Best Fragments Poems
Do not build a ladder
when I fall into the abyss—
I did not call for climbing.
The thorn in me
is not a riddle to solve,
nor a window to repair.
I am thunder, not your project-
rain needing witness,
not your umbrella.
When I say I’m drowning,
do not throw ropes of reason.
Let me sink into your silence—
weightless, unrescued, yet unalone.
Be the shore that does not move
as my waves thrash and settle.
My pain is not a puzzle.
Don’t match it to your pieces.
It is a wild bird—
let it wheel, let it scream, let it land
uncaged cage on wild earth.
You see my storm
and lash advice like scaffolding,
but I need someone
to taste the torrent,
to say yes—it bites, and burns,
not someone who murmurs
“you should have stayed inside.”
To love me is to shhh,
to hold space as sacred,
to hear with your cells,
not just your ears.
Fractals.
Spawn of iterating quadratic functions.
Choreographers of cosmic conjunctions.
Impervious to human dysfunctions.
Makers of multiverses. Encoders of creations.
Limited only by imaginations.
Recursive. Coercive. Immensely immersive.
Purveyors of poetic creative cursive.
With formative fractals you’ll melt your mind’s shackles
and be anywhere that you may want to be.
You can form fractals to your own reality,
and make anything in the sky or the sea.
You can even repurpose them to poetry …
Yes, if
fractals were dactyls they’d flow off the page,
whirling and twirling, sublime.
Freeing us, being us, thoughts disengage,
teasing and pleasing with rhyme,
reaping the rhythms of time.
From mundane equations that yet yield complex
repetitive patterns that please and perplex,
come fractals so beautiful in all respects.
Constructors of coastlines and snowflake concerns,
foundries for forests, and feathers, and ferns,
the deeper you dive they have more twists and turns.
Generators of patterns, like veins in a leaf,
and the branches of trees, shapes of every motif.
Look around, everywhere, there are fractals, good grief!
From the large to the small and still smaller they flow,
simple patterns repeating, yet different, you'll know
that there’s just no escaping the great fractal show.
So, let’s face them, embrace them, we’ll host history.
Let us master them, plaster them, I guarantee:
merge your mind into fractals, you’ll set your soul free.
Reconstructed 3/22/2021, for the FRAGMENTS OF VERSE Poetry Contest, sponsored by John Lawless
Tossed upon blank beaches
like men without souls,
shell fragments littering the sand.
Each broken shell once could sing
lyrics lilting of glories past,
tales spun in Dresden colors,
soft, shimmering memories -
blissful days beneath shining seas.
In broken men who walk the earth,
vignettes I view . . .
shattered beauty every one.
Copyright, August 3, 2014
Faye Lanham Gibson
Life's highway is strewn,
with fragments,
of rainbow-hued dreams.
8/2/15
For Andrea's Pretty Little Lunes contest
Visual #7
Kelly Lune
in - pie - ces
why must you be in fragments?
take me pl—
ease me in-
to the pangs of oppression
let me ROT
in fragments
i trust you'll be whole again
while I break
In the shattered mirror of hollow empathy, I see fragments of myself drifting,
Like ash butterflies dancing in the cold wind of unspoken truth,
And their words—"I can't empathize"—are silver arrows piercing through
The illusory veil of superficial consolation, revealing the inner garden
Where I alone grow the cucumbers of wisdom, where I water the flowers of courage.
And I hear footsteps fading away down the corridor of memory, the steps of friends hurried
To their daily markets, to the Turkish dramas that swallow their evenings,
Leaving behind only the echo of a pat on the shoulder and a worn-out phrase
"Don't worry, it will all pass"—a devalued coin in the ATM of compassion,
While I remain here, in the fortress of self, counting my resources.
Ah, how strange this revelation—that in the absence of foreign comfort
I discover my own healing hands, my own wellspring of strength!
