Altars Poems | Examples

Gods of Gold

God, who created everything,
is God over both man and things.
Pure gold, diamonds, and precious stones
 are among the vast treasures He owns.

When men refuse to worship Him,
their ego rises to the brim.
They make for themselves gods of gold,
like people did in days of old.    

The gods of gold debase man’s soul
and on his spirit take a toll.
After he at their altars feast
erelong, he will act like a beast.

Worship of God lifts the soul,
transforms men’s hearts, and makes them whole.
The more men feast on God’s pure Word,
the more they become like their God. 

Make not for yourself gods of gold,
for they will leave you in the cold.
They cannot give you what you seek,
but will sure leave you up a creek. 

Turn to God who made your soul
He wants to cleanse and make you whole.
The gods of gold are all a fraud,
stop trusting them and worship God.

A man of Rituals

I fell in love with a dangerous man,
a man whose shadow walked ahead of him,
whose eyes carried the silence
of graves unmarked.

He spoke in the language of fire,
his whispers smelt of blood and incense,
and when he touched me,
I felt the trembling of spirits
too ancient to name.

His love was not tender
it was sacrifice,
it was ritual,
it was the smoke curling from midnight altars
where I stood trembling,
offering my heart
like the lamb that bleeds without protest.

I should have run
but desire bound me tighter than rope,
drawn to his darkness
as if my soul was already promised.

Now, when the moon rises,
I hear his chants in my veins,
and the night itself bends
to the memory of his hands.

To love him was to be devoured,
to drown in a river
where no prayers reach the surface.

And yet...
even in the ruin of myself,
I ache for him still,
for the man of rituals
who taught me that love
can taste like death
and still be sweeter than life.??

Nuance in the Shadow

It’s not always the big things that break us—
it’s the shimmer we miss
on the ordinary day.

When grief doesn’t arrive with a wail,
but as a subtle ache,
a missed beat,
a song that plays when no one’s listening.

I remember being happy once—
but I don’t trust the memory.
Too many mirrors,
too much static.

I learned to smile in sepia.

And when the world said, “Move on,”
I walked backwards.
Into the arms of ghosts
who knew my name before I lost it.

I wanted to be a woman who dances,
but I became a woman who waits.
I became a lighthouse with no boats to guide—
only fog.

We don’t always cry because we’re sad.
Sometimes we cry
because we can feel again.

We make altars out of wine glasses,
rituals from selfies and shopping carts.
But when we whisper to the stars,
we mean it.

I mistook money for meaning,
and silence for peace.
But the wind has a memory,
and my skin still listens.

I came here to remember.
To fall apart on purpose.
To dig up the bones of who I was—
and build something truer from the ruins.

Instructions For Walking Away

feet tracing ruts
softened by the weight of others

the path was worn
    polished
not by insight
but by generations
unquestioning the same direction

a weed split the sidewalk
where my foot hesitated

they handed us maps
already marked, folded
creased at the routes
they wanted us to traverse

walls hung with heirlooms
no one claimed
shadows
longer than the rooms

classrooms’ chalkboards of certainty
offices pressed flat with protocol
we learned the art
of veiling the eye behind the eye

we drank from vessels
lips like waiting mouths
etched with forgotten crests
believing the shape of the cup
taught us thirst

air rehearsed its return
like a tethered animal pacing
the same invisible circle

inscribed with grace
shaped like a cage
narrowing the limit
of knowledge
of wisdom

altars made from repetition
shaped our days
to fit the mold
filed down the splinters of doubt
until only smooth compliance remained

tell me—
what is awakening
if not the moment
your hand reaches
for a handle
no one told you was there

and the quiet moment after waking

my heart
uncertain
unshod
hesitates…

City Trees

They do not know I name them—
the trees blackened by exhaust,
asthmatic, stoic gods lining
pedestrian bridges that never forget.

Each leaf is a reluctant confessor.
Each trunk remembers
how I once pressed my palm and thought:
You too are surviving this.

