"swagger" poems
You want me to wear
logos in my hair
and purchase
the matching scarf?
A billboard for sale
at the human scale
Sporting your brand
Oh, what a larf!
Go Team Go!
Print on a throw
For the low price
of fifty-four dollars
I'd rather be happy
not buying your sappy
stuff that you sport
on your collars
you tell me to buy
because i'll look fly
and fill up my closet
with swagger
Believe when I say
not one single day
I'll fall to the dance
of your dagger!
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 4:47 PM UTC
My ascent into adulthood was just that, an ascent. It has come slowly with little consistency and massive amounts of determination, stamina, and a reassuring trust in the universe. But the idea of adulthood has slipped its way into my expanding comfort zone with ease, which I think has come from the preparation I received throughout my childhood. The importance of perseverance and hard work in achieving anything at all was beyond emphasized in the parenting techniques of my immigrant mother and father. They sent the babies straight from their unemployed bellies into the best forms of higher education they could find because
My achieving of adulthood was more of just a gradual shift in mentality and perspective that developed into my addiction to change and new experiences, distaste for dependence, and denial of my previous nostalgic tendencies.
With more maturity also came a more logical understanding of the world around me. The more I understood the working ways of my surroundings, physical and psychological, the better I could feel my drive to achieve. The achievement I sought was not economic or career oriented in any aspect. It was based off of my ceaseless search for something new or for the rad or for the gnar or for swagger or for living a life that could inspire a minimum of 3 people including myself. The seed of this search was planted in me during my childhood by my five older siblings who all held within their bellies a fire of the same breed.
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 2:35 AM UTC
Paved thoughts
They lay
In naivity
Youth
Born into homogeny
Told
"Different is beautiful"
But taught
To fall in line
With the swaying ways
Society's norms form
Pin-up billboard smiles
Flash magazine swagger
On surgeon made bodies
Guide retinas of wide eyed
Youth
To mirrors
With disgust
"Different is beautiful"
We'll say
Yielding our whitened smiles
"Different is beautiful"
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 11:28 PM UTC
Here she comes
Check her out
You can see it in her walk
Listen, to that velvet voice
It's even in her talk
She has a certain swagger
That's so **** and not lewd
The girl knows where she's going
She's got that country attitude
She's got the look
Of country cool
She's got country attitude
This girl's in charge
She breaks the rules
She's got that country attitude
Like a good smooth bourbon
From Kentucky
To be with her
You must be lucky
She wants man
not just a dude
To share that country attitude
She'll chew you up
and spit you out
So, treat her good
With out a doubt
The way she looks
Is misconstrued
She's full of
Country Attitude
She's got the look
Of country cool
She's got country attitude
This girl's in charge
She breaks the rules
She's got that country attitude
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 1:28 PM UTC
Give him a skinhead, insignia, boots
Less scruples, a swagger-stick, crowds, money.
No black shirts visible. Just business suits,
and pride is restored: tragic but funny.
Proud like a skyscraper, godless as sin
Babylonian promises, towering lies
Reality shows when plutocrats win,
Their rhetoric raining from empty skies.
She-wolves, elected by uninformed sheep
behave predictably, eyeing the flock
Their wool (and the lamb-chops) are hers to keep
Grazing voter—this should come as no shock.
It’s a bitter pill (more like pilloried)
So shall we now be ******* or Hillary-ed?
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC
EVERY
SINGLE
DAY
I vibe your electromagnetic waves
THERE
IS
NO
WAY
to shake your swagger babe
NORTH
WIND
TAKE
ME
AWAY
sinking into the feel of it. The reel of it. Making a meal of that swirling lay.
