"preserves" poems
the extermination of the straight white male
soon we will be gone and the remainder carried over into zoos for
“safekeeping,” our DNA and ***** harvested for science purposes
you will be pitched advertisements
send $ to San Diego Zoo so they can save the few remaining
white rhinos (which they neglect to mention are in preserves in Kenya and the Sudan, but send $$ a way)
and the last three straight white guys
(surfer, techie, and an aborigine)
to preserve the species so the world can modify their cells
to stop sexism, racism and other male diseases
gonna maybe mate them with the rhinos,
which will be expensive cause of all the rhinoplasty,
so send me some
money, money, money
yup
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 4:37 PM UTC
In a quiet corner of my heart, 🌹
her memory lingers, softly alive.🌹
I need not call her name in prayers,🌹
yet my soul forever pleads for her.🌹
She does not fade with passing time,🌹
like a hidden flame, she continues to glow.🌹
Even in silence, her presence speaks,
a whisper the world may never know.
🌹
What the lips refuse, the heart confesses,
what the world forgets, my spirit 🌹🌹preserves.🌹
For love is not bound by distance or voice,
it endures in a language only the soul deserves🌹🌹
Sep 19, 2025
Sep 19, 2025 at 1:50 PM UTC
when the earth makes a complete orbit around the sun,
it is called a revolution.
when people stand up for what they believe in, enough to make a change,
it is called a revolution.
when you save something, preserve it for yourself,
it is called conservation.
when you told me you were leaving and i couldn't come with you,
we held what is called a conversation.
when i followed you across the country, train ticket in one hand and your hand in the other,
it was called love.
when you left me with nothing but a note on a hotel pillow,
it was called hate.
they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but words and pictures, slip-ups and homographs, grammar and literature and math and science,
none of it matters anymore.
none of it matters when nothing is changing and time stands still.
none of it matters when preserves run dry and talking turns to silence.
none of it matters with notes on a pillow that doesn't belong to you, thousands of miles from home.
Jan 27, 2012
Jan 27, 2012 at 1:36 AM UTC
Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,
Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,
Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud.
Docking mangels, chipping the green skin
From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin
Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth
To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind—
So are his days spent, his spittled mirth
Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks
Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week.
And then at night see him fixed in his chair
Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire.
There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind.
His clothes, sour with years of sweat
And animal contact, shock the refined,
But affected, sense with their stark naturalness.
Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season
Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition,
Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress
Not to be stormed, even in death's confusion.
Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars,
Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.
2.8k
"unconditional love dinner-dance"
so names the advert for an evening of a
big shot, posh charitable event,
which the glossy Gatsby East Egg magazine implies,
if you fail to attend said soirée, you nobody, will have no way to claim truly understanding the composition of an
unconditional love dinner dance
laugh internally, swirling,
riffing on eat love pray,
this ditty is what I instantaneously say...
*what do these swells,
with their self-appointed importance,
know to probe/defame my claim,
to this poem's title?
these are the factors,
the stepping stones from
my minute to the minute next
love
am I not oathed, bound
unconditionally
by my very own name,
which life bestowed upon me at birth,
to compose of this love
in every etching lineage, signed verse kissed upon our faces,
then, as well, oh so well, so swell,
to kiss our babies
whose smooth skin has no familiarity with
time and all my love
all my love,
uncritically makes no distinction
dinner
she loves me through the silence
of my oohing and ahhing,
these sounds,
escaping willingly,
unconditionally,
as delight unconstrained at the delicate deliciousness her love
has implanted in the dishes she preps,
with which she
preserves us
dance
she love to dine upon
her laughter at
my akimbo'd imitation of
'so idiot, you think you can dance'
hip hop
begging me between crinkling boisterous hardy laughter,
please, not to hurt myself
she, a Martha Graham educated,
Argentine Tango ballet mistress,
a life long dancer whose genes forbid her
to pass by the sound of music
without breaking out, breaking into dance,
in perfect synchronicity
to whatever the composer calls upon her,
to present the music, to inform us,
in body graphic form,
unconditionally
what they intended us to
see within and between each note
I need no tuxedo,
no fancy dress,
no permissions to comprehend
the meaning, the actuality,
the unconditionally of
unconditional love dinner dance*
I dine and dance with love daily,
and yes, to be very sure,
unconditionally
for is there any other kind?
