Best Echoless Poems
CAMPFIRE
I thirst to taste your solid wood stare
I see you and no one else
Nestling under the stars
Hungry for each others ears
Chasing every comet across the sky
Fierce when it comes to standing tall
Desires releas screams from the mundane night
Running naked throughout the world
Firewood burning the depth of our soul
Dancing in a path we put mortals to shame
A swarm of gray shade arousing the night
Secret moans before, morning dew hit sunrise
Prowling in circles
Feeling each others instinctive curiosity
Surrender to the ashes of our hide
Passion lost within a dream-catchers web.
A pack of thieves we long to be
Weaving into an echoless growl
No one dares to separate the pack we create
A stare of solid wood I hunger to taste.
Night after night, IN THE MOOD ~always
Finding Forgiveness
Can you forgive my humble home?
A cardboard box my diamond dome
Can you forgive my scanty clothes?
The least that I worry of my woes
Can you forgive my crooked smile?
The frigid air a thermostatic trial
Can you forgive my lack of food?
Your leftover meals I have chewed
Can you forgive my hungry heart?
A life brand new I’m hoping to start
Can you forgive my tapering tears?
There’s little left after all these years
Can you forgive a saddened soul?
A love lost in an empty echoless hole
Can you forgive my losing of will?
A shattered stain of a splitting spill
Can you forgive my only existence?
For the Lord has in his holy presence.
Nov.06.2017
Healing power of forgiveness
Sponsored by: Line Gauthier
They really don't know me.
My existence doesn't affect them.
Unseen on the crowded streets.
Just another passing breeze.
A name not even carelessly whispered.
Just another number.
I'm falling through the cracks.
An echoless scream resounds in my ears.
And so it goes for years and years.
The same unvisited house.
Never noticed at the end of the street.
Where curtains of iron protect;
From intruders who never come.
The unpainted mailbox,cocooned in cobwebs.
Houses the loveletters yet to be sent.
Near the unmarked grave;
In a lonely plot embedded in weeds.
Where the flowers are invisible just like me.
"The Vibrationary Possess Feelings"
The silence
became a killer,
it annihilated most
of everything eventually;
the soul becomes numb
dead to the core.
they say
empty vessels
make the most sound.
this is not true.
without vibration
there is no frequency
no light energy;
life becomes
an echoless chamber.
the vacuum of silence,
like a black hole
ate its way swiftly
through everything that
required frequency for fuel.
the atmosphere
became numb
became dead.
can you imagine
not even a bird singing.
when the beautiful monsters
made their entry,
music
became their language;
evolutionary feelings
touched the All of emptiness
with strange synchronicity.
unity existed
unlike any unity
known to those of the
time before,
who had vacated
indefinitely.
it played
like a pulse
running keenly
through
everything.
they weren’t of aether.
they say they arrived
with no hearts,
with something different
dancing through their veins,
but music
became their language.
the ones with no blood
heard and felt everything.
The Vibrationary
possess singular
non-solitary feelings;
music is their language
frequency their advantage
(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)
I tell myself I do it for the birds.
They gather together
around flameless fires
feeding on warmth’s memory,
chattering amid the blowing leaves,
feathers puffed against the cold.
Their beauty undimmed by the
stark dark and light of barrenness
their songs no less beautiful
in the echoless emptiness,
their presence – undiminished.
Quietly, I leave a gift,
mixed seed to welcome all
sustenance to those who share
a loneliness in winter,
a scarcity of caring
the fading heat of flameless fires.
I tell myself I do it for the birds.
10/18/2015
submitted to – For the Birds – poetry contest
sponsor – Anthony Slausen
Hardened Thoughts
To those who tell me what I can and can’t
I have no words to sway their mindless curse
nor would they listen should my voice unveil
the emptiness of lips echoless purse,
aspiring to restrain youths sudden joy
assuage depleted chests with stolen gold
sit idly in the chair of hardened thoughts
unable to release the chains of old.
In their hearts lie the tyrants of I can’t
fearful beggars that kneel at open gates
imprisoning the reason of the free
within the total blindness of the fates.
Unable to admit just how they fell
enraptured by this mindless state of hell.
3/5/2016
Submitted to Rob Cormack's "Screwed" contest
The Choctaw
never taught me what the
Choctaw would’ve taught me.
The Australopithecine never taught me what
the Australopithecine would’ve taught me of.
The Memories, these Memories,
our Memories are fading songs in
an echoeless cave.
The listeners have tired,
moved on.
The choir sang, regardless...
...for a time.
And, in time, the silence overcame
the joys of recalling and the calling out
was no longer met with the
Response.
The ochre greened-over,
the iron dust fell from frost and
puddled dryly on the floor.
Summer winds, hot and desiccating,
soon scoured the walls and ushered out
the swirling cinnamon sand.
The drums beat to mineral-rich cave-dew,
on occasion. A sometime rain that formed cones.
They stretched with weatherings; sometimes taut,
sometimes loose. Their stories lost, nothing taught.
In time, their skins followed their long-lost bones into
the buried burned and carved, now-broken empty bones
Home. The silent tumulting earth. The cold overlay of the
Singeing Beneath. The singing stalled. The echoes bounced for a time from
voice to ear to wall to child to child to wall to stone to dust.
The stars never taught me what
the stars might then have taught me.
The dreams and dancings, the tremulous and then-credulous
tremolos, the inspirations of ululations, the song-stories of
peoples, of healings, of wilds, of ways...now silent.
This silence, in this echoless cave,
is the most wanting, most missing,
Sound.
Sound I’ve ever heard.
The cave never taught me.
