Best Mawkish Poems
I don't need mawkish photographs to see
the drowning rowboat tethered to the dock,
a withered seahorse clinging to debris
as umber water seeps through feeble caulk.
The cord grass will have grown up through the planks
to marry splinters teeming on the pier,
putrescent pillars tilted by the banks;
a pallid corpse beside the marsh's bier.
Those summers when we sailed through brackish mist
have long since gone the way of floating sculls
that languish in the asters to be kissed
by empty oarlocks perched atop their hulls.
Your August ghost still flounders on the fen
then sinks beneath in nightmares now as then.
Categories:
mawkish, death, imagery, metaphor,
Form:
Sonnet
How long will this dreary night go on
Seems years since the dawn of morn
Why does anxiety keep me awake
What is this burden I cannot shake
Heartbeats too fast within my breast
Too quickly to grant needed rest
There's no moon above to cast light
This crepuscule gives birth to fright
I smell the wax of candles burning
but something keeps me from turning
If this be a dream, I pray, let me wake
for I've a thirst and hunger to slake
My eyes are open, and yet I cannot see
the willow outside; my weeping tree
"Fear not," I warn myself in voice aloud
the moon must be cloaked by a cloud
I call out for Davinia, in angst and fear
but my dear wife is not sleeping near
I long to glimpse morning rays of sun
Harried for never-ending night to be done
Only sleep could bring a measure of peace
and from shadowed night to have release
but I seen to be shackled to the beast
who fights the dawn's rising in the East
Of going insane, I fast approach the brim
tortured by thoughts, dark, dank and grim
Whispers I hear, mawkish murmurs dim,
"What will become of Davinia without him"
Who speaks of me in grammar, past tense
Someone who's lost all sentience and sense
Fragrant air 'round me grows warm and dense
Could that redolent odor be flowered scents
A memory haunts my sleep deprived brain
It's of a brutal nature, and cold falling rain
An act of violence, like the angry sin of Cain
A man's life taken; from a dagger he was slain
Motionless in rest, but not on my feathered bed
This unnerving moment is one I most dread
In a sepulcher, on a satin pillow, rests my head
In eternal darkness am I to dwell, among the dead
Categories:
mawkish, dark, sleep,
Form:
Rhyme
You Fall ...
the ground of your reality dissolves in this
stream of distraction, this inconvenient passion
the mawkish pop music you mock
is now singing your story, as
your thoughts, your breath, your blood
all consumed by his eyes, his voice, his words
all the moments of his notice of you
painting your gray paper with extrinsic purple
and lavish green, filling your thirsty cup
with intoxicating attention, until time
is measured only by your meetings
You Stall...
hitting the invisible, inimical wall
penalized and ostracized
for presuming the right to ask why
for waking from complicit worship
for retaking your will and your mind
for staining his golden idol
with faith of the atheist
You Call...
for all his proud proclamations
he is a needy, greedy child
your adoration is his sun
your life force he feasts on
disenchantment is your release
from the prison of submission
his hollow heart, his churlish charm
all merely a false alarm-
9/10/18
Categories:
mawkish, love hurts, pain, recovery
Form:
Free verse
A bird sings.. mawkish
Sings and dances smooth
She... by doing so
has naturally
forgotten her world.
Soars high upwards
aims to touch moon
but sadly can't..
falls back in nest
the bird is
unable
to achieve
her dreams..
being
"leashed".
15-5-2020
~DEEPA~
Placed as Honorable Mention in the Contest.
Note1:*Diminished Hexaverse Poetry Contest*
Sponsor:Emile Pinet
Placed as Honorable Mention in the Contest.
Note 2:STRAND no 770 any theme any form'
Poetry Contest sponsored by Brian Strand.
Categories:
mawkish, bird, dark, imagery,
Form:
Diminished Hexaverse
I sit with sullen memories,
alone on an amber shore.
A balmy breeze ruffles my hair
as I recall a night of wildling winds
that took you away, my love.
It violently ripped us apart,
plunging a dagger into my heart
as if Romeo's hand impaled it there,
leaving it bleeding in mistaken err.
Once, we bore genuine feelings
that youthful passion explores...
dancing in moonlight's golden glow.
But too soon you were gone,
leaving me grieving and forlorn.
Melancholy misery darkened the sky
and brought tears to doleful eyes.
Now, my weary mind turns back the night
to when my world was turned upside down,
ending in ashes and embers that took flight.
I remember waking early one morning,
as a child, singing a wishful song,
"Daisy, Daisy, growing in the meadow,
please tell me true. Will I fall in love?"
Never given thought to the hellish heartbreak
only death could cause, or the lingering need
I still feel to hold you in my arms again.
Memories take me to a dismal place
filled with shadows that haunt my dreams.
Only on waking can I catch my breath
to stop my screams and tears of despair,
the mawkish mourning over your death.
I bare my heart's bitter bereavement
with pangs of loss each time I recall
our youthful days of passion
when once we loved and had it all...
before wildling winds took you away.
Categories:
mawkish, death, lost love,
Form:
Rhyme
28 March 2010
Glutinous Rice Cake
Just perfect to prepare on special occasion
Where bonding represents this kind of dessert
A tradition that passed through generation
Cooking this food is always a pert
Experienced to cook a mawkish sticky rice
Wherein body language is in rhythm with stirring
Endure the hardship of stirring using ladle as a device
Each family member in alternately stirring to add a zing
Cook sticky rice with the pandan leaves
Mixing coconut milk and brown sugar in a hot caldron
Stir the mixture of rice and coconut milk until it cleave
Share eating a sticky rice cake with the family with blessing the whole year round
Categories:
mawkish, family,
Form:
Rhyme
When equanimity falls to the wayside
And the eyes empirically survey the hillside,
It’s Einstein’s time that I can’t bide,
Mawkish mental masturbation adroitly I chide,
Thy self,
Then my discreet self in its inchoate knowledge of reality,
Like the mass of humanity
Dissembling about Nature,
And Nature in turn disassembles matter, that we build up and think
Matters,
Your death is no grand spectacle even if it seems to be,
wrought cosmologies wield fantastical narratives of eternity,
Even when my hero Nietzsche in his tautology: Amor Fati unfolds itself like origami into eternal recurrence
Don’t get any ideas about permanence.
Take an uncompromising acceptance of reality, isn’t that just akin to Buddhist philosophy?
As discreet markings form abstract symbols of meaning in letters that form alphabets, that form words, that form sentences, that form phrases that compose ideology to compel us and histories, that inform us of existence, don’t get too cozy with them as they have a way of presenting like the Horizon,
The horizon, you know is just an illusion.
I do not subscribe to Pascal’s wager, Dawkins showed me the light,
I do not matter much, but no matter, as surely as I exist nothing is more precious.
All religious cosmologies aside, miraculous evocative entertainments beguiling distractions,
"Cogito ergo sum" Descartes comforting statement.
You bring the inside out,
this doubting mind can be certain of existence, by our certain doubt.
Categories:
mawkish, philosophy,
Form:
Free verse
Like a mourning dove, my lament is spilled
I cry in grief as shadowed night grows cold
Spirit crushed from love's promise, unfulfilled
Burdensome sorrows in my heart unfold
Succumbed by tears, I piteously weep
In sullen thoughts and restless sleep, I dwell
'cross the skies, Luna flies in lambent sweep
With consoling hope, or my tolling knell?
On winds of change, I'd soar to zenith height
With wings fanned in poetic volition
Never again fearing a mawkish night
No room for gloom, nor fear of perdition
My eyes long for benevolence anew
Where the world is adorned in hues of blue
11~17~2020
Winds of Change
Sponsor: John Hamilton
Categories:
mawkish, loneliness,
Form:
Sonnet
There is a method in your madness,
A vain and venal nature,
You possess and masquerade.
I wish you were a mere memory,
Not the vast, vertigo inducing
Sentiment, which mesmerizes me,
Which murders me.
Monsters, both of us, darling,
Vulnerable and villainous,
Muddling each other's feelings, thoughts.
What my mawkish heart could not bear,
Was your vice,
The way you misled me,
Matching the pain others had inflicted.
Marred by this,
I have lost my vivacity,
Vitiated by your change of mind.
Categories:
mawkish, crush, cry, feelings, longing,
Form:
Free verse
Wish You Were Here
The hay bales golden, crimsons and ochre sere leaves fallen-- the caw of the Jackdaw
There was no Nightmare until after the fall, painted and swooned like a Fuseli
the clouds float in staccato and layered rich tones: vibrato from sparrows joins the chorus
the suffering alluring woman frail calling on Nature, who chides the mawkish
yet still holds in her in Her own way,
as she ambles and thinks of loves’ long ago
sadness your becoming frailty; weakness a handmaiden, its alluring on you
and there is a mourning call from the maw of the jackdaw
and the skies go crimson, deep ambers until a now purplish blue
and the clouds become negatives as rotation continue-- I see the first star
appear and think of all the females who thought love’s true
“Boot in the face, the brute. brute heart of a brute like you” said Plath
Tolstoy’s males prevail, the amative women frail, and frailty is true
The tender heart a pulpy thing is simply the mind at war
And Nature now turned to dusky twilight transforms her as before
Categories:
mawkish, lost love,
Form:
Acrostic
I.
Ode the thrill of a tango
curled in clutches sleek
Elegance, a prerequisite
Add on a spun euphoria
Nimble is a turgid swoon!
Arms conduct to the aria
New skin, feels no tocsin
It's deeply in a you and i
Glazed, to the tightening
and a strangling organza
Necked into a suffocation
So go the tunnel deaths…
(1/27/2021: '02 Silverton MY; Alameda ...contest theme was murder in the tunnel)
II.
Ornately, I gild over my days a’ la fresco
Carefully, I wield molten gold, enigmatic
Elaborate must these life undulations be
as metallic sheen screens all insipid aura
New cantankerous crack? Just weld upon
and smooth the jagged with flowing flora
Now the feckless plaster sparkles golden
I spurn mawkish, like the silvered literati
glossing my craven, to caverns gleaming
Aurum weaves, in its narcissistic miasma
Nothing malodorous in self-love / loathin’
So imperious my bombastic art, it glazes!
(8.17.21 Redone at Willow Berm and DBW; theme was Craig’s Broken contest relating to Kintsugi)
Categories:
mawkish, addiction,
Form:
Ode
I was crushed and miserable from love unfulfilled
Like a mourning dove whose blood had been spilled
I cried in deep lament as shadowed night grew cold
Sorrow burgeoned my heart with miseries untold
Overwhelmed with fear, l fell to somberly weeping
Wisps of silver moonlight crossed the sky, sweeping
It was a pale light in darkness; my hopes were felled
On the edge of oblivion with sullen thoughts, I dwelled
My eyes tormented, I searched for benevolence anew
How I longed to take flight, trading grey skies for blue
In need of faith and courage instead of dismal dread
I yearned for paradise where happiness is daily bread
I longed to soar among shining stars at great height
No longer bemused and alone on such a mawkish night
I wished for wings so I could soar with poetic volition
Without fetters keeping me tied to melancholy perdition
May 15, 2023
Couplet Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Sotto Poet
Categories:
mawkish, lost love, sorrow,
Form:
Couplet
Villanelle : Teach not a dog how not to bark
(This dog the mawkish villanelle baulks)
Teach not a dog how not to bark
Dogs bark for a lark in the dark
When Masters mawkish dreams embark
Do dogs bark to ape human talk
Or wake Masters to take side-walk
Teach not a dog how not to bark
Each dog howls up some Jack’s Bean Stalk
For the wolf in the dog must stalk
When Masters mawkish dreams embark
Do dogs bark to make the dingo baulk
At some sick Master’s leash-end talk
Teach not a dog how not to bark
Each dog lifts its leg at some bark
Don’t preachers too leak after dark
When Masters mawkish dreams embark
Every dog knows it must bark
Every dog knows its own bark
Teach not a dog how not to bark
When Masters mawkish dreams embark
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2015
Categories:
mawkish, freedom, poems, poetry,
Form:
Villanelle
Villanelle: Who would put us on this blue-green hot-cold earth
Who would put us on this blue-green hot-cold earth
Love us as much as we whose steps in vain grace
Why make us defile the holy womb of birth
Who wouldn’t find us such a mawkish source of mirth
Our entry into world blessed with slime on face
Who would put us on this blue-green hot-cold earth
Should not some other means have been found for birth
Than the bang-bang thrust in lice filthy disgrace
Why make us defile the holy womb of birth
That pleasure be sought in and around the girth
And to make things worse drag down the beauteous face
Who would put us on this blue-green hot-cold earth
Unless the lesson’s to rise above and loath
The fiend in thirsty loins contumacious
Why make us defile the holy womb of birth
Could our true fate be to disown very earth
Not knowing why we came in the first place
Who would put us on this blue-green hot-cold earth
Why make us defile the holy womb of birth
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2015
Categories:
mawkish, allegory, birth, sexy, woman,
Form:
Villanelle
Amidst the fields of plenteous
they sat in empty
with every meal starvation stalked
While on the land sunlight poured to copious
so to drink the rain they called it enemy
and famished hearts were born in every fruit
And so upon this grand abundance wrought
the very skeleton of their iniquity
the gnawing hunger of the populace
For now they harvest all to naught
and curse the earth for inadequacy
and plunder thirst for the sake of piteous
Amidst the fields of plenteous
they sit in empty
and every meal walked with gluttony
To paradise they crawled inglorious
to name their faith in fear of plenty
shall starve to death in mawkish lot
While on the land waters flow voluminous
so to drink the sun they called it enemy
and famished seeds are born in every fruit
Categories:
mawkish, society,
Form:
Free verse