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Best Poems Written by Gail Debole

Below are the all-time best Gail Debole poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Nice Day For a Funeral

Written by Gail DeBole
In memory of my grandfather

Nice Day For a Funeral

I
(You were always old.  I can't remember a
time when you were not.)

Cried
(And you had no past before the first time I
became aware of your presence.)

When
(The weather huddled the mourners together.
It was a cold day, but the sun was out to pay its respects, also.)

They
(I huddled with the rest.  Echos of
the service left a sad taste in my soul.)

Lowered
(The Rabbi had spoken of you like an old friend.)

Your
(And convinced me of your close 
lifelong brotherhood with him.)

Casket.


Funeral, Eulogy, or Memorial Service Poetry Contest
Sixth Place

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An Evening At the Home

Written: March 5, 2012
Updated: March 11, 2012

Listen to nurse's report including the news
that Joe and Wilma like each other.

Check all rooms and find that Roger is out of his bed
and down on the floor again.
(Hip not broken yet.)

Answer Wanda's light to calm her justified paranoia
because she knows that she is somewhere other
than her home but just can't figure out where that is.

Answer Jeremy's light to help him sip his water
while he giggles at his favorite T.V. show.

Accept his thanks and feel your heart break again to see a
45 year old man who can no longer control his limbs be so
appreciative of such a small act of kindness...big act of kindness.

Check on Jack even though he doesn't turn on his light
because you hear suspicious noises coming from his room.

Help Jack to bed after you find him swatting an
imaginary fly with an imaginary fly swatter.

Try to re-position Emma so that she is comfortable
even though her limbs are fetal-position frozen.

Kindly lie to yourself about her comfort so that you can
control your guilt when leaving the room.

Go into Jackie's room when she starts her usual screaming
that "she doesn't want to be here, and her family hates her
and that's why she's here."

Kindly lie to her and control your shame because you know that
what she is saying probably is true.

Answer ex-model Mabel's light and listen to her story about
how she could have married Groucho Marx, but that she married
her true-love instead.

Feel a sense of sad pride when Anna proudly explains to you
how she keeps track of her day by tracking her activities as she
would have for patients when she was a nurse.

Keep taking care of and giving these people (not patients)
love every chance that you get.

Gail's notes: Portrait of Joe and Wanda is the sequel to this. To protect the privacy of those who have lived before us, the names have been fictionalized, and the events semi-fictionalized.

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Who Am I To Say

Written by Gail Debole on 
April 2, 2013

She, on her near-death bed
Face grey as she faced what is inevitable.
I, sitting to the right
And Death floating to the left.
She, mumbling that it was her time.
That she was to leave.
I, forbidding her to go.
Told her that it was NOT her time.
She needed to stay.

The nurses, came to her rescue.
One on each side.
Death and I moving away.
Her face becoming pink with new-found life.
It was a miracle, the nurses exclaimed.
She, with eyes awake.
Death moving on to another victim.
I, again seated to her right.
She told me her truth.

She smiled and explained
That she was still here
Because God had said 
that it was not her time to go.

And I, who knew my truth,
And who never pretended to be God
Knew that NOT to be true.
And could never tell her my truth.

And she, who lived on
Told that story many times
Of the miracle that she was part of.
And I, never said a word.

Then years later after her passing
My mind’s eye opened.
Could she have been right?
Did God tell her to stay that day
Speaking the words through my mouth?

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Life Is

Written by Gail R DeBole
on April 4, 2022
Updated on December 29, 2022

...Free Verse................
Unless you turn it into Iambic Pentameter.

...a swirling kaleidoscope of colors...........
Unless you only use one color.

...ideas that tickle your fancy.........
Unless your fancy is not ticklish.
 
...a crowd of people absorbing and releasing the positive.....
Unless the positive is broken.

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The Wrinkle Mystery

Written on 9/26/2022
Updated on 9/27/2022
by Gail DeBole

The young boy was watching his mom
Straighten sheets on his bed with her palms.
He began scratching his head
Looked at the floor and his bed
And seemed to be mildly alarmed.

The young boy who was not quite four, 
Said, “The wrinkles are not on the floor.
It did not take long 
For them to be gone,
But why did they not fall to the floor?"

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The First Real Case of the Coronavirus

Written by Gail DeBole
on March 13, 2020
Fictional poem

The First Real Case of the Coronavirus 
(or The Coronavirus Stew Recipe)

Nobody knows that this is really the way
The Coronavirus came here to stay.

A witch who was looking for a new supper brew
Concocted a recipe of a tasty bat stew.

The recipe was easy, a few this and thats
One frog’s ear and a big black rat.

The ingredient that would make the stew fine
Was a bat’s wing marinated in wine.

All served on top of a Yew Tree Leaf
Who needed steak when she had bat beef?

The meat was cooked rare with a slight tinge of pink
And smelled like a mixture of evil and stink.

The next day her witch friends found her alone
In a position that could only be prone.

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Grendel's Supper

Written by Gail DeBole  
and included in PS: It's Poetry
A PoetrySoup.com anthology published in 2020

Note: Grendel was the monster in the old English Heroic poem titled Beowolf written by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet.  John Gardner wrote a related book titled Grendel in the 1970's that told the same story from the monster's point of view.  Soon after reading Grendel, I wrote this poem from the point of view of Unferth.


"My God, Grendel!  Are you Godless?
You hold heads that drip with hate-deeds!
All your fury 'voids compassion.
Are you spiritless? Don't eat me!

I see eyeballs in your teeth-sneers.
Faded lips you chew with ease.
You are laughing - yet I've cry-tears.
Here's a toothpick. Now let me be!

I, leathery, bony, meatless;
Old gruff meat that breaks your teeth.
Unferth's ready, willing, fearless.
For you, I'll fetch younger meat.

Backed up now, your breathing eats me.
Close as bricks glued back to back.
Grendel, hear me!  I will save you!
I will give you what you lack!

Name the fortune that you'd like.
I have charts of riches hid.
Under soil, far from man-sight.
I will give you what you bid.

Or think of mothers. You have one.
They're forsaken without sons.
And my mother's just the same.
For her sorrow, you'll take blame!

Grendel!  Grendel!  Let me go!
I am old, but I will fight.
Why, you vile, formless, foe!
I will tell you where"...

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A Thankful Turkey

Written by Gail DeBole

When a turkey, who yearly escapes
From his owner's Thanksgiving plate,
Was asked to reveal
Why he's never a meal
He said, "That much of a turkey I ain't!"



Note: Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of each November in the United States.  President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed this as an official holiday in 1863.

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My First Grey Hair

Written by Gail DeBole

I dyed it.
The dye did not take.

So I pulled it out.

Then I climbed to the highest building and shoved it off.
It boomeranged when it hit the ground and came back to me.

Then I tried to bury it so deep within the ground that
I only succeeded in tunneling to the other side of the world.
And it was still with me.

I threw it off into the sunset.
The moon's shine threw it back at me.

I folded it umpteen times and paper clipped it to 
Last week's newspaper for recycling.
It was recycled back to me.

I hung it in a facade of suicide.
It slipped through the noose.

I stamped on it.
Beat at it.
Did everything besides forget about it.
And hated it passionately.

And then one day, it had gone.
Of its own will, not mine.
And I could not find it though I searched high and low.
I surveyed the front of my scalp and back
And stared my victory down into the mirror...

A whole head of grey.

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Gravity

Written by Gail DeBole
Updated July 1, 2016

The Universe's Tape