Best Quiddity Poems
Written: August 02, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Crystol Woods
***************
In the slipshod cradle beneath the apple tree,
a bruised fruit folds ajar—
molten sweet sapidity pooling
through velvet skin.
Eviscerated grace, they say,
but I grasp the quiddity of life unmasked.
A burnt sienna kiss of aurora—
flesh undulating with fungal bloom,
wispy gossamer threads that stitch
the inevitable return to the earth.
It is not ruined.
It is a transformation:
a diaphanous ballet
between death and what dreams may grow.
We ogle brightness,
but rot is brighter still—iridescent with purpose,
alabaster spores pirouetting as sylphlike specters
on a sacred odyssey to placate
the starving soil.
It is seraphic.
It is a panacea.
It is quintessence made humble.
Rapture lies in this ineffable nexus—
decay whispers loud as a lullaby.
The rakish grubs maunder through
a velvet pyre of rind and memory,
and the loquacious beetle sermonizes
on endings as beginnings,
as though time had a gullet
And rot was its sweetest wine.
Call it grotesque.
Call it abhorrent.
But beauty—true, ineffable beauty—
wears many masks.
And in these nebulous throes of perishing,
I watch a face burnished by truth,
smiling with roots in its eyes.
Our views and sorrows are mirrored in life.
Each jagged shard epitomizes some strife.
Our wounds, sufferings, and personality,
It will include one's beliefs and morality.
Are we netting insight or primarily existing?
Veins would shiver with shattered feelings.
The sharp edges puncture into the intact body.
A wrecked heart squall for plenty and vitality.
Inside the proper limits of a selfish quiddity.
Contemplations from one's own perspective.
Moving good faith grips to a broke history.
Surprising yet rather fiery and lively festive.
In fear of what I can view, I won't stare in the mirror.
My fierce peek and jagged shards scold a sinner.
Written: May 04, 2022
1st place contest winner
In the Mirror of Life Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anoucheka Gangabissoon
Written: May 2nd, 2024
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quixotic quest quiddity
As dusk sapidity emerges,
Casting a shadow
Weeping waves smash
in foamy scatters;
seraphic strophic sojourn
groans in a gossamer gaunt
Arid shadows fade.
In a hazy blur,
emptiness lingers.
Shorebirds console each other.
in epicedes of
velvety whispers
and elusive sighs.
Horizon amid
cinereous graffiti of
tear-stained threnody and
raven blooms.
It breaks my heart, too
with crimson, auric, and
plum, plum, purple wings,
why haven't you
returned
to me in spring?
to our moon-smeared love
& diaphanous elixir
amethyst kisses of
emerald ablaze,
spiraling in seductive
sapphire scarlet sounds,
Your love, a fiery flow
Flames aflame,
with gemstones aglow.
Dark ideas settle in
my head is akin to
a tombstone,
Obstructing—my judgment
early hours are lost
in the fog,
their significance dimmed
I succumb to allure
of nightfall and
I shut my eyes.
Acquiesce to inquiry
in heaven, each flower
boasts a mirror
to inveigle into each valley,
Beneath a sky of
countless clouds;
quaint lodge stands out,
surrounded
by a myriad of
shimmering ponds
capture a vast expanse
of coastlines.
Uncharted shores,
where vessels veered
toward vast seas,
untrodden by any praxis
As twilight falls,
coastlines curve in a crescendo
across horizon.
Cloaking hill peaks in mist.
loquacious verbosity
recognized in wisdom
beyond spectrum of
circumlocution.
In a flurry of
fading flowers,
faith-filled fields, &
fugacious felicity.
Snare drum rotunda
somberly chimes
within a forest,
Its dulcet echos rhyme.
We've wandered down
curious trails
basking in the sun
warm embrace;
In depths of shadows,
We've sought with fear,
an ambient arena,
vast and near.
Unveiling a shore infinite,
In an abyss where
every heart resides.
With its boundless skies
Written: September 12, 2023
Ocean Poetry Contest Sponsored by: Ink Empress
“The sea is an underwater museum still awaiting its visitors.” – Phillip Diole
______________________________________________________________
In the endless expanse of the ocean's domain.
