two, laughing at my wingless back,
My songless throat.  I spread my arms
As if they had feathers, and taste the wind, 
But my feet are planted on shifting gravel.
Behind me, another wall, pushing closer,
Impenetrable force, I have nowhere to go
But out and down, down, down.
Toes at the edge, dry mouth, nothing to swallow.
He said he’d be a swallow, if he were an animal.
Focus.  The horizon spreads wide enough
To swallow me whole, to inhale
My tiny universe.  Hands trembling, I think of home,
But where is home?  Is it the desert, 
Where tumbleweeds chase you down the road,
Or is it the pendulum-  deathly winter one minute,
Blossoming paradise the next? 
My breath catches in my throat.  The wind
Dries my eyes of tears, and always that wall.
I am stalling, and everyone knows it.
I consider jumping.  I consider it for a long, long time,
But I can’t see the ground through the clouds,
And I am still not a bird.  Pebbles roll and fall
Off the edge, pushed by the force that threatens me.
I do not hear them clatter on the ground.
Maybe there is no ground, and if I jump,
I’ll fall until I die of old age.
What a joke for the fates to play on us.
I think and I muse for too long; the wall at my back
Leaps forward and I am thrown headfirst 
Into the abyss.

Details | Little Sperling Poem

Closed Doors

Let’s fly away from this dim, smoky place
To far off lands and over endless seas.
At last, we’ve found all our locked cages’ keys.
I ache to feel the wind upon my face.
I scream adieu to all this tortured waste,
And think on views so different from these.
Imagine open air and swaying trees-
A paradise of light and open space.
I ran and leapt and raced into the light-
The taste of liberty atop my tongue.
To things far gone and past I gave no thought.
The future briefly stole away my sight-
(In my defense, I was naive and young.)
I found all of my dreaming was for naught.

Details | Little Sperling Poem

The Swallow and the Kestrel

He is a boy with orange hair
And more freckles than pride.
He is a boy with his eyes on his feet-
He glows the light that others reflect.

She is a girl with accusation in her eyes
And more regrets than confidence.
She is a girl with her face to the sun-
She steals the warmth that others emit.

His is a world filled with locked doors
That he has the keys to.
His is a world that never stops moving-
It tries to keep up with him.

Hers is a world filled with empty boxes
That she’s already searched.
Hers is a world that claws and bites-
It defends itself against her.

His wings are small and fluttering-
They take him South for the Winter.
He sings a charming song
And revels in the world.

Her wings are strong and wild-
They carry her through the Stormclouds.
She screams a hunter’s anthem
And contradicts the world.

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Stars

I’ll never know why people fear the night
Why fear something so beautiful and fine?
The darkness gives me more than can the light.

People rely too much on eyes and sight
I’ve learned that I can’t put much trust in mine.
I’ll never know why people fear the night.

Why talk things through, when you can yell and fight?
Store up my blood and set in on a shrine.
The darkness gives me more than can the light.

I watch the world from cold and weary height,
And feel the liquid, diamond stars align.
I’ll never know why people fear the night.

I think on death, and dream of warmth and flight.
I don’t trust words or masks- show me a sign.
The darkness gives me more than can the light.

Not everything that’s pure and good is white.
My throat is blocked by shining, silver twine.
I’ll never know why people fear the night.
The darkness gives me more than can the light.

Details | Little Sperling Poem

All I Have Lost

All I have lost, I cannot find again.
And all I find, I fear I’ll never lose.
I only live for when my life will end.

My soul is filled with words I cannot pen.
My days are spent chasing a wary muse.
All I have lost, I cannot find again.

The shadow lurks and thinks, “Not if, but when?”
A voice and presence I dare not refuse.
I only live for when my life will end.

My mind dwells on all that might once have been-
Love, light and life with the power to choose.
All I have lost, I cannot find again.

What good is life when it is naught but sin?
No need for Hell when I’ve myself accused.
I only live for when my life will end.

My thoughts force down on ice already thin,
No riddance of dead weight will pay my dues.
All I have lost, I cannot find again-
I only live for when my life will end.

