Best Cocooning Poems
There’s a beguiling danger in beauty…
seduced as I was by the fickle fingers of fate musingly stroking my hair,
I envisaged
this lusciously lavish landscape
of sun-raptured heavenly hills and valid valleys
to be a lush, plush place for me to land ~
alas, such deception my naive perception did offer.
Buried beneath the facade of a fertile dream-come-true
and a mesmerizing mirage of natural light and zephyrus breaths -
where your thoughts hugged the horizons of my mind
like clouds on the edges of prairie dog skies
and where your stampeding passions trampled my inhibitions -
were delicate bandeaux of ice;
finespun and feathery like polar gossamer
that formed on the stems of your ruptured dreams
that then became my nightmare
when you had your hard freeze
while warm sap still flowed through your veins,
pumped and pushing through your broken being
and freezing on contact with the chilled clime
cocooning me, in a sudden silken surge of your glazing gauze
holding me, in the vivid wild magic of your frosted crystallized clutches -
fossilizing me, in icy opalescent ribbons of ornate whorls.
Unable to escape the grasping glacial petals of your exquisite pain,
your frost flowers plunged me into the frigid heart
of your bitter bluestem’s prairie winter...
There’s a beguiling beauty in danger
hypnotized and hijacked
as I was by the rhythmic sways of your tall grass ways -
your flickering tongue tasting my air
as my emotions were extorted
till I was bled white -
obviously oblivious
that I was being preyed upon
by a stealthy force of nature motivated by indigenous instincts.
Susan Ashley
March 13, 2018
~ First Place ~
Premiere Contest: Poetry for the Sake of Poetry
Sponsor: John Lawless
*bluestem: tall grass native to the Great Plains with bluish leaf sheaths*
*frost flower: thin layers of ice extruded from long-stemmed plants in autumn or early winter. These thin ice layers form dainty ‘ribbons’ or ‘petals’*
Like a spider you drew me into your web
Cocooning me within your silver threads
Words, pretty words
I was totally taken in
Wrapping me up in silk ribbons,
like a party gift.
One for you to open at your pleasure.
You teased me, toyed with my emotions
Powerless to resist, I believed your web of lies
I was trapped …
"Trust me," you said.
Oh what lies, what wicked lies you wove
Foolish was I for believing your every word.
Love blinded my eyes,
My heart heard only your song.
I thought you could do no wrong,
Then slowly, the scales fell from my eyes.
I realized your web was one of deceit.
The cockerel crowed three times
You lied!
You lied!
You lied!
Keep yourself wrapped in the lies you weave.
Other innocents may fall victim to you as prey
But I've broken free from your hold,
and untangled myself from your web of deception.
06~27~16
Contest Pretty Talker Sponsored by Skat A
Entered into Any free verse poem in 200 words or less
Sponsored by Laura Loo
word count 157 words
My favorite family photo
Shows Dad canoeing
With my brother and sister
That’s how I remember him
Peaceful, at one with nature
In awe of the timelessness
At ease with the great outdoors
Just gliding through waves
Surrounded by sounds of emptiness
Of vastness cocooning us
In love with the serenity
Hovering fondly around us
That precious look in Dad’s eye
Can’t be misunderstood
It exudes of happiness
Of a heart bubbling over
Of harmony
Of wholeness
Of life
Of eternity
AP: 3rd place 2020
PS featured in 2022
rolling horizons season
holding life beyond what we see
when winter hangs in bare trees
silver branches bedding down in a hangover of lost green
beyond city limits, forests fall into slumber
waiting for a seasonal flip to loosen the grip of cold
huff and puffed winds cocooning one to a protective box
the hold of a robust time that loves its own white ruin
in this air of frigid authority, my life of reading to snoozing
a peaceful indifference like the weightlessness of wooing
free of complications
I have a soft spot for thoughts that drift to the mundane
like a lost mitten in the snow
maybe I'll keep the bedroom door shut and locked
till a warming April sun knocks its intrusion
slicing open a greener terrain
a garden that asks for seeding
for now, in these darkening days
shadows, like mob rule, carry their own power
readying slumber
folded in the margins of my book
its script of possibilities
Awakening, cocooning
The air with tenderness, breathing,
As it waters arid grounds, speaking,
As it drenches the air with harmonious sounds, it makes
One succumb the soul,
It makes one
Thank God…
Nature’s divinity, as
It enraptures me, liberating
My soul from earth’s dimness and
Opaqueness…
In its arms I am, and
Within its embrace I’ll eternally be…
SINLESS EYES
Nine solid months unto her womb is he,
breathing and heartbeat they do as one.
Carrying him safely, his husband sees,
providing food and money his daily home run
'til the day his son pleas to be out in the sun.
(always then his aim is to be a good guy)
Though it will take a long long time, his son--
sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
His son grew then unto the world he spree
where he is exposed to gases, bombs and gun.
Along the streets, he and others learn a key--
that learning curve adhere but some remains undone.
Shoulders bruised, torn, from bearing a tonne,
some lost souls wander, their life gone awry--
falling short to wonder later how it all began,
sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
Can later bestow some better decree,
outlasting evil by following a model-- a nun?
On returning to God by following thee,
from this day, forward, man shall never shun
to battles that last even 'til midnight sun.
Answers possessed on the strings of whys
and never again to ask for a hired gun.
Sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
Darkness is beaten, light has won!
Wisdom now reached, cocooning the guy,
a new day now welcomes another son
sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
©J.A. Fraser and O. E. Guillermo
9:40 pm, December 01, 2014
Woven in Silk Threads of Love
(Apropos Us and the Children)
Time tested love, bruised
and battered,
lay like littered crystals
on the steel plate stage of life;
dismembered and crumbled
like a stale cookie
whose particles
have lost
their electromagnetic-like
attractiveness.
Ingredients of envious spice
inhibits any and all adhesiveness—
that tough threading love folds and kneads.
Yet, the sprinkling of forgiveness
knits and weaves the web
of diverse unity of understanding—
cocooning new beginnings:
Indeed, the most fragile butterfly wings
have endured—soared in monarch majesty—
defying time tested, treacherous winds
that the teeming silk of love forever spins.
Yes, to err is human; to forgive divine;
may eternal blessings forever twine
this tender love of yours and mine.
SINLESS EYES - a collab with JAMES FRASER
SINLESS EYES
Nine solid months unto her womb is he,
breathing and heartbeat they do as one.
Carrying him safely, his husband sees,
providing food and money his daily home run
'til the day his son pleas to be out in the sun.
(always then his aim is to be a good guy)
Though it will take a long long time, his son--
sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
His son grew then unto the world he spree
where he is exposed to gases, bombs and gun.
Along the streets, he and others learn a key--
that learning curve adhere but some remains undone.
Shoulders bruised, torn, from bearing a tonne,
some lost souls wander, their life gone awry--
falling short to wonder later how it all began,
sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
Can later bestow some better decree,
outlasting evil by following a model-- a nun?
On returning to God by following thee,
from this day, forward, man shall never shun
to battles that last even 'til midnight sun.
Answers possessed on the strings of whys
and never again to ask for a hired gun.
Sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
Darkness is beaten, light has won!
Wisdom now reached, cocooning the guy,
a new day now welcomes another son
sinless eyes, no smiles, when the children cry...
©O. E. Guillermo and J.A. Fraser
9:40 pm, December 01, 2014
The Great Beauty
by Odin Roark
How short lived
This laughter made for releasing
Buried in the tragedian
Locked in the universal clown costume
We
You and me
We might watch Fellini’s balloons part
But the message of La Dolce Vita
Has faded into paparazzi history
Or perhaps
Never was
But
Taking up the Master’s baton
Paolo Sorrentino runs like a gazelle
His Great Beauty
Revisiting the question
A man lent to us
Provides a moment
Where one’s man for the ages
For our lifetime
A sufferer for both woman and man
Torn between the paternal instinct
And imagined freedom…
Becomes alone
Yet all-embracing
Such a price
We might say
Italy’s microcosmic decline
Man’s countenance on trial
His worth awaiting
A Christie's auction
Everything with its levy
Yet
What price the good life?
The good life seldom realized?
The kind lived
Then rebuked in
The Great Beauty?
Oh to seek
The unanswerable
Not the self-cocooning
Of “I know”
And the peace of inner-nothingness
Sublime’s secret
Like Sorrentino’s protagonist
We all live in bubbles
The question is about choice
Your bubble
Or
Mine?
Foolishly Enticed
Whereas your plot did draw me in,
yes you, but perhaps not you alone.
That inviting open widow
that I was pulled through wore sparkling glass
with heart’s desired
worded sash.
Whereas that I, now too late, do clearly see
that it was I who became a foolish moth.
Drawn toward
an open window my heart did wished to see
with a porch light
that wasn’t lit for me.
Therefore I share pain’s lesson,
reclaim my heart, and learn from this.
Cocooning, again,
until a new porch light is lit.
Open windowed wary... as not all panes
wear true love’s tint.
© All Rights Reserved 11/4/14
4/1/17
Flowers blooming
Spaced out or in a tight-knit grouping
All around things looming
In space objects still or moving and zooming
Birds pluming
And other animals grooming
Downloads queueing
Electronics in need of a rebooting
Or powering off, to enable cooling
Below, on and above the roofing
Toxins spewing
And other particulates polluting
Some of which are made for fueling
All weeds were removed by uprooting
Trees and bushes getting a pruning
Especially any areas that are drooping
There's just no excusing
You'd better stop snooping
And assuming
As well as tooting your horn
Or ridiculing the poor
What the hell are you fooling for
When deep down, you know you could be doing more
Ocean life caught by fishing poles, harpooning
Or cage using
Die hard fans rooting
Or booing
Times of booming
And continual losing
Certain insects and people cocooning
Humans continually feuding
Suing
And fuming
As if there is something they want to be proving
Major scale jobs, including
A lot of or very specific tooling
Drugs and alcohol others may be using
And possibly abusing
In the right conditions, water pooling
Near and far from any rocks protruding
Live a life of your choosing
Continue pursuing
Knowledge, and ways of improving
With or without musing
By: Dalton Ogletree
Giggle dancing vanities around bonfires your funny fancies, hula skirt feigning moves with floras and flowers I had dedicated unto your chocolate tresses of hair waltzing beside you my own flames circled about flickering ablaze upon your delicate and subtle grooves
Tracing, painting, the gentle touching your camberous and my muscular frame, creating endless, countless new ways of whispering, feelings, revealing our deepest, darkest secrets swallowing, consuming each other, dissolving all our pains
Offerings, submissions of stripping naked hearts, placing you upon a pedestal you leaping back down into my arms, crawling, veiling myself within the inferno, you cocooning vulnerabilities exposing your wonders, endowments, captivation of your devoting arts
Your majestic soft smiles blowing kisses to my face , sun rising, the Aprils, the Mays, the Junes, sunset bowing with grace, silks and supple of my princess, my goddess one day soon vanishing an apparition over the twilight shimmering dunes
Exodus grandeur, an angel exiting from a scene, the years hiding you away oft in my dreams, hoping, praying, believing that another time another day, bumping into meet, finding each other again, a reunion of union, marrying in another lost summer retreat
The lost summer fog, the misting ocean’s spray whisking returning a lost essence upon our sacred,consecrated domain, analogous subsiding tides, gulls fly off, sea grass evaporating, the shifting dunes our memoirs have all but eroded away
Memories, reminiscences of two naïve, innocent youthful hearts, and lost summers blissfully buried treasures, fondest here remain testimonies reigniting renaissance adolescent wildfire sparks
Tonight we change the clocks, which means
Tomorrow when I wake,
The world will look transparent
And will not appear opaque.
It’s nice to have some morning light
But not worth what we lose
And darkness in the afternoon
Is not what I would choose.
For shorter days just make me
Want to hurry up inside,
Cocooning in the coziness
That lamps and lights provide.
But that’s a paltry substitute
For sunshine and fresh air
And when the daylight lingers late
Indoors just can’t compare.
We can’t fight City Hall, they say,
So I’ll reset the time
But I can still complain and oh,
I love to kvetch in rhyme!
shivering teeth the ceiling’s descent,
the drunken spongy borders of
dim imagined soggy pulsing
images in foggy spots,
exhalation and the sound of exhalation,
sense as the center of dampening paper
surrounded by our soft cocooning breath.
the shrieks are streaked across the walls by
muffled crux-splatter and shuffled scuttle after
skin-wrinkling stink, under-curl shrinkwrap of
comatose redeye
paint-by-memories,
remembered
visions of
ambling backslides,
jigsawed backside horizon
intimating blackened soul,
so
the sky is falling
in so dark split shatter rift cracks
faded bleak paint streaks
bleeding watercolor from above,
cloud fog tops of toothy skyscrapers,
drip drop splatter plops on
closed eyes,
vacuum void pupils, and
fingernails that scratch attached to hands attached to sprawling nothing
named.
echoing
generating rank fragrant impact
sacks of poetry,
memory,
life
stacked by the door
filling cracked space gaps with
slick and sickening scattered sacks,
shattered patched mock-smokeless thoughts
collecting next to kitchen sinks,
grime and mold and
ants converging colonists,
the smell the heat it generates congeal to
melt the hipster
break the beatnik
and
politico and
preacher melt
the child father mother melt
the you the me
into
elemental blank drywall
cement smooth surface,
reflection of an etch-a-sketch,
cannibal intellect,
our scratching sounds
obscured through suture-milky selves,
imagined innocuous incestuous imagination,
the poem the poet are clown house mirrors
reflecting endless reflection reflecting endless
so endless
so stab the bleeding hearts of the
bleeding-heart poets,
**** abrasively the ******* of the
sensuous speaking spectacle
preformed performance
melt all it is
it’s all
it is and
all is
The trackmarked pain on the televisions face raining out and cocooning his grave was not a
very good advertisement for reincarnation Wake up at last near the worlds end crescent in
fetal shape symptomatic riding electric spasms of rampantly distasteful nervous system
Insolent huge anxious insect squirming monster specimen hid in a safe watchful eyes
blinded by heaven next to me was vending machine annihilation Cartwheel of half eaten hint
of red tapeworm breathing concrete pages of dreary neon lighted soul suffocating streets
filed to a pulp Beer drinking benders on Saturday mornings no concept of time vibrations
running spit on floor of reality Psychological moral and artistic problems suicide gallows
with teeth in a grotesque nightmare interlude of cellular panic Your old and valued friend
of detrimental poetic tendency has defected there is no treatment - is it wrong to make
the patient as comfortable as possible? You should have seen a glass of whiskey slaying
Goliath on a respirator superior yet terrified the frivolity felt more lubricated then
usual (mixing another scotch stroking his brain) now that the music has faded I will sleep
until the end of time in a porcelain bathtub Capillary incision catalyzes tongues of a
flare ten shades of green that flings ignited subject exploding into space “Come on out
old troll, let us put daisies in your hair” Sanctuary in the embalming to emaciate the
wings Do angels ever cut themselves shaving?