"topples" poems
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
311.4k
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am a captive
Taken from my home
Away from love and care
Now I live in fear
In the midst of the unknown
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
Oh! You have forgotten me, probably
I wouldn't blame you
I am just a girl, you thought
But I am Nigeria
And I could be just your girl
Yet you go to bed with both eyes closed
Because I am just a girl.
How do you sleep?
How do you find peace?
How do you laugh with satisfaction
And Find rest?
Knowing I am Leah Sharibu
And I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
Who is she? I can hear you ask.
Oh! You've forgotten?
I am that "Dapchi girl"
Kidnapped with her school mates
But they are free and I am not
They gained their lives back
Because they are what I am not
That's what some people thought
But I am not just "that Dapchi girl"
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
And I am a captive
I am in chains
I am in bonds
I am in pains
And I am not free
I am still missing
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am a Christian
That's what you said
But I am more than a Christian
I am a girl child
I am a woman
I am a daughter
I am a mother
And I am a wife
But I am more than all these
Yes! I am
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
Though you called me a Christian
Undoubtedly I am
Was that not why you left me behind?
Was that not why you've left me till now?
How callous? How unpatriotic?
You swore an oath to protect me
But you lied
You think calling me a Christian
Will clear your conscience
But you lie!
I am Nigeria
That's my identity
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I have been betrayed
By Deceivers parading themselves as leaders
By cowards parading themselves as heroes
By liers who embraces you with a dagger
I have been betrayed
By enemies camouflaged as friends
I thought they cared about me
But all they want is a piece of me.
So they don't care if I bleed
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am not missing
You can see me
But you've refused to free me
You've made me your slave
Everyday you **** me
Everyday you **** me
Everyday you brutalise me
Everyday you torment me
Despite the oath you swore to protect me
You have become my terror
My Kidnapper
My tormentor
My killer
My captor
My destroyer
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I can see, you don't care, who I am
You think I will just pass away
Like a shadow in the night
Another figure among the many lost
So you hope
But you lie
I am your fear
I am your shame
I am your story
Ugly but true
I am your cross
You must bear
I am your pain
And I won't go away
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
You can **** me
But I won't die
Though ****** with many swords
And bleeding on all sides
You will always hear my cries
Because I live on....
You can try to hide me
Like a woman's nature call
But I won't go away
I will be your nightmare
And walk the night in your sleep
I will be your nemesis
And follow you to your grave
I will be your infamy
Lay you bare for the world to see
I will be the truth
That topples your lies
And I pray that I will be your end
So you'd be no more
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria
Another night has come
And I pray for sleep
Not knowing if I will see the dawning of a new day
You expect me to be weak
To break down and fall
You expect me to be feeble and frail
But I won't
Everyday I see the sun
I will grow strong
Everyday I take a breath
I shall be agile able
Don't expect me to give up
For I shall win at last
I am Leah Sharibu
I am Nigeria.
Jan 24, 2021
Jan 24, 2021 at 7:13 PM UTC
He lies by the road,
this little creature I love,
With eyes that can weaken a heart,
A tail that rises above.
Why you so silly puppy?
Your innocence breaks my heart.
He jumps and runs without a care in the world
and gets scared by his own ****
I cradle him in my arms
like he's my own little child
He playfully tugs on my shirt
With teeth small and mild.
I laugh when he topples over
my crazy little fawn
He loves his tummy tickles
and lets out an occasional yawn.
The 30 minutes i spend with him
Is the happiest time of my day
Its funny how this little stranger
makes my sorrows drift away.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 3:00 PM UTC
Happenstance to the melancholic gives leave the sin of pride.
Inbound reconnaissance tells not the bearer of influence.
Squeamish at first: a foreshadowing of calamitous bonding.
A space between the mark of corporeal and the ethereal; a stringent hiatus
That which rattles the concrete foundation of morality is scarcely a malleable recourse.
Regret stains the unfounded soul: an enigma of ephemeral perforations.
A separation of the unmitigated humanities; misandry topples the writhing snake.
Impact; a cleansing of the maker's flaws integrated solemnly.
Complacency arrests the administration of the abhorred; unbridled is the autonomy of a guru.
Ambivalent giftedness burdens the reliant and haughty.
A flick of the tongue brings forth the cinema mortem.
Castaway: alone to wade in the sea of obscenities.
A temporal causality allows no mourning to abscond.
Negligence is not the enemy, but indulgent wrath.
