Better Than Starbucks Sentimental Poetry

Sentimental Poetry edited by Anthony Watkins

Rose Tinted Binoculars

A time ago when I would run the grass would barely bend
The laws of physics and myself were not considered friends

I would fly along at such a pace my shadow would surrender
Before a letter was even sent I could return to sender

I could jump from any crazy height and land without a mark
I could tumble down most any hill, make a fire from a spark

My hands would very rarely rest upon my handlebars
The road was but a playground for weaving through the cars

From our secret lair we could watch the world and never once be seen
If dirt was steel I was a magnet with not an inch left clean

Ghost stories made the short walk home last a thousand years
A multitude of hidden things to fertilise my fears

I made a fairly decent dent into the sugar mountain
And quenched my never-ending thirst with a sticky fizzy fountain

Trees were climbed and blood was spilled and bees were caught in jars
And our hearts came tumbling from our mouths as we lay and watched the stars

David Hayes is a writer, researcher, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst in-training. His writings include poetry, essays, articles, and theoretical research, and have appeared in journals, newspapers, and magazines.

Clouds

Children delight in creating flying horses, castles,

pirates, and so many other things till clouds separate

into trains headed to exotic lands.

Before long, we conclude clouds were just moisture:

evaporation, currents, dew points, and so many other

facts learned at school.

Carol Smallwood

THE BAD PICK-UP LINES OF OEDIPUS

“O, where have you been all my lonely life?”

He states, assured, and with a kingly sway.

She shows her wedding band, “I am a wife,”

She says with rolling eyes and turns away.

This legacy has cursed the Cadmus line

Since great-granddad incurred Athena’s wrath—

The curse to see malignant as benign

In married ladies whose possession hath

In riddles lain. But then he tries again—

“You’re pretty, like my mom, when she was young”—

To draw on female sympathy. Yet when

she struts away, he does not bite his tongue.

He scopes the bar and spots another prize

With blinding premonition in his eyes.

Mauricio Rosales is a native of El Salvador, though raised in the US. His poems have appeared in The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe, Exit 13, and The Lyric. His translations have appeared in Mundus Artium and Borges and I(Univ. of Arkansas Press).

That Mountain Tree

Alone now I must bid farewell
I've done a dirty deed,
I leave behind my family
an outcast of the breed.

I strangled all his ties of heart
and left him lifeless there,
I'll hide up in this mountain top,
let nature clear the air.

And when we come up missing long
they'll search and find him dead,
and knowing that I had been there
they'll realize why I fled.

I don't know why I did the thing
I snapped and lost my cool
and killed us both because I’ve now
replaced me with this fool.

The ones I love, my wife and kids,
I'll never see them grow;
I took away our neighbor's dad
they'll hate me when they know.

I cannot live and face myself,
such a vile waste of breath,
perhaps I'll fertilize a tree
in sorrow and in death.

And if that tree grows up to bear
some song birds and their young,
I hope to God my debt is paid
in all they will have sung.

DE Navarro founder of NavWorks Press, is an award winning poet and author who lives in the Los Angeles area. See his books and read more here.

Sum of Her Parts

Is it the tilt of her head when she's looking ‘just so’

Or the line of her form from her head to her toes

Or the breadth of her breast and coquettish ways

The measures of how a woman's worth is appraised?

While makeup and fashion are how she's defined

Her intelligence and depth have been undermined

Why not highlight a woman’s inner beauty instead?

You'll find the world blossoms when her soul has been fed

No spiked heels nor glitter and surely no pumps

Will define her strength -- they simply highlight her lumps

And while she is soft and her tears easily fall

It's the glint of her mettle that defines her, that's all

Please make no mistake, though she wears boots and jeans

and the tread of her shoes might not ever be clean —

Pay attention to her and let's get something clear

'the weaker sex' be damned! We're all nasty women here

©Trish Shields

tip of the hat to Nina Donovan