PLAY BY PLAY
~Rachael Hays 9A15
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 2:17 PM UTC
Puissant piquant and predatory
And observant from afar
He looks down on your slumber
Like a door that's left ajar
Plying with his manly vice
A reckless male visage
A rogue of masculine device
Seeks entrance to your mind
He saunters with a swagger
A macho savvy moxie
To personify virility's incarnate
His dream zone's metier
He sifts your ****** entourage
In search of sprawls recumbence
To tantalize climactic fervor
With lambent photic scenes
Grasping at your revelries
He spies the wanton lust
With swanky strut appealing
Your primal urge to sate
He leaves undone resistance
With innate resilience seized
The lavish wayward implications
Of unrequited livid deeds
Like passion's lurid lecheries
An insatiable torrid sooth
You wrestle with his adamance
Your carnal ecstasies revealed
You pounce on his exsertion
You splay your agile form
wriggling like a supple nymph
You accept his blatant storm
You writhe in your abandon
In a euphoric supplication
His machismo ****** enveloping
Your wildest latent needs
With no regrets or reticence
you awaken from this dream
To find yourself alone again
Like it had never been
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC
Getting it's easy.
Everyone wants it, everyone's given it, everyone gets it.
We play a different game, but it's all the same.
You buy your fancy clothes and cars,
eat your fish eggs and drink down your expensive bars.
I don't need that ****
It doesn't take much, anything and everything goes.
Just do it with some swagger, some flare, an apathetic stare and you'll be walking on air.
Get them wet
and
you're
set.
Feb 18, 2014
Feb 18, 2014 at 11:39 AM UTC
Mud is good,
Its dead good mud,
It's in me blood,
But where not understood,
Us people of mud,
In the shadow of a gas tank and born on a Mersey bank, I lived on cobbled streets dark and dank,
I played on a ship that sank, and for anything else I wouldn’t thank....... you
On king street docks, girls in cheap frocks, curly locks, time tocks, the boat rocks,
The tanyard smell made life hell for all that dwell, under the bridge,
In Garston L19, it’s the scene, its clean, it’s where I’ve been, it’s not obscene or green, if you know what I mean.
Its community security sincerity and every other word that ends with erity,
But it’s fallen apart,
Don’t lose heart.
I go into town when I’m down, it clears me frown,
I don’t go in me jarmies or me dressin gown,
There’s men with round bellies, toddlers in wellies,
Posh ladies gather in their marks and spencer swagger,
There’s scouse brow teens, sunbed queens,
Hunks and punks, lonely drunks,
Suits in boots forgetting their roots and hens in *****
Big issue sellers, statue fellas holding golf umbrellas,
Coz of all the rain,
But it’s all good, coz we come from mud,
Let’s cheer, why?
Coz I’m here,
I’m me, me names T, and me hubbys P me best friends she..... lagh,
I like coffee and toffee and Roger Mcgoughy,
I like statistics logistics eye shadow and lipsticks,
I like bags and wags and cigarette **** but not beer,
I’m fine on wine if I take me time,
I don’t do a line, unless I’m hanging me washing on it,
I work in a bar, not far, I don’t drive a car, and I don’t say Lar or kid or lad or lid or mar,
I’m proud and loud, don’t live on a cloud, and I don’t follow the crowd,
I’m a mum to some, I’ve got a big round *** but I’m me you see,
I’m not square, I dye me hair, I swear but you can take me anywhere,
Coz I care,
I’m good,
I’m mud; it’s in me blood,
Understood
By Christina Ford
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:23 PM UTC
583
A Toad, can die of Light—
Death is the Common Right
Of Toads and Men—
Of Earl and Midge
The privilege—
Why swagger, then?
The Gnat’s supremacy is large as Thine—
Life—is a different Thing—
So measure Wine—
Naked of Flask—Naked of Cask—
Bare Rhine—
Which Ruby’s mine?
4.9k
It’s early Friday afternoon and,
over plates of greasy spoon dinner,
the musician and the businessman
repeat their weekly ritual.
The businessman has his problems at home
and spills his guts to his musician friend.