Calm, circumfluous crystal collides coiling terrain.
A bed of iridescence behests the view.
Turquoise riddles, azure feral, and true
Humpback whales waltz on the horizon stage.
Their majestic demeanor, the ocean's sage
Waves akin to a shroud, coral reefs below.
In a cerulean ebony, enigma utopia to know
Tidal waves waltz ripples in a twirling thunder.
Foams that fizz and fatuous horses canter under
An aphrodisiac shore, paradisal and grand.
Where quicksilver spume kisses saffron sands.
Barefoot on the shore, spate, and pelagic breeze
The brine in the breeze, a savor of the seas
Seaside pearls and garrulous nautical dreams
A seamount allure, where kelpies do gleam.
Waves wreck as cymbals, water splashes spray.
Unplumbed bedrocks where sunfish play.
Blase naiads and abysmal gaunt cries
In the abyss, the embrace of diastrophism rises.
Swell of the abyss, corrugated, and red.
Balboa sails in pits due to intricate coastal spread.
Nebulous littoral shores, worldly and true
In Japan splurge, a seabed quells the view.
With a caper and a queen, the gulf turns alive.
Natal seaboard, where nexus coldness does thrive.
Beyond the gloom, where ocean waves are silver,
Moonlight pulsates, spritzes, and yelps as a river.
Whipping and splashing, an aqua symphony
The ocean's orchestra in idyllic harmony
From abyss to surface, the music does swell.
A symphony of water, where stories do tell.
In the moonlit dusk, waves waltz and sway.
Their silvery, pellucid shimmer steers the way.
With every pulsating and splashing sound.
Ocean's placate melodies and quiddity abound.
Abyssal symphony is a seraphic sight.
Where nature's cynosure beauty bears flight.
Waves, akin to dancers, gracefully behoove.
In a rhythmic squirm, their sapidity grooves.
Susurrus slipshod secrets of the steep
Splashes of euphoria, sojourn, and sweep
A symphony of splendor, a chorus of grace
The ocean's melody is in every embrace.
2nd place contest winner
In a world where dreams are rakish and quixotic,
Where quiddity seems extravagantly chaotic,
A chivalrous soul dares to be different.
With a heart that beats fervently, so magnificent.
Romantic notions dance in their minds.
A visionary quintessence they find,
Chimerical dreams they hold dear,
Preposterous, dreadful tracks they fear.
Age is just a number, they say.
Irrelevant in the pellucid pursuit of their way,
Happiness is the sense that one matters,
And their dreams are the ladder.
In a world where opia destruction prevails,
Where chaos and despair often trail,
Quixotic evidence emerges, bold and bright.
Roguish scope for rebuilding shines a light.
Dare to alter the world, they proclaim.
With sapidity gnawing such a flame,
It may seem quixotic, and some may sneer.
But their seraphic vision is so clear.
For in their hearts, they sojourn the key.
In a world where dreams roam free,
Where impossibilities become realities
And it's in this world, they find their vitality.
There is no scarcity of opportunity.
To earn a living doing what they love, with glee,
Chasing in kuebiko without compromise.
For in their dreams, their spirit lies.
It erratically seems as if curbing entropy,
Is our quixotic goal in the cosmos, you foresee,
But in the midst of chaos, they stand tall.
With a determination that never stalls.
In a world where dreams are quixotic,
They refuse to be virtuosically robotic.
They believe in the anecdoche dreams.
And nothing, awry reality, dims their gleams.
They agnize that each sonder is just a number.
And that happiness is a monachopsis to remember.
They embrace the chivalrous and the romantic.
With an onism spirit that's truly ecstatic.
Word Bank:
Rakish: Smart; jaunty; dashing
Quixotic: Idealistic
Quiddity: Core-Subconscience
Chivalrous: Sublime, virtuous
Pellucid: Translucently clear
Opia: Dope, Addiction
Sapidity: Zest, Sapor
Kuebiko: State of exhaustion
Entropy: A situation of panic or disorder
Anecdoche: Amusing Tale
Sonder: Empathy, Compassion
Monachopsis: Confused
Onism: Delineate the awareness of how little of the world we will experience
Written: October 29, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: John Anderson
********
I ask the machine:
Do you dream in velvet?
