Best Palimpsest Poems
Beneath the graffiti littered by the years
and the fatigue signed by a thousand cares
Through the scratchings of so many tears
that were summoned or caught you unawares
Under the mottles by done days quarried
and the shadows writ by a jealous sun
where disappointments linger unburied
and age is making its relentless run
My tired eyes can still trace your first face
by the thievery of time irreducible
Written: August 05, 2025, for contest Marathon Mile 3 Poetry Contest / Sponsor- Mark Toney
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As it rises shakily, the aurora radiates,
Shore gets battered by periwinkle waves.
Scarce alabaster turns to an ebonized sheen.
A sacred, somber, and katabatic sorrow.
A mild ache dances around joyfully,
As kindred souls merge in a forlorn embrace.
And halcyon as paradisal opiate utopia
It is as vast as the unclaimed love.
Your skim was both ethereal and brief,
It hinders my span of lethargic wandering.
Chest pain at every peak: a fipple passion,
Gossamer scenes that wish to last forever.
We gamboled beneath auric heavens,
Effusive murmurs in dulcet hush.
Stringent crave twirled in tricky loops,
A mental usufructuary, weak and eternal.
The limb caresses a vulnerable, airy speck,
An ambrosian ache in a weary world—
Meticulous truths submerged in the deluge,
A shredded hope, a shriveled flame.
Love is a chimera—a ripple on a palimpsest.
Crestfallen spume claws the coast calyx.
Then resiles, bedraggled, into amorphous dusk.
Amort embrace, undone, beshrewed by time.
Now, balmily, you are my nepenthe,
A calix once held—an ambivalent ache.
And I, a desperate-looking romantic,
Forever ephemeral, forever asunder.
Writing upon the scroll,
year after year
day after day
the monk lives for the painted work
He prays and draws
He prays and writes
Eloquent brushstrokes
fall like soldiers into place.
Who can say that
not an inch beneath them
lies an army of letters
too vulgar for the eye to see
too forbidden for the soul to taste.
Lost in his set serenity, the monk
takes no heed of the bewailing clamour
the ships, the heathen helmets and the crowd.
Lost in his world he covers
the threatening set of words,
ignoring that in seconds
he'll be a hidden palimpsest
a human palimpsest
beneath
a crust of curdled blood.
As you fade into the distance of my memory
I can't help but feel desire that this be so lovely a thought
That even in despair is love
If only thought could be enough
But tragedy cannot suffice
Desire that I realize
In actuality I see before me all the thoughts I thought so tragic
That I meant them utmost, fully but to be the memory of love only imagine
Can you feel the phantoms
Flying through the starlit skies
Cleaving images in twain
Can you feel all these
Dichotomies again
Rain, wash down around me
All the emptiness I see surrounding
Fill the wishing well of sorrow
Wash away
Wash away
Drown desire
Fulfill the sameness of these empty days
I can't help but feel
I can't help but see
I just want to wash away
To crucify the dream that lies in starlit skies, in empty eyes
In all that I can't realize
Is my demise to be a false dichotomy
Oh see me here deny the tears and fears of empty years of sorrow
Bent upon hopes of tomorrow
Here I kneel now
Washed away into the sea
Of all that I can never be
Words undone
Scribe me
A Palimpsest
I'm slowly becoming a ghost
Speaking softly and never getting to finish a thought
Fading into shadows and doubt
And memories recalled as non stories
It wasnt always like this
I was the one with the most
Time, Circumstance, loss and defeat have taken toll and the bell rings for the end of another round
A Palimpsest. Written on parchment thin as the skin around an old man's eyes
That's my corrupted compendium, the tragic game show I host
I'm slowly becoming a ghost
I made a painting of a happy little house
On a happy little hill
Under a clear azure sky
And the sun was cheerful and bright
Then I covered it with black
Then I splashed it with gray
Then I let crimson drip onto it
Then I took a knife and stabbed it over and over
Then I tore it apart
Then I burned it
Then I spat on the ashes
Then I howled in rage
Then I curled up into a ball and cried
It was past midnight
in my college bed
above the shuttered café—
the whole town in a hush
so complete I could hear
my own breath and quiet it,
when a crystalline voice
floated in through the dark
like something half-remembered
from an unfinished dream.
Amazing Grace,
sung soft and distant,
as if the night had opened
just wide enough
for me to hear it
and I ached for something nameless
which I longed to touch but couldn’t hold.
Years later, in another town,
I wandered into a church—
restlessly, not knowing why,
and I sat, not expecting
anything at all.
But when the hymn began—
Amazing Grace— again—
it rose around me
like something I’d carried for years
without knowing,
and everything in me
broke gently open.
I had to bite my lip
to keep from sobbing—
not from sorrow,
but because some long-closed gate
swung quietly wide
and I found myself
on the other side.