The music never taught me.
The drum never taught me.
The dance never taught me.
The cave never taught me.
The fire is out, the embers lost.
The handprint remains on a wet wall in a dim corner in an out-of-the-way
scree-field crevasse just past the Cree field impasse.
The teachers are gone.
The ancestors quiet.
The cave never taught me.
The silence may
yet.
Sown by beings courageous
The seeds of unsayables
Streak across landscapes echoless,
Vast and conscious of our mindsets,
To sprout home a shift paradigm
That gives insights to the sightless, quake not,
And voices to the mute.
Who would lend their essence to such words
Uncrumple them ‘midst fading sense of truth
Sharpen dull edgeless rusting swords.
Shouted once from blood stained creaking boards
Muttered by those grown “long in the tooth”
Who would lend their essence to such words
Whisper calls from echoless fjords
Spur the interest of our failing youth
Sharpen dull edgeless rusting swords
Challenge them to run - not from - but toward
A passion that would brand them as uncouth
Who would lend their essence to such words
Reweave them as a fire, incite the hoards
Nurture the subtleties taking root
Sharpen dull edgeless rusting swords
Re-sound the growing call of freedom’s chords
Deny the tyrants reign of spurs and boots
Who would lend their essence to such words
Sharpen dull edgeless rusting swords.
©2/26/2022
AN ORIGINAL VILLANELLE CONTEST
Sponsor – L Milton Hankins
Pontificating pin heads
laboriously tongue lashing
mandatory attendees
pundits, preachers
oligarchs of oratory
empowered by mad scientists
in twisted mind laboratory.
If everybody gets a bite
of a sandwich never ending
the masses will be sated
and we’ve controlled our spending
if everybody works for free
--that is except for you and me –
we’ll clad them in amorphous dress
and treat them all the same
then we’ll give them numbers
for servants need no name
We’ll sell them all a golden goose
some magic beans as well
fan the flames of fear and hate
then lock our compounds iron gate
rally them in revolution
painted posters – false solution
We’ll watch the sun set in their eyes
as curfew bells remand
the darkness to the deviants
who won’t cave in to them
listen in the shuttered minds
of echoless condemning sin
Peace cannot be won by war
global warming’s not just a thaw
bathroom doors are not the key
to making everybody free
nor does shouting down the opposition
lend credence to a fool’s petition
It’s tongue in cheek -it’s just a joke
just an old guy -blowin’ smoke.
But then again -it could be true
the proof is – sadly - up to you
John G. Lawless
©8/12/2018
Solitude, silence
Space, limitless, timeless
There is no echo
PRISON DANCE WITH GYPSIES
the guards’ rifles stab the thick gray air –
under their eyes shivers of rain
wash our faces – beat our bodies
with needles of water
hollow metal buckets – instant drums
an echoless mantra slowed by fading hope
raise our hands with rhetorical questions
praise the beans in our thinning stomachs
the buckets’ full sound
springs us onto our feet –
we throw our clothes in mud
breasts jump startled
nipples harden in the cold
in our patch of freedom
we jump – stomp the mud
model and remodel its silky softness
mud embraces
caresses our nakedness
with open mouth kisses our thighs –
our toes wedge it
in lightning we are silver
like slippery fishes
swim in our guards’ minds
we burn their eyes
insult them with gleaming flesh
we crush them
with the air that touches our hips
we cast our nets
with fingers of rain
and catch our guards –
their veins are broken
with tired impotence
when with wondrous hands
we map a woman’s topography
the guards with their rifles
with slightly opened rodent mouths
are smothered in our movement –
we foam their fantasies
we blow the swampy water
long hair wet
slither in the air
like whips
crack the guards’ faces
splash them with mud
in pagan dance
Mystique mist shrouds the penultimate path
to the future, fading away in obscurity.
In twilight hour the sunset swansong resonates
the echoless tune of forlorn somber life,
silhouetted against the faint skyline of longing.
The threads of turmoil weave
the blue motif with sadness mold
in craving satiation, riding the sensuous storm
to the blank mindscape of frustrated desire,
once embedding the fervent fascination for repletion.
The shards of splintered hope adrift on buoyant flow
of cascading memories of the lively times
bring back the flavor of the old spices of life.
The remnant vibe of rejuvenation returns
within the sanguinity sphere of listless life.
For teaching me of unknown paths
For hinting to me of fogs at feet
For reminding me of sunrise tea
For showing me both ink stain and light rain
For simply savoring the simple life
For illustrating the service of the eremite
For singing to paulownia blossoms
For dancing with loneliness
For sculpting sorrow and joy
For nights in caves
For ragged cloths pulled tight against
the biting, bitter frosts
For wondering at tiger tracks
and losing foods to monkey packs
For hunger days
and thirst nights.
For solace found in the brethren-free,
high mountain, echoless and grand...Lonely...
For smiling to passing clouds
For bowing to bent bamboo
For conversing with berries
For chorusing with birds
For sitting at the feet of pebbles
For asking deep of puddles
For taking advice of flocks,
both goats and geese. (And gnats, as well.)
For taking as their audience
the empty Valley
the midnight Sun
the empty bowl
and the passing breeze
I wish to not ever visit
each and every hermit.
Not ever.
Not ever.
Forever.
No, never.
Reaching through the blackness
Trying to find something to hold
When all I could feel
Was the harsh damp cold
Desperately trying to block out
The emotions that poison my soul
I lay slowly suffocating
Beneath the rubble of my broken dreams
As silent tears spill from my eyes
Mouthing hollow prayers with Vodka soaked lips
This echoless silence is driving me insane