Best Gradients Poems
I want to ride a zebra
and race the rays of radiance
through heat-waves’ sailing gradients -
a folly wild - a mood untamed
elated hands in bristled mane
unbridled veins uncorked champagne...
yes! elevate sedate heart rate
I WANT to ride a zebra
stripes yin yang oasis sweet and
whimsy rules a drumroll beat as
gallop sways euphoric roughness
crossing plains of dreamy lushness -
steed’s exotic tender toughness
pacing thrills in state of luscious...
yes! animate to sate my wait
I want to RIDE a zebra
savanna grass a grand expanse
a lion’s roar - hyena's rant
amuse myself with peril’s speed
adventure sows romantic’s seed... so
gestate date with fancy’s fate
YES! I want to ride a Z E B R A !
Categories:
gradients, adventure, animal, dream, fantasy,
Form:
Rhyme
THE ADVENTURE, HER
Eyes
Deep, shimmering pools
Drowning fevered fools
Voice
Feigning tenderness, tragic
Whispered, lilting magic
Scent
Je Reviens enchanting
Left shamelessly panting
Hair
Bouncing raven tresses
Velvety elucidated guesses
Smile
Sparkling white gradients
Breath-stealing bright radiance
Lips
Succulent raspberry fruit
Passion's delicious route
Shape
Form-filling voluptuous esses
Curvaceously exploiting dresses
Skin
Satiny cappuccino wrapping
Exploring fingers, mapping
Taste
Tippy-top to feet
Nectarous, tangy, sweet
Whole Package
Symmetry imperfectly perfected
Entirely painstakingly inspected
Plan
Moonlight eventide, upended
Enjoyment, dishonorably intended
Result
Personal intentions, punted
"Hunter" becomes "Hunted"
Afterglow
Her sensual surprise =
My satiated eyes.
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Six-Word Couplet Series Encore" Poetry Contest, Mark Toney, Judge & Sponsor.
Categories:
gradients, adventure, appreciation, beauty, body,
Form:
Couplet
Written: November 24, 2024 for contest Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann
__________________________
In a calyx of ambivalent dreams,
where shadows swirl as silken strands,
I slip through the surface,
a sailboat in a tide of thoughts,
where colors speak in whispers,
and sounds weave a tapestry
of guffaw and sighs.
I am an astronaut,
zipping into a cosmos of canorous clangor
past comets with names such as chimera
and planets blooming with a corpulent deluge
simmering under layers of desultory dust,
each a sun waiting
to ignite an encomium spark.
Footfalls on the ledge of splendor,
swirling in circles,
a kaleidoscope of moments —
jumping from the quicksilver
of a fleeting glance,
to the deep sinkhole of silence,
where time slows to the pulse of heart.
Here, on this canvas of perception,
the boundary of self dissolves,
melting into the esoteric ocean
and excruciatingly eviscerated thoughts
are squid jauntily joined by caring currents,
amber-colored fires dancing on the horizon,
unraveling secrets hidden in their stings.
I chase shadows,
those swift-painting phantoms,
a ghostly gap in gnarled grooves of life,
seeking sincerity in a swirl of sights —
the stillness of awareness,
longing wrapped in vibrant coils,
darkness stitched with fragile threads of light.
In stillness, I stroll.
feeling every pulse evolve into a quilt of colors.
tracing trails tracked by supple notions.
as the clock spins dizzy tales —
my pen touches the sky,
gathering glimpses in gradients of glides.
a jaunt laced with lingering layers.
charting caverns of concealed aspirations.
where wisdom blooms in wild gardens,
Inviting all intrepid inclined to intrude
the twinkling, tantalizing tones
of existence, endlessly entwining
every exhale an echoing essence.
of something that yearns.
to be liberated and let loose.
Categories:
gradients, analogy, meaningful,
Form:
Free verse
Canopy’s aperture, spilled light’s nuance, tinted,
as my eyes arrested, to attest fall’s saga…
A tree proclivity, had me stalled in Ashland,
watching the leaves succumb, leaving stark limbs barren…
Those with temerity, plunged at high speed, head first
Others spun dizzily, tornado-bewildered…
Few flew in gradients, of sideways-sloped descent:
wishes on air sustained, just a little longer…
Some seemed to ride gentle, invisible, sleep-chutes,
touching down easily, with wizened acceptance…
My marrow slowly chilled, as damping moisture crept
But cheer was soon bubbling, as merry maples fell:
swaying in zigs and zags, frolics of to and fro,
to come to a smooth rest, on the glassy brook’s face
Alighting sans ripples, their fate in water’s hold:
floating on a mirror, reflecting their past life,
ere being swept by currents, to their next journey’s start…
(11/4/18 - Repost of Ashland Autumn for P contest hosted by Constance la France)
Categories:
gradients, autumn, seasons, september,
Form:
Alexandrine
In the language of Spirit
it is said: “that we must die before we die.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the language of Sprit
it is said: “that we must die before we die.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It kills me,
a lot of things kill me.