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 12:10 PM UTC
She preserves her horrors in her bones
every detail carelessly engraved into her structure
every bump along the way creating a signature braille of her history
a silent story told by the curvature in her body
a girl crying on the inside
wheels of fake smiles and emotions move her
she is a mere puppet to a life she cannot control
the scars are too deep
she is too broken
she cannot tell her story
silenced by horror
her bones narrate.
Aug 9, 2012
Aug 9, 2012 at 11:44 AM UTC
It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first:
To offer you now at last my least and my worst:
Minor, absurd preserves,
The shell's end-curves,
A document kept at the back of a drawer,
A tin hidden under the floor,
Recalcitrant prides and hesitations:
To pile them carefully in a desparate oblation
And say to you "quickly! turn them
Once over and burn them".
Now I (no communist, heaven knows!
Who have kept as my dearest right to close
My tenth door after I've opened nine to the world,
To unfold nine sepals holding one hard-furled)
Shall - or shall try to - offer to you
A communism of two ...
See, entry's yours;
Here, the last door!
2.3k
Who knows who would
'true valiant be'
when you can't see
beyond the end of your nose?
who knows?
It has to be Sunday some day
and today is some day for some
hymns and hers (towels in the bathroom)
down the stairs
toast and preserves in the conservatory
not mandatory
but it's Sunday.
God must be reeling in shock
wondering what he has done
Jesus is getting the backlash
it's always a Sunday for some.
I'm going to queue up for my
holy wine and wafer
it's
safer not to sit upon the fence
and where else can you find this
kind of entertainment
for a pound or even less,
for fifty
pence?
beyond when I pass into
poets corner
where the monks and Friars
sort wheat from the chaff
I shall laugh
I shall rhyme
have a ****** marvellous time
Who knows who
'..would true valiant be..'
Apr 22, 2018
Apr 22, 2018 at 1:38 AM UTC
White snowflakes fall.
Brown boots break the ground.
Porcelain perceptions
are lost and now
crimson puddles
seed the grounds.
This is what is found
when nationalistic
rhetoric
slowly crosses
from let’s make
this country great
to this is who
is to blame
and who to hate.
Till, that ill suited
nuclear rage
resets the atomic age
and glass jars
of peach preserves,
rhubarb,
and non-perishables
in dusty cellars
are the only things
left of us human beings.
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
When you made preserves our house
Didn’t seem so haunted
Our kitchen seemed bright and inviting
Instead of white and sterile
The window above the sink seemed so far away
And the curtain above that
Even farther
They were
Peach
Turquoise
Brown
And they made me dream of Indians in their teepees
Lonely desert nights
Though I had never been there
Arizona
New Mexico
California
Colorado
I had never been to those places
Those were your places
That was where you fell in love
Dad told me
And the pictures in the laundry room told me
I always went in there to look
For a part of you I had never met
But sometimes when you were making preserves
You were that girl again
With a crazy mass of curls that you’ve never tied back
Cuz you hate your ears
After two kids, you were still skinny
And taller than I’ll ever be
And in the heat of the kitchen
Tiny drops of sweat beaded on your forehead
You’d roll up your sleeves
Tie your shirt at the waist
And laugh and play in the steam where you boiled the mason jars
Pretending you were at Yellowstone again
Watching Old Faithful erupt from the earth
Right on cue
Holding Dad’s hand
Back before he grew his beard
I tried to count your freckles while you were reminiscing
You’ve got a lot
A lot a lot
I thought you were the prettiest woman I had ever seen
As you turned those scalding mason jars upside down
And told me to wait till I heard them pop
You made it sound like it would be magical
Elusive
Like if I didn’t pay attention
I would miss it
And I did.
Everytime.
Cuz I was in the laundry room looking at pictures
Of someone I didn’t know
When a symphony of popping would ensue
From the kitchen
And I’d come running
But I missed the mason jars rattling
And shaking as they played their tune
Raspberry preserves in c minor
I missed the butcher’s block by an inch as I slid on the linoleum
And nearly knocked over the coyote cookie jar
I missed my chalkboard easel
By the Grace of God
My earliest masterpieces remained intact
But I did not miss your face
Or the grin that lingered
When the popping ceased
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 3:53 PM UTC
Plant a fertile garden in summer & harvest all of the fruits and vegetables.
