"penance" poems
stand fast
raise your warrior arm
in splendour and dissent
carve the path
besieged on all sides;
the penance of deviance
awaits with open arms
embrace the battle cry
let it ring in the ears
of your foes and their kin
fulfill the oathes
uphold all that is good
in a world of devilment
that crawls beneath the skin
You are a Viking
in this life and the next
do not falter
your name depends on it;
resolution and absolution
await only the brave
the Viking exists in you
do not ignore your dreams
until your grave
your last breath
will be the final kiss
upon this world;
make it count.
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
What if love became so overwhelming, such an inextinguishable force that its true purpose betrayed itself completely?
To the point that even the utterance of those three powerful words, that at a different junction had held such promise, now left a distinct taste of uncertainty on the lips and a ringing of insanity in the ear drum. What else does one say when the most pure form of expression and commitment echo with distain and regret?
Even as I slide into introspection, diving deep to the point of no return, there seems to be no logical path, no penance for the monster I have created. Through my own autonomous actions and neglect I have reached this dark place. Perhaps I indulged beyond a point where thoughts and actions have boundaries. A broken compass , spinning without meaning. All indicators in tact, every cog and point in place, magnetism lost to exaggerated memories, fears and regrets.
Self delusion is a drink that is best served with company. With companionship the mind tends to believe its own meddling. Delusions are mistaken for truth and biased opinions blur with reality.
All roads lead to pain. Every so often a spark jumps to the surface of my consciousness. A pin ***** exclaiming hope. It’s a glitch of my own creation. The belief in happy endings and love prevailing. That love is more powerful than any disappointment, mistake or breech in trust. My reality had been resurfaced and augmented by the media. Love stories are just that. Stories. A wave of manufactured hope, washing over the beach of the human psyche. Every grain of sand is washed back to the sea just as it has arrived.
Happiness, a flame burning on a tiny wick. Enjoy the heat while it lasts for it is going to be a cold winter. And the power is out.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 3:19 PM UTC
Missing blissful memories,
Cherished thoughts.
Memories in webs,
Tangled knots.
Binding grievances
Pave the way.
Unfettered thoughts
Have their own say.
Moments felt,
Moments understood.
Times are past,
Graveness its hood.
Calm seas rejoice
In silence.
Storms are but
Reasons to penance.
Regret hopes to
Unbind the will.
Will’s infant cry
To escape.
Bewilderment stares
With mouth agape.
Confusions unfold
In graves.
Souls depart
To hellish caves.
Brevity speaks
A thousand words.
Wilderness stands
On a million swords.
Confused and petrified.
Thoughts again
To guide.
A vicious circle
So unholy.
One committed
To every folly.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 12:44 PM UTC
The line didn't move, though there were not
many people in it. In a half-hearted light
the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly
with a large dazed family ranging
from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady
in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage
was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed,
the rumor went through the line. We shrugged,
in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation
had never seemed a very natural idea.
Bored children floated with faces drained of blood.
The girls in the tax-free shops stood frozen
amid promises of a beautiful life abroad.
Louis Armstrong sang in some upper corner,
a trickle of ignored joy.
Outside, in an unintelligible darkness
that stretched to include the rubies of strip malls,
winged behemoths prowled looking for the gates
where they could bury their koala-bear noses
and **** our dimming dynamos dry.
Boys in floppy sweatshirts and backward hats
slapped their feet ostentatiously
while security attendants giggled
and the voice of a misplaced angel melodiously
parroted FAA regulations. Women in saris
and kimonos dragged, as their penance, behind them
toddlers clutching Occidental teddy bears,
and chair legs screeched in the food court
while ill-paid wraiths mopped circles of night
into the motionless floor.
10.3k
*Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall
I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."*
- Matthew the Apostle
I
Seventy-seven bottles of gin
lie in the guts of sensuous men;
seventy-seven I forgive you's dissolve
in a fanatical mind's resolve.
II
What offence occurred under Saint Constantine's priggish eye?
Was it specious as a Samian's thigh?