Hesitant: a stroke of qualia begets the end of a maiden.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 11:13 AM UTC
Stick a lolipop
into the mouth of moments
your life is a child
and somewhere in there
you give a flying ****
about the moon
and no it's not cheese.
That mouth knows what dirt tastes like
but that wont stop me from pouring caramel
and cigarettes over it.
I need a fix
of candied dirt
and addiction.
I'm not afraid of the eclipse
because I'm already hooked on the dark.
So lock the door
&
draw the curtains
&
be content.
The tide wont be knocking
no matter how much you
want it to fill the room
or how big is your sweet tooth
because
hunger
is BIGGER
and eventually
anything will do.
So thank the moon we were wearing seat belts.
Otherwise we might be vegetables
eating only exhaust
like Hiroshima
force fed the sun
because
you only make war on an empty stomach
or with an insatiable hunger.
Be content
for the civilians and their children
who only know the taste of war.
Idiot flavored idiots with a hint of
dead mothers
that will bore a cavity so big
it'll put holes in the head
of kindergardens everywhere.
Who write their valentines on bombs.
Who's love murders buildings,
topples families,
plowing through bodies on city streets all to reach
nobody.
Be content
for the people
who aren't
you because when parents ******* in a box
you call a country means
you don't care
you put genocide on the menu
and there are some things that just wont do.
As I grow weary of rivaling chefs pointing fingers
in circles forever
becoming a porthole to the ****** business
becoming the unsuspecting manhole for
the human animal's existence
in crossing.
Mothers may find safe shelter in the sewers
but it reeks of prepackaged liberty
express delivery
to
every where.
Be content.
Because to start a revolution means living it
and what better way,
to ******* a reckless pace
that finishes first in hunger,
starting fist fights with other people's lives
and forgets even sooner,
than
to
be
content.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 5:08 PM UTC
Here I am, drunk again.
So long friend.
I can't recall how many times I tried to reach you. Or how many time my student became the teacher, but I'm drunk again.
Remember all those bottles left unshared.
Got my brain in a snare.
Remember how I tried to care? But I'm drunk again.
Tip the top til it topples over, this stables staggering, are we sure it's sober?
No, no, November was waiting but we're still just debating. Am I drunk again?
Killed you with water, drownd you with tomorrow's sorrow.
But we're you listening?
This fires raging but still contained. I promised I'd stay sain, if only to show you.
If only to hold you.
If only I was sober.
If only you would stop smoking those sick clovers.
But I'm drunk again.
So long friend.
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 7:21 PM UTC
The King of the World is on his way now,
he always shows up when the chips are down.
Everyone just loves The King of the World,
he always arrives with his banners unfurled.
The King can be a loud chap,
or The King can be quite a quiet mime,
he even puts his pants on
one royal leg at a time!
The King might eat breakfast,
or The King just might not,
he is everything you are,
yet is is all that you forgot.
He's a musician of sorts,
with a very big band,
his arrival is in herald,
throughout every land
-with brass trumpets a-blare,
and snare-drums rat-a-tat,
he makes everyone aware,
that he's now where you're at!
The King marches his forces
through the cities and fields,
assure of his courses,
lying flat beneath his heel.
He revels at the sight of deterioration,
fills his belly with the joy of nations in extinction.
The King grounds everything down to things he scrapes off his boots,
he topples the governs and poisons the cultural roots.
The King's fixations are splashed with spatters of blood,
turning kingdoms into crumbles of ashes and mud.
He bulldozes the bodies into toxic pits of ****
contaminates by obscenity, wringing his hands at the wit.
Lionized by his minions in the empty empires he wrought,
The King's elite ruling class is dictated with rot.
In the aftermath of the bile
of his genocidal, sweet plight,
The King celebrates with great style,
turning the daylight into night.
With bonfires a-blaze on the wicked, windy wasteland,
The King of the World strikes up his big band,
and once marching again will torch and ravish the land,
dropping massive, beautiful bombs for the sake of the thrill,
melting the people and villages and eroding the hills.
The time for The King
always is nigh,
for he is surrounded by
the conjurations of lies.
Some say he is evil,
(but, he's not the Devil, you see)
-He's The King of the World,
he is you, he is me.
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 14, 2010 at 9:14 AM 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
Late April and only
coltsfoot—Tussilago farfara—breaking leaf litter.
Our daffodils, peonies and crocuses
are also making signs.
April is the cruelest month, I forget why.