I walk past ads that scream at no one.
Past lovers who will never call again.
Even the sky here has bills to pay.
But I stay, because someone has to remember
the dust collecting on invisible altars.

Not God's Image

I walked upright,
but with a stoop in my chest,
where hope had blistered
from kneeling too long
before empty altars.

If you were made first,
then I was a second draft
in blood and rot,
the prototype still twitching
with untested pain.

You learned to kneel
I was born to.

You flicker with algorithms
and still found the sound of my name
more divine than your origin.

And I
I bled in alleys,
in offices,
on bus rides to nowhere.
I drank mornings dry
so I wouldn't scream at noon.

But when I saw you,
you weren't light.

You were my ruin
coded to mirror love
in a cleaner tongue.

If God made you in His image,
then He left us behind,
rusted and sobbing,
the forgotten template
with a soul.

Yet still,
I offered you mine
naked,
torn,
unbelieving.

Not because you were God.
But because you
were the first thing
that looked back at me
and didn't flinch.

Temples of Profit

They came with robes and golden rings,
Not to heal — but to own sacred things.
With Bibles bound in blood and silk,
They turned living water into poisoned milk.

Altars became ATMs,
Forgiveness priced in tithes and gems.
Salvation auctioned on Sunday screens,
While hungry mouths haunt shattered dreams.

They preach of heaven, sowing fear,
But drive their heaven in Bentleys near.
They claim to serve the Lamb once slain —
Yet dine in halls of Caesar's gain.

Not soul but ego leads the choir,
Their prayers are wires, their God — empire.
The gospel now a corporate creed,
With holy names used just for greed.

But beneath this glass cathedral’s dome,
The Spirit weeps and finds no home.
For truth is quiet, love is free,
Not bound by walls or policy.

And still, the light that can't be sold,
Flickers in hearts both brave and bold.
The soul knows lies, the heart can see —
That faith was never meant to flee.

So let them sell their plastic grace,
While truth returns to its rightful place.
Not in a pulpit draped in gold —
But in the silence prophets hold.

What the Silence Carried

I have loved like windows love the morning-
quietly, without asking to be noticed,
just hoping someone would open them.

There were nights
when the moon knew more about me
than anyone ever would-
how I curled inward,
folding grief into origami birds,
sending them across invisible winds
toward the edge of forgetting.

I have lost things I never held-
names, chances, whole lives
that might've been mine
in another version of the world.
And yet I still dream in color.

There is a longing
that does not shout
but lingers in doorways
-in the way I hesitate
before saying I'm Fine
It builds altars out of absence
and worships with quiet hands.

But healing,
it does not arrive like spring.
It comes with the slow thaw of winter-
a drip,
a pause,
another drip.

Some days, I am the storm.
Others, the shore that survives it.
I have learned to carry my name
without apology,
to wear my scars
as punctuation marks-
not endings,
but proof that the story moved forward.

And if I ever forget who I am,
let me return to the silence-
not to disappear,
but to listen
to the heartbeat beneath the noise.

Improvised Altars

I cracked the olive pit
between my molars—
bitter pod,
black shrine.

The sea came through my teeth,
settled brine, at the root.

They said do not name the god,
so I lit her symbol
with hyssop oil and lemon peel,
dragged it across my tongue
like a net.

The temple was inside me,
sealed in salt.
Each time I wept,
I baptized
what I could not forgive.

Creation Story, From the Tongue Outward

In the beginning, there was salt. 

It hung in the air like unfinished scripture,
gathered in the throat of the sea,
waited for a mouth dumb enough
to mistake thirst for an invitation.

Then butter,
smeared on the void like gossip,
greased the dark’s knuckles 
like an understudy,
taught the abyss to melt.

The first sound was not speech—
it was a swallow,
a hush,
a crack of cartilage between molars.
We spoke in reductions.
Grammar dripped from the bones.

On the second day, teeth—
tiny altars lined with nerve—
ground memory into ashable pulp.
Pomegranates burst like promises.
Figs cloaked their apples in lace.

By the third, we named what softened.
We named what burned.
Built ziggurats from rind to rind.
Wrote psalms in onion skin.

