Best Chiaroscuro Poems

From purest white to deepest black
And finite grays between,
The chiaroscuro images
As yet remain unseen.

A canvas taut and unadorned
Before your strokes begin,
So too, a poem lies in repose,
As tethered words within.

Emotion is the shepherd of
Our vision to complete.
Inspired, we highlight, shadowing,
In disparate technique.

As paint will blend,...

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A light mist of ethereous rain falls 
silent on his thin, sharp-angled
face. He lengthens his stride and 
leans toward the wind. He walks 
through plundered poverty; crumbled
by the weight of exodus. Abandoned
to the blood-rough nails scratching
on the concrete diasporas of multiethnic
history.

Past the playground echoes of...

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Lurching out of the door into darkness 
A street full of people, bodies pass n collide

Plunging from dark to light!

Not looking at or thinking of what is done
Northern winds carrying the rush of ice come

The harsh, brutal fire seers against my flesh
The uncertainty of fate,...

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chiaroscuro
of moon shadows through
the dark forest
mother has passed
her love for this wood...

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tracing the edges of her hourglass 
curve, he imagines her eyes’ shadows
on oil and linseed…
wanting to be filled with neutral hues’ lines
as brushes smell of linoleum sky.

inside her navel is a garden and a river
waiting to be peeled, etched by strokes
washed in brown and grey...

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I’ve seen faces pictured 
half in shadow and half in light,
mysterious,
ominous, 
unsettling,

though not half as menacing as
certain faces I see in real life, 
warm, 
smiling, 
inviting,
but on which, in the full light of day, 
you can’t see 
the mind....

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I am dying that the light may live
Piercing my shredding shroud
For the glorious sun to blaze forth
Out of the depths of my darkness.
His brightness will shine through

                  ...

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rainy day water colors  refrigerator Rembrandts


©1/2/2018


submitted to – Monoku 4: Colours...

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sun-spoiled colors like fruit to burst slowly yield to a shadow tide pulling a demure 
crescent 
moon posing nude for constellations extinguished by the tremorous lips of dawn 
changing 
watercolor into oil for noon’s dominion over shade hoarded then troweled and finally 
plowed as 
light...

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Clear, dark
Hand of
Illusion, from the
Artists' dramatic
Rendition with its
Obscure depth and
Secret dark
Corners in the paintings'
Ultimate expression of
Repellant terror
Out from her mind....

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I hear canaries crying, marginalized black birds
In zones of pain
I want therapy to bring wings more than words

The people pray but need a king to march again
If you are silent
You concede the betrayal like a devil in your vein

Wait, wait, the urgency's deterrent argument
That fences...

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chiaroscuro 
arvo by master artist....
moth in spider web...

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Backlit in life’s shadows –
the exacting burden of responsibilities –
you are lost.
Bathed in light amongst shadows
of trials and tribulations that
internal hope defrosts;
one can but surmise 
your inner strength,
as the light bends to reveal the cost.
...

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It was a ghostly orb
obscured by smog—
glowing faintly yellow
at the center and fading
to amber, 
then ochre, 
raw sienna, 
and finally umber—
as if the light itself
were turning into smoke—
and I couldn’t breathe.

Even my crib was hazy
beneath the poisonous 
congregation of vapors
roiling and swirling
near the ceiling
and descending...

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springtimes
chiaroscuro
gouldian finch...

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