Best Phases Poems
the night as black as a newly broken heart
increasingly
the crescent of a single sly smile
outshone the vast stellar firmament
an enigmatic, ephemeral shooting star
subsequently
with a twinkle twinkle in her eyes
counting down to our jovial Jupiter joyride
waxing poetic on a comet's cosmic course
and
life was
Full
inevitably
eclipsed by a brighter constellation
diminishing her gorgeous gibbous glow
our penumbra luminosity reached its nadir
ultimately
her heavenly smile inverted
my waning orb fell from her orbit
i splashed down in a cold, lonesome ocean
the night as black as a newly broken heart
Written 14 Aug 2022
THE PHASES OF GRIEF
bereavement pain physical
spiritual and philosophical
SHOCK & DENIAL
can’t find relief
overwhelming numbed disbelief
PAIN & GUILT
unbearable preemptive suffering
remorseful chaos excruciating
ANGER & BARGAINING
growing bitter frustration
time rewinding negotiation
DEPRESSION & REFLECTION
grieving bitter loneliness
memories filling emptiness
THE UPWARD TURN
adjusting calmer living
affliction less unforgiving
RECONSTRUCTION & WORKING THROUGH
willingness to survive
becoming functionally alive
ACCEPTANCE & HOPE
handling new reality
reinventing integral repartee
AP: 2nd place 2025, 2nd place 2025
Submitted on October 8, 2018 for contest SIX-WORD COUPLET SERIES ENCORE sponsored by MARK TONEY - RANKED 1ST
She is silent & she plays
Mostly she has books before her face
She rarely come to me
& ran away as fast as she could
I know her since her childhood
She is my Lil girl
& I'm an old mirror of her room
One day she came to me
Having beautiful smile
& gleaming eyes
Singing romantic songs & flying
As if she isn't watching mirror
Like she is playing lead role in her favorite fairy tale
I felt her crazy & myself amazed
'cause I realized
My Lil girl who is actually shy
Fall in love with a guy
One day she came to me
With wetty eyes, throat filled
Uninterested in everything
Ist time focusing her face & thinking
As if she isn't watching a mirror
Like she is a cop beating herself, arresting someoneelse
I felt sad & she was depressed
Then I realized
My Lil girl, so lovely
Failed & Fooled in love, badly
One day she came to me
Pushed her eyebrows up
Brought leader's smile on her face
One hand up & delicately waved
As if she isn't watching a mirror
Like she is addressing the whole world through me
I felt proud, she looks great
& finally I realized
My Lil girl unknowingly
Just growing up slowly... &...slowly
As small children we are wide eyed and innocent,
toddle after Mommy like baby elephants,
go to school to learn with our writing implement,
our parents hoping that we don't act indolent,
As teens upon graduation were confident,
some acting wild while others are reticent,
finding our jobs and falling in love relevant,
some marry while others act more dissident,
When we get old hopefully were still intimate,
thinking back on our lives with heartfelt sentiment,
being nice with people till death is imminent,
eulogy at funeral will be evidence.
1-11-17
Great works are like
Fossilized trees
Petrified by time
And turned into stone.
Great works are testament
Of hard work, perseverance
And made up of precious materials
That goes beyond generations.
Great works are history
Of life, progress and conflicts
Never run out of legendary stories
That carve a name in the epoch of time.
(Pen in hand, the work will follow --
writers’ nature deplores a hollow)
I’ve seen the moon
in many phases
a wonder to behold
with telescope
sought clearer to define
only so much revealed
by the human eye unaided
the blinkered heart
having even less options --
senses themselves
Creation’s greatest mystery
what determines a life
the mortal language of feelings
very private till on vivid display
the craters of the moon so much like
love, even in light a pocks of shadows
at its elusive edges – strange what
we gaze upon in our abstract nights
wondering if you occasionally recall me
if you yet have visions of me and notion
to wonder what may have been missed
in transience?
