#modernlife poems on Hello Poetry

Edward Coles Feb 2018

Leaves

If all the leaves are gone
Then where’s the story?
If all the money is gone
Then what are you hiding?
If you have been here before
Where do I go from here?

If all disaster falls
At the last leg of home,
If all the thieves are caught
Then why all the cameras?
If even ******* fall in love
Why can’t I?

Saturday and it’s 5a.m.
Saturday and the room starts to spin
Smoke a cigarette and look down
At this grey, grey town.

And they will beat the drum
For any cause
If everything is ******
Then where do we start?
If all the money is gone
How do you manage
To sell out to all your friends and thieves?

If all the leaves are gone
Then what’s the damage
When every country is armed
To their teeth and think-

When the power is gone
What will we feed upon?
Have we reached the end
Or can we start over again?

A song I wrote

https://soundcloud.com/ed-coles-667440414/leaves-demo

C

#depression #anxiety #modernlife #society #politics #corruption #weltschmerz

David John Mowers Sep 2017

Dust

Today

Corridor
cubicle
knick-knacks...
computer,
chair
co-worker...

Parking lot
status/car
leather seats
class established
road home...

Modern large, house
many rooms, furniture.
Giant television, computer
game console, throw pillows...
...beautiful wife, luxury bedroom.

Money in stocks, paid-off home
inherited wealth, garden with gnome
butterfly bushes, peonies, sunflowers
life of fulfillment, family of hours...
...everything in life, collected, recorded.

1,000 years later

...dust...

Whom could afford it?

Nothing you see today will be known of or exist in any way in 1,000 years. Nothing you do matters. Nothing you have will ever be permanent. You mean nothing. Your life has no purpose. When you see the futility of ants after a rain storm knowing the forecast calls for more...you look in the mirror.

#rhyme #meter #modernlife #life #absurdity #purpose #dust #insanity

Seán Mac Falls Apr 2017

Way Words

.
I have seen couples,
So far from each—
Other, on a platform,
Waiting for the next train,
Never touching, yet how
They ****** their mobile
Devices, how softly, sweet,
Without guile nor agenda
They swipe the glass—
As it swoons back in return
With blue lights and alerts,
So dearly needed and answers,
In way words for the machines
Of flesh and the ghost within,
With such personal aplomb
In real notifications of text
And instant message.

#love #dream #lovers #technology #dystopian #modernlife #daymare

Pat Adamek Oct 2015

Vices

In front of me I see a table
A table full of vices
A table which remembers the nights before
Covered in evidence of vices
Coca cola and Pepsi labels stare each other down
A beer cap and cigarette ash and packs crumpled down
An empty water bottle
A cellphone and a lighter
Littered with change is the table
Covered in nickels and quarters
George Washington's looking forward onto Golden Arches
Around the table the chairs are still pushed out from the people who brought him them
Left now but ghosts haunt the places they have emptied
They beg for anyone to notice the hell they are in
They scream look at what I have left you as a message
Look at my vices!
The sections are mapped out on the top of this table
Each vice has a person and each one a label
And the labels they leave are the proof there's a problem
They turn to these vices and hope they will solve them

#youth #consumerism #modernlife #americanpoetry #yolomentality

Molly Jenkins Oct 2015

screens I

and often nights? i -
i’ll have no trouble
it’s the screens that
do me in.

the fallen angel
the lithesome, spent glow
of do-overs
it just
does me in.

i am too possessed
by mercurial vapor
a dead self
at 2 and 3 and 4am
egging on, asking
“keep looking? it’s
somewhere in the archives.
it has to be.”

i promised, i promised
i wouldn’t, i promised
or I’d spend months
years, decades of life
living in the guesswork
the in-betweens
lying in the pathways
between the thought
and the reflex.

i could scroll a whole
lifetime away
in wanting.
it’s the screens that
do me in.

#technology #badhabits #haunt #modernlife #inaction #halflife

Sanjukta Nag Oct 2015

Are You There?

The light that burns darkness
Still sleeping above faint sky

World is splinted with woods
Steel is constructing mankind

Removing the portraits of life
They play the game of smoke

Happiness crossed terminator
Reddening my eyes with moan

Let me discover my reflection
On pupil of Your evident soul

Lift me up with Your firm arms
For staircase demotes to Hell

Tend my existing solitude and
Whisper, “It’s still not too late.”

#god #modernlife

JG Fletcher Jun 2015

Talking

It's strange
When you first start
Talking to someone
The interest is there
Attraction is ever present
Yet, you aren't looking
For a relationship
Just companionship
It may blossom
Into something more
But for now
Simplicity is key
It's all you need

Written on a scrap of paper and a pen while I was at work.

#relationships #talking #attraction #modernlife

Pat Adamek May 2015

Make Today Meaningful

A poem to make today meaningful.
Though I did something
It was nothing worth sharing
So you've heard before, no one's caring.

I'll write a poem to make today meaningful.
I'll be constantly reminding
You that you never had a good grasp of timing.
And it wasn't jealousy that forced me to quit responding
It was the fact that you would only text
me that I found alarming
...and you wrote a poem to make the end meaningful

You really must be my favorite author
I've bought your work time and again
I've your words stuck in my head
And you said
"You're reading too much into this" and had nothing else to offer.

#love #relationships #technology #modernlife

Michael Apr 2015

Out of Order

She said the Guatemalan women
had a trick for situations just like this.
A variation on a familiar tune of
slow and steady wins the race:
Just take small-calculated steps,
don’t exert too much force,
and when you finally reach the end
it’s like the journey was a godsend –

but I rise helium heavy, each step
an angular insult to my weight.
This modern pilgrimage of bottled water
and Doritos, clothes marred by tide and decay.
Otis, I pray that you’ll hold me once again
I’m not made of hearty peasant stock
My hills are made of concrete and
I order Seamless ‘round the clock.

#modernlife