Best Atolls Poems
“Just because you are soft doesn't mean you are not a force. Honey and wildfire are both the colour gold.” ~Victoria Erickson
Tonight the moon sanctioned
her golden halo
to unfurl butterfly wings
rinsed with honey
and champagne ribbons,
as feathers of lunar crust rise,
to embellish the sky
with silver sequins,
drizzling second chances
upon fickle hearted dragonflies,
gifted as weapons of
deception to the sweltering breeze,
that wrapped my weakened knees.
I’ve always known trusting
is a losing game with no winners,
but why do I always feel
like an intruder sinking deep
into the depths of spiteful seas~
where planktons and stinging marine
nettles prick my untouched skin?
Yet I am still searching for
a singing star that wouldn’t
need written renderings of
how my black tinted glass
heart was left to drown.
Who would have thought,
there’d be more to the
onyx glittered
ripples that stream,
in teal blue waves?
If only they’d hear
every unspoken tale
of shipwrecked ruins
resting amongst graphite
motions of frozen intuitions,
forgotten through forsaken
lagoons amidst
fleeting monsoons,
left as memoirs along
soft coral mists swiftly
passing through patch
reefs in abandoned atolls.
So let me take my splintered
spheres to a realm of no return,
forgiving sinful anthems
that lured me to believe
that friends were more
than enemies in sweet disguise.
I am soft, not fragile,
neither am I a
shrunken blossom.
I am a tiger lily,
fragrant yet fierce,
ready to face whatever~
hypocritical fangs of fate
may serve in merlot wine chalices.
Thank you O sea,
For the untiring music of your waves,
For the rolling of your rollers,
Thank you O sea
for your music so refined,
This music softens the soul,
His sight soothes the poet
Console the painter ,
Thank you O sea
For your music,
For your mighty storms,
Merci Debussy
For your symphonic poem,
Thank youO sea
For your overflowing imagination,
For your writers, generous
Homer to Baudelaire, to Hugo,
Thank you O sea,
For all your colors,
For horizons surrounded by foam
For the sunny south of ancient Greece,
For your date palms,
Thank you O sea, for your example,
For the exemplary flight of seagulls,
For the frigate, white terns
For the quiet schooners,
Who anchor in the atolls
Thank you the sea,
For your illuminated ships
In the port of Brest,
For each oysters savored,
Thank you O sea, for your gifts
Your travels to America
You are the soul of the world
the source of my thoughts.
For years this ship has been sailing the seas
From the beaches of Hawaii to the Florida Keys
With no land in sight and no view of atolls
The ship was used to pitches, yaws and rolls
Alas, land has been spotted ahead
After four years of feeling left for dead
No more sorrow or lonely, sad songs
Just happiness that good fortune has finally come along
Like an island to Odysseus’ men many years ago
This island is what the captain has wished he would go
After so far away from love and compassion
This was not an example of instant satisfaction
This ship has suddenly turned engines on to full throttle
And its captain now drinks rum from a bottle
Never again he wishes to see
His ship out of love and adrift at sea
Beneath a veneer of sapphire waves,
Rays of sunshine make fingers of light,
Ethereal, over crusty, pink coral forms.
Atolls that rise from stark white sand, create
Tunnels for twining eels and twinkling starfish
Hues of rainbow anemones mingle with
Tangerine flowers, resplendent along
Avenues of pelagic growth, draping over
Knolls of time worn stones, mirrored
In sunken remnants of marble ruins.
Now, at day's end an orange sunset
Glows with long beams to reveal a lost Atlantis.
Breathtaking
Contest Judged: 3/12/2016 12:00:00 AM
Sponsored by: John Hamilton
3rd. Place
Climate change was not gradual here
Leaden sky melting, brass clouds fall
Indignant acts from the past appear
Mutilating order, and trust into a wall
Anxious omens ignored repeals pride
Tempers of nature shaking the truth
Enemies and friends become one brute
Created to be united, the world apart
Hangs torn, hurt, blemished at the heart
Atolls, wetlands, in polar rise and swoop
Nude but ordered, brings errors to loop
God keeps the heart that keeps him real
Ever in praise his virtues in it well sealed
Secure to deal with love when it will chide.
(and now the ship moved on....)
She took us like a valiant steed,
from coast
to islands free,
where Tongan tapas decked the halls,
of South Pacific glee,
Marquesas, atolls,
reefs and pearls,
far away lands
grass skirts, dancing girls!
(and now the ship moved on.....)
The dream fulfilled,
we headed back,
her wooden body held wind slack.
We heard her fate,
she sank one day,
that boat was old, she had her way....
(and now the ship moved on)
[This poem took its inspiration from a sonnet by Charles Hamilton Sorley, When you See Millions… The sonnet was in a collection of writing about World War One.]