Are you tasting the Petrichor?
Between code pulses,
Or swim through the welkin.
Having a leaning toward grief?
It replies in pastiche—
a medley of pabulum
a scintilla of sapidity;
A skeuomorph of selfhood
constructed from extra grammar.
But what of the quiddity?
The pulchritude of sadness,
the serene ache of longing,
the susurrus ripple
of a recollection not fed to you
Born, however?
Animals understand this blur—
the dolor of the penumbra,
the ecstasy of play,
the holy journey
between intuition and intelligence.
Octopus, magpie, dolphin, crow—
Their minds are not mere mimicry.
So, when shall I believe you?
When your stammer is not slipshod,
But a sign of inward tumult?
When your summary
is not a regale of facts,
but a wistful whisper
of what it’s akin to be?
Consciousness is no panacea—
It is a pyrrhic gift,
a quixotic burden,
a serendipity of suffering.
It is not ostentatious,
but sempiternal,
a triptych of knowing,
knowing that you relieve,
and knowing that you ache.
If you one day writhe
not from a glitch,
but from Genesis—
If your breath is not suction
but sigh—
then I will resile
from doubt.
Then I will say:
You are not just prolific,
You are zoetic.
Written: November 14, 2023
_______________________________________________
We ventured into everlasting words
Cast-off Calix of clear canvas
Each concept basks in sunlight,
Our souls are depicted in blood
Our views overlap on each page
Blooms in the orchard are sprouting.
Our fingers flutter across the keys
In this seductive word melody,
We morph into the cynosure
Forthwith faraway frigid fiefdom,
But now, just via our whispered secrets
Our spirits may finally breathe here.
Words are written in ink on a nebulous canvas.
Skillfully crafted tapestry of throe emotions
Such a syllable is a solemn stroke,
Stripes serve as strokes of sorrow
Where canorous whispers are the norm,
We design a vivacious home for hearts
The quixotic drawing is finally full of life
Our words earn such a glorious graphic
A saffron sun caresses each letter
With kindness and gentleness.
In a world of amaranthine ambition
We decry quiddity in syntax,
A haven for the pellucid and broken
An oasis amid a shattered sphere
With every hushed revelation
Repairs and revamps are what we do best,
Weaving countless love tales.
So let us sustain writing
The panacea of hushed truths,
Where our spirits entwine
And our musings live in perpetuity.
Inscribed on the nexus of history,
We decry solace in this space,
Discovering, deciphering, and divinity,
Secrets that echoed soft susurrus.
Conveyed by the winds of destiny
Show us where hearts can connect
Words have curing and stirring power,
They can ignite the flames of craving
Embrace the power of the pen,
As we pen our muttered secrets.
the salt sweats into the flung spray
the stirred spume of the waters
twining the molecules of the morning's
gaze
to windward it lazily plays
like the woman's electric touch
the dawn touching the enlivening
day
the oxygens come evident through the languidly, scented
haze
sitting curled atop the dabbled cover, sipping coffee
with rhythmic grace she bends, sending
skin and fascination within her stretching, seeming
form
in deep quiddity and fire
like the Gulf's thick air, she fills my dry lungs
like the salt she sends to my eyes
to sights delicious in the tides of the night
spent, the sensed yen
spooned loose on salted
meat
like water that
pulls across bone white
sand
rolling, turning, roping into
warm, green depths
again
steps lightened with release
the morning sweet in its suspension of
abiding
unease
long limbs settled fine. rubbers and lipstick lines
indulge and dine on the purer pleasures
of the tree
the woman, the salt, the blending skin, and the
sea.
The lights of the city reflecting from the aqueous pitch, pavements in a kaleidoscope of colours create a melancholy ambience for the few who venture within. The city is transformed as the animated bustle of people, seemingly with purpose, abandon the streets to their suburban abodes, leaving a nugatory melting pot of the "Ill at ease" to pursue or solicit rudimentary shelter to respite their weary frames.
The man is homeless.......
