A life will not fit in three lines, so these poems do not try. They take one hinge - a childhood bedroom, a face in a mirror, the moment a person notices they have become the older generation - and let it stand for the rest.
This selection from the Three Line Poetry archive is about memory more than anything else: what is kept, what fades, and how unreliable the whole business turns out to be. There is a poem below that observes you are right now as old as you have ever been and as young as you will ever be again, which is the kind of thing the form does well. Each poem links back to its issue.
35 poems from the archive
Memory of memories:
Enchanting angel was she
Yet remains no more
my childhood bedroom—
a kaleidoscope of memories
unfold on the cracked wallpaper
Silently the waves push through
Eternity, churning up memories
And dreams long forgotten.
hopscotch etched sidewalk
childhood memories of summer
chalked in shades of simplicity
Kaleidoscope
Hues of hope sing
Elope with dreams
childhood memory…
a red flame in the darkness
and a dog’s wet nose
Your whisper, my love, as winter light;
how delicate is our dream. We want
from heaven a soul – in birth or truth.
Bounce the psychedelic ball
Inhale the joy and wonder
Recalling spent days of youth.
Art is born
at the mouth of the cave
within the refuse.
Ten androgyneless years, the cancer spreading out
everywhere now, my M.D. wife slowly becoming
the best Czech mom- grandma I ever had.
Timepilot - with no perspective, no horizon is real.
All grows, and rusts in memory fisted controls,
painting a backhand dance in marble.
Aging: right now you’re as old
as you’ve ever been
and as young as you’ll ever be.
old face
etched with the story
of a lifetime
hidden evergreen needle
pricks bare feet -
Christmas memory
Pretty girl in school
Stealing glances before class
Siren song of youth
Fall is not remorse
Cyclic time cannot be lost
Spring revisits birth
How to remember
to work on
my forgetfulness?
I dream of
Blood on tarmac
Your life leaking away.
if we could choose our parents
when we’re young enough
to dream in every color
in a crowded room
alone with my memories
single once again
full of memories
left derelict and empty
rain runs down pane
Sleepwalking, spiraling Earth
Awake in your world of dreams
Where delusion feigns reality
In our green youth
we climbed high,
limitless.
As I try to remember
The stories you told,
I do not know you.
freshets of images
from drifts of dream
dried up in the morning light
forgotten party dress
faded with regret
we never went salsa dancing
I stand before him a stranger
All those memories lost to the disease
He is still my father but I am no longer his son
Velvet Elvis
the silence of dreams
that no longer fit
At twenty, I sharpened knives
to bleed myself dry
At thirty, I dream of living light
The beard brimmed over my chest, catching
everything as a memento
Clean shaven everything belongs to memory
Forget-me-nots bloom
and wilt like watered memories
Plant forget-me-nows
The nightmare of the assult, plagued my soul.
Today, I’m impervious to haunting memories.
Smashing glass into rigid mountains, healed me.
memories of him
losing clarity and color
in the dusty corners of my mind
untie the choking chords of youth
black into ash and flee
into the possibility of you
childhood playhouse --
flowers pierce gaps between boards,
chasing the sun
More poems by theme
From the Three Line Poetry archive