"minimally" poems
What's the best way
to celebrate one's birthday?
To throw a party?
To cut two cakes -
One for birthday, another for promotion?
To be with loved ones - called a family?
To cherish oneself and make goals for future?
To teach art to the less privileged children?
Yes, I did it all this time!
The best of everything was the part
when I taught art to the less privileged children
But to my surprise,
These cute children taught me
more than what I could teach them!
It was- how to be happily happy with minimalism.
I spent two hours of my birthday
With them
Teaching them art
And it was so awakening,
Their happy expressions of art
Made me more happy.
They gifted me that day a smile
Which was unconditional
Few were orphans,
few children of a single parent
With less of money
but more of heart!
Their smiling aura
Amidst all odds
taught me how to live
and be happy minimally!
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 2:16 AM UTC
Embracing His Solace!
In solace mountains scaled.
Solidarity stands strong.
Between two upstanding.
Love matters minimally.
Grace relaxed in cultured elegance.
Company not desired much.
Cries alone.
Dies alone.
Does he moan.
No deals granted.
Pours another escapist drink.
Needed to **** or release the lurking tears.
Forced to descend thy tender cheeks.
Solace found also in my place.
Want no-one to invade my space.
Love freedom to be mine.
Detest freedom myself at times.
Then I to cry.
Flood rivers rarely.
Too selfish to co-exist.
Although your heart and soul I've missed.
No deals wanted.
Love never denied!
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 10:16 AM UTC
The rock slept
Genghis Khan clamped fingers
Over the edge of a land mass
And peeled freedom away from the East
The rock slept
The mob beheaded a woman who aided the American Revolution
Americans denied it later
But every town called Marietta is named after her
The rock slept
A vegetarian who didn’t drink and smoke
Commandeered information technology and chemical engineering
To commit the biggest murder-robbery
In the history of daylight and star-shine
The rock slept
The vegetarian cowered from justice
Committed suicide like the milksop/milquetoast he was
The rock slept
A fourteen-year-old boy clamped his fingers
Around it
Aimed it at High Strength Lexan riot shields
Protecting flesh, blood, and bone minimally paid
Protecting shields of numbers, theories, interchangeable office holders
Until he realized the futility of it
Dropped the rock
Turned south (or maybe north)
And walked away
The rock slept
Snoring unheard through the next spurt of tyranny
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 6:33 PM UTC
i exist somewhere between the kick drum and the snare
i am the blood thundering in our veins
i am the rhythm that gives us life
i am the 375 nanometers of ultraviolet light shining down on you
i am the space between the notes and the silence before the drop
i am oscillation, reverberation, undulation of bassline
i am rattling ribcage from excess decibels
i am titinnitus waiting to strike.
3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, Lysergic acid diethylamide, tetrahydrocannabinol, ethanol, benzoylmethylecgonine; choose your poison so that you may enjoy me better
i am the sweat that slicks our skin and keeps us cool
i am the longing look that leaps from eye to eye
i am mellifluous melody, motivator of movement, master of mind.
i am the sea of strangers you find yourself lost in, minimally clad bodies moving in ways you didn't know were possible.
i am the fire-poi spinner, the LED hula-hooper, the melbourne-shuffling madman, the obnoxious bro, the ancient hippie, the obviously underage girl, the idiot overdosing in the corner, and the person wearing more pony beads than clothes.
i am the rave.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 3:01 PM UTC
This night advances past the evening.
The dead moonlight shines in, gleaming.
The tick of the clock is the present sound.
The tea kettle boils on stove, steaming.
A burst of wind punches through the windows.
The candle light's flame no longer shows.
Gently, a sound trees sway through the night.
The tea kettle screeches like a train's whistle.
As shadows crawl across the wall.
midnight moonlight minimally falls.
Light travels down the hallway.
But it dims down and settles as dull.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 11:15 PM UTC
I left her room for improvement, but then she occupied it with other people's shoes as if any of them could ever suit her. The company she keeps wage minimally. They place their bets where she places her rest. I placed my bet where she places her plate. She knows exactly what I brought to the table, but yet she is in bed with them? Business partners she says? Well then that's just bad company and this is precisely why...
I left...
