Best Papery Poems
A field afire
papery petals glow like ruby votive candles
a collection of cupped solar flames
vowed to shine despite the dew before dawn
evaporating any doubt the sun would rise
the mist would lift
consoling one in darkness
Rising up where wildflowers past have fallen
victim to soil fallow and shallow
your Spring growth resurrects my hope
as your resurgent blooms stretch to the heavens
I awaken thawed from the frost of loss
regenerated by dreams
of undying love sacrifice and joy
O poppy blood red
vast your bed a symbol of life and death
and imagination.. you inspire me with your irony
your roots belie a feathery foliage
anchored though airy
light and looking like you might take flight
but spirited blossoms stand an army of angels
earthbound and blushing
My breath stops when I gaze upon you — yet
when I walk among your thronging whorls
grazed by your grace
my chest rises and falls
my bloodstream set ablaze
by the grandeur of your inner light
my heart rejoices with the voices of breezes
aswirl with a swish through your scarlet banners of peace
We share a savor for new-day chardonnay skies
tender the warm tinge before summer’s singe
rhythmic air moves us with singsong sighs
a swaying dance of sepaled celebrants
with nary a fresh bud trod upon
crimson and sunrise spirit and flesh
raising palms and psalms in thanks and praise
festive in rebirth and remembrance
where tears fall not as rain but as
c o n f e t t i
as my heart carries the bouquet of your immortal beauty
like a bride on her May wedding day
Susan Ashley
March 11, 2022
*Dedicated to my father who gently passed on June 10, 2021.
You are loved and missed dearly, dad
~ First Place ~
Premiere Contest: Spring Showers or Spring Flowers
Sponsor: Regina McIntosh
*nary: not, or not any
(Image: Glow with pride: Express.co.uk)
Silver haired, the year
rests in the field.
Crows gather
on the sycamore bones.
The day is like glass.
Winter lurks
in the shadows.
In brittle glades,
papery pods protect
the last seeds.
Spiky coneflowers stand tall;
the goldfinches had their harvest.
Everywhere signs
of a cycle
fulfilled.
December 24, 2017
Oh! How I despise dawn’s blushing optimism
and dried hydrangea blooms sepia skinned and papery thin.
Humdrum hands beat doldrums drum.
Why won’t the summer solstice light this darkness?
A gnawing hollow where my heart should be.
Where cinder clouds float in negative space
memories collect like nesting sparrows beneath eaves.
I stray, a waif lost with my armful of loss.
Your death did steal my breath and heartbeat like a thief
while October’s wind trembled aspens like harp strings.
(Ten Poem Titles)
The Corruption Of My Lust For Life
Autumn Side Of September
Mundane Matters Of Mortals
Theft Of My Will To Survive
In Woes And Throes Of Sorrow
A Vanilla Dove
Escape Of The Bluesman’s Song
The Sham Of My Humanity
Death Is The Bane Of My Existence
The Shedding Trees Of Autumn
Snow draped folds like loose Cashmere curtains cover the evergreen boughs
pining for the lengthening days of each succeeding sunrise,
reticent to see the cold of night fall once again on the lonely landscape.
In this fallow world of darkness quiet is the norm, hushed silence,
nothingness, invading the shadows that fall ominously across the reaching branches
giving a sense of preternatural sleep to each living creature, each plant,
inhabiting the frigid winter's lonely, desolate abode.
Surreptitiously, the awakening begins, slowly and without notice,
Cyclamen hidden deep in the forest break free from their frozen bed of bounteous soil
oblivious to the naked dreaming deciduous trees that surround them.
Malaise broken, they reach their softly painted petals to the warmth of the sun
in perfect unison dancing the Danse Macabre to remind winter of its inevitable demise.
Narcissus will soon send forth his papery white blossoms to mock the
glow of the radiant gleen of the melting frost.
Summer still distantly drowsing cares not for the struggle of life born
out on frozen winter days and Autumn is but a memory now glowering in its
ostentatious robes of leafy brilliance; though, the
nor'easter may yet blow, just look and you'll see the signs, Spring is coming soon.
03/23/17
Bleak winter Melbourne morning,
a cold wind coming in
from across the Bay
and blowing down the street,
past the Esplanade Cafe
with the smell of coffee
and warm air spilling out
from an open door.