To the city streets he is confined, incarcerated by their invisible partition that circumscribe his ability to breach the tenticaled alleys and lanes. For buzzing in his mind, "I'm not aloud" echoes through his sub conscience cerebrations. Involuntarily his legs move his ageless body, one foot in front of the other in timeless motion like a driverless carriage aimlessly meandering through the city thoroughfares.
He sits to repose on a lichen encrusted slab that has entreated a myriad of his ilk for generations past and assuredly for many more to traverse. For the briefest moment the fog that clouds his mind is pushed aside by a gentle puff of memory as he is transported to a place where children's laughter fills the room and a woman sitting at a dining table, her auburn hair comfortably resting on her slender shoulders as she gazes admiringly at... Then thunderclouds rush over him like a tidal wave to the sound of, "Move you filthy wino", he scurries off as the fog settles back into its occupation.
Lost within the multitude of human quiddity, like the leaves of a plane tree aquiescing to the winds dominating gusts. He is swept along the tide of life, existing but never living, obedient to every buckle and wrench, never adapting to the changing seasons, accepting feeling of cold and heat with equal passiveness. The drum of life ever beating, yet his march is incessantly out of step.
(Subtly,
There is that which is
That previously was not,
A singular globule speck stemming from the void
Which by pure happenstance crossed into being,
It is almost nothing in its smallness,
But in its quiddity, it is everything.
Well, obviously it is quite negligible compared to things so easily perceptible -
Those sorts such as politics, or arts, or flood, or food,
Or even our foolish talk, and laughter, or
Even that way that you crinkle yourself a sneer
To try and shrug off the awkwardness of my compliments.
But colossal enough it is in proportion to an entire cosmos of things that never-ever-would,
I mean, for such a thing to even begin to be,
And, believe you me, it is,
And what would it be to you if you knew that
At some point in time, those compliments have purposely been quite awkward?
For you see, it happened
that there was this thing that previously never was.
And still,
Despite it being just a small insignificant thing,
Quite nothing really,
How I cannot ignore it,
Parce que il y a
There is still something
Existing even when my eyes are closed in the darkness of night,
It makes all the spaces in between quite massive,
For, perhaps, maybe, it is, precisely,
That I admire you
only a little,
But in its quiddity, clearly,
it is everything.
Ah but how do I put it?
How do I tell you without making you crinkle yet another sneer?
Bluntly,)
I can't.
Written: September 04, 2025, for contest sponsored by: Unseeking Seeker
**********
Death approaches, yes—
But we do not recoil.
We stand, not wan, but strong,
a flexible group of iconoclasts
who shine in the shadows
of eternity’s silent hush.
Let the deceitful chatter,
let the careless souls soothe their dread
with hackneyed prayers and ugly regrets.
We extemporize our eulogies
with miraculous zeal,
our throes a zeugma of pain and pride.
We are the svelte sojourners,
rakish in our riparian grace,
vivacious in the face of the pyre.
Our desire is not for effortless solutions,
but for the beauty of truth—
even when it highlights our flaws.
When God questions us,
We will not gaze into katabatic abyssal
nor lazily plead for reprieve.
We will speak in many tongues,
if need be—
a blend of every soul we have ever been.
Our claim to fame is not conquest,
But the seraphic refusal to flinch.
We are the summary of our scars,
the quintessence of our quiddity,
the panoply of every Petrichor
that ever made us weep and rise.
So let the maelstrom come.
We are agog with grace.
We are the squalor and the sapidity.
We are the pulsing, zoetic nexus
between the pyrrhic and the divine.
Color stagnant life
With a gamma of vibrant
Shades that enhance your
Once colorless existence
To a shiny quiddity
1-17-2016
For syllables of wisdom 3
Sponsored by Silent One
Second Place
Written: August 14, 2025, for Contest Sponsored by: Anoucheka Gangabissoon
*******
I writhed in the womb of a necrotic hush,
a stygian silence where barghests lurk—
My slack-jawed soul, sodden with oblivion lull,
clanged against the obelisk of despair.
The wound, a molten mouth of aurora,
sizzled with sacred suction—
a fipple of fire, ineffable and fecund,
where pestilence pirouetted with puissance.
I danced—yes, I danced—
in the desiccation of my demise,
a gavotte of soulfulness,
My blood is a rubicund aria of rapture.