PIckle all of the vegetables.
preserve all of the fruits-leave some
Apples for pie.
Place pickles and preserves in the darkness of the root cellar.
Order How to ****** a Farmhand in 10 Days from the book catalogue.
Order the Art of War also just in case
Invite Handsome Jimmy Pike from the neighbouring farm over for pie.
Get Uncle Abe to cover the dirt floor with planks.
As Mama always said a frozen dirt floor is just for the dirt poor.
Bake Pie. Place on windowsill.
Waft the smell
Of hot pie over toward the woodpile where Uncle Abe is chopping wood.
Invite Jimmy to play Gin Rummy the evening when Uncle Abe is mysteriously ill of a stomach complaint and sleeping in the barn.
Show Jimmy Uncle Abe's tongue and groove method of log cabin construction.
Ask Jimmy to show me the **** and pass method of using unmilled logs to **** up against each other without notching.
Spike Jimmy's tea with ***
Show Jimmy the root cellar.
**** up against Jimmy with notching.
WITH LOTS OF NOTCHING.
Fall pregnant.
Tell Uncle Abe and have a shotgun wedding.
Bake another special pie.
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 6:28 PM UTC
I just need a minute
To express the sadness
I felt when I read about this crude act of madness
The innocence of a child... doesn't deserve this
This level of violence on a child? God will not forget... the memory, He preserves this
Whoever you are... whatever your reason
A fate worse than hell... that fiery prison
The shooter deserves this
A child
That is who you killed... a child
An innocent soul... not a Crip, not a Blood
You will never see the day when you can get rid of the stain left by a little one's blood
I just need a minute... to write this
May God give those affected the strength to fight this... injustice
And to the madman... it shall haunt you beyond the grave we know
Poetic justice
But nothing we write/say/do can undo this unnecessary act of violence
However, let's just take a minute to pay our respects
Let's have a moment of silence.
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 4:55 AM UTC
Pearl white
the color of four walls in an empty hospital room
or the color of your teeth when you are smiling
at anyone who isn't me; I think you know what I want to see
before I let myself go under.
Pearl white - the color of slate I could scrub
until my knuckles bled but never quite clean - you know,
white is the color of an innocence
I'll never know, like a blank open document
before it is corrupted by words, a blank sheet of paper
before I smash my skull open like a glass jar
and let the ink drop and stick like preserves;
I've never been that smart of a guy and every big word
I ever said to you was probably forced.
Pearl white - your bones if you'd ever let me see them,
but oh no, never touch - you know,
pearl white isn't made for hands like these, these hands are sticky
with baggage and defilement and I fell in love
with the way your body melted into a white couch
but I never said anything, nothing, no way, no how
all the fears in my throat are blood red and I have always been afraid
of staining beautiful things. Pearl white -
I can stare at a full moon like an empty notebook for hours
and nothing may come out, but when I look at the whites of your pearl eyes,
I start to remember the phrase about the world being my oyster
and once I upon a time I realized I have such tiny hands
and I was scared to hold something so intimidating and large,
but now you stand here and suddenly I can hold the universe in my palms.
I would dress you in all white - white is the color of a ghost hiding beneath a bed sheet,
white is the color of wedding dresses and maybe if you stand in a graveyard
you might hear church bells, but, then again, you could just
press your ear to my chest instead.
Pearl white - the color of four walls in an empty hospital room
or the color of your teeth when you are smiling
at anyone who isn't me; I think you know what I want to see
before I let myself go under.
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 10:02 AM UTC
She had a sweet voice made for lullabies
Among the people who sang like sirens
She was but a whisper without an echo
Singing along voices that could cross oceans
A starling surrounded by suns
A subtle breeze against a hurricane
A dim version of what she could have been
A candlelight beside a fireplace
People tend to undermine her existence
Telling her she was never quite enough
Her quiet and subtle nature was forgettable
She only deserved an equivalent love
Even so, she stands with her small stature
Without wavering after the day has rest
Into the night she preserves her light
Guiding and accompanying those who feel any less
She was the lullaby that touched separated hearts
Reunited with the harmonized whispers of song
She was a knight of light who guards a single child
In her presence, the night can do no wrong
She didn’t have to be the action pack thriller
She was a bedtime story that lulled you to sleep
The narrative you asked to be read each night
Because it is a tale your heart wants to keep
Gentle and calm, soothing and soft
In a harsh world that demands sharp edges
Her hidden strength was how despite it all
She preserved her softness from all the wreckage
May 4, 2021
May 4, 2021 at 7:50 PM UTC
Soap.