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 2:02 PM UTC
Sometimes after I've
Had a drink or two,
Or a few more,
I convince myself that I can
Find what I want
In the superficial distractions,
Building my ego in faked conversations,
Pretending to be the careless girl
I've never really been able to be,
But pass me one more beer
So I can text every other
Y-chromosome in my phone
And pretend the meaningless
Exchange of dialogue
Even minimally replaces the gross
Urge I repress
To send you the stifled sonnets
That lay dormant at the pit of
My suppression.
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 1:04 AM UTC
Underneath the burning building in my gut
So much is preserved safely
In the memory where you are smiling
I find peace
I want to be lonely in private
But there is no space for that
Under the rubble
Compound fracture of bitter jawline
That same smile a photo
Warping in fire
I want to preserve you
Like a wasp in amber
But we are not as slow as that
Not as gentle
The theory is
Two objects fall at the same speed
Regardless of mass
Except for people
We do not fall for each other at the same pace
I felt like the man with the rescue dog
That heard your heartbeat
After the cement settled
And the wood grew cold
White ash
Black cinderblock paperweights
Your body preserved under
Layers of broken building
But you felt safe
Because you set the fire
And I was the man that found you
Some secrets can’t stay buried
We were cave people
Found and revived
I’m not new to this
Just rusty
Just dusty
There are burn marks on our bodies
And I have almost forgotten how mine got there
There were things you thought you should go back for
Things you wanted to leave behind
But in the saving you took what you could carry
There was baggage in your desperation
To save what you thought was important
When you burnt yourself to the ground
You forgot that fire is a funny thing
It lives too
And you can’t control it
There were some houses
Left standing
Whole acres unlit for no reason
Not everything gets burned
And there is a photo of you
Cigarette hole dimples
A smile that brings me peace
And you brought with you
Bits of burning ribcage
And smoke filled lung
To hide your heart minimally
I brought nothing
Mine is slightly weather calloused now
But it works just fine
It’s just rusty
Just dusty
So take this
What is left of my burning breast plate
Carved message on the inside
like an oversized locket
Underneath the black and white negative of your film strip
“Thank you for trying”
Dec 27, 2012
Dec 27, 2012 at 6:01 PM UTC
If precious time to freely spend
is all that you could offer me,
with a great deal, I must contend;
I don't feel the fairest harmony.
My mailbox needs fixing.
My muscle is burning.
My value is changing.
I'm tired of hurting.
If precious time to freely spend
is all that you could offer me,
I wonder why I'm so content
to whine of overdue upkeep.
Why must work be so hard?
Why should work be so hard?
Now, without further adieu,
I'll prove from you what I have learned:
I can love what I'd like to!
I'll make every moment beauty earned.
My mailbox needs fixing!
My muscle is burning!
My value is changing,
I'm tired of hurting!
Dec 8, 2010
Dec 8, 2010 at 4:44 PM UTC
in time alone
we grew relentless,
sleepless, piecing together dream theories
on why life must slumber
and dreams conquer
you
who tried to resurrect dead moons and stars
who looked at the sun in his face
who shed feathers from your loneliness
who pierced your own wings and fell
like comets kissing earth, stuff of dreams and religions
golden staples
you liked your tea minimally sweet
and painted colors underneath your dark circles
primitive, of earth, your deification rite
divine
darkness churning on, you saw a feminine shape
drawing back a youthful veil,
a thousand pairs of eyes peered into a couple thousand years of
void
iridescent
marble gaze, beautiful and alien
colorless, but for a splash of red
lips that held the universe in a needle-like balance
sweet as a ripe fruit drooling
barred
the galleries of your mind
ever so gentle,
the midnight raven tore at the dove’s throat
visions of an apocalypse we idly gamble on
you
who never came back
who went on a path of dark suits and diamonds
soared through milky ways and emerged from afternoon foliage
lost your way, circled back
and gone
May 15, 2024
May 15, 2024 at 1:31 AM UTC
You’re feeling depressed so you head home early.
Your mom asks if you’re okay the moment she sees you walk in the door. “Just tired,” you mutter half-heartedly.
Sooner or later, you start to believe it.
The “just tired”s build up slowly and quietly until you are legitimately fatigued.
You can’t sleep at night but you can’t bring yourself to get out of bed and do something productive in the morning. Your grades drop. A teacher eventually calls home. You start going in again, but you are reluctant enough to leave the sanctity of your bed each morning; school is another obstacle entirely. You scrape by with average grades. Your parents are just happy to see you “functioning” again.
