Best Precipitous Poems
I could adorn you
with great riches,
but my greatest gift
to you is my poetry.
Like a pearl without an oyster,
I roll along a precipitous path,
through a plethora of vacant shells -
none seem to be my sanctuary.
Slightly dizzy, swirling and twirling,
my glass heart illuminates,
scintillating upon dust and blackness,
seeking that opalescent path,
where dawn is greeted with crystal skies.
Meadows glisten in emerald dew drops,
as luminous rose gold sun silently soars,
awakening sleeping tulips to spread their petals.
Sun rays blossom through amethyst stained glass,
reflecting upon her bronze plum cheeks,
shimmering upon her ruby - rosy lips.
Revelations of silver glints in her eyes
are like diamonds that only sparkle for me.
When our shades infuse and absorb,
our spirits float like a spectrum of butterflies.
Juices flow like emerging stars at twilight -
An end to lonely monotonous darkness.
But what am I,
but a lonely pearl 'rolling
and strolling,' yearning to feel
glorified within my beloved's
opalescent path.
Categories:
precipitous, love,
Form:
Free verse
I was an experienced family therapist, helping families maintain functionality,
As wandering, starlit seasons maintain all nature, being rooted in practicality.
I loved preserving healthy relationships, that foundation of healthy societies;
And kept up a fruitful dialogue between the families, which relieved anxieties.
I, myself, had come from a happy home, never causing huge worries or fears,
For dear ones that I loved, never seemed to be leaving, as silvery cloud tears.
Friends dropped by like colorful fall, never failing to fetch the fondest smiles,
In the midst of a watchful, apricot noon, when rouge butterflies were in exile.
Family flew past fluffy clouds each fall, when autumn was pretty and frumpy,
Like field blossoms of windswept fragrance, elegantly disheveled and grumpy.
I lived in the house of sweet memories, and smiling faces on rose hued walls,
As rouge sun swims in roses nightly, prior to descending the precipitous falls.
Street performers were small, singing sparrows, on my swank avenue of sun;
Like a solo turns into a chorus, creating a prettier song-more elegantly done!
Nearsighted neighbors came to see me nights, and gaze at nacre pearl moon,
On the peach, peony porch of my placidness, in colors of the faded afternoon.
All were seized in summer's saffron grip, creating orange juice mist sunsets,
Like walking away, when it is best, and yet brave enough to have no regrets.
Flowers thrilled hot, apricot hours, and birdsong excited long, obsidian nights,
Cats slept on porches of ruby pansies, their short, sweet lives full of delights.
Then persistent tragedy finally struck me, when I lost a dear family member;
And while I suffered long and cried, I was comforted by smiles I remembered!
I found great solace in my work, for helping others paves the way for smiles,
Like keeping glad eyes on the summer garden, to delve its newest color files.
I found a love and was eventually married, like first tango of sun and planets;
And we and our children continue family traditions, like lofty birdsong habits.
Today, my grief is much diminished, like storm clouds fading into saffron sun,
For minds full of memories, help loving hearts heal, like rosy day just begun.
Categories:
precipitous, family, fantasy, grief, love,
Form:
Couplet
Vacantly staring into the night sky
She saw big bellied clouds drifting away
Are they fleeing away from the luminous moon?
Or mercilessly driven out
After being robbed off everything?
Once again she looked at her expanding waistline
And felt the pulse of life beating within
It sent a lightning of terror through her
The chapters of her life flipped past her eyes
With several scenes reeling one by one
"You are my sky
The ascending star of my soul in the dawn
And the bough of my homing at night"
Those words that sent goose bumps all over
Now rattle in her skull like worthless coins!
Never had she thought she would be
Thus cruelly betrayed!
How she had once wished the time to stand still
Now she sighs seeing the needle of the clock
Crawling at snail's pace!
She thought the deserts of her life
Had been turned into grass lands
When did the cruel frost fall
To suck up all that was green, she fails to locate!
But she remembers clearly when she had fallen
From the perilous heights of the cliff
Into the precipitous depths of the ravine
It was in excitement, she confided to him
That his seed was growing inside her
Was it with disbelief or bitter annoyance
That he heard those words, not quite sure.
For days, she heard nothing from him
Though worried, she tried to light up hope
One day as a bolt from the blue,
She got a curt message from him
‘We now go our separate ways'
She felt drowned while diving for pearls!
With a mutilated heart, the star crossed girl
Lives on....
Without knowing, time winging away
And the curse of the dead albatross
Hanging heavily in her neck!
But she shall live...............
Clutching desperately to hope.
Live for the poor ‘bastard' growing inside!
Categories:
precipitous, angst, betrayal, depression,
Form:
Free verse
I've heard there are two paths you can go by,
I've read I ought to take the path less traveled;
I've made my own path despite,
Ever having given either path a gamble.
