Best Phantoms Poems
Phantoms of all my lovely sins,
Who come to me at night;
Bring sad fingers of the rain,
To wash my dreams from sight.
They take away my eyes and ears,
Giving no more thought for sorrow;
For they have spent my future years,
In surviving for tomorrow.
My tears are falling with the rain,
Capricious and unholy;
Tapping at the window pane,
Running sad and slowly.
I have lived with all the beauty,
Of the churchyard's friendless flowers;
Let me this night find duty
In the phantom's moonlit bowers.
Every withered leaf shall fade,
When bright October passes;
And yet the day brings sun and shade
To sift through fragile grasses.
Phantoms of temptations heed,
My plea to be forgiving;
Don't you know that I have need,
To be dying with the living?
The clearest blue became mottled with age,
and I only recently began to notice.
Time-soaked eyes, foggy mirror to my own,
reflecting a frail wire, just out of reach.
Leading to a skull-shaped cellar,
therein lay the contents, shadows,
wavering in small glimmers of truth.
Reserved but yearning, they call to me.
Whispers carress my lobes;
they are phantoms you have carried.
They ride on waves of joy and anguish,
snapshots of my tiny feet trodding down halls,
chasing cats with remote-control race cars.
Then I tumbled over a carpeted ledge
and bent your office-drawer key.
Maybe you'd suspected those young paws
were much stronger than they looked.
As time sped all around me, your atmosphere grew thin,
and labored breathing stole the spark from your limbs.
When cells began to replicate like narcissists in the West,
your hovel became a war zone, and I, a refugee.
You never caught your breath in the wreckage,
and when a second bout of war came, your lungs gave out.
I watched it happen, at a loss.
I remember your mouth agape, eyes glazed, wide,
as, in your final breath, you ran towards something I could not see.
Now, the battleground you once crawled through
has been cleared of every trace, every tuft of dog hair,
and all the shining documentation to prove you were an artist.
And how you were an artist, having sculpted so much of my
lanky willow limbs, my dense, ferocious heart.
I have a case of survivor's guilt.
I am writing every day a mystery, wading through
my own metaphysical mess, only faintly aware of yours,
the stuff that lingers like shadow people,
darting in and out of my peripheral vision.
I only wish they'd speak to me and
divulge what last you saw, or that I could
re-activate your smart phone and read
the very last text message you sent.
Phantoms
In male six, psychiatric ward at night
there live ten patients burning bright,
their thoughts are with their missing
mums, while eager for breakfast wait
their tums
Now here, as not before, it’s all about who’s
first through the dining room door, theirs eggs
and bacon and toast with butter, it’s enough to
make a man’s heart flutter
But romance has now long gone, with shirt
needing help to put on; and in this slight
miscarriage, a moral judgment say, they
take their medication and live another day
But then there’s lunch, what delights await?
with biscuits, cheese and cream and tea, to
fill old hearts with tempered glee, a taste of
butter, a square of fudge, a barely felt old-
fashioned grudge
Five square tables, two at each, if they move
they make a screech; which brings us to the
main event, evening dinner heaven sent,
with pastries, pies and soft fried chips,
and bread and butter for trembling lips
And interspersed amid all this, there’s
medication from the list; black and blue
and white round pills, so designed to
soothe all ills
Ruminations-trembling- hallucinations
too, popped in mouth or drank as syrup,
tis the steed and you’re the stirrup
But here’s not to dwell and dally, on visit
Saturday comes aunt Sally; with choc
and fags and pink smoked salmon, raise
the spirit, mood does rally
But alas now all the wards have gone,
white coats and patients they’ve moved
on; and if one day you pass at night,
remember them when burning bright
Hunting phantoms seek
Innocence and harmony
Upon which to feed
imagination
through cool gray mist
phantoms drift
Approaching the end of the day,
shifting shadows scurry away;
while cobalt skies morph into grey.
Scarlet and crimson rivers run,
as red bleeds from a dying sun;
twilight's defeated; dusk has won.
Buzzing vampires that like to bite,
mosquitoes, usher in the night;
their taste for blood, fueling flight.
By stridulating all night long,
a cricket chirps a high-pitched song;
calling for a mate, loud and strong.
Tickling them till they softly purr,
a brisk breeze sets the leaves to stir,
laughing with the wind: as it were.
And an evening chill cools the air
as unblinking eyes start to stare;
peeking from shadows everywhere.
While sounds and demons widely strewn,
are merely phantoms of the moon;
or the haunting call: of a loon.
They’re sweaty and they’re soupy
Outrageous, and moody
They’re all together fruity
The Phantoms family
Their house is a soup bowl
Where people come to condole
They really are a hell hole
The Phantoms family
Stale
Impale
For sale
So get your table ready
With a soup kettle, you can carry
They’re funny and they’re scary
The Phantoms family.
Please forgive me my friends...if anyone disagrees with these outlandish face lifting cutouts...let me know through soup mail, and I shall remove you from the premises...
...otherwise (((((Happy! Halloween!))))))
Oct.30.2019
Winged Warrior...^WW^
Just goofing!
Not for any contest
Phantoms dance
in sunlit rooms
And shadows gather
in the corners
of the cavernous mansion
in which I live
and hide
Inside where there’s
no one else but me,
Refracted and reflected,
stretched out in all dimensions
The shadows offer
thunderous whispers
fAnd the phantoms rehearse
their eerie, silent,
hushed and beckoning dance
In the hesitating stillness
of the moment before
I release my captured breath,
The phantoms
and the shadows
Flutter wings of dread,
fear swells up,
Extends beyond my skin,
Dry-icing me, enticing me
to dance the dance
of phantom shadows,
Enthralled, enchanted,
Adrift inside a dream
I reckon a vast symmetry
between sunset and darkness...
when shadows obscure the starriest scenery,
and clothe trees in tenebrous mystery:
I turn my glace to the full moon in distress!
