Best Scalds Poems
Tongues of solar flare writhe in combat kiss
—flame-throwers unleashed
iron words h a m m e r e d in fire
ferrous words melt-morph into heart-welts
once under skin
hear the fevered air burn with cheers;
c a c k l e s of c r a c k l e s and h -i -s -s -s
bellies of tears full of fire; fire feeds on gasoline tears
fire-eaters’ —bellies full of flames
turn inside-out; fire-breathers shape-shift
from love doves to squawk hawks
bonfire of marital bliss consumed by wildfire
desolation burns holes in lacy i n* t i* m a* c y
ashes
fall
from
s o l o
cigarettes
. . . nuclear winter in summer
t h r o a t s of songbirds c h a r r e d
. . . silence
follows blaring —w h o o s h— of serpent fire
purification in cremation of all OratiOn sound
liability and liberation
animate to dissipate in snaky smoke of HeLL-wraiths
apathy clouds form they rain on red heat
smother a smolder mother a cease fire
ember-ice; scalds freezes t–h–a–w–s
whets flesh — and wets fire extinguished flower bed
ashes laid down
—passion’s quiet confetti paves a path—
w. a. i. t. s
— s l e e p w a l k s
… d r e a m s
Of late, nature moans inside a scraped womb
As her lush environ FLOUNDERS breaks out…
Played like a trusting NEOPHYTE from woods to rivers
She endures the BOMBAST of dirt through man’s crimes:
Awaiting kindness …amends remain undone
While LECHEROUS deeds persist without guilt, why, why?
More wrongs ravage innocent fish and flora
Infecting her very marrow, to drain away.
Loot, SMOLDER, rip a body ! Time runs out.
Mother Earth answers through bloodied jolts…
By will of PROVIDENCE, she whips a storm without INHIBITION
Halting indifference, her fire scalds air’s layers,
A battle citizens might grow DOLOROUS over--
Until her soul is nourished back, till she moans no more.
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Eight Word Free Verse Challenge
For John Hamilton’s Contest 6/13/2019
Midnight envelops the pillow
where her head rests sleeping
as each shaft of moon light glows,
umber and ocher traces,
through the satin nimbus of her hair,
gently caressing her soft cheek.
The billowing gossamer of sheer veils,
like phantasms, take flight
with morning's sigh
through the open window,
while the shadows dance playfully
through each beam of light.
She stirs but a moment when the cool murmur
tickles the lashes that smile across her eyes.
Smiles of the wonder of life once lived
of friends once known,
now, mere dreams that taunt her
in early morning slumber.
She, once the consummate ingénue,
naive of life's sorrows,
innocent of the pain of affairs
lived and loved and broken,
lies like a babe in mother's arms
cradled in the bosom of her warm haven.
As the sun scales the scaffold of early dawn,
its light scalds her eyes
and harsh reality again awakens her.
With painted face and perfumed breast
she is no longer the innocent,
for life demands tribute and she pays her debt.
Act II, playing the part comes easy now,
the soubrette, her new role,
her transformation complete in the light of morning.
Hiding her doubts behind coquettish trifles
She makes it through another day,
only to await her midnight dreams.
11/18/2018
I am a dare-dreamer, a mask wearer
a soul bare-r (not always my own); a word-weaver.
I pull thoughts like strings. Strings of cobwebs,
cirrus, frayed dungarees, threadbare memories.
I warp and weft strings of thoughts into poems.
Sometimes I get caught in knots—
I cut myself loose of those naughty strings.
I hold kite strings. Oh and rainbows strings.
They connect my soles to realms of my soul.
At times, I lose sight of kites in the gale.
Was I irresponsible with responsibility for strings?
I think, “thoughts”, should get lost in wind and clouds
to find the eye-of-the-storm—where I rescue
kites and make a poetry page my stage
and arena. I twine strings into heavyweight rope.
Fasten it to four corners of a contest page. I enter,
incognito, with Apollo imagery and Dionysus metaphor;
a masked prize-fighter filled with creative angst.
I grin for wins in poesy masquerade parades.
When I fail, strings break off of my drama mask.
Revealed but unrecognized, am I a fractured rainbow?
My inner balcony critic reprimands:
“sunlight through raindrops must be flawless
to create flawless strings of prismatic color”! Alas,
lack of refraction leaves words white; non-prismatic.
I restring tragedy mask; ego sphere of a versateer.