Lost traversing aimlessly through,
The lush spring prairies full of life;
I seem to unknowingly choose,
Desolate vast tundras of ice.
A colorless empty wasteland,
Slows down my once wondrous journey;
Turning my hue-less eyes face down,
Numbing the thoughts that concern me.
Selfishly I ponder on,
Giving myself a gander;
My lucid daydreams carry-on,
Struggling to turn my criticism to banter.
With no longing for a sunrise,
No interest in howling at the moon;
Only now in sunset skies,
I can feed my empty tomb.
I have known that for survival,
Trapped within this frigid glacial world;
Atonement flourished revival,
Sent within a single warm word.
Precipitous licking fire,
It's flares echo from up above;
Precipitates the muck and mire,
To precipitation of love.
Still off in the foggy distance,
I can faintly hear the tone;
Beckoning to my existence,
For my soul for whom the bell tolls.
My tortured weary body aches,
While my minds bright embers aglow;
The songbirds of sorrow awaits,
Reaping dark empty seeds I sow.
Devaluating precious time,
And prioritizing my pain;
Has left self-loathing in my prime,
With a pessimistic disdain.
Perhaps time isn't as real,
As understands our mind's perception;
It must just be the moments we feel,
More like a figment for recollection.
As the white sands of time flow through the glass,
I helplessly watch their numbers diminish;
With every grain another lapse,
With every moment that goes till it's finished.
Categories:
precipitous, depression, emotions, how i
Form:
Quatrain
I took a casual stroll through the local cemetery the other day,
Looking for interesting epitaphs and to pay my respects along the way.
Many stones were simply etched with names and dates of death and birth.
Others contained tales of sad demise, yet others of perky mirth.
"Here lies Clyde now expired,
Another man's wife Clyde desired.
The man pierced Clyde's ticker with a knife,
Thereby making a widow of Clyde's wife!"
"I now own this little plot of land,
And as such I make this firm demand:
As nigh my hallowed grave you pass,
Please keep off the cotton pickin' grass!"
"Scuba diver Marty came to grief,
As he was tooling 'round a Bermuda reef.
He was having himself a carefree lark,
'Til he encountered a ravenous shark!"
"Here sleeps Sergeant Major Cooper,
A brave Fifth Cavalry trooper.
It was just his bad luck,
That when arrows flew he failed to duck!"
"Herein lies trucker Don who failed to swerve,
Speeding 'round a mountain curve.
His semi sailed o'er the precipitous edge,
Landing at the foot of a thousand foot ledge!"
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
Categories:
precipitous, humorous,
Form:
Rhyme
Precipitous the conquest of a woman's heart is for a man who doesn't venerate her soul!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
27 August 2018
Categories:
precipitous, love, men, women,
Form:
Monoku
Travelling to the past…tiptoeing
back to soft, tender days of miracle,
which disappeared like crimson
rays of dusk gradually spread an
aura of apparent everlasting peace
with birds homecoming...
cocooned by mother’s love, and
father’s affection…protected
by doting siblings, a poignantly loving
and giving, blissful childhood!
Life is not a perpetual dream,
easy, and flowing, soothing, and calming…
The breeze which lulls, may
turn into wild, torturous, blustery wind,
cutting like a sharp knife on your skin,
on your face; you are swimming
against the cruel current of kismet,
an abrupt and precipitous choice
turns life into an unimaginable nightmare,
and no respite in view!
girl who used to find all her dreams
crystallized in shiny silver snowflakes,
was shaken by turbulent waves
of hurt, sorrow, and sufferings!
her values shattered,
her hopes crushed,
she thought she met the inevitable grim end!
End shocked her - standing upright
against the merciless storm, dark
clouds evaporated, radiant sun
arrived on a chariot of seven stallions,
horizon turned vermillion red, temple-bells
started chiming cadence of blessings,
she stood alone, but triumphant,
she was jubilant!
Categories:
precipitous, inspirational, life,
Form:
Free verse
The old saw "Go West, Young Man" is attributed to Horace Greeley,
But it was coined by a writer from a Terre Haute paper, really!
Horace was agin' westward expansion and was filled with doubt,
So in 1839 he decided to travel west to see what it was all about!
He traveled by Concord stage which was then in its Golden Age,
Crossin' desert, plain and Rockies, bravin' robbers and Osage.
On the trek esthetic Horace rubbed shoulders with pious preachers,
Gamblers, sozzled drunks, "soiled doves" and decorous teachers!
He arrived in Carson City, Nevady needin' a speedy coach to reach
Placerville, Californy where he was scheduled to give a speech.
Now drivin' the swayin' stage to Californy who would a-thunk,
That hapless Horace would be ridin' with celebrated Henry Monk!
"Hang on, Mister Greeley. I'll git you thar with time to spare!"