“It’s been a real long time coming,
but she’s still been such a bitter *****
They’ve met this way since
their college days and nights
spent studying the bottoms
of whiskey bottles. And, as usual,
the businessman’s hair sits sprawled
on his head like a rag, and his tie
is loosened. The musician doesn’t understand
divorce: “You look like hell.
You know, if you need a place to stay,
Helen and I and the boy
can always make some room for you.”
They light a pair of cigarettes and wait
for a waitress to kick them out.
Into the haze of a Lower East Side crowd
the musician and his band play
his newest pieces, riffs on the happy swagger
of the Duke. His critics—
and he has many—
write that his jazz sings
the inescapable *********** of suffering
through the life of every oblivious body,
which makes the musician’s music
sound more like the blues
than jazz. But it’s jazz all the same
and perhaps it was the intensity
of the growling bass that shot
spirits down the throats in the audience,
reeling drunk in time to the beat
of the musical suffering.
The weekdays die and it is Friday again.
He has a big view of midtown,
the businessman, and though the window the falling
sun horizons over his socked toes,
parked on his desk in triumph over
all those stockholders. It’s a pain
to lose your family,
but the businessman puts on
a good face, and drinks.
This Friday, the musician and the businessman
are not in the mood for talking.
But a scotch thrown down,
and the two are tighter than
thieves.
The businessman complains of life at home
and the musician’s eyes cross.
That night, the musician skips his performance.
His wife cries in their bed,
shuddering with worry and asking him
what makes him so distant? she asks—
it’s a mystery even to himself.
He is sweating whiskey—
which suits him fine—
and he spends his night on the bridge.
One week later and it is Friday, finally.
Today, the businessman will see
his children at his former home
for the last time for a handful of months
at best. The musician has not been home
for three days. He stays at a friend’s apartment,
puts on his ***** blazer
and a record of the Duke’s
before he throws himself down the airshaft.
The businessman jumps on the 5:44
out of town and calls his friend the musician
to cancel their usual Friday meeting,
but his phone keeps ringing,
ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing.
Apr 12, 2010
Apr 12, 2010 at 10:01 PM UTC
To a Louse
by Robert Burns
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hey! Where're you going, you crawling hair-fly?
Your impudence protects you, barely;
I can only say that you swagger rarely
Over gauze and lace.
Though faith! I fear you dine but sparely
In such a place.
You ugly, creeping, blasted wonder,
Detested, shunned by both saint and sinner,
How dare you set your feet upon her—
So fine a lady!
Go somewhere else to seek your dinner
On some poor body.
Off! around some beggar's temple shamble:
There you may creep, and sprawl, and scramble,
With other kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Where horn nor bone never dare unsettle
Your thick plantations.
Now hold you there! You're out of sight,
Below the folderols, snug and tight;
No, faith just yet! You'll not be right,
Till you've got on it:
The very topmost, towering height
Of miss's bonnet.
My word! right bold you root, contrary,
As plump and gray as any gooseberry.
Oh, for some rank, mercurial resin,
Or dread red poison;
I'd give you such a hearty dose, flea,
It'd dress your noggin!
I wouldn't be surprised to spy
You on some housewife's flannel tie:
Or maybe on some ragged boy's
Pale undervest;
But Miss's finest bonnet! Fie!
How dare you jest?
Oh Jenny, do not toss your head,
And lash your lovely braids abroad!
You hardly know what cursed speed
The creature's making!
Those winks and finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice-taking!
O would some Power with vision teach us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notions:
What airs in dress and carriage would leave us,
And even devotion!
One Sunday while sitting behind a young lady in church, Robert Burns noticed a louse roaming through the bows and ribbons of her bonnet. The poem "To a Louse" resulted from his observations. The poor woman had no idea that she would be the subject of one of Burns' best poems about how we see ourselves, compared to how other people see us at our worst moments. Keywords/Tags: Robert Burns, louse, church, bonnet, lace, Scotland, Scots, dialect, translation
Apr 21, 2020
Apr 21, 2020 at 5:26 AM UTC
How long my days, my nights listening to swagger jaggier
Since the seagulls, dance broke the sand-bags
Last year have been widely criticized as the torture year
How long my days, my nights listening to swagger jaggier
Last year hurt more than ever
the attitude of the unions lecture
How long my days, my night listening to swagger jaggier
Since the seagulls, drove the dagger deeper.