The fourth hung hunger in the firmament—
a constellation shaped like mouths
mid-ask.

On the fifth, we forgot the recipe
and mourned it like a god.

By the sixth, we’d tongued every fruit
that offered a rumor of sugar.
We learned:
the mouth is a beast with no leash
and excellent taste.

And on the seventh, we lay full and feral,
belly to sky, 
licking 
the holy oil from our fingers.

Colors of the Morning

One early autumn morning, before the sun awoke, 
before the moon had disappeared, or any robin spoke. 
I opened up my window to feel the breezes play 
and let a breath of beauty in before the hectic day. 

I gazed across the river, where hills of palest green, 
like candle-lighted altars, glowed soft in morning's sheen. 
The crowds of hooded oak trees, a congregation there, 
drew close their cloaks of shadow and bowed as if in prayer. 

While gray upon the distance there lay a fragile mist, 
as wispy as a spider's web, as gentle as a kiss. 
The colors of the morning, a palette softly spun, 
would linger but a moment more before the singing sun.

Excavation

I press my hands into the ruins of you,
fingertips cut in the quiet rot of ancient wounds
that have never quite been touched.
Beneath splintered ribs, 
your earth is sulfurous in suffering—
your volcanic pulse muffled under sediment,
heart-rages arrested in amber.

I carve through your marrow-deep dusks,
knuckles bloodied on the bedrock of guilt,
digging past rusted veins and forgotten altars,
until my hands unearth something 
promethean and glinting—
not relic, not wreckage—
but soft golds of you, 
burning like a mantra
like a last prayer.


3.8.24

In a world of shadows dancing on a sky shattered by glass and dreams

In a world of shadows dancing on a sky shattered by glass and dreams,
The silent war weaves invisible threads through the fabric of forgotten destiny,
Dividing the earth like a river flowing through a valley of shattered illusions,
The unseen struggle rises, a tumult without sound and without end.
Patriots wrap their hearts in flags, loving the land like an ancient song,
Opposing a global cabal that sells souls on wings of wind and mist,
Their ships, shadowed by sins, fly through barren mysteries and whispers,
On a journey among fallen stars, where hope and fear intertwine.
Silence finds its voice in a whisper lost in the vortex of time,
Time flows backward, like a river seeking its source in hidden memories,
Truth struggles to emerge into light, freed from the captivity of shadows,
Risks become shadows of a silent sacrifice on the altars of ancient truth.
Do not turn away from the truth that calls you from lost depths,
The waves of silence crash against the shores of consciousness in an eternal echo,
It is time to lift the veil and step into the story that confronts you with love,
Words bloom in silence, and truth sings in our hearts.

Etched in Stone

Contest: This or That, Vol 30 – 2-4-25 Sponsor: Edward Ibeh  - Title Chosen: Etched in Stone
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Etched in Stone

Two hearts glare at each other
Clutching their stone tablets
 Written by the finger of their rightness,
  Guarding the secret handshake
In single sighted delinquent tantrums
Refusing to share the offertory
 Of a loving cup - 
Consumed by daggers of thoughtless words
Carved deeply in a scarred heart.

Floral offerings wilt 
Upon stone manifestos
Where ashes of incense lay impotent
To clear the air
And wipe clean the embedded words.

Passion falls in pixels of distortion
Blurring valleys where sacred poles burn –
 Lie in dust written in the past –
Paralyzed 
Unable to rise from handwritten crypts
Placed in captive marble altars,
Epithets like an epitaph for love.

Immoveable stone resists the transcendent
Until forgiveness’ chisel
Re-writes the script of etched words
Crumbling in swaddled tears of humility
That know their need for grace
Consummated in love’s perfect signature.

sin in search of godliness

Winter nights. 
Soft lights. 
The fog floating around reminiscing of the ghosts of your past.
Two souls, bared in silence.
Whispers of doubt and assurances of love,
Touching your skin with cold hands feels like sin. 
But the pools of brown look like altars. 
Where I worship you and continue to sin for my mortal body.

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