The scent of Eagles
Shortly after hate-filled
Cantations
Drive you vertically insane
Nearly touching utopia
Engulfed in flames
Your editor suggested options
Including uncovering cemetery
Ashtrays enrobed in trace-water
Marble
Unforgiving
Even joyful I concede
Your mouth dripping fresh-picked
Strawberries
While antediluvian rainbows
March towards certain death
Or nirvana
You
Said
As phases of the
Moon
Dictate
6/20/15
© james marshall goff
Life is in many phases,
Daily,as we meet new faces,
Lets think through our paces,
Look high to the hills to see peaks of icy water laden tops
Water is flowing downwards into winding streams
The permeation of ponds, lakes, rivers and the mighty seas
Thus a supply-chain like feed supplying all watery needs
The Sun's fierce heat induces water evaporation
A dark daunting nimbostratus starts hovering
A mystical misty moist cloud of condensation
that produces many rain droplets pouring
White-water overflows in steep canyon gorges
Grapes, figs and dates in the fields are made ripened
Flowers flourish and many fruits can be eaten
Water is flowing resolutely and continually,
into the great ocean's mouth
Sun's incandescence purifies water:
Water vapors are making an upward ascension
to clouds of cumulus, cirrocumulus and cirrus
These are white fluffy aeronautical rain vehicles
The waters again start descending:
To form again white snowy watery capped ice tops
This upon many mountains zenith spots
This a perpetual, continuous, isochronism
of the Life supporting cycle:
Ice, Liquid and Vapor
All making an ever vibrant and repeated musical
crescendo, nature's "Watery Phases"
I am my own hero
Life is not a zero!
Still thinking it as weird?
I'm over what I feared!
Think I passed the worst
Was high school cursed?
Get past the pain
Grow a new brain!
Life is a journey
It is not a hundred meter dash
It is a marathon of curves and twists
That unfolds in stages
Every phase serves a purpose
In the university of life
No matter how brilliant you are
You cannot be given double promotion
You must undergo and pass every course
For every course is for a purpose
As you ride through life stop-overs
Refuse to be stuck at red lights of life
Keep your eyes on the ultimate price
Be focused and resilient
Persist and become winners
Quitters can only lose
Keep your hands fasten on the plough
Let go only when you try just one more time!
People change.
The beggars randomly scorn the commoners
When refused a beg,
And solemnly retreat to their
Dejected lives, waiting for another expedition..
The obnoxious fact that
Men control their fates,
And women control their mates,
All are portentous assumptions
To relieve the baffled human soul
From another.
We wish there were trees
Huge enough to shadow over our sins,
Then perhaps, a certain recluse
Cant be blamed,
Unless found detained to a bark.
When friends are supposed to be friends
And enemies the same,
There is no difference:
As the setting sun puts out the light of the world
Technology blooms, like a goblin
We seem to be lost in neon lights,
Smoke, drugs, parties....panties
That is the rarity itself.
The odd mother unable to feed her children,
The kittens dying under the shade
The grandmas and grandpas living like a ghost, alone, for days
The sun comes up again,
Feeling bright and bringing a 'new day'.
Nothing changes
The face, maybe, not the phases.
Life is a phase
Full of energy like my son's crayon
It open up in pages
Flipping through in no rhythm of colors
Our dreams are often in cage
Strings and tunes are in block colors
Yesterday paces up in phases
With a lot of good memory in black
Today is like a snail with no pace
Hoping that this present peace will still be white
Tomorrow soars to the heaven in a chase
Life is then fine-tuned to a shade of colors
Just like a detective writer Hadley Chase
With a dance of colorless tune in sight
We have made for our generations a good case
Our dream is a like green with no fertility
Sometimes like rotten food, it get decayed
Yet we smile with our faces red in anger
Holding the future rainbow with the mace
Alayande Stephen T.
9.28pm
06/10/2016
When your boss calls you aside and asks
why you are smiling all the time
on the salary he gives you,
you know
he suspects you of raiding the till.
When for three or more times
your girlfriend cannot keep a date
because she’s so busy,
you know
you’re about to be dumped.
When your six-year-old granddaughter
greets you with the question:
‘Where’s your credit card?’
you know
your place in the family hierarchy.
When your family doctor
allows you to smoke and drink
to your heart’s content,
you know
it’s time to make your will.
When you are reading the obituary column
and you happen to notice
that you are included in it,
you know
that you failed to attend your own funeral.
Phases
rainstorm, thunderbolt
in the desert
umbrella promise to protect us betrayed
a flash flood washed away our treasury empty –
into capital banks of self, less of -ish democrats.
lost, disillusioned
in the forest
broom’s vow to clean up and lead us to paradise
turned messy and blood gullies trail
the paths of the delusive retro-, I mean pro- gressives.
anxious, desperate
we must awake, wait for the second or first coming
of either the rhetorician or the labourer!