• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Reading
    • Blog
    • On Writing
    • Interviews
    • Famous Authors
    • Stories
    • Poetry
  • Writing
    • Writing Tips
    • Writing Inspiration
    • Playground
    • Writing Prompts
  • Publishing
    • Publishing Tips
    • Literary Magazines
    • Book Publishers
  • Promotions
    • Book Promotions
    • Promoting Tips
    • Classifieds
    • Newsletter
  • Submit

Every Day Poems

A Poem A Day

  • Poetry of the 1500s
  • Poetry of the1600s
  • Poetry of the 1700s
  • Poems for Kids
  • War Poems
  • Every Poem

Inspirational Poems

Cost of forgetting by Sunil Sharma

August 16, 2018 by Every Writer

Cost of forgetting

by Sunil Sharma

If you methodically dismantle
memories of—
beings
names
places
past
community

with a swift movement

a time comes when you are
dismembered by the selfsame process—
a yawning chasm

then
being becomes a remote blur
on the horizon— pale-bluish-orange-dark

slipping into an amber sea
of fire-breathing monsters
hungry for crumbs of memories
dripping away in their flight
into the forest of dementia

on such nights
burnt-out, scary
living becomes walking dead
and the region gets dissolved

finally—

wiped away quickly
by rushing fogs

or stiff days
shrouded
by storms.

###
Sunil Sharma is a college principal, freelance journalist, author and editor. Mumbai-based, he has published 19 books—solo and joint. His prose and poetry have appeared in many places in the world.

Filed Under: Inspirational Poems

Instructions: On Getting Ready to Die by Gayle Kellner

March 24, 2018 by Every Writer

Instructions_ On Getting Ready to Die

Instructions: On Getting Ready to Die

by Gayle Kellner

Please take off my watch
I won’t need time beyond the moment any longer

Followed by my earrings
There will be no one’s eye to catch,
No partner to impress

Slip off my shoes
Let me put my bare feet in the grass
One last time

Set my glasses for reading on the piles of books I’ll never get to
But stack my favorites near me
For they are among my closest friends

Wrap me in a sweater
In remembrance of those perfect chilly fall days
And take me outside
Let me feel the morning sun on my face

Unbutton my collar
Loosen my cuffs
That damn bra
I’ll need help with the clasp behind my back

Take off my belt
Lay all of these instruments of restraint aside
I will be restrained no longer

Why did I wait so long?

###

Gayle Kellner is a writer, an artist, a poet, and an educator. Her essays and poems have appeared in Utne Magazine, Orion Magazine,  The Loop, The Beachcomber, and  The Nature of an Island. She is currently a regular guest on Voice of Vashon’s community radio program The Brown Briefly hosted by retired reporter and editor of Time Magazine Brian Brown. Gayle also works as a professional artist. Her paintings have been shown on Vashon Island at the Blue Heron Center for the Arts and the Barnworks.  Her work in stone has been shown at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington Kentucky.

Gayle currently lives on Vashon Island where she is pursuing her continued interests in writing and art. She spends her days now rising with the sun; to write, read poetry and history, tend her chickens and her garden, paint in her boathouse studio, and walk the shores and woodlands that surround her island home.

Filed Under: Inspirational Poems, poem

On Cooking Krakens by Julie Irigaray

September 17, 2017 by Every Writer

On Cooking Krakens

On Cooking Krakens

by Julie Irigaray

The stalls of Italian markets
display four different
types of octopus and five
sizes of squids
with glassy eyes –
piteous nautilus
from Hokusai’s erotica.

I learned with practice how to
extract their entrails
without piercing the ink sac,
how to cut the cuttlefish’s
mantle to get the pen,
proud gladius raised against me.

I am not the fisherman’s wife
disarmed kraken,
there’s no need to resist
with your sharp beak
and your toy tentacles.

I discovered the squeeze
when one squishes the skin,
its plasticity once peeled –
What a strange appeal!
An opal ghost floats in the basin.

###

Julie Irigaray’s work has appeared in various international publications such as Southword, Banshee (Ireland), Shearsman, Mslexia, Tears in the Fence, Envoi (UK) and The Ofi Press (Mexico), among others. She recently won third prize in the 2017 Winchester Writers’ Festival Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for The Yeovil Poetry Prize 2017 and The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2016 (UK). After living in the south-west of France, Ireland, England and Italy, she is back to Paris.

