Best Ghostlike Poems
When love is torn asunder and there is nothing left but dissent,
a lover's heart will be shattered, mortally wounded and rent.
In a relationship that was once held as sacred and eternal,
sorrow takes a heavy toll on the one left behind, and infernal
flames of grief scorch the lonely heart so that it must dwell,
suffering in what seems like the fiery abyss of emotional hell.
Forlorn the man when his once-upon-a-time love went astray,
and became a wraith without a face. She refused to stay.
Dressed in bridal gown, perhaps she seeks a new marriage mate,
a man who will please her instead of treating her like a roommate.
She looks forward to a brighter future than one she's left behind,
wondering why she married him. How could she have been so blind?
Could it be there's another side to the separation of two lovers?
In death she was buried in a white shroud. Sorrowfully, he hovers.
A bouquet of crimson flowers he's brought to leave at her grave
but he cannot bear to look at the tomb. Today, he's not that brave.
Ghostlike she appears to him, a wispy figure, floating in the mist.
He's haunted by memories of the lips he'd passionately kissed.
Categories:
ghostlike, lost love,
Form:
Ekphrasis
You whine and whistle, ghostlike, when you round
the corner of my cottage in the cove.
You sweetly soothe or taunt and terrify.
No one on Earth dictates where you will rove.
A menacing marauder or a mild,
melodious, mysterious delight,
you play your part in nature to the hilt--
just heard and felt, not subject to man's sight.
June 23, 2017, placed first in Brian Strand's Mid-Summer Premiere Contest
Date: August 19, 2017
Contest Name: Blowing in the Wind
Sponsor: Nicola Byrne
January 26, 2019, entered on Mark Toney's Poetry Marathon, Mile 13
February 18, 2020, entered in the Strand Select T contest
Categories:
ghostlike, nature, wind,
Form:
Rhyme
Oh souls that brave All Hallow's moon
whose shadowed face would bid us swoon.
We stare upon your ghostly veil
a-flight on twilight's empty trail.
And yet, we delve where darkness daunts
to fathom mystery, know what haunts
our souls when comes October-tide,
where fear and anguish both abide.
Each hidden passage, road or rill
we spy while walking makes us chill.
Gray shadow wings on ghostlike trees
make heart and footsteps quickly freeze.
All pathways lead where horrors thrill.
The heart is numbed as is our will.
Frail steps draw close toward the lair
where phantom talons might ensnare.
How long until we're safely home
free of this mental catacomb?
These questions spin within our head
as we trek fully gripped by dread.
How do souls flee such grievous fright?
Oh moon, postpone our dreadful plight.
Deliver us to warmth and home
from black enigmas in the gloam.
Categories:
ghostlike, dark, evil, fear,
Form:
Quatrain
I saw the Four Horsemen -
the famous apocalypse guys.
They rode silently past neatly folded laundry,
They approached me in silence,
their breathe a rye and meadow wind.
Each of them in turn,
gliding ghostlike past where I sat,
watching steam on the mirror
grow cold.
War had no use for me,
past my prime, bum knee.
Not even as cannon fodder.
Famine had little to work with,
I had known hunger, want, poverty,
nothing he had could scare me.
Pestilence likewise dismissed me out of turn,
for which I’ll be forever grateful,
probably too sedentary to spread the touch.
And Death, well, we all must dance,
but today is not the day, now not the hour,
Death merely bid me good day.
And then they were gone, their vacancy tangible,
while I decided to look up embolisms or strokes,
trying to close this doorway into myself.
Until I saw the tracks in the talcum powder,
heard the soft whicker of horse,
and tasted their life on my tongue.
Categories:
ghostlike, allegory, death, fantasy, future,
Form:
Free verse
Invaded by the tribe
The old station wagon
Pulls to halt in my driveway.
The five children fall out
of its rusted doors
shouting and laughing.
She turns off the noisy engine.
Slips ghostlike from the drivers seat.
Her five hours of driving
In a bedlam of her children’s noise.