Today I bathed in black water,
Rinsed with the sewage we call society, and dried off in governmental regulations.
You call yourselfs clean based on the record of your criminality and the color of your skin?
You use a plastic kind of soap the produces no clean but like a camera it captures and preserves what's inside.
So you can play bath time with your bubbles, pretending you own yourselves for a night, but after your bath comes bed time. You will wake up tomorrow and find your still owned by the government and, your soap was just plastic.
So you need to bathe again.
Don't forger to lather, rinse, and repeat.
Chris burk
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 1:14 AM UTC
A subcutaneous doubt musters and you itch
The shore line depression is here without hitch
A sea of harps instigating an emotive atrophy
You discharge and you dive with certain alacrity
There is a boat afloat out in the briny of spite
Oar-less and holey amid the bark and the fight
You plunge and you quaff as you leave quiet behind
A clamber and a climb and inside you will find
Ruckus and roar as you rock with each crash
Thunder and hail as the waves tempestuously lash
Gladden with the grim elation preserves you
Mirthful and drugged whilst the wet pours through
To the most aphotic of waters that drags you deep
The boat now just wood unto rocks in a heap
Too eager to leap and now too weak to swim
A stoical sink under madness to dim
The seashore despair was a lie to itself
The still and the shielded brimming with wealth
Never attempt to weather a storm
Of a storm as endless as that of that storm
A wish that you stayed a want that you listened
You’d still be where her green eyes glistened
Where love and the good is now once tendered
Most is best left as how it’s remembered.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 9:02 PM UTC
Biscuit and sorghum syrup happy faces with Georgia peach butter and blackberry muffins , childhood favorites that tickle the palette !
For a bag of Fall persimmons , a handful of roasted pecans I would gladly cross the Alcovy River naked as a jaybird !
Rutabagas , turnips and cracklin cornbread would be my staple of choice if marooned on an island , a Frosty Root beer and mothers egg custard !
Peach ice cream and scuppernong jelly , fig preserves and tomato gravy !
Columbus grits and Claxton fruitcake , Vidalia onion rings , Elijay apples !
In my next life I relish the very thought of becoming a Cardinal , turned loose in a muscadine arbor ! The most heart stopping , meanest scarecrow ever made would be no match for a wise old crow in a watermelon patch ! Mockingbird busy in a old plum tree , a honeybee in a clover field as far as the eye can see !
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 12:29 PM UTC
Indulge me for a few brief moments, if you will. While placing some old photos in an album, I realized that soon it will have been 25 years since the passing of my father. Had it not been for him, I wouldn't have been able to compose some of the stories that have appeared on HP. For that reason, I chose to re-post my piece, "Rust to Rust." For those that have taken the time to have previously read it, "thank you." For any new members that I hope will read it, thank you, ahead of time.
Richard Riddle
At first glance, it's just a rust-covered pan, typical of what could be found in the trash, hiding behind an old abandoned building. But, its more than that.
This pan is more than a hundred years old. It belonged to my great-grandfather, to my grandfather, then my father. It's the pan my father used to find those small, glistening nuggets, taken from small streams in the mountains of Arizona and California, from which my mother's wedding rings were created.
I cannot begin to imagine the events this pan had laid witness to, or how many stories lie beneath that blanket of red crust. Oh, the history lessons it could teach. Held by calloused hands, it tasted the water that held those particles of nature that men sought, and died for, in their search for wealth. It heard the cries, and caught the tears, of many who failed in their endeavors.
At one time I considered restoring it to it's earlier time, then realized I would be destroying a history book, and the protective blanket that preserves those untold stories, hopefully, for many more years to come. It will be passed to my grandchildren.
copyright: richard riddle-February 16,2015
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 11:39 AM UTC
FRAMING THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY
It's the little things remain
shadows on your skin
memory preserves it
makes it more precious
despite its
insignificance.
The ephemeral
made permanent.
You all
sunlight and shadow
marking you a tiger
a stripey 5 year old.
"Rrrrr!" you roar
burning bright.
I throw my little tiger
up in the air
catch her years
later.