Filed Under: Halloween Poems, Inspirational Poems

He Sits by Sy Roth

January 29, 2014 by Every Writer

Sy-pic-by-June

He Sits

by Sy Roth

 

He sits in his garage,
Dressed in black jogging pants,
Black nylon jacket striped in white along the sleeves matches.
The pants bottoms pulled up to his calves show
White support hose
Makes his ankles look like sausages.

He sits side saddle on his plastic chair
Ragged-thin flowery cushion draped at his back
Peonies stretched paper thin,
Pores over the latest installment of Newsday.
Neighbors’ petty queries, wonder.

Ubiquitous red-hazy cigarette aglow between his yellowed fingertips,
He exhales gray clouds of smoke.
Like a Sphinx, he guards his space
An aging monument tinctured in carbon monoxide.

Lonely warrior of a steamer trunk of memories
Piled helter-skelter into the corner of his loneliness.
Conducts the business of waiting and sitting
As the copse of cigarettes mound.

He resides at his table
Hunched in his plastic chair
Crossing and uncrossing his sausaged legs
Newspaper words, a shimmering oasis
Dance on the pages before him.

Lackadaisically he turns his head to the street
A plume of smoke escapes his lips,
In a passing nod to humanity.
He sits.

###

Retired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace. He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in Visceral Uterus, Amulet, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, Barefoot Review, Haggard and Halloo, Misfits Miscellany, Larks Fiction Magazine, Danse Macabre, Bitchin’ Kitch, Bong is Bard, Humber Pie, Poetry Super Highway, Penwood Review, Masque Publications, Foliate Oak, Miller’s Pond Poetry, The Artistic Muse, Word Riot, Samizdat Literary Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Screech Owl, Epiphany, Red Poppy Review, Big River, Poehemians, Nostrovia Poetry’s Milk and Honey, Siren, Palimpsest, Dead Snakes, Euphemism, Humanimalz Literary Journal, Ascent Aspirations, Fowl Feathered Review, Vayavya and Kerouac’s Dog.

Filed Under: Inspirational Poems

Bankruptcy and Real Estate by Weldon H. Sandusky

December 13, 2013 by Every Writer

oldhouse

Bankruptcy and Real Estate

by Weldon H. Sandusky

I
Failure has such splendor
Coaxing you to rationalize
Then tossing you a pint of vodka
And chalking up a victory
When your committed to the
State Mental Asylum.

II
Success, similarly, wears such a deceptive
Smile tempting you to light a
Big Cigar. Poof! Bankruptcy. Poof!
Real Estate. Poof. A lawyer. Poof
The twenty-first floor.
Vernon and Parks. Ah, what Sublimity.
I buy expensive ties and plan a
Luxury Caribbean Cruise.

III
Then deluded, mistaken
Fallen, aghast walking
Down a street of stone
To throw with words
Like hard candy ready to spit out
My heart empty and full of sorrow.
They were such successful Friends,
Now nobodies in the funny
Backfire of a car somewhere.

###
I graduated from Texas Tech University in 1968-a B.A. in English. I then got an M.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin and a law degree (J.D. l975) from the same school. Divorce followed as did commitment to , first, the private psychiatric hospital, Timberlawn, in Dallas, and , later, the State Mental Asylum in Terrell , Texas. I petitioned for habeas corpus claiming a conspiracy to unlawfully commit me existed in violation of my constitutional rights
Upon release, I got a job at Exxon/Mobil where I worked twenty years as a cashier-nightman. During August, 2005, I underwent open heart surgery at St. Paul’s Hospital in Dallas and have since been declared totally disabled. I have coronary heart disease.

Filed Under: Inspirational Poems

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 7
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

AD




Search

Latest

On the Last Day by George Moore

George Moore’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, Arc and Stand. His recent collections are Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls

Winter Kitchen by Jenny Dunbar

Quince, the golden peach

Infinity by Anna Banasiak

Anna Banasiak have been published in New York, London, Surrey,  Australia, Canada, India, Africa, Japan, China, Cuba, Israel. She is the winner of poetry competitions in London, medal Unesco, Berlin, Bratislava, gold, gold and silver in Kamena, gold, silver and bronze at All Poetry.

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in