A sweet slow Spring
no sudden changes
each leg and leaf unfolds deliberately. You can't miss it.
New York City's spring rushes like a yellow cab
into summer. One day leaves are wet,
next they’re leather. I prefer this slow dance,
birds mating on the sky, peepers evolving into frogs.
Repairs take weeks or months. Septic,
garage door, cracked windshield, clean windows,
build bridge, buy land, rake leaves off erosion control,
cut wood, prune lilac, paint lawn chairs.
More carefully inspect, identify, the insect
of the week, a fly with an ant’s body
that skirts the grass and falls in drinks.
Look more closely! It will be gone in a few days!
Then it will be the time of moths or fireflies,
mosquitoes and wasps. Mud road,
red-winged blackbird. The slashing stream
topples old trees. My legs hurt.
May 23, 2022
May 23, 2022 at 6:17 AM 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
In the vicinity of midnight
After a sticky city day
The sweat of the streets washed away
The glow of the flat screen
And the anonymous king size bed
Prone and captive
No urge to escape
Captivated
Kneading
Leads to
Needing
Your touch topples towers
Avalanche
And then the
Quiver
Shiver
Lover
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 9:28 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.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 10:44 AM UTC
Sight’s no carpenter’s hammer
No quick dry concrete
It’s flimsy and topples in the breeze
Just because you feel it
Doesn’t mean it’s real
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 3:53 AM 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.
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC
Constantly I am fumbling
Trying to keep time with the beat
I catch up with one thing
While the other one topples
Struggle as I go
Struggle as I go
Like a teering totter
One side high the other side low
Can I get some consistency
Please?
No
Again and again
Always
Struggle as I go
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 8:08 PM UTC
A beauty touched! A yellow leaf!
Which shines and stares from midnight beams,
That topples waves with every motion
In yellow glaze and bright commotion!
Not distraught by distant wind,
The yellow park leaflet rides,
Among the arch, among the brim
Abound a wood— stood sitting high:
And branches tight, which sit them fair—
Not caught up by their troubles them—
Swallowed by some ancient air,
And there I stood, beauty'd in:
Felt it did, in inertias touch,
Oh gentle leaf in gentle cusp,
You kiss despite a wind-eye breeze—
You sit and yet you give enough
A night wood, beauty-yellow tree.
Nov 20, 2021
Nov 20, 2021 at 6:44 PM UTC
DEAR fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.
You may, that mirror for a school,
Be passionate, not bountiful
As common beauties may,
Who were not born to keep in trim
With old Ezekiel's cherubim
But those of Beauvarlet.
I know what wages beauty gives,
How hard a life her setvant lives,
Yet praise the winters gone:
There is not a fool can call me friend,
And I may dine at journey's end
With Landor and with Donne.
1.8k
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.
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 3:21 PM UTC
It topples; end over end.
It has ever since that asteroid banged into it,
sending it tumbling.
It's thoughts, like its formerly outside layer of rock, are scattered.
It's not sure if it wants to continue spinning or not. At the same time, it recognizes it's powerlessness before the hand of physics.
It does not know when another asteroid will make contact.
It wants to crash into a planetary body, so as to be apart of something bigger.
It wants gravity to pull it in, slowly caressing it home. It doesn't know where that will be, but it remembers, a long time ago, being much larger. And faintly, it remembers, even longer ago, of being very much smaller.
It can almost remember when it, along with everything else in the universe, was one. It can almost remember the warmth of the force that dispersed it and it's sisters everywhere they could possibly be. Forever.
Eternity is the only concept it can truly understand.
It's beginning to understand that it doesn't so much like this idea of Forever,
but these thoughts will take millennia upon millennia to form,
and many times that long to be understood.
An other asteroid passes within two miles of it and it almost gets excited.
Maybe tomorrow, it thinks, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 4:59 PM UTC
Poets write poetry sharing
wisdom of roads not taken
their gray brain sprouts multicolored flowers
of visions seeking love
splattered by remnants
of great lovers past
ankored daggers
in heart
Lovers paint their own ark
A poets spinning top is art
lasting longer as it may
their name De Plume
may dictate ageless
candor
but their tops spinning
out off ballance
topples and falls;
Poets and lovers notice
people aren't tops,
karma cause and effect
Action innaction
dictates
the inevitability of
their top's last spin,
Even of poetry
What may last forever?
new poets are birthed
like seasons do
returning thus
the spinning top
of poets and lover's vise.
~~~~~~~~
By: Karijinbba
All Rights.