You get a job. It ***** but the hours are decent and allow you plenty of time to sit alone at home. Eventually your minimally active drive begins to taper off. You stop trying hard; your manager notices. You eventually get demoted after being late one too many times.
You drag through the hours, watching other people move by in a blur, and you come to point where you stop in the middle of the freezer aisle with your shopping cart. (You can only bring yourself to make microwavable food these days.) The children in the seats of the other carts stare like they can tell something is amiss, something is different, perhaps your aura or your face or the way your clothes are hopelessly wrinkled. You can’t bring yourself to finish your shopping after that, so you leave your half-empty cart there in the middle of the aisle and walk back out to your car empty-handed.
This is your life, you think. This is your mediocre life. And you are tired of it.
Apr 28, 2013
Apr 28, 2013 at 3:44 AM UTC
God, do you see me?
God, do you understand?
I'm reaching out to find my world being a mirror.
wishing for sight, but wanting to run from what I see.
So sad, so full, so empty, so minimally, tragically in need.
So inept. So innate. No sense, just walking around the rubble that are my thoughts.
the most beautiful voice singing my sad story.
learning, but tearing.
Move some mountains for me God.
Hear me, hear me, hear me.
Hear what I'm afraid to ask for.
Take me as you find me, all my fears and failures,
fill my life again.
I believe, but my own hands cover my mouth & eyes.
I can't stop crying.
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 3:57 PM UTC
I AM A ******* ADULT.
At the very least, the status is implied
by the Jenga-tower
of (mostly unopened) envelopes
on top my refrigerator
(which is full of ingredients now,
occasionally,
instead of scraps or dead-end, quick-fix options)
My wine comes in bottles, now;
$6 bottles, on average, but still.
(though I maintain my
unconditional support of the
undeniable
economical benefits and efficiency offered
by pumping it into/out of a box)
Why is the measure of maturity exhaustion?
Two years ago, I bought a file cabinet,
for no other reason
than it seemed like the
'adult'
thing to do at the time.
Inside lies reams of papers
instinct tells me to save.
Some with impressive
time-sensitive, stamped, sealed, italicized importance.
Times New Roman.
PAY ATTENTION.
My plates don't match,
and technically until less than four months ago
I only had one bowl,
but i have a decent can opener and
measuring cups of various degrees.
-No ladle. -
(But how often does one really need a ******* ladle?)
Why is the measure of maturity exhaustion?
A queen-sized mattress
minimizes the volume of my
minimally-spaced apartment.
A point of pride last year
after the 24 it took to shake the twin-sized option.
Sheets with a thread count
low enough for my cat to count to
but I could get some throw pillows,
or a dust ruffle. (do people still have dust ruffles?!)
I am a ******* adult.
What a shock
to discover
from where I sleep on this red denim couch.
(Did I forget to mention, that
I only sleep in my bed like once a month?)
But I can see the file cabinet from here.
Doesn't that count for something?
Why is the measure of maturity exhaustion?
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 3:40 AM UTC
Every time the eyes turn away
I cease to exist –
Dying a numbered death
Roaming in solitary, spectral form
The evidence of my existence foregone.
A returning glance won't bring my resurrection...
Hovering bee-like around you,
Minimally acknowledged,
This distant yeast mouth
Expands and swallows me.
In the absence of the buzzing wings
The mead waits for Dionysus
To be reborn.
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 11:04 AM UTC
Oftentimes we can be inanimate as an insentient being,
If not, then lost, torn, or broken,
Drifting off into a minimally-conscious stupor,
Responding only the the most prominent of stimuli,
Quite frankly, most of the time, we aren’t really alive.
And this--this is condemnable!
This is a pleasureless trick!
The human mind has incredible potential,
Yet it's hardly active,
And essentially quite thick
Still, such is forgivable
For when we originate the formidable,
Dreams come true,
Aspirations brought to place
Life is brought to life through inspiration!
Have you never experienced some urges?
Strong desires that can never be explained?
They rain down,
As a blessing,
Better use them--
They're quite shifting,
For the love of yourself and your species:
Respond to compulsions of ingenuity!
Out of all indecipherable anomalies,
Creativity is by far the strangest.
Yet, strange is commensurate to lovely,
If put into practice,
Creativity is quite comely.
