Dories poems on Hello Poetry

Dorothy Parker

I'm sick of embarking in dories
  Upon an emotional sea.
I'm wearied of playing Dolores
  (A role never written for me).

I'll never again like a cub lick
  My wounds while I squeal at the hurt.
No more I'll go walking in public,
  My heart hanging out of my shirt.

I'm tired of entwining me garlands
  Of weather-worn hemlock and bay.
I'm over my longing for far lands--
  I wouldn't give that for Cathay.

I'm through with performing the ballet
  Of love unrequited and told.
Euterpe, I tender you vale;
  Good-by, and take care of that cold.

I'm done with this burning and giving
  And reeling the rhymes of my woes.
And how I'll be making my living,
  The Lord in His mystery knows.

betterdays Nov 2014

shipwright.

some days i write
rafts and barks,
kayaks and corricles.

some days, a mere log,
set hopefully upon the water.

some days, dories and yachts
pinnaces, sloops, ketches and tugboats

on rare occassions,
great two and three masted ships,
schooners and galleons
filled with treasure..

more often scows, punts
and barges,
work man like and useful,
but not alway pretty

all painstakingly,
crafted...
with planks of words
nailed together with punctuation...
and caulked, with my soul...
sanded down by thought
polished, oiled and varnished,
with love...

then i set my sails,
my inspiration,
to the mast of poetry

and push off....
into the great white yonder....
hoping my xebec...my catarmaran, my dinghy...
my log...
will find a fellow waterman....
sailing, on this...
the ocean of words.

please forgive me,
any nauticalogical mistakes

av willis Feb 2013

An Ancient Field

I sometimes close my eyes
And perceive an ancient field
Where honor never dies
Behind an ancient wall of shields

I walk among the Peers
I've bled with since a lad
Beneath a copse of spears
I stride out brazen clad

The sun is hot upon my back
My helmet fills with salt
But then the foe starts his attack
So it's forward we vault

We have no drums for rhythm
No pipes to keep the time
Our forces fill the schism
Our Andreia fills the rhyme

Our Lambdas chip and crack
As the arrows fill our shields
I feel my Aspis thwack
As I bring my fear to heel

We finally reach their line
And our dories come to bear
They call on the divine
To deliver them from there

And I hear my captain say
As I walk amidst the squallor
"If all the world were just
There would be no need for valor"

So the back-story on this is I've always been a bit of a laconiphile, in fact I tend to list Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield as one of my all time favorite novels. I'm not, however, the worlds biggest spartan afficinado, that honor goes to a fellow i'm currently working with. So great, in fact, is his love of Laconia, that one night on post he fashioned himself a spear out of a random broom handle, 550 cord, and God knows what else. One night, he came up to the post I'm working at and asked me to sing him a song.
"You don't want me to do that," I tell him hoping to spare his ear drums.
"Sing me a song," he insists.
So in the end I compromise and end up reciting a few of my poems. By the time I finish the first he had a look of enchantment upon his face. At this point he asked me to write him a spartan poem. So I wrote the following piece, basing the theme off of the immortal words of Aegisaleus, "If all the world were just there would be no need for valor."

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