Never disappear from my sight, moonlight;
ask the north wind to make shadows vanish:
letting the cool breeze return to delight,
letting stars reappear and dismiss fright,
but is my assumption of fear too brash?
Aren't shadows and phantoms alike?
They come forward without making a sound;
I can crawl slower than a snake,
but fog rises too quickly, how can I escape?
If I run, leaves will crackle...I'll be found!
Written on 11/9/ 2015
I see you arching under me,
the dew of passion on your skin,
as bodies strain for liberty.
Our quest together, love within
a calming serenity's spin,
the physical unites with dreams
and sustenance in wanton screams.
Can phantoms of pleasure relate,
the fevered moments such as this
as nerve-endings reverberate.
We are as one in love's abyss
and all I am is all you are.
Daylight reminds, you are so far
and leaves me yearning your sweet kiss.
I pulled in late one night from off the pike,
A manor rumored haunted, yet it seemed
As clean and bright as any hotel deemed,
So worthy of what guests as I would like.
A busy place, yet there was still a room,
The "only vacancy" they had to spare,
But walking to my room I came aware,
That everything was quiet as a tomb.
So many people strolling to-and-fro,
Thus seeming to communicate at will,
And yet, despite it all, the air was still,
And why that was, I doubt Ill ever know.
I got to bed, but didn't get much sleep,
For when I shut my door the din began -
As though an all-night party was at hand,
An uproar that went on 'til morning's creep.
I nodded off just 'fore the sun arose,
Awakened to the dawning with a start,
A sight that I will always set apart,
For instantly, the blood within me froze ...
It seems I'd spent the night inside my car,
The manor, out my window, aged and vile,
I stayed there in a trance for quite awhile,
Recalling what I'd seen that night, bizarre.
It may have been a dream or mind canard,
But I will swear 'til death that it was real,
And nothing then or since can e'er reveal,
Those charges placed upon ... my credit card.
Written and submitted on January 22, 2019
For the "Night In A Haunted Manor" Poetry Contest
Tania Kitchin, Judge & Sponsor.
In a velvet night where shadows dance upon the starry sky like lost phantoms on high,
I ventured forth to touch a star, that cosmic beacon seeming to sing a waltz of light in dreams,
Where thoughts entwine like threads unseen of hopes and wishes, building bridges to the infinite,
With heart beating like a drum in the endless, hidden rhythm of time's unyielding march.
I reached for that fragment of eternity, believing the touch of a star would ignite the spirit,
With sparks of pure happiness, burning in white and blue, like cosmic fireworks, secret and bright,
But when I arrived on that celestial body, where I hoped to find a realm of fantasy and living light,
I discovered a silent landscape, a heavy silence of void and stardust, where the blue of the sky was gone.
The dreamed star shone only with pale echoes, lights borrowed from a distant, unreachable sun,
There, among those foreign silences, illusions unravel like a thin veil of clouds, revealing truth,
Whispering softly that the light I sought was merely a reflection, a hollow promise of what could be,
As fragile as dreams on Earth, those visions evaporating like morning dew under the sun's embrace.
Often we yearn to embrace unseen treasures, to find happiness in unknown and cold places,
Fleeing from what we have, like travelers lost in life's labyrinth, seeking to fill voids within,
Yet chasing mirages, we overlook those tiny glimmers of beauty that surround us every day,
Those raindrops that dance in morning light, those moments of quiet singing within the soul.
Perhaps in seeking stars, we lose ourselves, forgetting that happiness isn't at the journey's end,
But in ephemeral moments we live each day, in those simple, sincere touches that warm the heart,
And maybe sometimes, when we return from our imaginary journey, we realize that time has passed,
Leaving only an echo of unfulfilled dreams and a longing for the present moment we once ignored.
But in that quiet of journey's end, remains hope that it's not too late to see the beauty where we are,
To find peace in the bright present of the smallest and simplest things that life gently offers us.
Fields that echoed with the muskets' rattle;
Blood of Yanks and Rebs spilt in dire battle;
Now serene with murmurs of restless ghosts,
Of men who died among the frenzied hosts!
Are those the sighs of souls heard with each breeze,
As winds stir dancing leaves of ancient trees?
Do winter winds shrieking 'bout Round Top Hill,
Recall screams of men, their fate to fulfill?
Heard are moans of dying men, laurels won,
Or is it groans of pine boles 'neath sere sun?
Lincoln's speech yet echoes to honor they,
No matter the hue of cloth worn that day!
Should phantoms yet ask if they died in vain?
"Nay! Nay! Due to you this land rose again!"
Entry for Mark Massey's "War Sonnet" Contest
(6 January 2019)
the clay walls
of the bookstore
drunk with know
-ledge feel the creeping
sin of life
perched down the tree
opens its eyes
in the dark room
(almost four)
A.M. the urge
to close its eyes
to the tail
shaking lost phantoms
seas faces melt
vision fuses flakes
of shadow calmly coaxing
the sun to rise….
Whereas the evening filters through
To bring the darkness seeping down.
The daylight's leave now overdue
High above a slumbering town.
To bring the darkness seeping down
As the north wind starts its blowing;
High above the slumbering town
Night time shadows start their showing.
As the north wind starts its blowing
Round and around deserted ways.
Night time shadows start their showing
There under, eerie phantoms gaze.
Round and around deserted ways
Within the blackest, darkest night
There under, eerie phantoms gaze
Misleading by subdued moonlight.
Within the blackest, darkest night
The daylight's leave now overdue;
Misleading by subdued moonlight
Whereas the evening filters through.
Alan S Jeeves