"briefer" poems
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
6k
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
3.5k
The mind is like an unapart book with a bookmark. Words surround where you are; thoughts. They are written on your hands. You feel them. They are inside two sleeves. All of them. The book is you. The walls surrounding within hear the words and their ears respond in ink. The walls are thin paper that never are as blank as slight movement from the wind, only always catching stick figures, shot like fingers. All of you moves and touches paper all around you. You are weighted down in ink. The present moment between dreams practicing in that mind. That mind alive and thinner than one stroke, briefer than lines from the fast belly curves of your heart. Moving.
Oct 4, 2012
Oct 4, 2012 at 11:26 PM UTC
When you write
Your next verse,
The active voice
Is a better choice.
The passive voice
Isn't as terse,
Your readers get lost,
They may curse,
Or worse,
Disperse.
Will I...
Should I...
Could I..
Might I...
Start a line that might lie,
Start a line that might die.
Can I...
May I...
Would I...
Do I...
Start a line sounding sly,
Start a line that won't fly.
Be pro-choice
With the active voice.
Be the action,
Not receiver,
We'll be believers,
And you'll
Be briefer.
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 11:56 AM UTC
the half-life of a resolution
~for maaidah durrani~
“your words really spoke to me and
i deeply encourage you to write more”
<•>
any resolution
barely lasts to the completion of its
flyby, tower-buzzing,
razzmatazz appearance,
colliding with the wall called
not today a/k/a,
tomorrow
tomorrow takes the lead pole position,
the conditional timing prepositional,
the delaying exscual misanthropic of
but one more,
whatever, it’ll keep for 24 more,
holding out the pretense of hope
for the resolute dissolute
sure, for sure, tomorrow,
will dissolve regret
tomorrow will write of poetry
but not a poem,
tomorrow will swear my
resolutions will be enacted
or, at least,
erased and re-written,
the oldest first when
re-added to the top of the list
tomorrow
will honor thy request
keep on writing for I’m no fool,
1200 plus poems, I’m yet a novitiate
I will keep your request as
one I’ve can never
cross off my life’s list
but tomorrow’s resolve,
be a better man,
leaner, briefer, kinder, a better lover,
sadly
the list has overrun the white pad,
the blue lines refuse another resolu....
Feb 25, 2018
Feb 25, 2018 at 5:16 PM UTC
~
March 2025
HP Poet: Mike Adam
Age: 66
Country: UK
Question 1: A warm welcome to the HP Spotlight, Mike. Please tell us about your background?
Mike Adam: "Slum east London, dysfunctional violent childhood, playing on bombsites. School, dungeons and kidnappings, sad little boy. Love of dogs and plants and rocks. School: Beckett Shopenhauer, work, college, work university, 1st love lost, travel Asia beaches and mountains, monasteries, monks, Bhodidharma. Work, work, work, Lady J (published collection), retirement, happy at last."
Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?
Mike Adam: "Began writing 10 years old, HP about ten years."
Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).
Mike Adam: "Poems gestate and arrive unbidden, laid like turtle eggs, a little hole, sand flicked and forgotten."
Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?
Mike Adam: "From 1,000 posts perhaps start with the latest few. I call them "mercifully short," easy to read but, given time, you may unpack a great deal."
Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?
Mike Adam:
*"Ryokan:
Why ask who has Satori, who has not?
What need have I for that dust, fame and gain
Montale:
Life that seemed vast
Is briefer than your handkerchief"*
Question 6: What other interests do you have?
Mike Adam: *"Amidst the first suicidal mass extinction in history I am grateful to read new poetry and garner hope from young poets still expressing themselves in beautiful combinations of words so thank you all for that...
Who am I?
I don't know"*
Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much Mike, we really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to get to know the person behind the poet! It is our pleasure to include you in this Spotlight series!”
Mike Adam: "With gratitude, Mike."
Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know Mike a little bit better. We certainly did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez
We will post Spotlight #26 in April!
~
Mar 2, 2025
Mar 2, 2025 at 4:45 PM UTC
930
There is a June when Corn is cut
And Roses in the Seed—
A Summer briefer than the first
But tenderer indeed
As should a Face supposed the Grave’s
Emerge a single Noon
In the Vermilion that it wore
Affect us, and return—
Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—
May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?