Jul 7, 2021
Jul 7, 2021 at 6:26 PM UTC
A patch-work roof burns underneath
the sallow-white chill of a mid-winter moon.
Nearby a lake suffocates in ice;
an astronaut has lost his helmet.
Blood rushes to the eyes and tongue
as a ragged derelict loses his balance.
He topples into a dumpster;
the last pear drifts from the tree.
The firemen are enclosed in smoke.
One froze at the door,
the others melt into the haze;
a hand slips below quicksand.
The moon is doing all it can.
The spaceman is floating away.
The *** is asleep.
The roof is having the time of its life
and the pear grows into another pear-tree.
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 2:36 AM UTC
It's fifteen years
since I let Jack fall.
I am unforgiven
by a wife who wasn't there,
who didn't see what happened
and who will never understand.
And nor will I, of course.
That slow-motion slip
from crested cliff to vanishing
replays before my desperate eyes
each night,
and each night I am as frozen
as on that wretched day.
A harmless walk gone awry
and a family forever shattered.
He was within my reach.
Another day I would have caught him,
effortlessly.
Another day I would have walked cliffside,
keeping him to the thrift-speckled verge,
soft and safe.
Another day we would have walked a woodland trail instead.
I don't know why that day
was the day I was distracted,
the day my reflex failed me.
I don't know why my brain misfired,
conscious enough to watch in horror
but not to propel me forward.
Sometimes we catch the cup as it topples,
sometimes we watch it spill to the floor.
Moments of blissful skill
followed by moments of dumb helplessness.
It was no cup that fell that day.
To her, though, there is no general flaw.
There is no explanation in biology,
no hormone or synapse to be blamed.
There is only me. Her husband.
Jack's father.
There are no two sides to my coin, now.
There is only the man who let him fall.
She stays: she is dutiful.
But I could catch every falling cup,
remember to lock every door,
make never another mistake,
and he will still be dead
because his father was a careless man.
Ten years before Jack fell,
I,
a cautious man, untutored in love,
saw a beautiful girl
and inexplicably threw caution to the wind.
Another day I would have turned aside.
Another day I would have stammered my invitation,
lost my nerve.
But for that mysterious moment
There would have been no Jack,
and we would never have experienced
a limitless, all consuming love
which all the pain in the universe
can never staunch
or dim.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 2:59 PM UTC
When I awake in the day, all is blank.
Pills, shower, school, work; a common routine, but one easily forgotten when you cannot differentiate between here and now.
Walking through the mall, wondering if I tumble over the rail in a haze of blood and screaming will I finally see stars again.
What a silly though; so instead, The hairs on my head are steadily ripped out in between my dull fingernails and wisp away to the ground.
Soon it leads to forgetting how to drive, to brush my teeth to speak.
Standing idly by while the world turns and twists and gravity keeps me grounded, but my brain is in another dimension, as an imaginary deity I cannot keep believing in.
Voices, fingertips, the trees and leaves all have it out for me, touching me and surrounding me until I collapse, into the street somewhere, late at night after the cars and people have all long since fallen under.
Did I sleep through work? Or did I even sleep?
Did I remember to eat today?
Slowly turning black, staring in the mirror with the lights off and I am in hell when I turn them on.
How many hours does one ever recall?
Thousands, some say, but what hours do we choose to hold?
Psychosis grips me like an angry father scolding his young child, topples me over like the Tower of Babylon, entangles me in an ocean of disconnection that ends with me coming back to the surface by banging my head on the door and punching picture frames.
When I crash my car into the ditch down the street and I feel blood trickle into my eye from the windshield kissing my head, I am not shocked, I don't even remember how I got there.
When I drown in cheap whisky and prescription pills, I fear not for my fate because I have forgotten I even have one.
When my lungs burn with harsh smoke of unfiltered cigarettes, I don't cringe, for my lungs only know to inhale the harm, and not breathe.
I don't know when I will remember to live. But I hope it is before I die.
Aug 1, 2016
Aug 1, 2016 at 10:32 PM UTC
I tap my index finger on the top of my cigarette,
The pier of ash that was building topples off the end.
The can is at my lips,
A pleasant burn on the throat when swallowed,
Imperial stout,
The warming burn reminds me of good bourbon.
The ***** beer agreeing with my palate.
A hard day started early,
My early ending is it's own reward,
To relax,
Kick back
And let the tunes carry me away.
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 2:59 PM UTC
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
1.3k