Best Ascendant Poems
I thought the landscape burst in sudden flame
with embers wild cavorting in the glare
of dawning sun, but boundless sparks became
a throng of monarchs flitting through the air
above a field as though on charcoal ash
that gusts of wind then carry as they gyre.
From wings illumined spread the brilliant flash
of pixie dragons breathing threads of fire
as fine as frog hair glinting in the slow
emission of the morning's creeping light
that struck the gloom with every lambent blow
until each wizard shadow was in flight.
The tartan tiger eye that draped the glade
was blazoned on the pinions as they flew
like flower petals of the clans arrayed
in Lilliputian combat on the dew.
A cadence of disheveled leaves they fell,
these butterflies upon the turrets mean,
escarpments and fay parapets to quell
the mist ascendant from the April green,
then rose again like prodigies from smoke
that came to cloak them from the murky foe,
kaleidoscopes of flutterings that broke
the cling of darkness with emerging glow.
By noon the burnished battle scene had cleared
as dandelions waved their vanquished whites,
the gleaming copper standards disappeared
and I relinquished images of sprites.
Write Me
your ballad of beliefs
your epistle of emotions
your parable of paradigms
your chronicle of convictions
Underline Me
------------ -------
leave nothing out
embrace the honesty
bare your naked soul
Italicize Me
finesse the cadence
narrate with engaging elan
embellish with panache and aplomb
UPPERCASE ME
Magnify the Momentous
Shout from the Summits
Accentuate the Ascendant Apogees
Bold Me
use your signature font
imbue me with the vocabulary of your DNA
...the glossary of your very own fingerprints
*Punctuate*
your paragraphs with personality;
your chapters with charm -
your stanzas with s t y l e !
I am your diary of daydreams
your scrapbook of stories
your poem of promises
your litany of life
I am your tale
Write
me
written 6 July 2023
Innocent, juvenile, moppet
I am a child
Courageous, gallant, dauntless
I am a free spirit
Hearing, heeding, harking
I am a listener
Open, direct, frank
I am honest
Liberal, understanding, unsparing
I am generous
Trite, worn out, bathetic
I am tired
Divided, severed, separated
I am divorced
Forebearer, ascendant, parent
I am a mother
Contributor, benefactor, supporter
I am a friend
Devine, heavenly, spiritual
I believe in God
Feminine, passionate, strong
I am a woman
Sunrise, daybreak, morning
I am Dawn
Tower, buzz and scurry
Oh great resilient city
Ahoy!
Alive. Scramble bustle earth's
ethnicities
On lurid quests--
A pendulum of tantric turmoil and
Blessed harmony
Quixotic city--brash,
Sangfroid merotomized and
Chrematistic--metro nonpareil.
See a myriad melange of
Tortured splenetic
Souls and great spirits
Noble and soothfast
Great city, your hecatombs
Of underground trains
Roar scream in
Hodge-podge graffiti attire
Fat fuming brattling buses
Grunt their huffpuffs,
And nervous cars scissorcut
Impatiently betwixt tarred and
Cemented streets
August and capacious
Ferruminated grey glass and steel
Towers--Aeeries in obeisance to the
Heavens, erupt in anabasis at the azure
Pearly welkin,
Humming diapasons of marvelous
Melismatic tunes
A gallimaufry of cacaphony and
Sweet sounds--the
Great Metropolis persistently
Thrives.
Streets adorned with sylph fashion
Models, conute churls, street
recrement--dazed and forgotten men,
Enticing shuck and jive
Blandishing street vendors,
Natty brujo business gentry
With their helotry on a
Ferris wheel of daily
Triumphs and defeats and
Cheeky mendicants
Shuffle along allegro vivace
Howling chorus songs amidst a
Torrent of raining dollars and
Coins floating in the skies over
The brazen metropolis.
Snuffling restaurants like hives
Humbuzz the grandiloquence,
Pithy slang and sententious
Persiflage of the day.
A truly syncratic parley
Of passions sentient
Of crimes basilic
Of arts sacerdotal and gratuitous
Of fashions arabesque and outre
Of plays frivolous and profound
Of music sericeous and truculent
Of money pursuits solonic
Of loves ascendant and descentdant
Of rejections mournful and joyous
An e'er persisting cha-cha-cha and
Boogie-woogie of the fierce
Bustling bubbling bold city,
Pendulumming pandaemoniums and
Resolutions, day
Upon pertinatious day.
David John Hart 2003 USA
The calling gull leaves her nest
her wild magic cleaves the nimbus.
An avian aerialist suspended aloft
she sails on tapered ribbons of cirrus silk,
ruffled sea breeze ironed ‘neath her lustrous wings.
A wind witch, she defies and defines the w - i - n - d…
a weaver of worlds, knotting strings of stories as one wampum belt
in union with the sea’s connection to land and air.
