Best Sketch Poems
perched on a prominent edge of me
I ache looking through my dream debris
compelled I sight a prospective ledge
where bits of my gray are shown in sketch
sadly no colors of me do I detect
~why does no dream ~ ~ dream to console me~
Painting You
Before painting, I first sketch you
In my mind’s eye…To compose
The lines, shapes, shadows and lights,
That work altogether to form a semblant sight
Of you for any relative, friend or acquaintance…
Next, I embrace the required courage
To face the blank canvas; to dip my brush
In sublime tones for my wild orchid wishes,
Wanting to stroke across the heavens
For reflecting starlights bright,
Which I’ll situate to split the darker places
Where the inks bleed and branch out
Around you, smudging your purest colors…
That I endeavor to recover
When illness tries to smother
You with a viridescent blanket for on-going days;
Cloaking the glance of your azure blue eyes;
Pulling gray and white from your skull
To streak through your forest brown hair;
Rushing flag red moments to your cheeks
When you growl, “No. Don’t—“ when I
Try any way to help you through the fevers
That hang dredged plum-violet clouds over
The sofa — away — where you stay sleeping…
While I sit crimson awake worrying,
Watching you breathe…And asking
Through faith’s golden prayers for your healing;
For our holy Lord to send some ministering angels
— With their glistening opaline feathered wings;
Who side by side, place hands on you ~ veiling
My first view of prayers’ answers coming true;
Lifting me to a bloom of rosebud gratitude.
I paint you never far.
I paint your ocean blue eyes opening.
I paint you always beside me in a sandcastle brown.
I dapple the air over us an effervescent pink.
I paint your prism presence close.
I paint your mid-night’s Arora Borealis dancing hues.
Our love is a stippled, rolling color wheel
Of our linked diamond destinies: journeying
Together on amber roads under sapphire skies.
—————————————————
(c) sally young eslingwe 10/17-18/2023
Glory to God…
Color is an integral part of my life, essential in
physical descriptions, a blessing to language.
Colors are perfect subjects for character sketches.
For one perusing the color wheel, it's easy to
choose green, a color of such versatility and
profound meaning.
Symbol of nature and youth, signifying hope for
eternal life and respect for the environment,
green nestles happily in the spectrum between
bright companions blue and yellow.
The verdure of spring adorns the plants that sustain
our bodies, delight our eyes, and lift our spirits.
Lovely evergreens grace our forests, yards, and even
our homes, decorated and surrounded by long-awaited
gifts and jubilant families celebrating the season.
These wholesome traits and so many more surely outweigh
the greenness of occasional jealousy or inexperience.
entered in Eve Roper's New or Old 5 Poetry Contest on August 2, 2016
placed 2nd
Poverty stands close ready to knock
Bare essentials just those
Much love, human companionship
Lessons in life imposed
As a boy he learned to work
He didn't love it but did
With willingness he plowed the mule
No brothers' work him outdid
Responsive, responsible boy
Turns into a selfess man
A reliable mature human
Remembers where he began
Quick to laugh, quick to understand
Quick with mercy and gifts
He was positive strong man
Things for himself meant thrift
Caring, cheerful affectionate
Thoughtful in most ways
Faithful devoted husband
He's greatly missed today
Inspired by Gautami Phookan's contest
Sketch A Character
Not an entry
This is some of my father's positive characteristics
her obdurate scales no longer silk
(once kaleidoscopic),
worn from tides that led her to a
stagger stone,
she left the ocean to be alone;
unyielding waters wide
parted when she cried-
no ocean could atone
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
pale and barren, she wore nudity
like soft chiffon enveloped in lace-
long auburn hair flowing down to
the lowest part of her soft back,
with waves highlighted from the sun;
for
beauty was worn inside and out-
she knew not why her eyes wept,
nor why she wanted solitude;
she laid upon that stone to be
alone-
for no ocean could atone
September 23, 2019
Line Gauthier
Mermaids Poetry Contest
I sketch the stars
This edge of night
To walk by faith and
Not by sight
a lead pencil, blunt
and flaking, in a sketch book;
grey faces peer back
Born in Cincinnati that buckeye state
January 13th 1959 – 57+ years to date
A tangle of arms & legs testing lungs, which sounded great
He kind of resembled a misshapen octopus with oval pate