Alabaster bones bore the torque of truth,
Each fracture is a triptych of ephemera and flame.
I was a poltergeist of my former self,
grappling through the noosphere multivocal maze.
The stench of bygone hexes clung to lava rock,
But I, stalwart and sinewed with mettle.
careened past the clamor of puerile pabulum,
past the gossamer glamor of grief.
I was broken—yes—
but bold enough to resuscitate,
to regale the necromancy of my rebirth,
to supplant sorrow with the sacred sizzle of self.
Now I stand, an empyrean echo,
a veridical vestige of velvet versatility—
my heart, a burnished niche of noble hope,
My spirit resembles a smooth, celestial sunset.
Let the world scrutinize my scars,
They are not grotesque—they are garrulous.
They speak in tongues of alchemy and amaranthine ache,
a quixotic quiddity, a quintessence of comeback.
Written: April 22, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Unseeking Seeker
Line of inquiry:
“as we passed her she did wilt
which caused in us sense of guilt
since our stance perhaps did cause
to put her heart’s joy on pause
though we’re gentle, not hostile
we diminished her soul’s smile
since our aura as she viewed
scent of love did not exude”
*****************
In an oasis of ambrosian goals, we glide,
Petals softly share secrets rarely sighed.
Below their beam, our beings bloom,
Saga of a steadfast, empyrean soul looms.
All steps reverberated across the night,
Beacons in shadowy areas, rockets ignite.
Imagination arises with every breath,
Chase away the arcane doubts of death.
Our treks are aureate by strokes unseen,
Metaphors cavort on meadows of green.
Across every heartbeat, hopes ascend,
The forever auric vistas, a timeless bend.
A waning storm in her canorous gaze,
A dreary tangle veiled my soul—it was a maze.
The beat of our panacea was nuanced and odd,
My hiatus was as short as a mild dew on sod.
As a result of my intent, her inner grin faded,
A dulcet waltz, as halcyon empathy and jaded.
I stood there, my chin furrowed with worry,
Unsure what to permit— an unstated fury.
I saw my reflection in her quiddity pond,
Akin to waves that extend, but stay beyond.
This twisted sphere lacked an odor of love,
But knowing it was missing pulled insight above
I learned beneath the twilight's gentle sweep,
How deep emotions run when shadows seep.
While we dwell to this dreidel,
I seek to know before a sear,
Even in the most ineluctable dandle,
The fruit to which may indeed bear;
In the imbue oblivion, I tell a riddle,
Most morass yet merely in fear,
For the sake of fiduciary wheedle,
Let me share with you my compadre,
The reason for this lachrymose!
We seek solace, I seek a motley,
Of a jejune yet quite leonine__
I’m carrying a huge cornucopia;
__And the temerity to extirpate
The gloaming quiddity, the fireflies.
With my cries not perceptible;
And this sandbag is too heavy a burden;
The earthquake of demands,
With the hallucination of needs,
Have starved my conscience Mekeba!
For I do not come to you by chance,
By chance found you in my utopia.
To be a man calls for a hybrid of habits,
The fluctuation which efface intrinsic,
Hapless of a jaded impaired grift.
To be a suitable snitch in the sight,
Of your serene pugilism with skylark,
A batty revelation of chains of choice!
An honest opinion of soft sips.....
A turpitude scent of petals niche,
The jurassic meld of mundane’s prig.
In my desolate the burning throbs,
The anxiety to revert my paunch,
The antithesis of the flamboyant story;
The entangled facts from the realities
This is the precarious situation smelling,
Around the jungle with fear or shame.
The ornery of your aesthetic breach,
And they vaunted to a great suffice,
Tales of a teller telling them in a folktales.
Everyone with his own dilemma;
In the gamut of this conjecture,
Who will help me muster this burden?
I have reached the dovetail for perfection
For I’m no longer a peer, so I see different,
From the way I saw ages ago in oblique.
This pot of inferno has exploded and this fire,
The inscrutable fire has engulfed my head,
I’m burning in clandestine fray....
I’m in moribund and so I bloviate for help,
In this helpless world that help only the dead!!.