Or Sumerians receiving alien diplomats?
Maybe somewhere far under Moscow Putin's massing cloning vats...
III
Whatever discursive and belligerent milieu
church authority finds most tried and true
seems to be the most important decider
in the future of things like the Large Hadron Collider.
Perhaps, unfoundedly, they find it funny that Higgs
(though it seems much like calling the Liberal Party "Whigs")
is a name shared by a man and a theoretical particle
(though it be libelous in any journalist's article),
and thus label similar advancements as "blasphemous".
I guess that this is what it is: believing just because.
IV
Who can know blasphemy from piousness?
Maybe all Luther did was obfuscate a prior mess.
V
Seventy-seven palm-branch-adorned, donkey-riding kings:
an automatic-ring-making-machine beleaguering proselyte rings.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 1:40 AM UTC
Aimless devotion to discontent deities*
sacrificial offerings crucial for good juju
Altar boys and pages kissing feet for wages
Praying to relics
punishing heretics
Burning,knifing,shooting
Oh for the love of god!
Don't believe
Do believe
Maybe just for acceptance
Penance repentance
Breed a way of thinking
and get many precious berries
Jan 28, 2012
Jan 28, 2012 at 3:00 AM UTC
It is nestled deep inside the fertile
Shenandoah Valley.
There is a river that runs amok
like a rabid, winded wildcat in
the shadows of temptation.
And then there’s a back-country
woman that just won’t leave my
hesitated mind.
Taking time
to worry all about her,
risking heartache
to forever go
without her—
it seems like such an unfair penance,
like the result of prison’s popular
undeserved sentences.
Getting by without a proper windshield,
it’s starting to look as if my drummer
really is too far off the mark.
Wishes to again cross that princess on
that old and dusty road.
In the end it’s a crime that, quite
simply, has no motive.
And I’m paying my sentence daily for
being a prince—and not the most
handsome toad in the land.
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 1:46 PM UTC
That week was so hot,
every shotgun house gasped,
windows flung,
screen doors striking wooden frames,
the squawk of rusty springs.
Touching skin felt like punishment
at first,
then penance,
then prayer.
We were thin, androgynous,
switching cut-off jeans,
sharing tank tops,
slick with sweat and shaved ice.
Strays ourselves,
barefoot thieves,
pirates of the quarter.
Hibiscus syrup stained our mouths
outside the Prytania,
where The Abyss flickered
and you cried like a boy
pretending he didn’t.
Inside your walk-up,
we dipped into quiet love
like bread in stew.
The radio’s crackle carried The Ink Spots,
which I recognized but couldn’t name.
You mouthed every note like a secret
you wanted me to guess.
Faint smiling lines near your eyes
from knowing,
like you’d seen me
long before we met.
Not woman,
not man,
just two bodies
leaning toward the same heat.
I wouldn't see your fall or your winter.
When the seasons change,
I’ll be gone,
back home,
watching rain from a train window,
each drop undoing what we were.
That last night,
you placed your key by the door.
I saw it,
watched it glint,
and said nothing.
The snails were climbing.
The air was too sweet.
You slept through goodbye.
I left the key where it lay.
Jul 21, 2025
Jul 21, 2025 at 3:16 PM UTC
my whispers,
they float over the currents
braving the undulating waves in our overture...
around their necks, hung time-worn pendants
whispers...
struggling to convey my sentence
like wreaths adrift perhaps with hope
like a requiem filled perhaps with remorseful penance
but more like weakened footholds on a slippery slope...
this dream...
only spoke grandly of sprawling blackness
where nothing did gleam
only thoughts heavy but...
oddly weightless
except for...
a repertoire of transgressions...
raucous and obnoxious
mischievous taunts that pull me back
caging me,
enslaving me,
smothering me senseless
that was my consciousness
where second chances exist...
in faint sporadic eruptions
through the heavy curtains of uncertainty's mist
finally awakened by hastened breaths
heavy and laboured
as like previous temporary deaths
I could hear my heart
thumping...
