Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Editing - rough draft

Genocide

In the land once serene, pigeons bombard,
Free words stumble, lost to the drain,
Childhood's innocence stolen,
By the relentless war machine.
Rivers of blood flow freely,
Agony paints the scene,
Where pain reigns supreme,
And death lurks, unbidden.

All witnessed in Gaza's plight,
A tragic tale of endless night.

Cosmic ships

Somewhere there, beyond the edge of the world,
Magical ships sail into the distance, unfurled.
In the corners of the universe they sail not
With galactic foam, they cleanse both day, so vast.

Somewhere there, in far-reaching expanse,
Where mysterious whispers dance,
Where stars twinkle and planets soar,
And cosmic maps require a treasure trove, more.

Portrait of a Man

This portrait
Spread out before me
Of a man,
What a man could be.

Arms outspread in adulation,
In a radiant embrace
Of the world, the sky and sea.

Blistering sun and wind,
Cracked earthen cheeks
Receive teardrops of rain
A sacrifice of pain.

This fatted calf,
This wolf-in-sheeps-clothing.
Not lion, but jackal
Stealing babies in the night
Not lamb, but still a victim of industrialized slaughter.

How Long Will I Bleed?

I thought
it would be easy
to let you go

My walls stood proud
Shielding me the whole time

I thought
maybe
letting you go
wouldn't hurt

But here I am
writing about you
while my heart
aches

Those first steps

Frivolously fumbling
their withering way
Never seeming to stay
On the same
prevalent path
painted before
their tattered
tales of time.
And yet with
fear firmly fastened
in their hearts.
They still stiffly
stammer down
that slightly
slanted slope
with their
heedful hearts
hanging on
any hidden
hints of hope.

Of March

She is like the firstborn child
out of bed in the morning --
small feet stepping onto the cold floor,
slipping into summoned rain boots
itching to leap out the screen door
to count the crocus and laugh with the warbling robin.

She is like the restless child at recess
finally released from the classroom,
sprinting to the playground, its revelry
stirring just beneath the snow, waiting
patiently for the thaw, the germination,
the first receptive signs of euphoric new life.

Household God

Black Friday’s band came to play
Grey mourning blues on a Monday
Bawling horns and saxophone sobbing
Good morning you’re good for nothing

Family faces looking grey
Damn the dark cloud above our house
The casket closed and soaked in rain
No more dust and ashes anthems

Sixteen

In last nights dream, I am 16 again.
I drive to your house and blast Don Mclean on the way, windows rolled down past the weeds.
It’s cold in New York and the wind sends chills through my skin, spreads across my face like ants through a fruit bowl.

This is 16 to me: driving down St. Paul Street at 9 p.m. on a Friday. My backpack and a bottle of rum in the passenger side. Guitar pick in my cupholder - you left it at my house last weekend.
The beach, bike rides, cornerstores.

VAMPIRES

Swinging the cone of light
Chasing away the pocket
of black unlit shadows.

stabbing the candescent
stream. Banishing dark pockets
away out from the undimmed
Well lit hill cliff.

Upside down restless
curled hooked talons
Startled disturbed. Undead
flapping swoops and hisses

inside an abandoned empty
socket of darkness. All around

you famished dribbled drooling gang
of pointed fangs and yellow spools of

Button

I found a button on the sidewalk.

Fallen from the sleeve of a
lacy blouse
worn by a lonely woman,

popped off the collar of a
stiff cotton shirt
from a hurried gentleman?

Once, maybe, donned by
a poet,
a father,
a chemist,
a grieving widow,
a homeless wanderer.

Unnoticed and left behind by
someone heading somewhere
without their button.

I pulled a purple ribbon through it
and hung it on a nearby branch,
simple, ornate, and endlessly, endlessly
circular.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Editing - rough draft
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.