Author note...
sometimes in life we just have to take the good with the bad
remembering the storm of 2012..
I was aiming for: The Triolet Form of poetry
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 5:36 PM UTC
Two faced
Many minds
Shifter of shapes
Dr. Jekyll
Mr. Hyde
Past lives
Intertwined
Most mean
Few kind
All vie for equal time
All determine to shine
The writer
The fighter
Drama king
*** machine
The revolution ignite-r
The brave slave
One with
Passion and fire
The singer
Dead ringer
One who points the finger
Conspiracy theorist
Lyricist
Soulful swagger
Hip Hop demeanor
The teacher and student
The dude with attitude
And no one can refute it
A brother and a son
The one that has been shunned
One who leaves them stunned
With the selfish things
I’ve done
The secret me
The enemy
The one whose heart is numb
There are a lot of us
No stopping us
And yes there’s more to come
I’ll never alter
My alter selves
Incarcerate them
In individual cells
Even when they scream and yell
All are a part of me
And they refuse to be veiled
You ask me
Is there a pill?
A remedy…?
Because this has to
be
Insanity
Did you disrespect
My dissociative identities?
Do you really want
to make all of us
your #1 enemy?
We’re laughing
Its killing me
We flip the script easily
Me- and all of my
inner entities
Chillingly
You’re triggering
A very sad memory
Oh, what a tragedy
You’re just another casualty
Unfortunate fatality
Of my Multiple Personalities…
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 12:49 AM UTC
You were my coffee today
Just walking along the road
to Hell knows where on the last day of July
My car made the turn onto Sheridan
and my eyes caught the motion of your swagger,
dark pants
Black tank
Probably a red shirt wrapped around your waist
corded arms slightly bowed to give the impression of a badass
your long hair flowing in the morning air
In an instant your head came up
Instinctively giving you the image of my nearing car
And then you smiled
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 9:32 AM UTC
You've made me reconsider everything I thought
And change all the conclusions that I've ever been brought
You made me stare in adoration from the way you talk
To the way you have confidence and swagger in your walk
And when you dance, I see eyes filled with passion and drive
And from the audience, it looks like you become more alive
I see happiness, as if it's really the only time
You can feel such emotion and I understand why
You seem to fascinate me and I seem to admire you
Cause I love to know things like your past and what inspires you
How you hold yourself, your humor type, and I desire you
And I can't tell you why cause usually I enjoy solitude
But I'm so drawn to you, I think of you all the time
I wanna be snuggled in your arms, your lips pressed against mine
Cause with everybody else I'll just say oh yeah I'm fine
But I actually can mean it when I'm with you and I won't lie
I feel endless smiles and countless butterflies
And I can't take the stare you give me from your ****** eyes
So I look down, and fidget & become sorta shy
When it's all realization I finally got a great guy
For months it's been strange cause I haven't just cried
Cause we're fighting over nonsense or cause somebody lied
Or your ignoring me, cheating, beating, not treating me right
Im not used to this but it's all been relieving and nice
I gaze at you and I wonder if sometimes you catch me
Cause I'd stare all day if I could and if you'd let me
My love for you is strong and becoming very heavy
I rarely get the chance to meet people who don't regret me
You're what makes me happy
And wake up in the morning
Go to school, see you
And I see now what is forming
I'm just so in love and I would never ever leave you
Cause I don't just want you anymore, I'm beginning to need you...
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 5:25 PM UTC
Every Jamaican is a superstar.
It's there in the carry
in the step
in the stand.
It's there in the belief
that anything
that anyone
that anywhere
can swagger
can strut
can take the room
and make the world stop
sit up
take note
and smile.