beating...
fighting...
to set its beats apart
breathe deep...
allow the new day's air sink in
rise fully from sleep
wake up
and...
let today begin
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 8:01 AM UTC
Alive, her Tanned Smile mirrors in your Phone
And you smile back. Such Grin spices your Face,
Browning each side completely whenst alone
Fortifying your Moment in good grace
Haply in penance your Innocence bears
Of Blue-and-White Anthems she held the Gold
Which many Fans sigh deeply in Despair
Knowing, in arrest, her Story is told
It's now up to you. Let your Plum-Charm shine
Yet suave must be your poise during your Date
Me? I am the Earth-Hanuman; In thine
Set this Stone Pillar to secure your Fate.
I told you, Athlete: Only you decide
Which Ticket you had your cause to remind.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 7:25 PM UTC
being a poet is not planned
**~for Gabriella Garcia~
~~
*a sixteen old soul says she understands,
being a poet is not planned,
forcing an old mans re-collection of the first time,
he made love to a virginal white
papyrus with muscles trembling,
body bent, chest bursting a rockets red glaring,
eyes marking the sheets with salty drip spots
what possessed the wrist veins
to wrest a cheap ballpoint pen to transfuse pain,
in a semaphore of uncoded ink blotches,
what was he thinking
was he thinking?
that it was an ejection
that it was an ***********
that it was a tribulation expiation
that it was a tribute explanation?
that it was an injection
that it was a circumspection inspection
that it was a circumscision surgery of emotional complexion
excising an infection with a written genuflection?
try, but no might, the first is subsumed
by the thousands that followed dutifully
though his one poem flawless, expertly recalled,
it will always be the next,
and unplanned just like this one too
who anointed his brow, the hair and forehead,
with oil pure, dripping down onto, into his cut cain marker,
who is not answering a query relentless
is this his plan, his appointment,
is this his flawed excellence,
is this his imperfect penance perpetual?
knowing well and full
now
the unplanned is his plan,
it’s his faceted flaws
that refract his coloraturas*
~~
upon this he reflects,
praying that
god protect the
young poets
from planning
______________
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2893127/unplanned
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 27, 2019 at 1:27 PM UTC
Worm eats through to penetrate.
Trespasses, what ***** deeds?
What ichor is this to venerate?
How dare eat, how dare have needs?
Godly viral load unbeatable,
no t-cell left to count.
Wriggling in puddle inconceivable,
**** upon this crucified mount.
Lazarus, risen from the dead,
no dog now licks your wounds.
Lepers now banshees are instead
social workers which we swoon.
And the Roman laws and judges
continue blame, hand down sentence,
as degenerative generation smudges
out from existence, *** penance.
Dissected and pinned against wall,
this writhing experiment oozes.
Whilst priests and politicians naw,
compassion and AIDS funding loses.
Jan 28, 2016
Jan 28, 2016 at 1:20 PM UTC
'All glory and honor', to You, bathed me with yellowed fingers. Father.
Whips me across each molar for penance, offers me glue in the morning- the kind he uses on letters when saliva won't seal the deal.
I, the cliché, trim my fingernails with a knife and mostly miss target. Slide into various seas, daily, with tincan pupils.
Knock,
knock, its time again
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 5:44 PM UTC
Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore —
No doubt you have heard the name before —
Was a boy who never would shut a door!
The wind might whistle, the wind might roar,
And teeth be aching and throats be sore,
But still he never would shut the door.
His father would beg, his mother implore,
'Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore,
We really do wish you would shut the door!'
Their hands they wrung, their hair they tore;
But Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore
Was deaf as the buoy out at the Nore.
When he walked forth the folks would roar,
'Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore,
Why don't you think to shut the door?'
They rigged up a Shutter with sail and oar,
And threatened to pack off Gustavus Gore
On a voyage of penance to Singapore.
But he begged for mercy and said, 'No more!
Pray do not send me to Singapore
On a Shutter, and then I will shut the door!'
'You will?' said his parents; 'then keep on shore!