I stop, look at the cake
and pastry display through
the window, the basket
of freshly baked croissants,
Danish pastries topped with
strawberries and apricots
and glazed with syrup.
A cloud of steam
from the espresso machine
adds a touch of the surreal.
Anticipation moistens my mouth
on the sight of French vanilla
slices plump with custard
and cream, muffins erupting
from their papery patties,
Portuguese tarts, thick slices
of carrot cake topped
with icing. I savor each
with an imaginative bite
and decide my treat…
then groan. I've left my wallet
at home.
( for Deb M )
Cruising southwards to LA from Sac
a midnight filled with songs ‘n Luna,
light-etching hills in a black infernal…
It was a leviathan’s back on which I
felt the tires unrolling a chilled grief ~
Owlish-full, a hypnotic moon, ‘n Dido
reminiscing tunefully about surrender
negating white flags and loves forlorn...
Inside the eye, a wispy face smiled hi
and gently slid open a papery fusuma...
Dazed, I held her gaze, so undead
Round face framed in softest ether
exhaling cool peppermint to inhale ~
Amaranth rains of fleeting gardenia,
mildly-scented dawn's astral gloam ***
(11/2/2020)
Thrown together
by circumstances
outside our realm
of control-
as in a bowl
our varied shells
create a still-life
a study in contrasts
of creative coverings
devised so well
Some like smooth pebbles
all polished and shiny
or rough and scarred
all coarse and craggy
Some barely masked like
peanuts, thin and papery
others heavily armored
walled off, impenetrable
Light and dark
bitter and sweet
mere tender morsels
in our shells
vulnerability itself
delicately raw
ever so fragile
and flimsy-frail
Need for these shells
protective coverings
begs the question-
Who hurt you?
which echoes back
over and over
to you
and you
and you
and you-
Who hurt you?
Was it your mother
father, brother?
Sister, cousin, uncle
aunt?
Can't we figure out who
hurt who?
Can't we stop this
question chant?
Who hurt you?
Who hurt you?
Who hurt who?
Some would like to
crack the shells
open every one
up wide-
But, for me
I'd have to take
quite a different side
For shells are Nature's
loving way
of protecting
what is good
so shells are not
the enemy
they're doing
what they should!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Suspended like a cataract’s pale lens,
*the cold-hearted orb rules the night~
its blue-gray light pooling
into the hollow of his heart.
Fourteen envelopes stacked like unmarked graves.
He fingers the topmost seal, the wax brittle as hope~
the moon bleaching
their blue edges to bone.
What ghosts swim in this lunar milk?
No answers come~
only the ache of his ink
confessing:
These are *letters I’ve written, never meaning to send~
each a whispered confession,
unspoken prayers of my soul
paper cathedrals
built on the fault line of my heart.
small, papery ghosts, haunted by the weight
of unspoken things~
each a brittle testament,
a love that breathes only in the amber of my memory.
each one unfolded
read in the stillness of lunar milk.
each page I lift,
the moonlight dissects each I’m sorry
each one swirls in specks of dust
where your absence hangs.
I see your ghost in every autumn leaf.
I remember our nights on sheets of *white satin.
Silence and regret are suffocating me.
Come home…
he rewrites in paragraphs
…till dawn bleeds gray.
On gossamer lips
Wisped coppery tendrils
Showering sparks
Riding evening breezes
That radiate off my
Eyelashes in papery
Wet slivers
Sticking only when
Your song of ill-boding
Is breathed over me
Its primitive amity
Contused and crusted
On baneful syllables
In sweet consummation
Where at last I see the
Crumbling bouquet
That’s falls
Onto your pages
Of Unemployment….
It’s somewhat strange that the very thing
That provides a life resource takes my life away.
Gives me money to buy presentations of life
While keeping the progression of my mind at bay.
I can feel the neurons of my brain beginning
To communicate like long lost friends,
Calling from distant ends of the same community,
Engaging in song on a march of progression
Like enemies that have come together
As one to make amends.
I now find myself investigating everything
That I don’t know and questions I can’t answer.
Book-facts, places visited and making plans
For future advancement.
It’s like going back to school
But in the old skool way.
I’m at liberty to investigate ideas and avenues,
Removed from mechanics and procedure of 9 – 5 days.
But, Alas!
It’s ironic that the thing that has given me life
Is temporary just as this life is.
