Short Free Verse Poems about the Human Condition

Turn Back

A cabal of petty,
Unreconstructed hacks
With no experience of
Being discriminated against,
Making sweeping
Discriminatory decisions
Against the unprotected,
Limiting their rights,
Restricting their ability to
Achieve their dreams,
Ignoring heinous past and
Present transgressions.
Inequality institutionalized,
Codified by privileged brutes
Who’ve never had to
See things from
Someone else’s perspective,
Or have some kind of
Strange axe to grind,
Smugly decreeing a
Less compassionate world.
Turn back the clock,
Reverse progress.

Mercilessness

Sadism personified,
Culture of barbarism,
Fear, cruelty,
Casual violence.

Self-perpetuating system,
Commend bad behavior,
Promote inhumanity,
Celebrate malice.

Respond to everything
With brutality,
Pledge fealty to
Mercilessness.

You Do

You say that you act a certain
Way and then do the exact opposite of
What you’ve just asserted.
There are two options that might
Explain this type of behavior:
One is you don’t realize what you’re doing,
The other is you do.

Indisputable

No room for debate,
Mind made up beforehand.
Unrelentingly imposed
Hierarchy – a few on top,
Most on the bottom.
Homogeneity of belief,
Indoctrinated from birth,
Perpetuated by self-interested
Megalomaniacs unwilling to
Consider other perspectives,
Their version of the truth
Absolute, indisputable.
Fabricate the doctrine,
Tighten the yoke around
Subservient subjects,
Keep them in the dark,
The malleable uninformed.

Longstanding

Outraged that their longstanding
Position is being challenged,
They scramble out angrily
From their holes,
Attacking anyone
Who doesn’t fit the profile,
Obnoxiously making everything
Worse for everyone,
Terrified of equality.

Salves

She surrounded herself with
All manner of people who
Flattered and inflated her to
Fleeting girth and satiety.

When she became listless and
Shrivelled, she summoned
Another retinue and basked in
Sycophantic adulation.

When it came time to repose,
She stifled the cries with
Copious amounts of self-congratulation,
Elaborate salves of deception.

Disremembered

In his quietest moments he
Understood that it was not
Others who merited his caustic
Contempt or held his fate in
Their unworthy hands. It was
He who had the responsibility
To heal the wounds that had
Found permanent asylum in
The disremembered corners of
His unconsciousness.

Disregard

Cavalierly excuses himself
When she deferentially
Asks for help for her family.
A rigged game dependent on
Her subservience and
Fear of merciless reprisal.
Surviving day to day
On the fringes of a
Community that scorns her,
Demeans her very existence,
Considers her less than a person.
Spoiled starched gentlemen,
Primped wilting ladies,
An air of contrived civility
Masks a ruthless
Disregard for humanity.

Reverberating

Reposing in fortified edifice
Overlooking tattered hovels,
Broken dreams that never
Took flight.

Counting his earnings
From the sweat of
Indentured
Beings.

Surveying his lands,
Faceless toiling peasantry,
Noble tradition reverberating
In the present.