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 3:35 AM UTC
Verdant eyes, translucent pearls
speak in silent witness,
wounds unfurl
meaning revealed,
interrupted girl.
Safe in solidarity
prolific eccentricity,
the scandal of particularity.
Pouting mouth
grief - filled lips
alluring, set sail a thousand ships;
tempt me to leave harbor.
Arousing euphoria as such,
resistance, amity and distance
amour sans touch
her sense of humor transcends,
appeasing the mind’s thirst
a vogue sultana,
seasoned swagger
hair resplendent flame,
alternating cool, black
asymmetrical coiffure;
nonconforming demure
the renegade metaphor -
singular for sure, no cure.
Muted vanity, bathos piercing
the jaded circumference of banality;
pale protagonist servitude
the sapient palaver of the urbane,
covered patina of pretense,
induced coercion,
the commodity self
appearing abased
wearing lesions of lassitude.
Artistic chattel - eminent domain
preempting genius,
subsidiary of consuming narcissism
external locus of control;
surrender to the tentative,
fettered pendant, Venus in chains
arrested visionary bane
sterile savant, edifice of pain.
The soubrette, dubious incarnation
gravid ingénue of prevarication
imperceptible venue -
theatre of the absurd;
withdrawn siren,
solitude of necessity -
skin - slender veil of shame,
nearness loitering redemption;
moments envisage
the appointment with the soul;
ambiguity eschews clarity
awareness; ineluctable anxiety,
imago - centric confession
sacred pardon, seraphic venation
intravenous textures presume,
the tactile margins of liberty.
Therapeutic retrieval,
Sanguine,
beneath the portico of
individuation;
Your smile I hear,
recovered autonomy
blessed emancipation,
The scandal of particularity;
peculiar treasure
ironically captured
film, canvas,
prose profundity.
Ciphering as an ambling book,
I peruse you,
rendered captive
hypnotic avant-garde fiction,
spectator of denuded opacity
analogous reflection, I Mirror you.
A modest proposal - pontificate the imperative,
forgo the disposal, adapt your narrative,
the scandal of particularity -
resonate the echo, cogitate our propinquity
Love, imagination and destiny.
©2008 & 2011 W.S Warner
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 9, 2011 at 1:20 AM UTC
They're a funny lot, some of these poets,
feisty feminists, dreamers, anti-money,
and even some who are very self-defecating
about themselves.
And then there's the literary, learned allusion lot,
and some who've got their eye on eternity, that's what,
and others who rub too much turps on the **** of their imagination.
But it's the long-winded poets who make me squirm,
and for god’s sake, give me a bottle of red wine when the ones
with blue-rinse hair get up to have their turn.
They're terribly nice, but they need an echidna
stuffed right up you know where - at least once, if not twice.
And give me another bottle of the red, even if it's rough,
or better still a whole case of that stuff,
just to protect me from those who bleed too much in poems.
Psychoanalytic stuff makes me paralytic
and I have to stifle groans.
But most of all, I like the poets with their tongues on fire,
the ones who lick lightening before they write
and who throw a sizzling poem down
like a thunderbolt from Zeus.
I like poems marsh mellow soft and bitter-sweet, too,
and those oozing with the juice. And if a poem's loud and flash,
so what? I like a bit of swagger, with shameless **** and ***
And sometimes, I just like words that rhyme with licorice,
Dionysius, Priapus, Bacchus and preposterous!
Also, what the **** a poem can even give offense.
Poets sometimes need to do this to stop indifference.
They call this poet's license, but really,
indifference is the only hell from which
us poets need deliverance.
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 6:56 AM UTC
Walking into the Reception Hall,
they stole the show away,
A regal pair they were,
with a little bit of Butch
and Sundance swagger shown.
A confident air, not at all underserved.
Dressed with just enough elegance.
Their posture and hue ,
sleek and silky golden,
like a duet of Cheetahs.
Eyes alert and searching
for prey. Alert for danger.