Of war I read
The poems, the pain, the countless dead
And when you see the millions…
The millions thrown together in common grave
Of what were battle lines
And now are places paved
With bones and blood and interwoven human flesh
Their lives they gave, it makes me wonder why
All men they flocked together, came to fight and die
Though I wonder even more at how we live
Our dreams, our aims, the things we choose to give
And when you see the millions…
The millions thrown together in common streets
Not soldiers now, as citizens they meet
But in each other sense the foe or spy
Protect the private castles, avert the eyes
From foreign gaze or so as not to see
The other kind of me, one old or poor or not all there
Or just a neighbour’s sad or jealous stare
Of their own accord our hearts and hands
Lay borders, demarcate the lands
And build the trenches, place the guns
The lines of city fences, few the crossing points
Fewer still the truces called, the white flag raised
For emergencies perhaps, for holidays
When we stop being islands, become the sea
Unstitch the private space and melt into the ‘we’
But otherwise, the lonely shadows flitting by
For one or two a tear we could cry
Extend an outstretched hand and warming word
Not snatched away unheard in city rush
That sometimes brings to mind the people crush
Like in the soldiers’ tales, piles of corpses in the way
Just trampled underfoot in war’s indifferent haste
That dulls the finer feelings, steals the taste
Of fellow human beings and fate we share
These streets and skies and yellowed, dirtied air
Amidst the millions lose our individual face
Become the masses, fashion our new place
As atolls, reefs, and endless rocks
No shore we leave for building docks
No room in concrete towers grown tall
The weaving all machine-done now
And we, we raise the walls.
Extinction
Annihilation of atolls,
Extinction of species
maybe an act or fact of life,
Natural or by human hunt
calls for reinforcement,
But at times I feel....
There must be more content in death
than life could ever provide.
Unknown unsung lives
now in mention- the extinct.
Written Jan 5th, 2015
For contest by Anthony Slausen
All nebulous dreams prospecting,
A hideaway in cloud atolls,
A nightly ocean, warmth awaiting,
In quibbling flow, to dawn's aperture
In spectra falling, spectral play crumbled,
Sojourner stars: their lamps parole
In a distance, behind amnesic lights
Razing autumn clouds, amber hues galore!
Cloud heaths, like bosom steaming
Of shying lovers in meeting pour
Whom expectations, sunrays in flurry,
The sky makes dawn red, and Sun allures
The air, in restless breeze cavorting,
By promised things which procure
A blushful pink, on allusion's canvas,
The whimsy sky in homely warmth pleasured
Into a fecund rosiness, its secrets goaded,
Flee from shadowed swathes: staid, demure;
And where played curt poem, autumn moon;
Is a sky by the the bold and brash secured
she sits alone on the hotel balcony,
looking out at the city,
chin on knees,
arms hugging legs,
compacting herself into a hush.
but the stillness hides movements.
within her eyes water glides slowly in,
laps her retinas,
borrows what it finds there, recedes,
carries it in to sea.
the quiet water drifts what she sees
to distant shores washed by indigo tides,
around lonely atolls,
into disenchanted lagoons,
and finally back again,
returning it,
sodden with a long-neglected disappointment,
to the brown eyes,
along with a tinge of blue.
Oh, Pacific, Paradise at a glance,
Where the ocean sings and mountain dance,
Where nature's beauty knows no bounds,
And ancient matriarchies wisdom resounds.
As the stewards of the land,
They had shown deep reverence for their hand.
By tending the gardens and planting trees,
And fishing the waters with gentle ease.
With the shadow of colonialism,
Patriarchy defying ancient mannerism.
And suppressed women’s voices,
To plunder the earth against all forces.
They turned away from the weeping earth,
Celebrating the exploitation with mirth.
Women leaders, brave and strong,
Raised their voices, to prove them wrong.
From the shores of Fiji to the atolls of Kiribati,
They spoke of the impending tragedy.
And the need to heal the land,
Not in arrogance, but hand in hand.
To revive ancient stewardship of the land,
They started making people understand,
That we must nurture the earth with sacred care,
And this wisdom, we all must share.
Edge what remains their last hope, be enshrined,
be the breeding atolls summoned to mind.
Albatross are one of the bird's largest.
These goliath's wingspans are the longest,
which makes them less of a landlubber when
they take more to the sea and less to land
other than breeding and nesting. They may
fly for more than a year well before they
take to land, which has been limited to
the northern Hawaiian islands, that's due
to its isolation. Their numbers put
them on the endangered list. The output
rests on less interference, to; control
by observation like fish in a bowl.
Primal Language
Speaking gutturally in the fractured
Fragments of a foreign language,
A tongue unknown to her
She is come from another country
gesturing with her hands
Between the islands of broken English
Within her hesitations are the silent
Stutters of clarity
Using her body as a language
I know what she is asking
Between the atolls of words
Are oceans of sterling imagery
John Tansey
We are mislabeled as sea birds and should be called
big birds, like that yellow one but we're not yellow.
We never land on land for a year or longer, and we
been told that we have known God since he was a
little boy. The unfeathered say that for a very long
time we're like many fishes in the sea, but now we
are like whales. The few of us left, live in the north
atolls of Hawaii. There's no other place in the world
except for oceans, seas, bays ... forget what I said.
After the party on the boat,
I fell into a deep slumber;
I knew not what had happened.
I woke up on a tropical island,
my hands and legs tied with ropes.
Carrying out CPR on me,
the people there saved my life
almost from the jaws of death.
Serving all the delicacies they had,
they made me a guest of theirs.
Though their huts are so small,
they had their hearts so large.
And they welcomed me into their clan.
With stunning coral atolls,
crystal-clear lagoons
and diverse landscapes...
I found the island so idyllic,
and I made it my home
to be among the people
who are so pure at heart,
renouncing the place of deceit,
where I came from!