She steals the sough from the surf and the sigh from my sinew;
my guide to a mindful haven. This nurture-maven
glides among bouquets of pink-peony-cumulus.
She; my blue-sky-muse in celebration!
She; my compass rose, mediates my meditation.
I unfurl fresh wings, a night-to-day tern, and claim my turn with the wind
no longer a granite stone asleep on sand. I soar
from the glacial-age strand and lift through fog.. brief my tryst
with mist. Eyes blessed by the crest of a humpback’s breach.
I distill myself, my will; a droplet, tear, a sphere free of guise.
An ascendant of moon-magnet tides yet a descendant
from stratus to stratum, I settle upon the cliffs along the coast
in union with my soul’s connection to body and breath.
In the cup of my hands I hold the sun and drink its yolk,
white-cap breakers below chant a soluble sonnet.
From my inner dark, a flint-spark flares as I find what I lost.
My heart, akin to a wild cranberry, reborn from the womb of dawn.
I inhale the moment. Red clay cliffs, lifeblood, fire-skies merge.
Windswept pitch pines croon as I grow roots for my tabernacle,
cosmic beams stream through stained-glass-eyes.
The calling gull rests. A distant, silent witness to my quest.
My pulse a psalm as I emerge; a cathedral lit by sunrise.
Tribute
Bright star, ascendant,
Now too quickly gone,
Light becoming -
Bright as transparent rainbow colors
Made of sun and storm
Lingering on the sky
With not one color unseen,
Full spectrum complete
Of joys, of tears, of hope -
Abiding memory
Of child becoming one
With woman
In endless summer days
Winter secrets spoken beneath storms
Running through the spring
To autumntide.
Bright Star
With images held fast by midnight,
Rememberings paused,
Nothing added –
Nothing changed –
No words re-spoken
No actions explained;
A circle completed
All the threads joined
Into a tapestry of light
As shades attempt to separate
Present from memory
Going beyond
The still and final chord –
The naked soul
Fleeing to the light.
Bright star ascending
I still look for you
Upon the velvet sky,
Searching that empty space
Where you resided,
That place
Where daily tasks busied your active hands –
Where shimmering dreams
Guided your every step
In quiet recesses that even friendship
Left untouched –
For your light reflected
Life’s ever borning essence
Bubbling up,
You reflected the stunning wonder
Found in all creation.
Bright star,
This night I stop along the way
To tell you
I still miss
The patterns of your light
And honor you
With tears
Of separation,
Celebration,
And of love,
Quietly residing
Where the signature
Of your days
Wrote an indelible portrait –
To you, bright star -
A light that never dies.
Boisterous clouds are churning, roiling air-mass in warm updraft
Declaring on callous inhabitants of earth, a dark ferocious war
Manifesting malevolent force, imposing anger on spatial norms,
Conspiring with anguished winds to invigorate violent storms.
Colossal is their expanse that threatens the rise of new dawn
Offering a preview of what face of death would encompass
When enraged nature punishes humans for irresponsible acts:
Burning dirty fossil fuels, and decapitating vast forest lands.
Atmospheric inferno defies galactic harmony of equilibrium
Suppressing sun’s orange glow striving to uplift amber horizon,
Shrouding advent of nascent day to teach humanity a lesson
Collaborating with mighty oceans, stirring hurricanes and cyclones.
Overshadowed by the reckless commotion of ghastly gray,
Emerging marigold expression of ascendant tangerine daybreak
Grieves for the lost vegetation and deserted parched terrains,
Thundering a warning to foretell why the birds have already left.
March 28, 2020
Placed 1st: Gif #2 contest by William Kekaula
As I lay me down to sleep, for the last and final time
I leave you, my daughter, with this testament's chime
No matter the temperature, no matter the weather, no matter the clime
Be it ever so nasty, be it fair-to-middling, or utterly sublime
Be grateful, my darling, for our sun's constancy, rising anew every day
For its steady course through the Heavens toward sunset, wending its way
Appreciate the warmth of a Spring morn and the Autumnal evening glow
Even bone-chilling Winter, huddled round the fire in a cozy chateaux
Thank your lucky stars for Summer's finery midst weather resplendent
View each drop of rain as a scion of its climactic rainbow ascendant
For when you fill your heart with gratitude for what in Nature's indelible
Sure you'll stir the soul of your betrothed with Love un-dispel-able
June 25, 2018
Of Night Ascendant, Soft Capricious Moon
Of night ascendant, soft capricious moon,
In life and loving- may we never part,
Nor dance to any disappointing tunes
Whilst we fly together as two brave hearts.
Traversing immanent course with our God
Through appalling world, may we safely trod.
Throughout life, we our flowering seeds sow
Rising to dawn's call, its majestic glows.