1.4k
**Smokey rooms and idle banter,
across the fields of my mind still canter
girls in short skirts, January to December,
the embers flicker and flame as days remembered -D'ya remember?**
*Teflon tough guys with hardened looks
fast friends by nights end-foundations shook
I hook fast to the Past-MAN WE HAD A BLAST!
bait my line and cast as the time streams pass*
*some cry alas as the nights grow dim,
me I'll always have my Total Recall to dip in,
conversations reach out to snag my arm,
No alarm as I'm mugged in memory lane, just charm*
*we were charming rascals with roguish eyes,
no fools as the street schooled on us no flies!,
So we thought til life taught us harder lessons,
as the Mask beneath the Mask reveals transgressions*
faithless lovers and fair weather friends,
left their mark on our lives as they came to the end,
of their briefer tenure amongst REAL mates,
at your back in the corner as you faced your fate....
Feb 23, 2018
Feb 23, 2018 at 11:13 PM UTC
splayed limbs and warm sun and sneakers laid to the side and sun on my body and the sound of the water more than anything else
A midday shower to get the stickies off, maybe its all worth it
If I get to spend even a second in the wind, drinking in its cool caress, how could I remember to yearn for the warm sticky touch of another?
If I get to hear the rushing of the water so close to my ears, what phantom chatter of ghosts could permeate?
If I get to feel the sun kiss my skin the way it does, what significance could the absence of you hold?
When I have so much, how could my heart remember to need you?
When I have so much, how could my heart not want to share it with you?
You who I know would love it. You who I wish loved me half as much.
When I have so much, why does missing you take up any room for gratitude in this cluttered mind? I started off alright this time.
This is not a rhyming poem.
****** poetry, maybe 5 is my lucky number. But 5 is a lie I tell to and for myself. I seem to have been briefer to you than that.
The difference is that I say 5, and you do not say.
May 22, 2023
May 22, 2023 at 2:09 AM UTC
I imagined your touch
It was almost too much
And the wind screamed
And I no longer dreamed
Of soft lies
Only foreign skies
Alien landscapes that stretch on forever
And my grip on reality starts to sever
Yesterday I thought I saw you across the street
I looked down at my feet
Too scared to look in your direction
Unwilling to spread the infection
That is locking eyes
Because in them I see a thousand other guys
Five minutes later, I realized it wasn't you
That nothing my eyes tell me is true
Its scary to think
That everything is written in disappearing ink
I'm starting to slip
I'm losing my grip
I can't keep track of the days
Its all a never ending haze
Strange scenes
Never ending dreams
Ever briefer spasms of lucidity
I'm losing all validity
Oct 6, 2012
Oct 6, 2012 at 12:32 AM UTC
As i sit back and watch the openly wounded come back from the war of speaking to you, it makes the burning hunger in my heart more passionately unbearable. For a fleeting instant I was your's, and, for an even briefer moment you were mine. But you had an unendurable curious spirit that even i couldn't manage to capture the attention of for more than a rapid second. And that was tiringly back-breaking, so I stopped striving to be that one singular girl whom you kept around for a time. I stopped glancing around to survey if you were around when i was about to do something noteworthy. I stopped trying to keep the conversation going if it was veering towards a dead-end. I even stopped wearing my hair precisely the way you like it. But that undoubtedly didn't mean I still didn't thirst for your presence. That didn't mean I could deliberate with you about the very person i loved. In as much as, as laborious as this was to confess to you, I am still insanely in love with you.
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 6:23 PM UTC
we never talk about the ******* afterward.
it's hidden in the dust on my sheets, his liquids still fresh,
his cologne stamped on my pillowcases,
instead he asks about work, mentions his exhaustion,
doesn't bring up the marks he always leaves,
the one on my arm like a birthmark,
the small red ones on my back,
the ones on my hips like roses left out for too long
last night his fingers pressed on my throat and he kept asking how
i liked it. i was drunk, he was drunk and when he said he loved *******
me i almost thought he said
he loved
me.
in my room we spoke of what we always spoke of, books and PhD's,
of classmates, of futures, and interrupting our conversation his
lips found mine, in a hungry kind of way,
he never really liked to kiss.