Looking so slight and frail.
My heart melts again.
I enfold her in my arms
And whisper thanks for coming.
Even though I have moaned
About her children’s disruptions.
The extra work cooking
And entertaining.
I look into my sisters face
And whisper I love you Sis.
You are always welcome
In my house.
And in my heart
Categories:
ghostlike, beautiful, life, love, sister,
Form:
Free verse
It aches
Insanity – it is rich with light,
Ever lusher with shadows,
Dimly faded feelings, whispers
Welcoming the wars that come
To those who listen… it’s voice…
I know crazy
Crazy – it is like the wind,
Forever moving, never giving in
To sleep or silence,
Always flooded with sound,
Sound for those who listen…
It paints the heart in black memories,
Erasing the colors, the hues
Vibrant and rhythmic like a melody,
Sumptuous promises, poured out over,
The rising sun, as dewdrops tremble
On laughing petals, as the night fades
Into dawn…
I know crazy
It comes in many forms!
Crazy is the way a child loves a mother,
Who is always leaving, never loving, only going,
Never looking back…
Crazy is the way a silence forms inside the heart
Who knows the meaning of a panic,
That quietly floods the distance between faith and fear.
Crazy is the way the stars keep dancing,
Never silent despite the ghostlike darkness,
Who startles every dream…
Crazy is the way the ache inside never quiets,
The desperate yearning for a lover,
Who refuses love…
Crazy is the way a heart will break,
Even though its pulse is strong… its love is not wrong,
But the feeling has gone….
I know crazy, but I tone it down with the other thing I know.
And, I know it better than I know crazy…
God is great and God is steady.
He never allows my crazy to win over the hope,
Hope for everlasting peace,
Hope for eternal grace,
Hope for always – love that finds a way,
Even though crazy tries to wash the joy away,
Even though crazy tries to silence the amazement of this ordinary faith!
I know crazy… but I know even better,
The answer, the grace, the prayers for His embrace!
Categories:
ghostlike, anxiety, crazy,
Form:
Free verse
Warmly dedicated to SMJ
Three Sonnets Inspired by my
Reigning Ex
Part 0
Sitting at the edge of the universe
like a man atop a modern skyscraper
who might look down to see the manic street
full of yellow taxis and distant peers,
the first thing I notice on a backwards
glance is my snake-skin mortality
shed and skipping across the flattened ether,
a luminous orb on a linear course
like a puddle-hopping pebble, eager
to sink a lily-pad a child targets
for the hell of it. I realize then - either
I’m dead as a god should be, or just a pet
project of a German ghost, his meager
objective merely my way to forget.
Part I
Before you bed me, I assume the herpes
risk you ignored so many turn-style clicks
so many thick-like quick-strike Rolodex entries
not so long ago made that cavalry slicks
and right-swept Tinder mounts dutifully
saddled have begun their bountiful itch.
A testament, truly, of how beautifully
done was every each one, each surgical stitch
precisely sewn to salvage squeeze-box juice
of battle-field strewn, the red zest of life
a dead soldier blew, is once more, for you,
stalling to flow; knowing your rusty knife
has yet to slice temptation sterilized;
knowing your scalpel’s cut keeps cancer canonized.
Part II
All around you, this kelp-wall compartment
appears an ocean bloomed with room enough
for early light to shuffle halfway bent,
like time’s unpolished hedge, across the rough
field where too young have men gone to die.
Someone is responsible for all of it:
The ghostlike fish who grimly swim upstream;
the crunchy autumn leaves all creased and clustered;
and this, the box you loathe in sleepless dream
of birthday cakes and candles your grandfather
fed the wish-away lawn using mustered
strength from tears his daughter leaked, sprung to lie,
who now only cries at her daughter’s grave,
complaining of stubble when Pawpaw shaves.
Categories:
ghostlike, girlfriend,
Form:
Sonnet
Beakers ready, gentlemen,
titration calibrated to the critical degree;
unveil the poetry distilled
until reagents strike at all the barriers
that we erect in love, in agony,
in little niches, shadowy within the walls
along the course to home.
The night is warm and lovely,
radiance too harsh for summer's mists;
encomium may palliate the grave
yet leave it heaving with the frosts of truth.
May I not listen to the night?
May I not revel in its sweetness?
There is the lover with a heart congealed;
I would not see the distillate.
I could not care, for I am moved
not by nuance but by the lumbering
advance, the shameless ploy
of glorious beasts too wise
to manifest themselves within
that paradise of art I face,
that soft chagrin emerging, ghostlike,
from around my pen.
~
Categories:
ghostlike, allegory,
Form:
Free verse
And the cemetery is sculpted by freshly lain plots
Anticipating a frame to explain the gravely residents
To offer considerable homage with venerate thoughts
Of a journey long taken by soldiers and sycophants
Anticipating a frame to explain the gravely residents
An empty stone awaits the gracious terminal account
Of a journey long taken by soldiers and sycophants
And those who survived differently but died tantamount
An empty stone awaits the gracious terminal account
About an immortal battle that persists a war of sabotage
And those who survived differently but died tantamount
For they are our freedom from this absurd civil barrage
About an immortal battle that persists a war of sabotage
Gratitude is given to the cowards and the brave alike
For they are our freedom from this absurd civil barrage
Now dignity doused in tribute forever bleeds ghostlike
Gratitude is given to the cowards and the brave alike
To offer considerable homage with venerate thoughts
Now dignity doused in tribute forever bleeds ghostlike
And the cemetery is sculpted by freshly lain plots
5/17/2016
Categories:
ghostlike, death, grave, patriotic, soldier,
Form:
Pantoum
In the gray dawn, ghostlike,
A mist rises over the lake
Like a floating whisper.
My shorts and tee shirt
Are damp and clammy
From hanging on the bedpost
Near the open window.
The dock is slippery, and
The yellow kayak slips
Soundlessly into the water.
The paddle barely ripples
The breathless surface.
I am adrift in my imagination.
I am a loon, skimming
The water with its haunting cry.
I am the Indian Hiawatha
In his birchbark canoe.
I am Jacques Marquette,
Exploring the Mississippi River,
Watching for Indians.
I am a lone leaf, drifting.
I am the wind and the air
And the thick gray fog.
I am the water itself,
Calm on the surface but
Teeming with life, as it
Wends its way to the sea.
I am the wind and the rain,
The sun and the clouds.
I am all things in this
Haunting, misty world.
As the fog slowly lifts,
Lightens, and turns golden,
I slip back into myself and
Paddle toward the shore.
Categories:
ghostlike, allusion, imagery, imagination, nature,
Form:
Free verse
The one that has not succeeded in life knows
that these two dark emotions: fear and pity
are on the same scale of equality;
he feels its lows and takes blows!
I compare myself to him in many ways,
and unable to escape from the loneliness
inside and around me: the only comfort is prayers,
gazing deeper into Heaven and beg for painless days!
When all is bleak and clouds collide to strike
me with lightining, I hide where it's dry and safe;
but there's no ending to fear by being a ghostlike
and not run on hills with excitement to fly a kite!
Pity also hinders me from achieving the fullest joy,
I blame it all on myself, not on the causer of grief;
losing fear is a form of purification to get some relief...
troubled soul, let these two dark emotions become memory!
Written on 6/1/2017
Categories:
ghostlike, change, courage, emotions, faith,
Form:
Rhyme
A glimpse in time
I wander your rugged roads
Ignited by a glowing future
Digging into my own mind
So that the surgeon might fix himself
Sullied in a swinging sorrow...
Born into your light at the start of the day
I then mire under the stars each night in a rueful decay
A zillion lives in a day
Fractured love is love after all...
The Garden Isle holds you closer than Oahu does
Less of the screams and shouts of industry
While ghostlike fortune shoots from my ears
My identity dispersing
And I stand aright on a beckoning beam...
Soldiers of madness don your fake noses
Rename your children
And run aground with me
Haunt the light that has no name
Leaves of morass
This is what drains
Not being able to hold dear to one rhythmic chord
Sensing escape I flee
I mean to fly
When instead the will sponges back into life
And I am a coward among cranberries
Mending the unlocked gate
Laughing for you
Where silence would be stronger
Just not as fun
The arrangement of our lives
Appear as boundless landscapes
Illuminating a glimpse of the now
Time untethered
For your remorseless surrender
Categories:
ghostlike, beautiful,
Form:
Free verse
Broken Tree
As i lay here on my sick bed, here within my room,
There’s a window that lets in the light to break up all the gloom.
Out the window is the same view, a small hill not far away,
The sun casting dark grey shadows as it moves throughout the day.
Then as i look i see it, the small, frail, broken tree,
The one tree out all one it’s own, the one i’ve now called “me”
The other trees keep their distance from this sickly looking sight,
None of them engaging, in this poor trees lonely plight.
Yet no matter what the weather, harsh winter, wind or rain.
Broken tree survives the onslaught, bravely claiming it’s domain.
It may bear no buds in springtime and in summer while others peak,
It’s frame remains quite ghostlike, all withered sad and weak.
But that broken tree inspires me, as i view it there each day,
For it reminds me that no matter what “you can fight this come what may”
Broken tree i’ll keep on fighting, we’re so similar you and i,
Why should i lie in pity, while you’re still reaching for the sky?
We can both enjoy the pleasure of the sun and stars above,
And me i have my loved ones, with their never ending love,
At the summit of the hill you sit and i know the reason why,
It’s a place for all the strongest trees so keep on reaching for the sky.
Categories:
ghostlike, cancer, recovery from, sick,
Form:
Free verse
Midnight on the Clock
Midnight gray blocks out the stars
in racing steams of flowing clouds.
Moon light hides behind windy puffs
of smoky filtered white.
October nights are cooled by lingering rain
cold riding the wind.
A sudden drop in temperature calls out
for blankets and warm coverlets.
Tugging up against the chin downy warmth exudes
wrapping the body safe and snug.
Warm wood scented fires rising to the sky
wafting in the wind.
Winter waits in the background hovering t the door
with promise of cold and ice and snow.
Midnight dark slips in whistling winds in the trees
pulling leaves loose to set them free.
Autumn falls floating on the twisting turning breeze
sliding thru the maze of pumpkins.
October slides into November’s ghostly souls in flight
set free of this physical life.
Misty haze hangs then sweeps by in dulled vision
bringing tears to life and flow.
Seasons wrestle back and forth teasing and taunting
to be reborn in time.
Cool shadows drift wayward touching sharp and harsh
against the frosty earth.
Time edges in inches away with the race
unguided into history.
Midnight passion purple blends bold and brazen
into an overture of song and hymns.
Psalms, prayers, and promises sing soft and quiet
the solemn dreams of Solomon.
A time for every season of poverty and plenty
setting hearts afire with desires.
A flow of life’s endless continuance of hope
rising on the harbor waves.
Embers rise off in the distance setting wispy images
figures ghostlike in the air.
Tightly close the windows and the doors
lock out the visionary thoughts and specters
Enraptured, the dreams steal away to all that is left
Midnight on the clock.
Categories:
ghostlike, dark, time,
Form:
Narrative
Eingeschneit das Dorf
Schon nach dem ersten Schnee
Nur verlassene Strassen
Gemsen suchen ihren Schutz
Eine harte Zeit für alle
-------------------------------------
A ghostlike village
Soon after the first snow
Only abandoned streets
Chamoises seeking their refuge
A tough time for everyone
-------------------------------------
Un pueblo fantasmal
Ya después de la primera nieve
Sólo calles abandonadas
Gamuzas buscan su refugio
Un tiempo difícil para todos
Categories:
ghostlike, nature
Form:
Tanka