requiem

by oliver walker iii

oliver walker iii writes poems celebrating american history and christian family values

i met a man the other day and heard him say america has lost its way i wanted to disagree but it seems ro me he may be right the night is falling doom is calling there are no more heroes only the endless zeroes in the billions, trillions, quadrillions of the national debt which is cause for regret and will never be paid i am afraid a dollar is not a dollar and a dime is not a dime until the end of time it was not always thus when you could get on the bus or ride the rails throygh raun and hail davy crockett took an ax and gave the wilderness forty whacks and daniel boone whistled a free tune and delivered the goods in the deep woods george washington took a stand in the promised land for liberty against tyranny the pioneers had no fears custer took a stand too for the red white and blue billy the kid never ran and hid when geoinimo with his spear suddenly appeared and panned for gold or so the tale is told and went to the moon don’t ask me why on a day in july are there no more tales to tell? oh well —

josie

by kate j smith

kate j smith writes poems, mostly rhymed, about her children and grandchildren

josie is a little girl and school she does attend she doesn’t see fate coming around the bend megan is her cat dora is her friend clouds drift in the sky where will it all end? at math and numbers josie is not good but she is a good person that is understood josie likes stories if they are not too sad she has a whole collection on her ipad her mom bakes cookies and does not wear mink she has a problem it is called drink dad left them before time began when mom is asked about him she says, he was just a man mom has a brother with a big black beard he fell on his head once and often acts weird everything will end sooner or later the sun has rays and the moon has craters

warriors

by lily marsh godfrey

lily marsh godfrey writes poems about being a woman

the village was surrounded we offered our services as warriors to defend it the old men laughed the young men raged the invaders invaded the old men were killed and the young men were killed or driven away the invaders offered us our lives as slaves but we offered them instead as warriors we were refused and escaped nto the night pursued by the invaders and harassed by the young men of our own tribe who had survived we traveled many days and momths and came to the river and met other invaders from the skies who finished off the young men and enslaved us we are there still waiting our chance to offer our services as warriors to ourselves

underwhelmed windshield wipers

by henry brown junior

henry brown junior selects words randomly from an unabridged dictionary and pastes them together to form poems

angel apple buddha banana cat christopher columbus dog dragon emperor of the universe education frank sinatra faith of our fathers gorilla george washington henry james harriet tubman idol of the masses i never knew you jesse james john wayne king arthur koolaid lancelot.leonardo da vinci mississippi river mike fink nebuchadnezar nero old man of the mountain octopus peter pan pope urban v queen bee quiet night at home rogers and hammerstein rapunzel serpent of the nile savage streets tutankommen tower of london uncle bud uncle remus virginia woolf violin case willie jones junior who are you excalibur experimental yeti youthful indiscretion zen ziggurat isaac newton dwight d eisenhower that is no excuse you have no leg to stand on far away and long ago take out the trash

down

by paul bunyan

paul bunyan is writing an epic poem about the history of the universe and the human race

i went down to the river to chop down a tree but forgot my axe so it was not meant to be i went to the fair to buy me a bride but the bride ran away so i sat down and cried i met farmer brown and bought a pig and a cow but the pig ran away so what do i do now? i went to the city to find me a job first i got beat and then i got robbed i went to mcdonalds to buy a burger and fries but the gypsy was there because she was so wise i went to the ocean to catch me a shark but the tide was out so i sat in the dark it seems there’s no place in this world for me it’s all a conundrum but no mystery

album

by laurel abercrombie

laurel abercrombie writes poems about her family tree, stretching back centuries

my mother belonged to four or five book clubs and sampled countless herbal teas her mother had a royal (regal?) manner but was always nice to me her mother’s mother (my great-grandmther) was, as a matter of course, a student of genealogy and her mother, in the mists of time was a suffragette and as proud of it as she could be further back than that the ladies blur into one another sad as it is to say that <> details are a bit scarce except for their names ( many of them recurring) and the numbers of their offspring but i assert with confidence that they all dreamed of being free