Like a tree finding water in its depths when the sky refuses to weep,
I learn to be self-sufficient, to measure my garden of limits with steady steps,
To cultivate my own remedies, to be my own sun and my own rain.
I no longer knock on foreign doors begging for understanding like a crust of bread,
But build from the bricks of imperfections a temple of maturity,
Where the echo of my steps resounds with fulfillment, not with a void to be filled,
Where each scar is a medal of self-sufficiency won in battle,
And where loneliness is no longer a fear, but a throne from which I contemplate my strength.
Her perfume scent lingers
triggering lives with shots of translucent recurring images and flickering pages,
permanently installed unto memories and times
that unfurl bringing
to us unaltered,
visions of her fragments
left behind…….
Body,
Soul
Stop,
Start
In,
out
Here,
There
Now.
Then
Somewhere,
Nowhere
Tomorrow,
Today
Hello
Goodbye.
indistinct chatter
sweeps through my mind
like wind through trees
in winter's high pitched shrills
as memories twirl
in a spiral of thoughts
my heart pauses
beneath fragments
of shrouded warmth
once found in love
and this diminishing sun
i am hesitant to stand aground
where rains have come
between winded breaths
like these trees
naked on dampened hills
i too shiver in the depths
of coldness, alone
bending, almost dropping
to the accepting ground
bitter trails
of the unworthy
drop at my feet
like leaves of autumn
only to crumble
within the moments
of allotted time
i gasp
in what takes my breath away
momentarily
before i hear the depths
of my mind speak
as if warning my heart
to wake from endless dreams
halt to all possibilities
of treading on thin ice
beneath winter's frigidness
and bury my heart
behind the walls
that protect
so i do not fall
and drown
in the depths
of tears again
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every Breath You Take — The Police
Total Eclipse of the Heart — Bonnie Tyler
Against All Odds — Phil Collins)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They dance behind my ribs, these ghosts~
Every breath you take,
Every move you make,
I hear them still, though the speakers are cracked.
The night is a bruise, purple-black,
Turn around, bright eyes,
but the stars won’t rise,
just the hum of a neon vacancy sign.
And the odds? They laugh in my face.
How can you just walk away
when the ache stays,
a cassette tape jammed in an old machine~
rewinding,
rewinding,
but never
playing clean.
I write of fragments in my life
things written in diaries for attics
of memories- now just bones and dust
for those lost loves that still shatter my heart
of the people who sailed in gliding ships and left
and those who turned against me and left me broken
on a white sand beach
lie scattered fragments of shells--
my unfulfilled dreams
6/28/15
For Shadow Hamilton's "Traditional Haiku" contest
Her icy breath blows snowy swirls,
etching the land in abstract curls.
Sculpted spirals form frozen art,
frosty fragments of Winter's heart.
Feathery flakes of white on white
fall from heaven on fledgling flight.
And icicles, like shards of glass,
cling to the eaves and blades of grass.
Ebony colors the night sky,
yet cerise clouds will not comply.
And a red sun lends ice its fire
as its flickering flames expire.
A crunchy crust of sparkling snow
quickly loses its twilight glow.
For gleaming gems of golden light
vanish, with the approach of night.
Swaying silhouettes creak and crack
as shifting shadows ink them black.
And as skittish stars take their place,
a gilded moon beams down from space.
A fragment of my soul
Unleashed by the pen and quill
Time and again, pieces thrown away to the wind
Leaving me, older, and a wiser fool
Yet an empty man is left behind
All the fragments have gone
This empty vessel lingers on
As I read words long ago written
I steal a fragment back
Hoping to regain a long lost time
A careless whisper
A poets dream
As I fade
Au dieu
hidden beneath clouds
lambent light of moon
flickers through silence
within cimmerian shade of night
lambent light of moon
glows atop the crested waves
a ship's guidance
flickers through silence
a lighthouse beacon
abandoned years ago
within cimmerian shade of night
when the moon is dormant
keepers of past light ships way
trimeric