A Distinguished Selection of the Finest Modern Literature

Tag contemporary poems

Sister Blue by Brenda Davis Harsham

Brother new, sister blue, I miss you.
Both lost at age four. Pain is evermore.

Is it wrong that I still long to belong?
To share every care and touch your hair?

To pillow fight, fly a kite, hold me tight,
whisper secrets in the dark, swing in the park?

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Fever by Louisa Heno

I’ve got a fever inside ready to break out
I’m angry at my thoughts and all my self-doubt
I’m angry at the people who doubted me, too
But that’s a tiny flame, it can barely reach through
The tunnels and chasms I’ve built around me
But it’s burning, I feel it, and I’m hopeful you’ll see
It well overboard in a simple, brave act
And I would be free
And there’d be no regret

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The Paper Man by Dixie

He fell from the tip of my pen,
He fell from the edge of my rhymes,
He fell out of my poems,
He slipped from between the lines.

His lips were made of paper,
Unkissable and cold,
But his hands were a sonnet
So beautifully told.

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The Ghost Inside by Akshat Thakur

I’m not a doctor, I’m not your cure,
I’m not the medicine that you long for;
I’m not a lifeline, I’m not the boat,
I’m just the salt that’ll keep you afloat.

I stare at the noise, drawn to the void,
Conversations that I’ll craftily avoid;
I’ll walk off the earth, dying since my birth,
Keep running till my bones hit the dirt.

Under the shower, let the hotness devour,
And the water sink into my eyes like a rotten flower;
I’ve got the deadest face, I’m just a waste of space,
I’ll let my heart run free as my soul loses grace.

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The Tear-Catcher by Emily Bilman

The salt taste of my tears
bears memories buried
in the corolla of a rose,
in the odours of my childhood,
barely woken from a dream,
our tryst abandoned.

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A Nobody by Julia Hones

A “nobody” who writes for the voiceless
swims against the tides of fate,
clashes with uptight currents,
is buoyed by gentle waves
like a bolt into a dream made out of nothingness,
crowns of hope
along the touch of nature.No golden shoes enfold the feet.
They are bare and wounded.

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Silence by Sinimatik

My name hums upon your lips
Like a loose string
Out of tune
Out of place
Not welcomed in your vocalized melody
A mistake

My own ears whisper truth
But my eyes deceive me
To watch you
Plucking the chord
So desperately
So desperate
For it to belong

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Yours is the Haunt by Ranscan

Yours is the haunt
the silky palace of nights revenge
the desert dreaming of a storm
the voice whispering across the back of a neck,

Longing quantified and articulated
yours is the touch
that lights the forever fires
seethes the trembling earth,

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Whirlwind by Tyla Merrill

I am a mime.
Burning fingers pressed
against frozen air.
Fingerprints engraved on the whirl
of wind that guards your heart,
hides your heart,
traps your heart in the eye
of the storm. Snatches
wisps of meaning
with intrusive fingers.
Promises bits of something better…
promises unfulfilled.

I draw closer.

Laughing, taunting, stealing
the breath from my lungs.
Worn lungs,
searching for air,
gasping for words,
for some part of myself
to launch into the wind
as if it could reach you.

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