it'll be two weeks until i see him again, perhaps longer,
and our talks will be briefer, and i am hoping my scratches are long
and violent on his back, i hope his skull is stinging from my
pulls.
we **** like we'll never **** again, and maybe i haven't had
this passion in a long while,
because i know he'll never be mine.
his fingers on my throat felt like freedom, and it's in those hours between
late night and early morning we are nothing but skin,
his fingers on my throat,
his fingers on my throat,
his fingers on my throat,
i'm choking on my spit
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 1:19 PM UTC
Fledglings,
Now long
From the nest,
Alight with grace for
A brief repast,
And well-earned rest;
Then secret away
Before December's threats.
Fleecy sheep
From the promise
Of Spring,
Are fatted and shorn
And blithely waiting,
Will feed on corn
And winter grain
In straw-warm barns.
So you, with
Youth's eyes
Intent with queries,
Focus on
The coming seasons;
When the nest's
No longer home,
When the wool
Has yet to grow,
And the barn
Has lost its glow,
And cannot
Keep you
Warm.
Meet opportunity.
It's a subtle wink,
And briefer than
You'd like to think.
Look to your stars;
Leave earthly woes
Behind.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 10:46 PM UTC
Lions of focus
Smile and deed, a roar the better behalf
Integrity is a waiting game, for honor rests
In the land, waiting on a heed, to laugh:
Sour wishes have a little more time, than is...
Stoic in the give and take
We welcome a light of providence, to this
Host a briefer goal than silence, and you will dream my sake...
Habit in the halt of another sunny day...
Eat your fill, the rest of a knowing hate
Has found many in the service of any
The liberty it took to air the ordeal, we fate...
With a seemly finish, the tooth of integrity
Is here to stay, saying the obvious to a wall?
Pity for a salt, is better than a love of longevity...?
By any wager of flesh made, especially when a world is about to fall
In love, with a star...
Remorse and the silence anew, we note the prayer like a shame
Saviors and stead, to accumulate a scent of survival on far
Patiently yours, as if a lucre was the first to name...
Do you want this all to end?
In the turn of seasons into a walk of simplicity, enthroned
By the service of communion, we dote is a reason enough to lend
A unity in the dare of a lifetime, that has a heart for its own?
Jun 1, 2024
Jun 1, 2024 at 10:39 PM UTC
The ephemeral voice of solstice fades,
in solemn hushes from the sky;
While August melts its perfumed air,
and yellowed leaves go floating by.
Summer dreams define our will,
to follow our hearts' desires;
And when each day is briefer still,
we cling to sunlight's fire.
Looking ahead toward Autumn's face,
with wistful sighs of loss;
We spend our evenings under the stars,
feeling an early touch of frost.
And while the ocean dares to play,
its siren's song of love;
The blackest night can never fade,
when mists caress the doves.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 8:26 PM UTC
Fall Leaves Fall
by Emily Brontë
<>
*Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.*
<>
the summer visage long faded from caramel,
to a bastardized version of ugly dirt brown,
the streets empty of traffic and the silence
is a sadder shade of lesser peace, the vibrancy
given way to sharper clearer long division disagreement
my worrisome peaks when the trees
denuded, less shelter than ever.
no cover offered, we stand divided,
visible lines of demarcation,
unable to hide, from each other,
unable to hide, from our selves,
the briefer day transits quicker
into night’s decay, and the words
we utter and state,, hollow sounded,
have no echo ability, no resounding,
and we all grow silenced, partly in
shame, partly because partisan words
bring no gain, or the satisfaction of a
response that makes us say ah ha! you see!
the leaves crumble breneath tired treads
and forested footsteps long ago forgotten,
beige dust that the wind swirls, delighted
by its new power to spread its grounded
memories of human interference into
a coverlet of dust
this fallen solitude hurts me, for it is in
opposition to the joy gay screams of children
in to water running, the oohs and ahs, of freedom’s fireworks gloried colors proclaiming we are “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
Nov 5, 2024
Nov 5, 2024 at 3:13 PM UTC
If we should meet again
under the clock at Waterloo,
I wonder if you
would
remember me.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 2:08 PM UTC