Like a herd of antelope,
all heads turned to look,
The men perhaps out of desire,
the women staring envy at them,
Like the twin bores of a loaded gun.
Mother and fetching daughter,
From twenty feet, hard to tell
which, one was one, or the other.
Long blond hair, full and fine,
both women tall, statuesque,
moving with grace and ease.
The mother my old friend,
the daughter all grown up now,
each having a smile that would
light up anyone's darkness of mood.
We greeted one another,
hugs and hand shakes shared.
A little conversation in the crowded room,
Many pairs of eyes upon us there.
Enchanted is the word that best describes
my impression, this duo as intelligent and
charming as they were beautiful to see.
The mother sedate, classy and yet open
and free, no pretense, no games just naturally
at ease. As lovely as I remembered her to be.
Her offspring, vivacious, spirited and bold,
smart as whip, with a tongue that could
draw blood if she desired it to.
Chatty and funny, sure of herself,
in the manner of beautiful people,
yet not in a pompous way, merely
Confident in self and her place in the world.
She possessed all the character traits you
would wish your own daughter to have.
Her Mother had done well is raising her.
Too soon they moved on,
meeting and greeting others',
out of my hearing and seeing.
Some weeks have passed, a month or two
and yet their strong impression has lingered,
I can't keep them out of my mind.
The Mother, my friend most of all.
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC
When I walk down Shop Street
I shake my ***
(Yeah, I do.)
I swagger
With the confidence
That yes
I am a foreigner
In your country
And yeah I say,
You’re alright.
But I
Am a newly awakened goddess.
And it took being heartbroken
And being drunk five nights out of seven
And feeling like the water is going over my head
To say WAIT.
I am more than this.
And when you look at me
It won’t be because my *** is shaking
(although, that certainly helps)
It will be because
I EXUDE GREATNESS.
And you will want to know me.
I’ll be nodding my head from side to side
And shaking my hips like it is my God-given right
(it is)
And Instead of telling you how awesome you are
I’ll be telling myself.
Because that is the one person
whose been neglected from this equation
from the start.
When I ask
DO YOU THINK OF ME?
I’ll be asking myself.
And I’ll be replying a wholehearted “YES”
As I shake my ***
Walking down Shop Street.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 4:22 PM UTC
His hands ring in the upper classes.
There, in the morning light, his will
Is forged, bent, as truth, on ruling
This place, underhand, underfoot.
With shuttered ears divining his voice
The dim pupils see only what is said.
The top hand schools, topples all words
Ringing hands sing the song of fools.
How Headmaster trains on the heel,
A dagger strikes, the paper cuts
Exalted, his close minded hands,
See a Czar in the stony swagger,
And the student body, submissively lies
With his feet. Outside the college
The headmaster is heard. Grossly,
He is their dream and only shepherd.
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 9:48 PM UTC
His hands ring in the upper classes.
There, in the morning light, his will
Is forged, bent, as truth, on ruling
This place, underhand, underfoot.
With shuttered ears divining his voice
The dim pupils see only what is said.
The top hand schools, topples all words
Ringing hands sing the song of fools.
How Headmaster trains on the heel,
A dagger strikes, the paper cuts
Exalted, his close minded hands,
See a Czar in the stony swagger,
And the student body, submissively lies
With his feet. Outside the college
The headmaster is heard. Grossly,
He is their dream and only shepherd.
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 8:18 PM UTC
Expectations swagger
And clutter.
Small talk
Loiters dangerously near big talk
As gazes dance between
Lazy freckles.
Questions are asked
That require too complicated
Of answers.
Answers too uncertain
And even once certain,
Limbs putrify and freeze
In the daunting path
That has been figured,
Fathomed, barely
And never traveled.
Habits, self inhibitions,
Self-destructive agendas,
Pull at the walker
As his own mind swivels,
Exhausted,
Tipping into madness.
He’s found the path
But finds self-provoked
Difficulty in walking it.
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC