Best Dirges Poems
Who bade your life to live as such
pervading hearts with perfumed nose?
As down thy petals tempt the touch
when all for passions sake you're chose.
With lifetimes taken to bloom no more
you flower to favor all those who mourn,
then dance to dirges at misfortunes shore
un-bowing in tribute exalting fates thorn.
When the last crimson fades and darkness unfurls
and from winters hoarfrost you wither and fall
who'll mourn at your bedside as scentless wind swirls
and answer grave's whispers when I make my call.
So dance in the sunlight as long as you will,
While a vestige of fortune desires you still.
07/29/2018
Not Just Any Old Rose Contest
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
In youth the Eden where you played
was left bereft, destroyed, decayed,
by trusts malignant masquerade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
No grass survives your fallow glade,
when opportunist needs invade
and bleed the lives from every blade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
First, victims surging song is brayed
but dirges of the wronged soon fade
and urges pant their serenade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
Agendas you arrange cascade
to keep your motives undisplayed
and cover cracks in your charade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
You planted with your soiled spade
these spoiled seeds in hopes that they'd
advance the rancid plots you'd laid
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
In kind, your ruined past replayed
will find each bloom on whom you've preyed
entombed in blighted beds you've made
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Light 1-29-24 Syllables checked with www.howmanysyllables
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Light
Nightfall’s hand laid heavy on fleeing twilight
While the darkness, born early, swallowed the light.
Driving rain clouded the eyes of pale daylight,
Sheer curtains of rain blurred tears in the lamplight.
A world set spinning on bleak winter’s wrathful wings,
A battlefield of ruined souls shunned the light.
Howling waves, without sweet dawn’s consolation,
Drove raving storm surges, diluting the light.
Tangles of downpours assaulted waning day,
Jagged dirges shred blinded lyrics of light.
Torrent’s heavy footsteps drenched the dying dusk
When cracks appeared in sealed shelters, leaking light.
Atmospheric flotsam clogged free flowing dawn,
Driving dams of old debris to block new light.
In this rain painting, where darkness battled bliss,
There stepped a warrior, rain angel of light.
The storm wrath silenced. Darkness shamed. Light in whorls
Opened wide a redeemed chrysalis of light.
=======================
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
In youth the Eden where I played
was left bereft, destroyed, decayed,
by trusts malignant masquerade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
Sweet grass dies in my fallow glade
as opportunist needs invade
and bleed the life from every blade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
First, victims surging song is brayed,
then dirges of the helpless fade
and urges pant their serenade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
Agendas I've arranged cascade
to keep my motives undisplayed
and cover cracks in my charade
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
I've planted with my soiled spade
slick seeds of doubt in hopes that they'd
conceal the putrid plots I've laid
Shadow to shadow, shade to shade
My blighted past will be replayed
and every bloom on whom I've preyed
must lie now in the beds I've made
=======================
There stands a desolate castle on England's venerable shore,
That once sheltered a royal line that ruled its sprawling realm.
Now, according to local lore, eerie things are seen and heard,
In that castle by the sea, in that haunted castle by the sea!
On blustery nights a spectral sentry is seen pacing its towers.
Clad in mail, armed with lance, he's heard to herald the hours.
His disembodied voice is heard e'en o'er the raging storm,
Atop that castle by the sea, atop that haunted castle by the sea!
On stormy nights as thunder crashes and the savage gale shrieks,
Lightning illumes a princess wraith, tears coursing down her cheeks,
As she waves to her handsome prince who goes forth into battle,
In that castle by the sea, in that haunted castle by the sea!
On moonlit nights a phantom hearse drawn by six ebon steeds,
Trailed by ghostly figures intoning haunting dirges is often seen.
As drifting clouds overshadow the moon, it fades from view,
Nigh that castle by the sea, nigh that haunted castle by the sea!
If only those barren, lichen covered walls could only speak,
But, alas, they now stand forlorn, eternally mute and bleak.
The haunting secrets they might reveal are forever buried,
In that castle by the sea, in that haunted castle by the sea!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
Honorable Mention in Debbie Guzzi's "Jack OUT Of The Box" Contest - Jun 2011
Dappled Winds
Phantom gliders in the sky rise at day
To rush the firmament on dappled winds,
Heaven’s piebald appaloosas at play,
Brindled tempests ruffle zephyr’s fringes
On stippled flurries in mistral tinges -
Flecks of dirges – the haunting calls of loons –
Laugh with ecstasy at mosaic breeze,
Born from the mottled rainbow’s pure cocoon,
In a dappled dance of impish teases.
2-11-22
Contest: D Forms - Dizain
Sponsor: Constance La France
The ice-cold sun was hid
Behind a bank of clouds that came unbid,
Ugly freezing winds blew
Birds felt it all and flew
No place to rest, they knew.
The black cypress did their shelter forbid.
Beneath, lanes clearly showed
All tombs and snow covered the dead's abode.
Alas, their days were timed,
Their heavy hurdles climbed,
Their dirges were long chimed,
In heaven's eternity, they now rode.
Despite all I hunted,
The one tomb where peace and my love were granted.
I knew the number and lane,
Cold wind numbed not the pain,
Bereaved from my love was not a pleasant feeling
Especially when I heard the dirge bells pealing.
Saw her lovely photo,
Her sweet pale smile, and eyes were soft like a doe.
On the old tomb, I saw
A plaque, I stared in awe,
Her writing, without flaw:
That she loved me always, she had to show.
Placed 1
27 January 2023
Writing Challenge - B Word Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Constance La France
Tombs begin to bloom like raw, bloodless wounds.
Tomes are written with truths of her dead moon’s
tones. A keening lunacy keeps the dirges alive, while
bones rise out of repose. A degloved hand on the dial
hones into a night rainbow's radio, she runs on solar,
hopes for the rhythm to wrench free from her toller—
copes with the captivity of being bodiless hands. Twilight
comes to chance escape—open palms toward birthright.
Coves burst into flame; a hungry fire wants holier water.
Coven circles, recovers the skinless limbs of their daughter.
Woven like song, sirens' balm to restore coats of missing arms,
women are spells read correctly, using words as our alarms,
woken to language, resurrecting ancient pairs of sacred charms.
What Rusts In The Rain
(For The Memory Of William S. Burroughs
& Typewriters)
It is Lawrence, Kansas and the sky opens
up as if a doppelganger of all mothers and
wombs
Leaving out rain as milk from its breasts
onto
all things fertile
Rangas of storm
A writer adores their typewriter.
They name it and ache in its lack of health
and death.
Brother, the decades faded and the Beats
and the Hippies
their dawns edges burning off in the
sunlight of time
took flight on dusky dirges and are gone.
Generations come and go and that none
of us can turn in protest against, too busy
in our living and then our leaving.
Opiate, apt fruition.
There is no lover like a typewriter.
Stroke its keys.
Know its response.
Kansas, Dorothy's head all turned around
and paisley.
You died and they left your typewriter in
the backyard
of your last home, grass growing up into
its spine.
No more pawning for what the soul was
too terrified to
go without.
Maybe it is better here.
Waiting for the return of some living, freed
dignity.
An ability to grow creative legs, talk again.
The scent of English Ovals on its skin
Eighty-eight keys of ivory
Create the story of history
From requiems and waltzes
To rhythm and blues,
From dirges and ballads
To pop and rock,
How amazing! What stories are told
By gifted musicians and eighty-eight keys.
In our music room
Eighty-eight keys are played
When I am happy
When I am sad
When I am melancholy
When I am bored
When the holidays approach
And on days that are lonely.
Listen closely to the music
And imagine the story
Unraveling through the notes
Light and lively, slow and trudging
Creating a visual of the colors and climate,
Thoughts and feelings,
Life and loss of the musician
And her eighty-eight keys.
2022 Marathon Mile 5 Poetry Contest
Mark Toney
June 15, 2022
Elegy – 7-17-24
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elegy for Old Growth
Through measures of metered melancholy
The tattered winds sing a rent elegy,
A pensive wail for pristine old growth,
A drifting chant in pure pitch of final farewell –
The mute tongue howls in eulogy
For virgins of a thousand turns around the sun
For helpless giants surrendered in atonal sacrifice.
Gentle titans with feathery boughs lifted their faces
To embrace misted melodies of summer and winter snows
Forest zephyrs sang lullabies for sparrows
Nesting in their rustling wombs
Then shared the secret lyrics of their song
With robins sheltered in their lofty grace of red bark
In evensongs, matins and spring symphonies.
The myrrh of burial mixes with their lingering fragrance
In desolation and in their exposed flesh,
Nude hillsides of purple rage
Scream in final dirges of farewell
Modulated into anthems sung to saplings in circles of renewal
Little ones, like half steps, change elegies to odes
The threadbare zephyr now chants paeans to remember.
I am accustomed to spitting out bones of my prisoners, not witnessing their escape. I hear whales whistle their stoic dirges as I descend—they know the doomed are villains and freedom is promised to the brave of the brine. I am Devil Damsel, doomed as villain deemed with jagged teeth of unworthy. I am a colorless livid leviathan ghost ready to seize joy from the helpless, from the hopeful. I see red, but I am not blind. Before my downward plunge, I witnessed stars in the sky. Distracted by their glow, I missed your own, sinking back down into my monomaniac world, where stars are only dreams I shame over.
Seductive subduction.
I thought I knew darkness till I saw that glow—that glimpse of unreachable light. And I can live there. All I need to do is swim upward and kiss the surface. But the abyss—I consume it, and it consumes me.
Hydrostatic hell.
I am chained to these Platonian trenches eternally deemed ignorant. Death boxes. Nailed, anchored, mercurial, messy, mine. I deal with the discarded, the forgotten just as I disembody the discarded, the forgotten.
Catastrophic cold.
It freezes everything that I am that you see me only in your pain.
(Note: this is a sequel to an older poem I wrote years ago called Devil Damsel)
once i had footprints as tattoos
the art was tasteless
the seed was a hateful hoax
once i had phlegm laced spit in every hair follicle
the gleam was unattractive
the roots were unbalanced and unevenly growing
once i had gnats fronting as a jazz band predominately playing dirges
the rhythm was a compulsive liar
the melody was basically a malady
then you came along
you saw me in all chapters of unkempt
you dried my tears
you gave me shelter
you made me pray with you
you Loved me to Wellness
now i am a better man
now i am smelling like lavender and vanilla
now my heart is richer than my many big pictures
now i know the true meaning of Prosperous Gratitude
now i know what it really feels like to be Definitively Loved
Now I Thank God and Give Him Praise For You.....
now i must go and get myself together and get ready
her funeral starts at 11am
her last words to me were 'You Blessed My Life By My Saving Yours'
Treasure The Pleasure Of God's Blessings......
Day of Silence
A shredded temple curtain lies
Upon a shattered floor;
Silent Sabbath,
Daylight weeps before a stone,
Birds withhold their songs,
Dawn - undecided -
Rain - holding its breath -
Sunlight pacing -
Flowers fragrance -
Wandering in the shadows -
Jeers and taunts
Run from their echoes -
Earth's quaking - stilled
Broken palms - quiet dirges -
Whispers tiptoeing past
Stunned dreams - broken -
While midnight stands watch
At a tomb
Yet in the dawn
Guards an empty sepulchre
When "Alleluia" -
Thundering joy -
Rings out
For this was no ordinary man
Shouted from Heaven's rooftops!
Winding, shadowy etches
come whispering at my window
Night whispers, the whimper
of the wind
Blow blue - wailing as you go
Crawl inside an empty paper bag
and play me tunes of the moors
Give me lonesome tonight
Hollow dirges tonight
Reality is the whisper of grass
on a back fence, and the crying
of an empty swing
Some shred caught in a car door
struggles to twist free
with a slap and tug and creak
Whisper me lies and benedictions
I cannot bear the truth