I create poetry because I love to pluck things;
harp strings and heartstrings…
If I no longer make readers cry, will pen cred be lost?
Don’t think I won’t pluck nightshade petals, fly’s wings
and cello strings to make you feel my tormentia!
I’ll quiver lips of lost-in-love verse. Coax your soul
to sip pale ale of sorrow, as strawberry scent
scalds your skin. I’m not unhappy to gratify your senses.
I loop maverick string, whirl it and throw—
lasso a funhouse mirror; rein it in.
Imagination stilt-dances in looney-glass gaze.
I use muse strings to hang mirrors and ask;
who’s the puppeteer and who’s the puppet—
poet or reader?
As dawn it roosts, to the early lids of my opened eyes,
Never ever has been a happy feeling pleasant comprise.
Quinquennium back I can clearly remember,
The morning’s plea scalds my thoughts like burning ember.
My blanket festooned body, on the bed it stirs & moves,
The immensity of my drumming head, ever hopes it improves.
Rise as I to the early morn’s sunshine,
Try to smile and reminiscent, it’s surely futile to whine.
And so I sooth my dreary mind,
Impel the mind to elude dismal thoughts & unwind.
Alas! I’m timorous, those dull & dismal thoughts befall,
My mind ,now I know I need to overhaul.
To edify my mind I have to seek,
Muse must I, think ponder reflect every day of the week.
Tall happy positive thoughts I must now contemplate,
For these are those that will bring me peace and joy once they ruminate.
When I close my eyes to tardy nites,
Am gonna be happy at morn the thought itself excites.
A long dark shadow of doubt it always looms,
It’s foggy dawn and my dull thoughts they resume.
From dawn to dusk I carry on a low,
Pessimistic spirits, they make me slow.
Explicit thoughts are sought desired,
A sound body and mind are always admired.
Forlorn, behold it in my mind’s eyes,
Set tone the work ambience my passions cries,
Throttled are my dreams, dismayed are my desire,
And Brutus knife it’s uncouth edge stabs the back in holy attire.
In a Quinquennium span, and time it ran,
But my spirit at first light is like a weary man,
Now I cognize to him his destiny a bloom,
And to me my destiny untwined from his , so not to doom.
Must alter my retort to suit me fine,
And joyous days will transcend me to cloud nine.
Aghast I am for I have lost,
The crusade within me and am weary exhaust.
Forlorn I am to the day’s time,
Often mull are they my thoughts, that are all slime.
Forlorn I am to the nite’s time,
I know it’s time to clean up my heart’s grime.
Forlorn it will be till I inversely think,
From insanity, I’m now on its brink.
Forlorn ,I want to say good bye,
For many eons before I die.
Sizzling Summer
summer sun sizzles
sans sunshade shelter
sunburn scalds
she sprints scorched sand to shore
swizzles in soothing sea
Sandra M. Haight
~3rd Place~
Contest: Short Forms For Summer Part 3
Sponsor: Andrea Dietrich
Modern Tanka
Judged: 05/27/2016
i should have fallen for the Sun.
Everlasting light: the absence of ambiguity,
and of course the promised warmth,
it scalds the soles of those who lay upon me...
Or maybe the Forest-
boundless life!
And the incessant profession of love
through the high-pitched squeaks of birds,
and the croaks of frogs.
i am in love with the Sea;
when i heard your breath through the line,
i closed my eyes
and swore i was by the soft thrashing of waves.
Mysteries lay in the depths of your unexplored soul,
and each day i am usurped by your tides,
pulled deeper into the abyss,
maybe even drowning.
S.M. Alexis
We pull the weeds from dawn till night,
and pray for rain on summer's blight,
as muscles strain and blisters bleed;
we will not bow to nature's creed,
but dig and pull with all our might.
What burning zeal she dares ignite;
she sows those thistle seeds in spite,
and mocks our pain as we proceed
to pull the weeds.
If all our birds have taken flight
and blooms once lush are shriveled tight;
if summer fields stand choked in weed
and nature scalds us with her greed,
then stiff intent inflames our fight
to pull the weeds.