Daring to deny world's dark temptations
Live true, within Light's illuminations.
Of night ascendant, soft capricious moon,
In life and loving- may we never part,
Nor dance to any disappointing tunes
Whilst we fly together as two brave hearts.
R.J. Lindley, 1980
Rhyme ( Wherein A Soul Finds Salvation )
Arising, splits the purple nuclear sky,
Rends the dark valleys with light,
Spills along footpaths and alleys,
The glory of morning, ending of night.
In sanction, closing of the chaos,
Soothes the hot valves with dragon-heart balm,
Beams with serenity and salves,
In silvery moonlight, infinite calm.
Above, my ascendant sun and moon,
Arc-light searing and platinum white,
Adoration eternal and endearing,
My wondrous morning, my glorious sight.
The land of my fathers lays waiting,
Dispelling the lonely, the welcoming fields,
Whether industry savaged or verdant,
The hillsides of poets, their treasure she yields.
awakes, striding seamlessly towards the
trajectory of daybreak. Abed, passionately
attended by orectic thoughts; of whom
early on was created from man’s thoracic cage.
~Envisages;~
Without the least trace of compunction; exfoliating the
Saccharine damped canal with the tongue. Combined oils
and aroma lingers on the lips. Though the stiffened, unbridled,
solid thick muscle would supersede the tongue as the
warm tightened canal adjusts to its width inextricably.
~Pausing~
Waterfalls pouring profusely
Eyes trudge backwards
to that of yesterday
Fingers ascendant
to the nearest limb.
Digits of the foot holding forth
discourse with the sun.
~Orgasms~
Simultaneously
In due course.
Garnished bed linens
Accompanied by
Whitish fluid
~P-H-A-N-T-A-S-M-A-G-O-R-I-A~
"1st Pace Winner"
Contest Name: Best Descriptive Poem
Pace, G
INK-U-SCRIPT
Religion smoked a cigarette,
while sugar did some drugs,
I drank gin and anisette,
Heroin gave you hugs.
Was it my kleptomania
that seemed like such a threat?
You'd turn your back for hours,
hoarding the internet.
Drama was your primal right,
vandalism your apogee,
you had to have the spotlight,
spread your fame for all to see.
I was vitriolic,
without the wealth I seek,
became a workaholic,
for seven days a week.
Adrenaline was my certain need,
you were a voyeur sure,
I always wanted faster speed,
***** seemed your only cure.
Gambler's chips line all your shelves,
I bet on caffeine's sway,
you are Santa with steroid elves,
shopping - your passion play;
we're video games that run ourselves,
for twenty-four hours a day.
You cut yourself so many times,
carving addiction's text,
I drown myself with a metered rhyme,
before looking for the next.
Bulimia made you ascendant,
chocolate broke my fall,
I thought we were codependent,
But I never had you at all.
Between the Indian plains and the hills of Burma.
Protected by the affection of its three guardians,
The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna.
From there - this story began.
On a grassland full of hopes and dreams.
Right at the edges of Brahmaputra river.
Lying there without any wheezes,
A sad and lonely royal bengal tiger.
He remembers the smell of the Sal trees,
In Bhawal Park near Dhaka, his place of birth.
He remembers the sounds of peacocks, elephants, and deers
His heart wish they were not yet became a myth.
He has been a part of Pohela Boishakh feast.
When people bathe early and dress in fine clothes.
All the men put on their kurta, or the finest lungi at least
While women dress in sharee, letting their beauty to be exposed.
Tears streamed from his cheek. As the old tiger weep.
A momentary recalled the legends of his ascendant.
The story of the one whose once Sultan beloved,
And the one whose survives the liberation war in 1971.
The tiger now stood, underline his courage and chivalry.
"Will this liberty be felt by my offspring?" his mind fly.
Despite the poverty, instability, and all its vulnerability,
There is more to Bangladesh than meets the eye.
~ For the "LOVE LETTERS TO THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT" contest by Cyndi MacMillan
I am tough like Huey,
I dream like Martin,
I see like Malcolm,
I stand like Rosa,
I am educated like Booker,
I am the stature of Fredrick,
I am the embodiment of a civil right movement,
But I am the reflection of history,
I am the rebellion of Nate,
I am a leader like Tubman,
I am the community of Black Wall Street,
But I am the audacity of hope like Obama,
I am the most hated man like Colin,
But I am the most beloved person like Nelson,
I am the ascendant child of Africa,
But I am a citizen of a nation that is United States,
My oppression is of a third world,
But I have an opportunity,
I am from poverty,
But that won’t stop me,
Where I go,
My people will follow,
I am the example of greatness,
But endure failures,
I am victory like the revolutionary war,
But I still have a long way to go to be free.
Profound in her calm
Ascendant of attraction
Saint of sympathy