With that he cracked his whip - the horses took off in a tear!
Passengers were bounced about as Hank avoided stumps and boulders,
Hurtlin' thro' mountain passes rife with precipitous shoulders!
Horace protested loudly to Hank to express his trepidation,
Sayin' he warn't in that much of a hurry to reach his destination!
Upon arrival, somewhat shaken, from the stage he reeled down.
An inauspicious appearance for a gentleman of such renown!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
Categories:
precipitous, funny
Form:
Rhyme
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND
Half-Scot, half-English and ill at ease with the past,
Newcastle is sooty black from its coaly drama,
And the breathless town was always in a hurry to grow,
Narrowly avoiding destruction of its past or leaping over it.
Up on the plateau, industrial power-engine city:
Its earlier Norman Castle and Black Gate narrowly missed
By the frenetic hammers of eager Victorian builders.
Elegantly-proportioned Grainger Street and Central Rail Station
Pause unwillingly to admit the Scottish-style lantern-spired
Sandstone cathedral with its delicate shade of sooty industrial black.
Down at the riverside - an earlier town of shipyards and arms factories,
Quayside warehouses with watertight flood-doors,
Its precipitous narrow old port-streets carved into the gorge walls
And pierced by cold winds from the North Sea,
Is leaped over by a platoon of high-level metal bridges.
Across the Tyne, inelegant, they grab the opposite bank and bind the city to England.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
NOTE: 1 Newcastle is situated on the north ( = Scottish ) side of the River Tyne.
The town was an epicenter of the Industrial Revolution,
with coal, steel, chemical, engineering, and shipbuilding
industries, and was also a major seaport.
2 Norman Castle, Black Gate are remnants of a pre-medieval past.
3 Grainger Street, Central Rail Station are 19th century redeveloped areas.
4 Cathedral (St. Nicholas) dates from 14th century.
Categories:
precipitous, urban
Form:
Free verse
Water drop
Anguish
Cries
Out
Did I need to taste your sorrow?
She drowned me
While screaming fixated curiosities
Why I would not return
Oblivious to the obvious
Dilapidated wonder-wall
dripping concrete uncertainty
The fusion of incomprehensible dependency
retarding mass exodus of heart
As she cries all over again
I become a ripped towelette
thrown over her tattered neck of loneliness,
rushing into enigmatic corazon
I embrace familiar barrier
blocking out ultraviolet massacres
speaking subdued tongues,
another floating perdition
needing
a new painting against recycled canvas
Sweet dreams made
of
nothing
Did I need to taste the desolate madrigal
that I see running towards conundrum's savior,
still ready to love me tomorrow?
This heart is full.
I remove her weeping moon
searching for crescent bounds,
riding precipitous eclipse
My ears lie against vertigo's throat of irregularities
As she begs for the liar to return home
Because I always mattered
in the end
Allegedly
© Drake J. Eszes
"Forever will a scar remain upon broken ties. Memories serve to both assure and ruin in my eyes." -Anonymous
Categories:
precipitous, introspection, life, love, sad,
Form:
Free verse
I saw a gorge, a remote vision from distant, far far away from the surface, how sharp, how precipitous, how deep!
A singular, unsurpassed, cavernous cleft;
a crevice among two gigantic hills, how intense and steep!
The rocky walls of the mountains though withering,
canopying the remote sight from the brink of the rugged cliffs.
The highland though barren, is pampering the rivulet flowing,
emerald- azure, though erosive from shrink!
Its ages disposition, the geologic uplift and abrasion,
elevates the surface to fabricate its tapestry inch by inch!
The diverse, vivacious habitats in its bosom, in seclusion, are dozing,
in remote lowland, far from the tainted world in miff!
The robust gorge, all of a sudden, for its persistent profoundity,
a rare attribute in mortals, became my cause of envy!
Was pondering " where is that Gorge like once perceived devotion, allegiance from human inclination has gone? "
Nowhere the professed deluded ones, stands near its awe-inspiring abiding supremacy, the Gorge, the mighty!
Alas! The demons have taken away humanity's infallible dedication for substantiality and profoundity,
only to be as hollow as floating cotton balls, with no eye, no reverence for sublimity!
The Gorge is the apostle of Almighty's emblem of constant flow of unfathomed steadfast solemnity, beyond earthly folly!
Aeons ago, God's supreme contour, silhouette against the brilliant encompassing sky,
The persistent Gorge, determines to flow distant, diligently, from the lavish absurdity, from the sheer mortals idiocy!
Human devotion, so fragile, so freckle, so self-centric,
wish have an inch depth of the perpetual, perennial Gorge, the mighty!
Neither, any earthly disposition, can comprehend,
nor approach the grand Gorge, in reflections, so fickle, so tiny;
as insignificant as their fleshly existence,
in the face of the abiding Gorge,
the exalted composition of the Almighty!