teacher, part 2

by rhoda penmarq

two women sat on a bench in the twilight they talked about men “i do not find the subject at all humorous” the present is always with us the future not quite so much not even in the so-called 21st century the patriarch stroked his long white beard and stared at the work of art which he had been told represented the future so this, he thought, is human civilization and this is te best they can do perhaps i should write a novel about human civilization in the 21st century and perhaps touch glancingly on so-called western civilization and even more briefly on so-called patriarchy and look briefly into the mists of the future it will all be very scientific, to be sure and clean and bright and shining the sun flashed through the window briefly illuminating the past but it was only human civilization in the form of poetry and the lost art of western civilization lost in the present all very sad

the forest

by robin hood

robin hood writes poems about the cruelty and injustice of all life

rudy jones was the reddest leaf in the forest larry brown was the littlest bug in the forest and ate rudy gus smith was the greenest leaf in the forest george washington was the biggest gorilla in the forest and ate gus ridley dunlop was the biggest raindrop in the sky number 5 was the driest dirt path in the woods and swallowed ridley roy jones was the littlest rabbit in the forest he never had a chance lucas jefferson was the biggest bolt of lightning in the sky tom brown was the oldest tree in the forest he, too, never had a chance the sheriff of nottingham used to be my pal he never gave me a chance listen - you can hear the sounds of teeth chomping of rain falling of thunder crashing of rocks rolling of armies marching but mostly of teeth chomping and gastric juices dissolving

teacher, part 1

by rhoda penmarq

i am a science teacher i have taught science for a long time men are pigs this is the 21st century but the patriarchy is alive and well art costs money the patriarchy has plenty of it especially in the past and so does so-called western civilization is western civilization as bad as all that? “can’t any of you people take a joke?” i was born in the 21st century women! men are all pigs sorry, i am not very much interested in poetry i am a science teacher men are pigs the future is on fire poetry is on the top shelf women, don’t get me wrong i bought my wife a birthday present but that is all in the past because she was a woman but did not read romance novels i try so hard to understand they say the novel is dead i know i do not want to write one

eternity

by nancy dark

nancy dark writes poems abut being herself

i sit in my room and lift up my voice i have to be me i have no other choice i have had many lives i have been many things i have been locked in boxes and pulled with strings i have been hung on trees and dropped from skies been drowned in rivers and baked in pies i have been poked with sticks and given thousands of tests and always been told it was all for the best the lives keep on coming like raindrops in spring and yet through them all i ask only one thing is it asking too much to wish to be free for just one life in eternity?

5 haiku

by jennifer robinson lodge

jennifer robinson lodge writes haiku, always in the 5 - 7 - 5 syllable pattern

lonely blade of grass breaking through years of concrete quietly stepped on * under a white moon a jumper restores order insanity smiles * terror in the street look out below the neighbors the parrot comes clean * * excuse me dear sir my origins are not clear but the dinosaur * i used to love rain especially in spring but now my feet hurt * *

the bend

by george willoughby

george willoughby writes poems that rhyme

cursed from birth i had no worth and passed my time making rhymes i saw a cloud and laughed out loud i walked in the rain and felt no pain i listened to the wise with open eyes and shed sad tears with open ears p i walked alone through caverns of stone and wore brown shoes on broad avenues i wore red ties as a disguise and blue chapeaus down over my nose no matter what i did i was hid from humankind who paid me no mind i sit in the night waiting for the light but the bird never sings and the phone never rings if i didn’t know better i would write a letter to the lords of creation at the united nations and invite them to converse about the universe and how it will end as it comes around the bend

jastro - a fragment

by eleanor rapunzel

eleanor rapunel writes poems about the cruelty and injustice of humam lige

people are bad, they should be good this is widely understood and yet as we turn history’s pages we find no records of golden ages jastro the fifteenth, emoeror of b———— built a fleet, and put to sea he sailed through wind and rain and thunder for unsuspecting worlds to plunder it came across a distant isle whose natives, innocent of guile displayed their unselfconscious charms and welcomed the fleet with open arms the natives were quickly disabused what they had, they had to lose and as night settled on the waves they were marched into the ships as slaves jastro’s bosom swelled with pride lust was his soul, and greed his guide he continued on his evil way as his successors do today * could we but find a ray of hope as we dangle from a fraying rope might we ask, what can we learn from history, as the planet burns