Details | Little Sperling Poem

Head Cold

There is a vicious, ground-dwelling creature
Burrowing into my skull,
Maybe a mole,
It doesn’t matter.  What matters is
My head is cracked and pillaged.
Instead of gray matter, it’s full of snot
And mucus; it’s crevices drip,
And no matter how much I 
Expel from my nostrils, more will come.
I hurt.  The mucus has swelled my sinuses
So bulbous and enlarged, they press
Against my eyes and ears.  
I hate everything and everyone I see.
Look how freely they talk and walk,
Oblivious to my pain and their freedom.
They take for granted their snotless brains.
Their thoughts flow unhindered by mucus buildups,
But mine inch and hitch and stop 
Altogether.  Soon, I will transform from a creature
Of bone and muscle
To a gelatinous mass with skin and eyes 
And nothing else but slime.
This cold has stolen my good mood from me.
The world is a happy place, today, but I
Have a cold, and I’m miserable.  
Whose idea was a cold, anyway?
At least make me sick enough
To stay at home.  A cold does
Not excuse, does not 
Incapacitate enough to warrant
What I think it should.
Even if I were at home, I’d still
Be cranky and in pain.
Being home fixes all maladies
But this, it seems.  
Uggh.
My throat is full of cactus and my 
Ears ring, my arms ache, my
Nose leaks, and I curse the one
Who bequeathed me with this Hell.
May he step on Legos for the rest
Of his days, may he never find love,
May his ears forever refuse to pop, may
He always be stuck at a red light,
May all his waitresses be cranky, may
His head sprout dandruff and his mouth
Spit word vomit -and real vomit-  on those he wants to impress, 
May he misplace his keys a thousand times,
May he say everything he knows he’ll regret,
May all his conquests be failures,
May every book he reads be a cliffhanger,
And may every cold that goes around
Dwell with him far longer than usual.

Details | Little Sperling Poem

Waking Nightmare

Sylvia writes, “I have the choice,”
And her words gut me like
An overeager pubescent student
With a scalpel and tweezers.
I feel the same as she.  I, too, 
Ricochet; I, too, document it 
In my journal and in verse.
 
What can it mean that she who chews her pen
While she writes poetry on a keyboard,
Feels the same as she who is so loved
And so dead?
What can it mean that I
Shrivel to hear that my words have already
Been worded and my thoughts
Have already been thought and my
Feelings have already been felt?
Sylvia, with her beautiful name and 
Her published books
(And her suicide),
Has plucked away some part
Of my individuality.  What can I
Do to salvage myself?
How can I say, “A piece of my soul
Has been stolen!” when it was
Her soul, first?
 
I guess I didn’t start the fire.
I guess that I never have,
And this be my terror-
That every flame that has ever 
Warmed me was not my own,
That the stars in my sky 
(Dim and flickering though they be, and hidden by light pollution, anyway)
Were someone else’s stars, first,
That the words in my head 
Were never mine to begin with,
That I live and breathe and love
What has been lived and breathed and loved
A thousand, a hundred thousand,
A million times before
On a million worlds, by a million 
People, that even this 
Strangled indignation, this anger
Is not mine; these hands, these memories,
These hangnails and icy toes,
The name, though decidedly less beautiful than “Sylvia”...
Must I share myself with the world?
 
How small and insignificant I am.
Even wondering about my smallness and insignificance
Is small and insignificant, because
Everyone has wondered it.
Perhaps I am selfish, because I want it 
All for me, or perhaps I am exactly as 
Everyone else.  Would it be a compliment or an insult
To be precisely like Sylvia Plath?
Would it be a compliment or an insult to be precisely like
 myself?

Details | Little Sperling Poem

I Am a Broken Bone

These half score years for me have been a war,
My soul a broken bone reset in place,
The girl He made was meant for so much more.

In vain, I searched for naught I could adore,
With those I loved I could not keep apace,
These half score years for me have been a war.

Like vermin, filth, I writhed upon the floor,
O pain, the heat, I dared not show my face,
The girl He made was meant for so much more.

Like paper, silk, myself from Him I tore,
My sickened mind, impenitent and base,
These half score years for me have been a war.

I fancied myself locked behind a door,
Kept from the Light by chains and heavy space,
The girl He made was meant for so much more.

Though not quite mine, I know what lies in store-
After it all, I hunger for His Grace.
These half score years for me have been a war,
The girl He loves is meant for so much more.

Details | Little Sperling Poem

Remember Me

Remember me?
I remember you.
My home-
Where the meadowlark laughs
And the sun paints the tranquil sky
Over the ancient hills-
A familiar majesty,
The sagebrush and thistle,
So strong and hardy,
Ugly to most,
Dear to me.
I long to wander those hills again-
Anthills and rabbit prints.
To feel the constant wind
(I left, but it never will).
To dance in the summer monsoons
At the foot of my driveway,
Where the water pools,
And scream at the weeping heavens-
Turbulent and beautiful
Like an iron sea overhead.
Here, here is where my memories
Lie, close to the little cactus,
And here is my quartz collection.
Through two backyards and across a street
A red stucco house
With porcupine grass.
My best and only friend.
She knows me better than I do.
I miss her.
I love this place.
It is my home,
And my support,
The harmony to my song.
You may not hear it,
But sine qua non.
You can take a girl out of the desert,
But she will leave her heart behind.