Categories:
precipitous, absence, appreciation, deep, devotion,
Form:
Free verse
The Einstein paradox annotated ...
USA acronym:
unknown subspace anomaly
This astounding scientific breakthrough came by sheer accident,
the stuff of comic book portent
Bruce Banner employed by Bruce Wayne,
Tony Stark interviewed by Clark Kent
The dissemination of imminent advanced space travel
was met with global awe and dissent
Such is the case with earth-shattering news
Mankind standing on the precipice of
journeying between the stars
Distance no longer to be of any consequence
Mankind’s knowledge evolving on a precipitous path,
emerging from their planetary cave
to dwell well beyond their birth star
In a space station laboratory,
a rogue experiment runs amok
Shards of broken time
cuts through the spatial tissue of the temporal divide:
The future reshapes the past,
all known laws of physics shattered like glass
Thus, the subspace phenomenon occurs —
An unintended consequence unfolds,
a time loop periodically opens and close
Mankind now possessing the ability to travel unimpeded
through uncharted channels of space and time
Bursting from their solar quarantine ...
Humans will soon become viewed as a pestilence scourge,
spreading like a contagion among the stars
Busting loose from their terrestrial nursery confines,
waving a quantum gun of time
Forever seeking knowledge of the gods
is humanity’s most endearing cosmic crime
Categories:
precipitous, humanity, science fiction, space,
Form:
Free verse
Liberated spirit, keep up the fight
acquiesce not to the world foray,
where darkness is deemed to be light.
It would be easy to lose your newly found sight,
and follow people’s popular precipitous way.
Liberated spirit, keep up the fight.
Steel yourself against the wolf’s sharp bite,
Clothed in sheep’s fair wool today,
Where darkness is deemed to be light.
Ask for help from the heavenly Might,
And bend your ear to Wisdom’s say,
Liberated spirit, keep up the fight.
Mistake not immorality for right,
keep verbal engineering far at bay,
where darkness is deemed to be light.
Be not depressed in this world’s plight,
Let Him lift you from where you lay.
Liberated spirit …keep up the fight,
where darkness.. is deemed to be light.
(Inspired by and written for Catie Lindsey's Villanelle contest) 6/1/11
Categories:
precipitous, introspection
Form:
Villanelle
Whys and Hows
by Odin Roark
Through the window of rain spattered glass,
The old vet watched the large ant cling to the precipitous bombardment,
It’s tenacity of will overwhelming to the man’s eyes.
Why fight so diligently?
Why not let go?
You know how to land,
Endure your journey,
Continue the unceasing perpetuation of your species.
Obviously, the little creature understood something
Beyond the scope of the aging man’s comprehension,
Or perhaps the small creature just instinctively trusted mortality,
Had a clear and uncomplicated ‘why’ of life
Allowing any ‘how’ to just…be.
Slowly nurturing his espresso,
The elderly Marine continued staring,
Determined to arrive at an answer.
His mind wandered back to his youth
Where the meaning of life was taken for granted,
Where the indomitable mindset
Was the norm for any red-blooded young adult,
Especially one about to join in a war.
He asked himself if he had ever challenged a force that might destroy him?
Had he even once just allowed the many ‘why go on’ experiences of his life
To give him pause, like the loss of a limb…or two,
Or if the toll of war broke up his marriage-in-waiting relationship,
And especially the loss of a buddy to death?
Had he allowed any one of the life-threatening events to reveal itself
As a ‘how’ answer to ‘why’?
He sipped the last of his coffee,
Smiled at the ant,
Tapped the window
And saluted the small epiphany,
Who now seemed to weigh its options,
Then calmly walk through the rolling boulders of rain…
Maybe to find another ‘how?' the once fearless warrior questioned.
He held his gaze and tried to figure out
How the ant seemed so comfortable
Climbing up the pane of cascading rain,
Rather than just riding out the downward flow.
Hmm.
Categories:
precipitous, life,
Form:
Prose Poetry
Pokeweed waits
underground, snow crusts
small greenish white flowers, leaves entire
and alternate, black berries
poisonous, ripe late.
Waits patiently past February
when the sun stays up in the sky more than January
and six more months after that
past the peepers keeping watch
for every passing dog or truck.
We await our time
or have had it, or are having it.
Body in slow, not precipitous, decline.
Expend ourselves on work and wine.
Percent of budget expended, year to date.
I heard a redwing this morning
who might have been choosing a nest site
holding the spot against chevrons from the south.
Choosing the best site, away from predators, near water,
in sight of seed and buds.
It happens that when the pokeweed fruit pokes out
the chicks were born, the fledglings flown
leaves already leathery
and the weather has the faintest
hint of January's cold snow hold.
Categories:
precipitous, flower, fruit, january, morning,
Form:
Verse