But mind you do! For the plague is sore
Of a fellow that never will shut the door,
Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore!'
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 12:46 AM UTC
I've called this ghost town home for far too long.
Spent my nights drinking with the dead.
Each sip cementing their existence in my head.
Listlessly taking shot after shot.
Whiskey,
the water of life,
commemorates the spirit of the deceased.
One
for those who passed away in peace.
Two
for those taken prematurely.
Toast number three shall be a farewell to me
but I am not ready to no longer
be.
You see,
if I were to dream eternally
and sink deeper down the fiery well,
those infamous nine levels of hell,
I would forge fresh footprints through the ash covered ground.
Walking with boots of compressed gunpowder,
the trail I leave behind is always primed to catch up with me and
spark the time bomb I walk with.
The seconds
tick
tick
tick
away.
The clock is always heading toward zero.
I tried to be a hero for many,
yet couldn't save myself.
My desires put upon a shelf.
A self inflicted penance handed down from the only one
I was foolish enough to call
god.
I am too far gone to be saved.
Grave stones mark the decay of my hopes and dreams.
The etchings on each marble tablet will eventually fade away.
The soil I am to be buried in must be overturned if anything is
to grow where I could not.
Mother nature always finds a way to nurture even the worst of her children.
Like any good matriarch, she refuses to accept anything less than her child's full potential.
Even in death.
Though I refused nourishment and love,
mother earth still holds me close.
Embraces me in a final attempt to squeeze the last drops of good which
were buried deep and thought to be dried long ago.
Ignoring her guidance, I've lived as if I would never end up six feet.
Deep were my thoughts,
dangerous my actions.
Though I lived as if I couldn't be defeated,
my first true test comes as I fight for control of my soul.
Angels and devils are now my judges,
each making their case for my demise.
The scales of destiny weigh my past actions.
The outcome holding my future.
So I'll fill my glass one final time,
and toast to those who left before me.
I'm coming home.
Mar 21, 2014
Mar 21, 2014 at 10:01 PM UTC
So ends the Drama locked into your Bronze
Nike kisses you and shows you her Womb
Who, despite Angry Lads, live Life's Beyond
Now Married are you to Testimony
I guess you will survive the Afterthought
Of Promos and Parcels you will not Resist
The Wheel turns again; And in your Forenaught
Honest Advices refuse to make a Fist
You have this Resume of Deaf-Record,
Partial to Characters you do not Like
Even if they ask Penance for your Accord
Your Self-Righteousness slaps them in-spite.
What's the use? Your Friends will come to your Defense
Even if an Ant like me Stings to make Sense.
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 3:52 AM UTC
Dysfunctional behind closed doors
Shapeshifted the lovesick *****
She'll touch you timid, trembling hands
Scared that you arent coming back
Digs through drawers and under the sink
Searching for her missing link
A cigarette will do for now
At least it isn't puppy chow
Shameless in her actions past
Comfortable in coming last
Theres more than at the surface level
And everybody's personal hell
Clove hitch knot around her waist
She followed at a steady pace
Wrapped around your pinky finger
She mimicked all you seemed to give her
What her eyes can do to you
Back of my throat still tastes like glue
What a sullen memory
Of what that **** can do to me
She bites her nails and fingertips
Terrified that she might slip
A clumsy dance that she once knew
Of falling into penance due
Twirl your hair and crack a smile
This one's gonna take awhile
Different or the same old same old
They've paid for it in pounds of fools gold
Chasing after fading dreams
Tripping up on memories
Will she make it on her own
A concept simple, yet unknown
A reunion of the sweetest kind
Desperate to escape the time
Spirits burn an empty soul
But never can they make one whole
Echoing within her chest
"You have always been the best"
She sips and stares across the room
Shadowed by her phantom groom
Cut off from hearts nourishment
All on her own cursed to lament
The choices that she didn't make
And chances that she didn't take
A sigh inside an empty mind
A drop of water off the tide
She's buried next to clementines
Roots entangle, synchronize
What a pretty little mess
Of despondancy and tenderness
And she's still waiting underground
For a love once frolicked, love once found
Feb 25, 2018
Feb 25, 2018 at 7:39 PM UTC
The past a millstone of regrets
permeating, like a rosary-beads
of penance, the present.