Some might say said compulsions are
Granted by the influence of divine beings,
Yet I believe they manifest from the divinity IN us,
I could grant a rant,
An oration,
Or a panegyric about compulsions
But only under the circumstance
Of such an aforementioned trance
Oh Life!
Such compulsions are
The love of me!
My pillar of strength,
My foundation of truth,
Mainstay and
My hope!
My perceived ESSENCE
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 10:40 AM UTC
existing minimally can be such fun, for
oblivion wraps its fine fingers
delicately around my neck
in flirtation, and I see red and think
its love and war.
I like myself better when I exist
on precipices, hanging onto something
untouchable and trying to be
a little less star-crossed at another
tragedy, for I'm a poet
and not a hero.
Jun 20, 2015
Jun 20, 2015 at 4:20 PM UTC
I like the way streetlights shine through the red curtains on your french doors
I like that your mattresses are on the floor and your bedding is all white with a few blue minimally printed pillows
your dresser is decorated with traces of **** and dollar bills here and there
a coin jar that looked like a cookie jar
a childhood photo booth picture with your mom I've never seen before
the way the tv light reflects of our skin
that old velvet blue chair
blue, your favorite color
the tiny corner space the air conditioner is in with a window facing your backyard where the tire swing is
the mirror on the floor by your door, it looks just like the one my mom could never let go of as we moved house to house
2 tattered soccer ***** sitting at the corner of your bed,
I could listen to you talk about soccer forever and a day- love they way your face lights up like a christmas tree.
clothes lying all over the chair
cuddling to "jungle"
i've only been in your new room once, and even though you haven't yet- I've settled in.
I missed it there at your house...
where we grew up...
everythings so different.
but I'm here now,
5 years and we still walk around your circle and talk about God and aliens
I remember the first time I came over, riding on the back of Martin's bike, rolling up in the middle of one of your football games
I remember I was wearing that blue aeropostale shirt you liked alot
I remember the way you looked at me, holding my hand infront of all our friends for the first time
and how it felt to be teased and mocked
how our relationship formed
how our traditions formed
we're here now and I still love you the same, more if its possible.
I didnt know this was possible.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 3:51 AM UTC
Hello
Hi
I know
It’s me again
Sans the smoke and mirrors
Away from spaces in my head
And again and head don’t rhyme
But I didn’t need to say that
My self analyzing ways
Were in a haze
But made their way back
And I’d be impressed with myself
If there was some sense of pride in me
For each time
I grab said prize
It forces insides outside of me
And rhyming me with me?
Come on, man, that was simply lazy
Hazy
Crazy
Amazing
Maybe
No, you’ve got it, baby
Use it to the maximum
Forget minimally
But what if
Amidst these rhyming riffs
They see the real me
Do they see the real me?
There’s not a chance
It’s blasphemy
Because my armor, then would be
A holy one... almost gaping
People often ask me what my poetry’s about
They point like
“Oh?”
And I’m like
“No”
And they just question
As words pour out
And they move and they burn
And they twist
And I’ve learned
Not matter which way they’re turned
They’re about things that don’t last
They’re about loves torn asunder
About fires, rain, and thunder
Like that song
By Stevie Wonder
They’re the “Joy Inside My Tears”
And they lower and boost my fears
With all of their rusted gears
So I feel movement
A shift I hear
And yet I find it just still
Here
Hello
Hi
I know
It’s me again
This same ******* rut
That undercuts
These roots from sinking in
And the smoke and mirrors
The music
The light show they all go dim
I throw them to the floor
And the mirrors
Show me him
And he is me
But who am I
And...
...I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to shout
The truth is I’m not sure who my poems are about
They always hold some part of me
Hoping, despairing, living, dying
Some are etched
In stone-thrown rage
And some just leave me crying
Potential wins and consistent loss
They’re what fill my pen
Some acknowledgement to
A God who is always good
But a world that’s not my friend
And the struggle of my color
And the ripping of my heart
And the feebleness
Of my intellect
As I play this brief part
As I suffer
As I benefit
As I laugh
As I bleed
As I say hi
Hello
It’s me again
Just me
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019 at 6:06 PM UTC
A place I've shared half of my memories with.
It has held and embraced my most vulnerable moments,
carried me through each stage of my life, my first day of middle school, my first job, my first date, road trip.
