Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

You have until January 15 to post a poem, and from January 16-22 we’ll vote for which one we thought was best!

Please post directly into the topic and not a link. Please don’t use a poem previously used in this group. Only one submission per person is allowed.

Your poem can be any length.

This week’s topic is: Broken Resolutions.

The rules are pretty loose. You could write a poem about anything that has to do with the subject/photo but it must relate to the topic somehow.

Most of all have fun!

"Square One"

Ready. Set...
No starter pistol
Stuck staring at the target
It's hard to hit you.
Prepare the flare gun
It should be a fair run
Where am I at?
Back at square one
Vision board's impaired
Broken promises to myself
How dare!?
I swear I cared alot
Just prepared none
Couldn't find the discipline
But, look! There's fun!
Couldn't find the time
Somewhere, there's some
wasting away while I'm waiting
for the day
Procrastinating because...
Tomorrow will be okay
Where am I at?
Where I'll always stay
and where I've always been
if I don't step forward
and go a step farther
after I start again

POET: Garrison Kelly
TITLE: Welcome to the World, Gunther Golan
GENRE: Song
RATING: PG-13 for language



VERSE 1
After nine months of tummies being swollen
Welcome to the world, Gunther Golan
Can’t find your momma? Neither can I
Like a broken resolution, kiss her goodbye
Even I don’t know how you came to me
Must have been a night of drunken misery
But I can’t stand the taste of Budweiser
Another drug kept me from being the wiser

VERSE 2
Sorry for the disappointment, my little guy
Don’t have the patience or money to raise you right
Only resource I have is a life full of baggage
Potential turned to shit like eating too much cabbage
I could get a nice job flipping other people’s burgers
But that won’t offset all my fantasies of murder
Even if I had a million dollars in my bank
The screams still grated, the diapers still stank

VERSE 3
I can’t afford a car to drive you to school
So they give you D’s and C’s and label you a fool
Only option for you is to join the military
Where survivor’s guilt is their burden to carry
Another piece of meat for the sausage grinder
Another statistic in the government binder
This could have been avoided with a simple abortion
But instead the system plotted all this extortion

VERSE 4
After all the trauma and the baby mamma drama
All I had to show was a check from Obama
That was years ago, time flies like a vulture
Makes meals of us all, it’s American culture
We all had dreams at one point or another
Maybe you dreamed of having your own brother
But your legacy ends here, Mr. Gunther Golan
An endless stream of shit like cancer in the colon

FINAL LINE
But I’d give anything to bring you back…

A Resolution Not Made
By Brett A. Starr on January 8, 2023

Whether on purpose,
Or not - a promise not made
Is never spoken

Also, that a game
Of a favorite not played
Requires no token

Do not fret, my friend
A resolution not made
Cannot be broken

But what is the point,
Without making an attempt
To better oneself?


Footnote: My witty solution to broken resolutions: don’t make one and it cannot be broken. But what fun is that? A quadruple haiku with a purposefully broken rhyming pattern on the last stanza.

Fidel, excellent creativity! Has the rhythm of a hip-hop song. My son would love it!

Garrison, Gunther Golan is certainly a poetic story of a hard-knock life. I liked the part where you said "That was years ago, time flies like a vulture. Makes meals of us all, it’s American culture." It paints a vivid picture for the audience.

Thanks for the feedback, Brett! I'm glad I could capture those intense feelings and that they resonated with my audience. I don't have children of my own, but I would imagine raising one in poverty would be a challenge, to say the least.