THE SWAN
It’s unseasonably warm
The sun is high
And I’ve wandered down among the rushes
Bare-legged, knobby kneed, warm mud oozing between my toes
When she catches my eye as she slowly slides by
This graceful swan
No alarm shown, no ruffling of feathers, no hurry
She continues on, close to the bank
And, after a certain spell, is gone
I gaze up into a cloudless sky – one gull gliding high
And suddenly I am one – for but a moment –
With some formless, sandy jelly
Inched ashore from the hot primordial sea
This sense scalds, travels the length of me
And only a close reappearance of that lovely swan
Brings me back to reality
This poem was inspired by Andrea Dietrich's charming book, Prosies. If you haven't read it, I urge you to buy a copy =
Shadow Poetry
1209 Milwaukee Street
Excelsior Springs MO 64024
The rowan tree sees a light turn from white into grey colours turn
to shades of dust and claws of branches blacken against the sky.
Rowan made from feathers, made from blood keeping me safe.
The rowan tree sees a ghost with heat floating about a sodden
ground as night’s ghastly thoughts die down and give a rise to
the dreadful day. Rowan made from blood keeping me safe.
The rowan tree sees the sun make shimmering shadows as
brightness scalds our eyes and words shrivel on the edge of our
tongues like ash. Rowan made from blood keeping me safe.
Bitter as wormwood or Turkish coffee,
absinthian abandon;
this passion stings and burns.
Cheeks blaze with the scarlet sign and stigma
and your teeth leave their signature on my hips.
Prudence we shed like the ash
tapped off my cigarette with trembling fingertips.
This bed is an ocean in which I choose to drown-
sore each morning from being
crushed by your waves.
Ninety-proof ecstasy
scalds as you swallow,
but you, oh so deliciously, melt.
The scars will be there only because the body
could not bear the pleasure that it felt.
Chains tightly bound
Around my Spirit.
Hopelessness echoed
Sounding doom in my ears.
Fight, faith broken.
The Sea of Anguish
Had engulfed,
canopied& enveloped.
Then I looked to the Sky.
My gleam of Hope
Who nightly strokes
The sorrowful world.
Her soothing light
Ceaselessly shifting form.
Eternally
illuminating a path
For the Lost.
Unlike her blinding cousin, The Sun,
who scorches& scalds.
The Moon tenderly kisses
The face of the Earth.
Unlike the orange-red glare,
signaling misfortune.
White light glows,
promising a New Dawn.
Look out your window!
Look out your window!
Get a glimpse,
she is Full
maybe Half
tomorrow quarter.
Get touched,
the crescents heightening Whiteness.
Her untainted Purity.
"Oh that this too,too solid flesh would thaw
And resolve itself into a dew"
Water slips through our fingers ,so fresh and sweet
Yet a solid mass will smash all before it
Where scree sits,solid on the slopes,
Dislodged it will sweep down,wave after wave,
A sea of stones
That blanket of snow off piste lying still
Shudders into life thundering
With oceanic power
Drowning all in its path
How solid is cold metal until molten
And then its white hot stream
Spits and scalds and settles
Into its mould
I
order
some coffee –
Americano –
wait with anticipation.
Superheated steam scalds the essence from the beans,
then rising from the cup, that rich fresh-brewed aroma.
I
savour
the vapours –
pure Arabica -
then notice in the saucer
something which I did not order : a biscuit,
yes, cellophane-wrapped an unsolicited biscuit,
the ubiquitous and unsolicited caramelised biscuit !
I
wonder
what’s it worth,
my unsolicited biscuit ?
I’ll send it back and get a refund !
" An Encryption ... "
( Acts 14: 22 / Ca. 8: 6, 7 )
The Pain of A Thousand Cuts
The Shame of A Thousand Crawls
The Blame of A Thousand Faults
That Came To Mean: Nothing ... Or All ...
The Stain of Ten-Broken Trusts
The Claim of Ten-Broken 'Oughts
The Same Ten-Broken Pans That Scalds
Still Bathes Billions, Broken-Souls In Salts
The Aim of A Hundred-Hunts
The Game As The Hounded Calls
The Maim of A Million Assaults
... Lay Slain In The Hero's Halls ...
The Fame of Ten-Thousand Exults
The Names of Ten-Thousand Exaults
When Vain Pride of Ten-Thousand Falls
... To Flames of Love's Fire-Walls ...
The Strain of Countless Specs of Dust
Has Lain In Decades of Era's Exhaust
Sustained Over Ten-Thousand Broken Laws
Explained In Encryption of Ten-Thousand Vaults ...
... She Sang Inscriptions Written On Ten-Thousand Walls
Written & Copyrighted ©: 5/7/2014
by: MoonBee Canady