The sunlight now
in teacher mode
displays an
equilateral triangle
made of
pure light.
Hear her voice of then
still telling me now
"Look...an equatorial triangle!"
And so for ever
it is.
The angle I see her from
changes
the years come and go
and the equatorial triangle
still burns brightly
you my little girl tiger
twisting the sinews
of my heart.
May 27, 2019
May 27, 2019 at 2:12 PM UTC
Label the worldly desires merely a necessity
Live the purpose, just float above this sin city
Sparks of the coils attract into their electricity
Here lies all sadness, it's nothing a felicity
Forces the other coils into mutual inductance
Draws closer if not expressed reluctance
Easy is to fall down when the body's dense
Dodge hazardous wires and move, hence
Consume the meat of their fashion raw
Sharpen the focus, copy their fierce claw
Effective becomes spreading embodying the law
Judge not others, first clear up your flaw
Scrape the soul into a clothing translucent
Devilish whispers dissolved by 70 percent
Introduce oxygen and begin your ascent
Fumes off such reactions diffuse a smell pleasant
Preserves the body, such that as formaldehyde
When the soulless is buried, just to hide
Acts out instructions in his four day ride
Or at least for the acceptance once had tried
Faith feeds through placenta of the heart
Birth, a destined process, transformation a start!
Nov 10, 2017
Nov 10, 2017 at 5:24 AM UTC
Greenland never preserves greenly summer,
Penguins dancing with frozen souls,
Iceland indeed not chill
Instead,
a pleasant surprise to surrounded by crust of volcano
Icelandic internal heat,
blue lagoon lake,
sparkles our eternal hope.
Dec 30, 2018
Dec 30, 2018 at 3:52 PM UTC
Like a deeply buried and well hidden time capsule...
My mind preserves our memories
Each kiss is protected with the same
Delicacy and gentleness as the moment given.
The softness and tenderness of every touch
Remains un-withered and in it's purest condition.
My heart safeguards our Love
The innocence sealed in, it remains untouched
And untainted in this stronghold.
Shielded from days light, it goes uncorrupted
By the realities of this cold world.
My eyes give sanctuary to the secrets of our blended souls
Locking away passion and understanding
That was beyond the human realm.
Encrypting our story so that it is exclusively
For only us to know and tell.
My body is here, just as you left me
Keeping watch over these treasures
Concealing them from all who might discern
I am here, longing for you
And awaiting your return
©Tina Thompson 2012
Jan 24, 2012
Jan 24, 2012 at 10:14 PM UTC
I listened to the iron rooster
spinning in the wind wondering
who would climb the roof
and take him in, or would he roost
with strangers in the house
It was so cold
the chicken water froze over
The women made coffee
and the men went out to the shed
to look over the tools
No one would sit in her black chair
because it was a bear
that might wake up anytime
She died in the middle of the night
The doctor said her heart blew out
like a jar of preserves
Before dawn I laid my head
on the hard couch by the cast iron
stove and heard her coming down
the stairs with her cane and her teeth
in a glass on the way to the outhouse
saying Who took my flashlight?
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 8:53 PM UTC
Born into a box ruled by someone else’s fine print.
Where can I go to die, with dignity? in peace?
The sad truth is there ISN'T a place.
No one ever sees that, even when it is time
for it to be in their face.
We cannot leave this world the way we would like.
Rules and laws govern us from the point of *********** now.
Didn’t matter what you wanted, or how you lived, anyhow.
Euthanasia applies to every creature BUT us.
How is that even reasonable? Why don't we have a solution that's feasible ?
There should be a pill, a process, an injection.
Something clean, nonviolent. Something a family member could discover without unnecessary trauma and mess . Not a rope or gun or a car exhaust ,
and more stress.
If mercy is written for the beasts and not the people,
then burn the fine print.
Tear up
the contracts.
Polite cruelty? as if suffering needs proof,
as if the idea, the desire for dignity needs permission.
Respect the person , choice and decision.
Teach the world, starting with the U.S.,
a new word for human ending
not a disgusting, painful, lonely surrender of life, or suffering , depending,
A choice in passing that preserves whatever semblance of dignity remains.
A grant for freedom to decide how and when.
After all it's love
not sin.
Sep 17, 2025
Sep 17, 2025 at 7:39 PM UTC