The future a misty dream
of fading ideals.
Sep 1, 2010
Sep 1, 2010 at 8:38 AM UTC
My great-great-great-grandfather,
The father of my grandfather's great-grandfather,
He was a teacher by creed and by deed,
Once he sat with his eyes closed in great concentration...
A beautiful lady saw him sitting graciously in Padmasana pose,
That cunning nymph she wanted his penance undone for herself,
But he was a little short-tempered and couldn't take it when she tried it,
His patience was very short when it came to being disturbed during his penance.
Disturbed, he saw the beautiful nymph trying to break his temper,
He got enraged and picked up his trident to quickly ****** it through her *****
She had fear in her eyes,
Remorse on her face,
Pain in her contorted brows,
And despair in her dying voice,
As she uttered the curse,
*"O you so-called holy man,
You would never get love,
Your generations to come would die thirsty of love,
You're killing me because you can't make love to me,
So lost in your penance,
And so possessive about it,
Let your generations suffer for your actions..."*
She dropped dead there itself but her curse continues to be carried from one generation to the next.
I have been paying the price too,
Just like my father and grandfather,
No girl I knew has understood it,
No I won't just follow my forefathers,
I'll have it my way, I'll keep searching.
Dec 22, 2014
Dec 22, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
i sinned and came
across a page
across this page
my penance
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 2:12 PM UTC
To learn this gospel of that Birthing Home
A splendid way to start your own New House
Of your Man so proud; Dignity his own
Shows this Great Fixture of a Faithful Spouse
And I, envy-filled, toddlerish to Draft
To ask when my Best Time would ever come
You, Heroine's Pride, caused my Sorrows to Laugh
And boot this Troll for his Merriments done
Only for your Wish more Blessings invade
And never, ever Dream it should Resign
Which, termed Jolly, decomposed his best *****
And Danced with Gnomes your Prosperity fine.
Begging you, this Heart, please tell HER I Care
For the Flames I lit; My Penance I fare.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 3:33 AM UTC
the preacher never wrote a poem
about dahmer's baptism:
1.
he leaned across
the jail cell table
and his eyes were honest
when he said he believed in god
deeply
his eyes were honest
when he said goodnight honey
and gently draped his body
in a tub of sulfuric acid
his open jaw glistening in the moon
dissolving in the dusty noontime soliloquy
of crickets outside his apartment window
2.
can an honest man
bathe in those kind of wounds
and be allowed to ask
for a penance?
3.
for two weeks they left
his baptismal robes in storage
they asked if he really believed it
if he could believe in all this
4.
“when i was a kid
i was just like anybody else”
he had said
he seemed to think
being like anybody else
could dull the bloodstains
reduce the skeletons
still tucked into his closet
to powder
make his wishes into holy water
5.
yes jeffrey, anyone can drink it
but getting drunk on holiness
isn’t enough to repent
all of their fingers are wrapped around
your heart
doesn’t forgetting seem foolish
to the brains in your refrigerator
isn’t it just useless
to the spare ribs, in your bureau
drink all the holy water you want
you will always carry their bodies
on your chest
have you ever had a heart
other than the ones you collected
and did you ever know
what a soul feels like?
6.
and that day
they took him to a prison tub
and his body
glistened under the water
like a drowning animal or a martyr
jeffrey doesn’t float
7.
as he opens his eyes
his mouth wide
he looks just like him
suspended in white
ripples curdling in currents across his pale skin
a solar eclipse
covers the sun
as he comes up
for air
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 9:44 PM UTC
I laugh a lot.