It carried me home that day I got my period in Pei Wei but refused to call my mom and leave early because I was hanging out with the cool theatre kids.
It carried me home the night of graduation, and held me while I sobbed and thought the world I had so carefully crafted around me was falling apart.
It never spat back what I gave it.
Instead, it wrapped it's polyester arms around me and didn't let go until the world was right side up again.
The passenger seat, given a name to indicate it's existence lies solely in the idea that there must be a driver.
A mother, friend, stranger,
A lover to your left, the world to your right and endless possibilities in front of you.
Whether it be screaming at the top of your lungs to a song you minimally like, or spilling ranch on the seat because "you didn't slow down fast enough that wasn't my fault!"
Now I bravely sit in the drivers seat, the world at my fingertips.
And as I bravely glance over to my 11 year old brother sitting beside me, I know it is his turn to sit back and watch.
Nov 21, 2017
Nov 21, 2017 at 10:56 PM UTC
These pop song nowadays
They talk about wanting to **** you
To twerk with you
Wanting to take you home
And do violent thing with you
But that's not what I want
What I want is to have you next to me
To know I can rely on you
I want to know that I can call you
At god awful hours at night
Just to talk
(And you'll only be minimally upset)
I want to snuggle to you
While rent plays on the tv
I want to rest my head on your shoulder
When it's too heavy for me to carry
But above all
More than anything
I want
to hold your hand
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
i would have given it by now.
i would have loved you, and we wouldn't be here now.
you can keep sighing.
you can keep running into me on accident.
you can keep dressing more minimally.
but i won't love you, and we wouldn't have made it no how.
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010 at 7:46 AM UTC
So this is what my life's become?
A solitary drinker in a crowed pub;
Nursing a burgeoning alcoholism
And entrenching melancholy with self-seclusion.
Worse: compounding isolation by ignoring
Or minimally acknowledging, peripherally,
Those Sunday night lushes;
Instead, focused on the static dynamic of an evolving city;
Absorbed by a blue-meshed scaffold adorning
Another modern eye-sore of urban consolidation.
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 12:49 PM UTC
After the last minimally complex challenge I decided to make this weeks challenge a lot more simple.
A grain of sand
In eight lines, again you have one week
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 3:51 PM UTC
lost, one rung out through the scrub.
nothing i didn't need
anymore. matagouri beneath
heavy soles, the speargrass gave
me new skin. evenings
glazed over quick. dreams
curled up in my sleeping bag,
never touching me, dragged
'em to the tops, shook
'em out. i can sleep fine, now.
even in retreat, bathed in city
lights, foraging without snow,
gulping down the same old
chlorine i had lived with. oh,
antiquated i, now so deep in the
murk of this tunnel passed. i'll
make sure to miss you, albeit
minimally.
the cairn crop will spread out,
encompass frivolous dust-clouds;
from lowlands i shall stamp up
out of this trench i've so
meticulously hollowed. taste of
new victory fresh on tongue,
knuckles torn, eyes bright.
oh, new skeleton. nothing will
halt these unfurling wings.
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 2:51 AM UTC
she pens a thank you note, for my stealing inspiration from her observation,
to create a “beautiful bundle of words”
my vocabulary acquired by just hanging around this planet of aged years,
(hirsute, multifarious, repacked packets of globbed and gloated pins and notions),
is minimally useful in the arced architecture of reassembling a new combination
that pretends to be a beautiful bundle of words, a nouveau riches,
a poem rearrangement is only addition but that a new poem, does not make
to make a creation, one requires
a beautiful bungle of words,
each tripping upon the next, somehow discordantly harmonious,
a humorous pin ***** sordid that moves the lips into an O shape light emitting,
“why in the hell did not I think of that”
if it makes sensible than it’s likely just recombinant, i.e. a used car
if it makes sensitive as if it’s a new cry, unheralded unheard and
the first newborn among its peerage
bungle your pictionary mistakable notions from fumes of intoxication
stumble into a new theorem predicting the relativity of the impossible,
combine cross pollinations, fish and fowl, meat and milk, stench and best,
faucet drips of hurricane magnitude, draw insights from inside a child’s vision,
and say to yourself repeatedly,
this is how I bungle breathing into new poems,
this is how I birth beautiful
Mar 10, 2019
Mar 10, 2019 at 3:20 PM UTC