I mean the kind of ‘killing’
that blinks you out for a moment,
that kind of little death.
Such instances can be exquisite,
like when your life unlatches,
you stop in mid-throttle,
halted upon a careening mania.
There are no increments,
no gradients,
you just jump out of yourself.
A powerful ****** can kill you
with one thrust of bliss.
Holding your baby for the first time,
a sudden inexplicable gnosis
obliterates your present,
past and future.
Writing a killer line in a poem -
that can kill the reader
for a bitty twitch of time.
Those quiescent extinctions happen,
in a single tick of abeyance,
transient wipe-outs
(too abrupt to me measured),
when we forget
to be both happy or sad,
in nothing-flat
we have ceased to be, we succumb,
only to return.
Between each taken breath,
these little deaths may, at any time,
undo time,
revealing much more than we,
the living,
might care to admit.
Categories:
gradients, poetry,
Form:
Free verse
The deep and sonorous voice of
his defeatist self-talk was paternal,
and torturous,
reinforcing the force fed message,
"There is no happiness,
only gradients of misery,"
leaving him indifferent to the present,
careless of the future.
Reared in the shadows of perfection,
parental conflicts played out
as the "self-made men"
of a fathers' generation chased ambitions
beyond the cramped lives
of their own youth.
Affection and approval,
bestowed and withdrawn
by the performance scale;
he was a sundial
numbering only sunny hours,
with little of consequence to say,
a lucid, inquisitive and fertile mind.
His native endowment
a vivid sensibility for the beauty
of words.
He learned woman from
his quint-essential sisters
yet remained profoundly ignorant of women;
if love were happiness
it generated a loneliness
made all the more desperate
by the intimacy of severed connections.
Psychic numbness, and fauxbia,
yes, he feared being false,
had plunged him into darkness,
with his vision
of a minimum level of connectedness,
the raw ache of personal loss,
the empty feeling of helplessness.
Forced to live as that outsider
trapped inside a familys' feuds;
being bonded to survivors,
learning to live with the understanding
he would be jettisoned for others to survive:
emotional dishonesty became
necessary for survival.
Denial was the best defense
since he could change nothing
and repression had long since
ceased to offer relief;
he was too articulate
for that lie.
The tightly packed crowd
contained inside his head was
momentarily frozen by the question
"How to unlearn the lessons of his youth?"
To love and be loved, a necessary condition,
a prerequisite to a happiness
that could not exist?
Now, he works,
and writes,
and trusts in simple verities;
chaos, pacified by distance and routine,
serve to mitigate the sting
of realitys' reminder -
he'd found that so urgently sought,
only to have lost it in the finding.
Categories:
gradients, introspection, lost love, love,
Form:
Free verse
Valley’s of sleep that hold on to virtue through the years,
Distant from the arms of cities where vice and lust rule governments,
Where social values preach chastity to innocent hearts,
Where the earths depressions shelter Mr. and Mrs. Purity,
A v-shaped river valley of the virgins who roam there,
With rivers streaming from cities to valley’s that bleed desire,
Trapped they are by steep gradients with steep walls and narrow bottoms,
The cherubim keep shame societies there like puppets until the cherries blossom
and ripen,
Valley’s of cherries tucked away by pseudo morality, un-pollinated and stamen
locked up like relics,
Botanical gardens of exotic fruits and sacred flowers,
Kept there by valleys of locked up atriums where keys are closely watched by
bishops,
Vestal virgins with holy books as bosoms and nothing else,
In river valleys where streams of life’s juices are currents that flow in all directions,
Where church robes run from river baptismal’s of full immersion,
A sexual awaking blocked by dams that reach the heavens,
celestial ornaments of purity hung on swinging trees like botanical gardens to be
picked,
with winds that push and push until they are broken from branches falling below to
rivers that carry them away from brother and sister virtue,
sexual appetites subdued by chastity belt covered mouths that kill truth searching,
Sexual liberation, and the separation of the spirit hold separate experiences like the
sun and the moon,
finding the secrets that make the soul the soul requires a boat to carry souls
through rites of passage,
Horns are blown in glacial valleys to shake melting ice that flows leaving sediments
of intimacy behind to germinate in spring,
Human nature is the flower pollinated by romanticizsim that breaks away from
stems of adolescence and dogmatic aged tree branches,
Floating away in winds and water’s to cities where guilt is thrown off bridges,
rocks tied to feet where it sits at river bottoms like the Ganges,
only to resurface at the end of life’s death with purity and wisdom.
Categories:
gradients, adventure, angst, hope, imagination,
Form:
Free verse
The greys of words or rhymes of yellow,
Twice or tens or millions stacked in a row,
Which one utters the volition of a fellow?
That we'll leave it upon themselves to show,
For themselves will worry about tomorrow.
Brushes of dissonance and ink set ablaze,
Flames atop fan the ashes of charred maze,
Crafty norms inculcated with a strayed gaze,
Gradients untangle those minds of haze,
For mosaic lives in the sun none laze.
A blank canvas a blank slate,
Tabula rasa in comes a vulnerable state,
Lines of coherence they beg with a plate
Quills dance on scrolls not a moment late,
What enters when judgement knocks the gate?
Verbose cache brimmed the silver frames,
Back they stare the strokes and spaces,
Poised purposefully the question lasts,
A thorough conclusion discerned alas-
"Paintings are worth a thousand words
And poems are worth a thousand paintings."
Categories:
gradients, analogy, art, imagery, metaphor,
Form:
Rhyme
In Winter it's a new laid blanket of snow--
pristine, immaculate, innocent...holy.
Spring brings a softer air, at once
both fecund and perfumed, and
wildflowers leap into life, and trees
are reborn in gradients of green,
and life is temperate, gentle, fragile,
caught dangling between two brutes.
Summer feeds me: passion-hued
strawberries, fat blueberries, corn-
on-the-cob fit for kings and queens,
while fireflies dance and crickets sing
for our secret and quiet pleasure.
Now Autumn is different-- a season
to glory death and singe our unseen
immortal parts awake. The trees shed
their technicolor tears to lay a carpet
of sadness: by far the bravest season.
Categories:
gradients, allusion, beauty, imagery, nostalgia,
Form:
Free verse
Chilling with my computer
Skyping to myself,
Pretending that the computer
Talks back...so lets imagine:
I'm Plankton and i want the secret formula!
The gradients of success,
Too bad: guess that I don't know
All you need is a goal, love
And hard work,
Sponge bob knew better:
The man child, pan
So happy and full of life...
And so annoyed squid word is:
The mind as the heart thinks for itself
So misunderstood but the sponge-
Absorbs all, from sadness to pain;
Oh sandy: the irony of living in the dry lands
the desert of the ocean,
But for our dreams-
We see through the illusion!
The shine, the starfish:
As Patrick assists Him
From the bottomless pit,
Mr Crab's, the demanding and greedy ego
From Pearl the daughter-
To the penniless Work of the mind
To satisfy it's wants,
The customers: as the sponge delivers
The orders...the krabby patty!
Back to me: Plankton
The one eye fellow...
No more trying to steal-
The secret formula, I know now!
To see the full picture:
I gotta open my right eye;
And accept the people in my life:
Family and friends...Strangers too,
For growth we need that challenge,
But for love we unite ,so I
Use both of my eyes to see,
As I swim out of these waters!
Categories:
gradients, allegory, identity, image, life,
Form:
Imagism
As if a child should understand an adult’s muddle,
putrid oil slick puddle,
the dreadful pain we foist on wide-eyed offspring.
Robotic elders crush with rigid slabs of Portland censure whatever spark remains in those tiny rosebud cheeks before their prime.
Those innocents should never have to wrap their nascent minds around the wanton desecration of intertidal lakeland wetness gradients,
the callous douse of velvet purple algerita berries,
blighted by the stark timbre cloud forms
that recklessly pour bile on every genus.
The rug rats at our feet may never know the joys of sap-addicted sugar gliding nocturnal possums, whose acrobatic tree to tree mirror ball exploits mock Isaac Newton,
or the kinkajou of tail grip fame who flaunt their tan glow wooly fur coat in broad daylight,
or the dawn to dusk fennec fox, that doughty eagle owl and jackal dodger whose kissing cousin dens pockmark terracotta forests. But not alone in wider worlds are children being deprived.
A heartless milieu also asks our clutch and clan to dwell in
alloy girder mousetraps, those pale decor rat infested tumble downs gouged out by scrimp and scrape rust bucket caterpillars.
Beyond belief we tolerate the nick and hoist elevator,
that pressure cooker transit flight abduction of the harried wage slave parent,
those cotton garment dress code senseless
dragonfly stand-ins that hover in mid air.
There’s every chance we’ll leave our nursling’s ire to future bands of mutant stem cell rockers who are duty bound to sculpture rimshots meshed in suckling chimes,
when validating rawhide rattle chainsaw fret board anthems
at crowd mosher mud fests,
where rivers of apocalyptic visions burst the bank.
If only grown ups listened to that inner vocal quiver that we
may not yet have cast into plastic resin folly for the generations weaned in toxic smoke rooms,
we’d pollinate a luscious fairground acorn dotted garden with childhood zest its one and only buzzword.
A sweet treat gift with natural flavour pending,
eternal life for baby planet daisy chains of tender petal linkage,
who‘d finally experience pure clutter free environments,
an eco world that values new born thirst for natural realms
Categories:
gradients, care, caregiving, change, dedication,
Form:
Prose Poetry
From across the world
And against all odds
Their prayers were heard
By a Love-struck God.
He heard each's mirrored plea
For someone who brings out the best in me
A caring heart to fill my aching abyss
With passionate lips and Loving kiss.
Trapped and caged in their own unique ways
Yet their desired freedoms were exactly the same
In sweetest of dreams we meet, please remember my name
The mountains rejoiced as the rains swiftly came.
In a far flung corner of cyberspace
I Red your words, my heart did race
We're in the calm amid the eye of a storm
I gave her my heart, I know she'll keep it warm.
I got to know her through her verse
I fell in Love with her through her words
The many ways she teaches me
So many ways she reaches me.
Mutual captivation when our eyes first met
Loyal aspirations to nurture and protect
Such beauty as yours I've never beholden
I see our future gently unfolding.
Those yearning eyes that flutter
In seductive winks
Heart's a churning molten butter
Eye can't resist you, dare not blink.
Your eyes entrance me
my luck says "Chance me
And hold open your arms and heart"
Your loving smile cuts my worries in half.
Like a sun peaking over a mountaintops gradients
She shimmers with a warming inner radiance
With a beauty so deep
It could barely be reached.
She could have five eyes or no nose
And hardly any teeth
Her beauties not only out on show
It's surpassed by the tenderness underneath.
Everything she does never fails to amaze
With cinnamon shades and the highest of grades
I'm madly in Love with a crazy maniac
Maybe that can cure these star-crossed insomniacs
Categories:
gradients, love,
Form:
I sprung from fertile soil like a garden blossoming into a mosaic kaleidoscope of
vibrant colors
|that I no longer have the ability to see|
but I still feel the ghostly rose petals haunting my skin
~Heart hardened by the cold harsh bite of the wind~
my bones rattle as they echo as If they were fabricated from tattered tin
*Kissing me softly like morning dew on a Tulip only to wake in the silhouette of my snowglobe dream*
-That now seems all too strange to me
I simmer as my blood starts to boil-
Why am I so strange to me
Unfamiliarity in familiar features
Ghostly silhouettes of my parent's features
Here I lay writing as my all deserved place
As an abolished creature
Here I lay biting my own flesh just to bleed out a trace
Letting the emotion trickle down
my clammy skin as I submerge myself in the depth of Winter's icy cool touch
A cold thick glass window in the New Hampshire downpour fading into the grey skies
A distant memory blanketed in a monochrome gradients of nostalgia
These scars are the only thing that stays in this place
A gradient scale of grey
An alien feel of being far away
I long to be redeemed from the ultimate rejection
As I sit here and I compartmentalize my feelings section by section
I'll dissipate into the wind and search for answers in any direction
Anything to avoid the place I came from I see traces of in my reflection
Categories:
gradients, 3rd grade, addiction, dark,
Form:
Free verse
inexpressible longings
stirrings of breezes
tunes drifting on the currents, through my window
with the scent of the ionized nitrogen lighting air
and clouds, light and whispy, radient gradients of color playing between
oh, how i long to be alive again
to be alive some more
more life
always and ever, my cry
more life, more life
the music is overwhelming me
with its beauty and gravity
and chemical peace transmitted neurologic
blood currents
the pain and fear and horror of being
the promise and hope
that faith portends
my body, my flesh
craving, lusting
burning
this fire is ever present
the fire of the spirit
is ever present
longing, begging, screaming
life
more life
Categories:
gradients, angst, life, longing, lust,
Form:
Free verse
clouded omens across code
the objective fact of the atmosphere here
starves even the most modest
ambitions of fish outside their home waters
journey of yearning mundane
day-glow gradients of green
scales gasping
toward the summit
regret etched in the eyeball
a penumbra casting its subtle shadow
lips rest in swags of exhausted lassitude
beleaguered
by their own bland arguments
against the reality
hung above a feckless mountainside face up
blind to the gallows scaffold
too much air in the jagged aspiration
of escape
the breathless canvas of a departing day
Categories:
gradients, animal, betrayal, death, extended
Form:
Suzette Prime