I have responsibilities and I’m not a believer
In stealing another man’s taxes.
It’s somewhat daunting that, having had my fingers
Fly across my keyboard, in purposeful array,
To put thoughts of my own, this night, out into the ‘Cloud’,
Unemployment is drawing to a close just like the day.
The hunt continues for that papery substance,
That replaces the worth of grey matter,
Presenting itself as digits on an ATM screen.
Light contained behind thick, scratched glass.
Defaced beauty?
Oh, the irony of Unemployment!….
Fingers pirouetting semi-nimbly on the keyboard
the intermediate ballet course of my muse
encoding the fleeting images and rhythms
before they escape, a joyous outflowing
And from the rough direction of the office,
or perhaps the Throne Room next to it,
a shuffling sound, crinkle, rustle, whoosh
like the printer whirring to life
Identification of the sound brings a chortle of defensive laughter
the cat scraping litter to cover her own joyous outflowing
printing out a good one, like I hope to
my muse dreams in four colorful dimensions;
my poems print in merely two flat, ink-and-papery dimensions
how many dimensions does the cat’s muse touch,
given that she just printed in three-dee living color,
her inspiration complete and satisfying, with no editing?
Again I reflect on the destiny of our efforts
both hers and my ephemeral creations bound for roughly the same fate:
the landfill, eventually, in one form or another,
loved but forgotten
7/24/16
© Thomas W. Quigley
**For Destoyer Poet's Contest
Rock ~ Paper ~ Scissors
He threw ‘round his bouldery weight,
Threatening to smash all with his gait
Filled with shear fear
Wishing paper was here,
O’ our threads have been snipped by the fates!
But in flew the papery prints
The champion of scissors long since
So loud did we rattle
Crying out for a battle
That the stout flint began to wince.
Pulp pounced like a wafery veneer
Then crumbling was all we could hear
And after the trouble
The remains were just rubble
But paper knew something was *****.
He screamed that we misunderstood,
But it’s his head that’s made from thick wood
With no rocky pain
It’s scissors that reign
And we cut him to shreds where he stood.
**I should stop watching Game of Thrones LOL!
Around the old man’s sick bed
Arranged in the dining room
His amber bottles of pills were spread
And the mother a loving wife was playing
Serving herself iced vodka and tea
There she shed her cold crystal tears
For all the neighbors to see
You could feel a storm brewing
As the young sons thundered their rage
While their father’s skin turn papery thin
Their mother took center stage
Even the pill bottles were rattling
In the gathering forces of guilt and blame
Who loved him the most, used him the least
And who should feel the most shame
The air was damp with silent weeping
And grief clung to the walls around him
His wife’s hidden bottles and family lies
Made up his fifty years of martyrdom
It was in the clear light of morning
He lay still in a kind of peace
For he had now left the bedlam behind
His face sunken and calm, the pain had ceased
For the family’s drama--a new beginning
I stood from the foot sole of your eyes
And gleamed in secretly.
Your maned hair moves in the painted breeze:
Quietly, quietly, I hear you scream through your smile.
My eyes shadows your tumult.
The river behind you collects your tears
And down they stamp in your cloudiness.
In your eyes I forage your soothing distress.
Gracefully, as the first cry of child,
I enter the clear colors of your element.
Perpetually, I flicker and gasp at your stillness
And find myself separated in the interior of your mind.
Your cold heart bleeds densely,
The trees behind you bend its branches
To level the inferiority of their voices.
Oh Mona, with your loud mute smile
I plummet at your dark red feet beneath the
Drenched frame that weakly held your darkness
And watch your giant sham brightens.
Clear as a picture, you're chained dupe
Welcomes me and easily I went,
Planting myself in the holes of your skin
And transform in a lovingly pinkness
Adding the papery entice of your wile.
A man reach in and touches your smile.
(May 7, 2016)
Mona Lisa (by Leonardo da Vinci)
Whenever a papery butterfly
alights on a sweet scented bloom,
a rainbow arcs over the desert,
and there's a smile on the face of the moon
When the tiger bee sips from the chalice
of a perfectly formed daffodil,
spring instantly turns into summer,
and the sea becomes perfectly still
When the gentle dove glides over rivers
that mirror his wings like a twin,
the rattle of guns promptly ceases,
and real peace can surely begin