I laugh at myself because I am hard stuck to find the beauty in the poetry
but somehow to others words flow like vicious currents rip through ugly ducklings never to be grown to beautiful swans down the river Delta,
the Nile,
we call it emotion, this the true beauty of the words is always flowing page to mouth to mouth to ear,
honey water to be digested by the soul and mind
and some breast stroke some and some do the butterfly and some just fuckin' drown...
so you could say to some poetry is no laughing matter...
yet here I titter like a child because I cant help but wonder if Daniel's saying penance or just stuttering the word *****
So I laugh
I laugh and laugh and laugh I laugh at myself I definitely laugh at you people
I ha ha ha my course thoughts, outwards reflecting anger passion, turning it away
with the yip yawing of jaws and gums flapping in celestial proportions of denial
snorts and giggles push back emotion drowning out any semblance of fear or hate
because who's to say I can handle it,
call it sociopathic tenancies but I'll make it make belief because we just cant handle the fairy tale we live in
we cant handle that there might be no happily ever afters and we cant handle that we dont have a Prince charming to take care of us
but instead the crown is Crown Royal and you love it, love the burn down your throat,
something to keep you alive something to keep you awake but aren’t the two just one of the same anyway?
What is each day but a dream if automation takes you over rides you out like a machine and pushes 100110101.
So I ask you,
I ask you to listen to the words and the voice,
swim down the river any way you want just get your feet wet because living on dry land is living in fear
But more importantly I ask me
I ask me to do what I asked you to do, but how can I trust me to do what I told you to do when I hardly connect the concept of we and have used it but once in my work, though I am no different than you!
Because what are we if not all the same?
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 9:53 PM UTC
My hands still ache –
I’m convinced it’s my atoms splitting
No one asked me how I got addicted –
They said the focus was on quitting
But I’m here in the present
So I must have a had a past
It’s too bad “Where’d you come from”
Is a question never asked.
I went through hell to get here
So it should matter where I’m from
I tell them “it should matter what I’ve seen…
It should matter what I’ve done.”
He then responded like a father and began his sentence, “Son…
It’s the shock, not the trauma, that makes the body the numb.”
He said, “The thing you search is silence.”
“And yet you let your monsters drum.”
You start to figure things out. You know --
When you’re locked up all that time.
But you learn not from what you’re taught,
Instead, you learn from what you find.
And I found mine in the written word,
I found it in a rhyme.
Numbers always helped me think, so I looked for something to count
And as I pondered that man’s words, the room’s only light went out.
So I counted the only thing that I could feel aside from air,
And his seven words made sense, as I counted the one thing
That in the dark was always there.
I’m my own favorite number, so I began counting,
“One…”
But this time I didn’t count to two.
And the monsters didn’t drum.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t rely on someone else
For the first time, in the dark, I counted on myself.
I then knew why “Where’d you come from” was never asked --
Both they and I lived in the present; we couldn’t act upon the past.
It doesn’t matter where you came from, or even why you’re here.
For your past dictates your penance, but the present is your frontier.
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 1:21 PM UTC
I heard a woman singing in the car,
about being reborn as a peacock for Krishna
so that she could sit in beautiful penance for him.
While watching whizzing morning work trucks,
and beat-up corollas and motion blur,
I thought of you in the stillness of sleep.
If I were to be reborn I'd like to be a bird as well
so that I could provide the down in your pillow,
and be cushion to your carousel crown
But then I would be lonely when you go to work.
If I were to be reborn, I'd like to be your sunglasses,
so that I could protect your squinting eyes,
and live by your lushest lashes.
But then you'd lock me away in a case, and I won't be able to see you.
If I were to be reborn, I'd be a bracelet made of magic beads,
so that I could promise health around your often pained wrists,
and fix the freedom in your fiery fingers.
But then you'll probably lose me, or unstring me accidentally with time.
If I were to be reborn, I'd like to be your favorite puppy,
so that I could pacify your inner turmoils.
and be held by your human hands.
But then you'll possibly outlive me, and I wish to watch you grow.
If I were to be reborn, I'd be lonely, locked away, left, lost, and outlived-
so I'd rather stay in this life with all of my privileges
of providing, protecting, promising and pacifying
as your lucky lover.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC