Best Nadir Poems
Sometimes, reflections from my mirror,
recall when I slumbered at nature's nadir,
as naysayers whispered in whiskey breaths.
Bewildered, I wandered in the wilderness,
until the mercy of verse reversed the curse.
Poetry you've always been the legacy of my heritage,
a shimmering nimbus, where my words reside by petals,
but if this was my last poem,
it would be the death of an alchemist's magic.
There would be no potion to persecute my pain,
bleeding ink of wounds would have no quill mistress.
Yet, I yearn to leave evidence of my existence,
but my narration is not as lucid as
black pigment upon white pages,
because poetic colours have their own stories.
I'm tired from hiding behind idioms,
where metaphors drip in liquid lies,
veiled within tracing lines of heartbreak.
Whilst sleeping under cherry blossom trees,
I look back upon my life wondering
what purpose summons us,
as I've lost all faith in strange dreams coming true.
I've grown up surrounded by the scent of sorrow,
forsaken in seasonal spheres of fragility,
masticating upon mourning morsels,
adorning garlands of grief soaked in rainfall,
plundering like the tears of Earth,
but even when confusion composed its cruelty,
I fought back to rise, each time I fell.
There has always been pressure
from the heavyweight of darkness,
where I screamed songs of desperation,
as lamenting lyrics resembled emotions of a falling star.
When the breeze blew away the confetti of my stardust,
my heart remained like unblossomed florets -
so I became my own poetic gardener
and planted my own blooms.
Sins of humanity plague me into a withering leaf,
turning invisible, softly settling in sinister silence.
I search for a Godforsaken garden,
where my hands can heal fruitless soil.
Poetry, nobody feels like you,
yet, it's you I sacrifice, before my heart clasps,
as the soul sinks in ideologies of faith and fate.
I can't justify shadows with excuses from expression,
I'm letting go of bitter reflections from photographs.
as it's time to heal the scars from my bloody hands.
Wishing to remain quenched, but drenched in love,
so fate can prepare a grave for my sorrows.
I can't waste time wondering if I'll be remembered,
so, I wave goodbye, floating away like a feather,
executing the articulation of my senses.
When the smoky quartz sun
slumbers into a cold winter,
we see the aftermath of a garnet twilight,
it is then, we find rose stars
that refuse to abandon us in shivering solitude,
and beneath snake-skinned skylines of nadir,
we learn to appreciate
the truest colors of nature……
Hope is but a hollow rope,
hanging loose on empty lies~
splattered across eclipsed skies,
and this aching heart sighs,
singing to the fallen flowers,
fading into depths of
black-magic silence,
for peace is a distant memory,
frozen within pixelated Polaroids
of poignant pain.
I remember the night
I was unplugged and strangled
in toxic tremors,
slipping into fatigued negligence,
too tired of fighting a
battle with no prudence,
but no one hears the unspoken,
amidst the tears that
croon in tragic tunes.
Now my mind is a muted mausoleum;
weathered and withdrawn,
impregnated with deceased dreams~
and remnants embalmed in poison ivy.
Yet diabolical thoughts
keep whirling
through funeral chaos,
to cloak my conscience in
a glass casket of sleepless uncertainties,
smothering the last breath I held.
I do not seek an orchard
blooming with butterfly orchids
and pristine pansies,
yet, somehow, I am the wrinkled
willow~
awaiting dancing rays
of diamond twilight.
Perhaps this is how a poet grieves,
writing epitaphs with
bloodstained ink,
when familiar faces are
clothed in ivory farewells,
to rest amongst the forgotten,
away from the cruelty that creeps.
I know not the synonyms for healing,
the poems I’ve woven beneath
starry skies now flow undone,
and I am burning,
in my crippling confusion,
pondering why the sun is now
a curse in disguise,
why do I long to walk
through forests of ruins,
where the mauve moon was,
when insomniac
instruments of galaxies
strummed broken strings
of feathered fate.
So take this poem, weave these words
it into the final line
of tasteless satires,
streaming in the
rhythm of zestless zenith,
for I have no desire to
pretend and play,
or swirl and sway
when all I knew now is a
melancholic mystery untold.
So listen to the rhapsody of tears~
I am a frazzled firefly,
eloquently tangled in the
ruthless roots of jinxed junipers.
Ripples of pain weave circles round her.
memories sad and stark crucify her.
at night she encounters mindless phantoms
vampires who come to suck her blood,
and tear her flesh.
She seeks a shelter where she could fall asleep,
breathing dark secrets into her crumpled pillow.
when questions rise from all corners,
putting her into a dreadful quandary,
she longs to hide, in the remote corners of self.
Her pain comes in spasms as she realizes,
she is being caught up in a snare,
and has made herself prisoner within a locked cage,
from which she can’t escape.
why did she allow the world to leave holes in her soul?
When such thoughts of remorse come to plague her,
her despair pushes her down to the nadir.
deep melancholy bruises her soul from within.
Can she now wash clean in her own tears?
In a quickly darkening world,
she looks for a candle flame,
to make her ashen heart once more aflame.
when torn with the whiplash of life,
she longs for a balm to kiss away,
the sting of her reeking wounds.
From the throes of guilt and sin,
she resolves to walk into the calm,
into the serenity of a day’s end.
She decides never again to be thrown
and trampled, under the hooves of raging beasts,
not to be a toy fit for heartless rogues,
no more to be bound by the chains of her past,
and to become a new creation, a phoenix rising!
I wandered round the lonely graveyard.
The few mourners did not bother to look at me.
I ought to know the paths so well
Ah there it was, unembellished as I had left it.
Silence reigned everywhere, except for some bugs
I began to wonder what I was doing there.
Then a small group of mourners appeared.
Four bored men carried a coffin, plain as can be.
The burial took very little time to carry out.
A priest mumbled a few prayers and all left.
Except for a woman all dressed in ebony black.
She shed no tears nor mumbled any prayer.
And then she left without one glace at me.
There on the slab someone left a picture frame.
Curiosity got the better of me and soon I saw
It was a picture of me. The slab opened
And I just entered my place inside and all was calm.
Fiction, just a ghost story
Two full cups of wine
even before we dine
Two more later, raised in song
What could go wrong ~
by midnight’s gong*
__________________________
*All food and drink must be con-
sumed by the middle of the
night... A 'Seder' is the order
of the ritualized ceremony of
Passover night.
The worst nadir in my young years
that brings me still to shed sad tears;
while I was pregnant- months to wait-
September, nineteen fifty-eight.
My new friend's child was six weeks old,
and for a while, left me to hold
and watch her for an hour or two
while she ran errands that were due.
I fed and rocked her sound to sleep;
with love, my arms around her keep.
When Mom returned, she quickly went;
no signs of heartache- felt or sent.
Come morning, we woke from a scream-
and thought perhaps, Mom had a dream!
But no! Such horror took our breath!
Her baby passed- classed as crib death!
I could not comfort my dear friend;
her miracle came to an end.
Just like myself, so filled with mirth-
she'd waited for the thrill of birth.
Now, sixty-five years since that day-
this hurt within won't go away.
Though from that base, we all did part-
still feel my friend's pain in my heart.
Neither there’s zenith nor nadir of the soul
Death is a fathomless pit, a dead-end--
Lo, the spirit wilts when death takes its toll
No one's meant to know what’s up the bend.
Live life zealously; it’s an absolute end,
There’s no afterlife and no heaven,
Past death, who cares where I’m send
If it’s hell for me, let it so be my haven.
Ha, I envy them the most that dwell
where ignorance and indifference reign,
They desire no heaven, they fear no hell--
Abode of eternal bliss, pit of endless pain.
Open wide the eye of your mind
You’ll see the universe it holds
and eons a wandering soul binds
as it wraps the eternal time in its folds.
Stranger yet are the prospects of life,
Does destiny foretells our fate
or we shape it by our toil and strife?
Alas, no one can ever firmly state.
The bittersweet fruits of our labor
Here and now in time we must bear,
Of this I am more certain than ever—
A pumpkin seed yields not a pear.
~Contest: "Z" (Zenith)
~Sponsor: Constance La France.
The sky was streaking in the most
amazing blazing hearten colors.
I thought that I was impregnable
from the outside, quite challenging,
competitive world it commands.
Behind my desk I sit in my study.
The sun casts shadows through
the large windows, upon the large
exposed darkened room.
Piles of unopened bills spread out
I've ignored, rustled to open.
Stifled, I couldn't stop looking
at a letter, wishing it would
disappear, I just had read.
It's the banks final
repossession notice.
Feeling I was in prison.
Determined struggles of energy
to be rescued.
As many hours I put in working
to make everything go right
But, it was just not enough.
Opportunities of offers had open up,
but I knew it wasn't going to be enough.
Finding myself reaching the nadir of my
despair, I knew now my emotions
were hard to conceal.
Reflecting back in the beginning
I thought it would be easy, I was mistaken.
Whispering a small prayer,
"Lord, if it is your will; please help guide
me in this crushing storm I'm in
and bring the calm of the waves embrace."
He had a house and money he could spend.
But that was not enough; he wanted more.
He met a person posing as a friend,
and she could see that greed was at his core.
She flattered him. His mentor she became.
She got him to invest all that he had.
Too gullible was he to guess her game.
He sobs with grief now, feeling ever sad.
He took out loans and put himself in debt
to feed his need to be a wealthy guy.
He’ll lose his house and possibly his wife
here now at the lowest point of his life.
Sleep escaped,
Without a farewell,
She had not the grace
To aspire my light,
She proved to be darker
Than her gaze,
Glaring, glowering,
Glowing with madness,
Bipolar’s destroyer – two sides of the coin
Despair, dread, doubt – depression
Delight, elation, wired – manic
Stages of dark and light,
Day and night,
A breath, a prayer, a silence
Flooded with fire –
Cold, brilliant desire….
Where she kindles a flame,
A feeling, a flavor
Peppered with light,
But pouring out – fight or flight,
Willing the spirit to mute
What is a glorious ruse.
Nadir deceptions in the form
Of acceptance, darkness and light,
Fading into day, then night,
Manic depression – bipolar like
The questions
That come to life
When there is no prescription,
Killing the sparklers
Within my mind, within my brain
Where bipolar is made
From two pieces of a maze,
A labyrinth who prays,
For God’s healing touch,
His endless grace,
Overflowing my cup, bringing
The chance to wake up
From the sleeplessness that pursues
Enemy of His truth,
Insomnia, the ruse!
Born into a landscape,
Not quite littered with landmines,
But the occasional hole -
Holes that seem inescapable,
Like quicksand -
When I fall, I just keep falling.
Where is the bottom, the nadir?
It's impossible to know.
It's impossible to get out,
Like being captured in a whirlpool,
My only direction is in and down.
Like a lost spider in a toilet bowl
When it's flushed.
A vicious cycle -
The only direction is down and in.
I live in fear of these holes.
Above ground,
I find friends and pleasures,
Challenges and detractors,
But nothing I can't handle.
Once I fall in,
And approach the vortex,
I'm hopeless.
There is no pleasure.
My friends don't understand.
There is no way out.
There is no bottom.
I can only fall -
In and down.
Yet, I'm living proof
That one can escape.
Perhaps, I began in a kind of vicious cycle
A cycle of anger,
A cycle of hate.
Cycles upon cycles,
Round and round,
With no escape.
Tit for tat,
It seems such cycles
Can only deepen.
But, somehow, I got out.
It took time.
Like George Harrison said,
"All things must pass".
A few times, I fell in love.
It was like being pulled into a vortex,
Without choice.
My heart was broken.
Somehow, I got out.
It took time.
All things must pass.
Once, suddenly,
My health was dealt a blow,
Resulting in physical pain,
Sending me,
Down, down, down.
I thought I could never get out.
I still have the health problem,
But I'm out of the hole.
It took time.
All things must pass.
Once, suddenly,
I lost my girlfriend.
I lost my job.
I lost my house.
I lost my family.
The ground under me was removed,
I found myself with strangers
on Christmas day.
Even there, I was unwelcome.
And I fell down, down, down.
But I'm out of the hole.
It took time.
All Things Must pass.
I live in fear of these holes,
And I think I'm pretty good at avoiding them,
But there is no guarantee,
And I never know
When I will fall
down, down, down.
I'm sure many people
Have likewise fallen deep
Into seemingly hopeless
vicious cyclic whirlpools
Of despair.
I wonder,
If even whole societies,
Can suffer
Vicious cycles,
Tit for tat,
Of of hate, hopelessness, ignorance,
And despair,
And, if so,
One day, this too,
Shall pass.
Life faces two extremes, acme and nadir,
When we ascend to acme, we glow in its glory,
Self-confidence grows, sometimes ego too,
Seldom we reach out to people in need.
When we are down to the nadir point in life,
There is no hope, no sight of light in tunnel,
No one to cry on shoulders, no one to give a helping hand,
But the self-esteem comes in, hopes rise from ashes like phoenix.
We will face these phases in our lives,
Optimism extends hands to both phases of life,
Pessimistic thoughts will put you down,
Sometimes, looking for guidance from God helps us too.
Tabled all my thoughts to keep them empty
Walked alone to make the voices die
Never thought pebbles would make waves that crested over all the sunlight
and brought my hopes down with the colors of the sky
Nothing there to balance what is spinning
I cannot let the phantoms gain control
My pulse quickens as the chaos starts to envelope all the silence
Can't make the pieces come together as a whole
zenith
maximum, highest
attaining, climbing, reaching
peak, acme, ascendant, pessimism
descending, plunging, sinking
lowest, minimum
nadir
Date created: 05/16/2021
A fable of worth weaves a fair tale,
that wealth possesses and not possessed.
A quest to feign means forges a trail
long jaded by the marks they unveil.
Though blind seeker's minds a treasured chest.
The hope for glory gloats jealousy,
the more the merrier, too cliche,
counting amounts to a specialty
until idle growth reels entropy.
Insignificant be, sensed doomsday.
While the moment ill-timed takes pleasure
as imbalance shortchanged one's fortune.
Debt collectors knock at their leisure
of court rulings, list your worth's measure.
It is beyond the call of margin.
Though street level, not truly gutter,
err midst a fool lacks austerity.
Low-life address as a deal cutter
a debt paid in full hangs aflutter.
A world minus dreamt prosperity.