Glowering inxs of deep purple from blue mood being irate
Thrust out the womb of Harriet Harris whom Boyce did date
After courting this youngest Kuritsky kin whose ill-fate
Whisked by grim reaper, which demise she did hate
For her being imbued with vim and vinegar til illness ate
Away her je nais sais quois personable maternal trait
Evident during my boyhood reflected by her son of late
As he too inches closer to his mortality and Hades gate
Aware that each day ought to be cherished as the rate
Of time courses down that zip line where grim reaper does wait
Attired in brand name hoodie swinging scythe across oblate
Spheroid i.e. terrestrial firmament – though many years some great
Yet to be lived – trying to recapture childhood bliss before freight
Train on a collision course toward self-destruction ala tete a tete
With Anorexia Nervosa as thy then coveted deadly mate
A brutal hellish spiral down into abysmal depths of despair did create
Indelible psychological affects undermined existence I now equate
writ horrendous emotional, physical and social upon head of mate
Pledged his troth (almost 2 decades ago), which spouse doth berate
For lack of expressed concern and attests schizoid psychic slate
irrevocably seared and stunted natural development where I rate
prepubescent, early adulthood mental illness did grate
Against once boisterously playful innocent boy crushed potentate
Only male heir from me deceased mother who tried to extirpate
Mailer daemons who forged suicide pact and via voice did dictate
Albeit without success, yet decry forsaken innate
Experiences with female relationships lured my own poisoned bait!
She is the sketch, never looked nice,incomplete and the loner.
She never glowed like princesses,
always at the back raw
and was never expected to bloom like Gerbera daisies.
She is just the sketch
with her peers she played and laughed
and some days she would wish to take that atmosphere
back at home with.
one-time she was with friends playing in front of her house
and noticed one of her brothers coming out of his employers car
her friends were stunned to see a white man's car in front of her house
so she pulled a stunt and told them " that is my father! ",
knowing that she was lying but she just wanted to own a parent
and boasts about what her Father will buy for her.
She only enjoyed that imagination for a minute
then reality kicked in in her boney chest box into her agonized heart,
Her guilty conscious caused her to promise herself to never lie about herself again.
She feels uncomfortable in the crowd
She thinks they are better than her,
like a black stone amangst white crystals.
isolating herself from others is what she prefers,
it's so peaceful and comfortable in her own.
though She can see through their eyes
that they are not free around her, she gives it a blind eye.
Its not fair.
Her soul is loving and caring but it is hidden behind the thick skin.
sometimes She can see from a distant a broken soul.
Oh! How she wish she was a butterfly,
fly over a broken one, whispering words of mending
but her wings are broken.
She is just the Sketch!
mouth silenced by the hand of low self esteem
mind talking like floods, eyes speaking like a Queen
Oh! how I wish her mouth could be just her mind,
puking words from her mind.
I guess only her tears can do the talking,
the paper and the pen does the expression.
She never chose her background but She is about to choose her future.
She is just the sketch and the sketch never glows.
when taking more than just a passing glance,
It makes you feel something so uncanny irresistible.
only the feeling can confess its beauty.
My somewhat outsize ears and longish neck
(I swear exist, which contrary to popular myth
never seen by living persons) support this egg shaped
(fried or scrambled some might argue) head.
A mostly flat and hairless chest attests to a regular
regimen of light (self-concocted) chest-pounding routine.
Exercise (as well as meditation) a vital part of my
daily program to deal with the ordinary stresses
of primitive existence. Coffee happens to be the
sotto voce sole vice, which exotic brews provide
helpful jump-start. I sometimes even chump on cup
kept teeth sharp. That unproductive habit came
to a screeching halt after breaking every pearly white.
Now to that locale known as the trumpeting rump
pull stilts skin. Although the unseen forces of biology
and genetics dealt me an itsy bitsy, tiny tushy
(which serves as the but for fellow Apes to taunt
and tease) such anatomical feature offers little
value as the worthiness of sexual prowess.
This palm pilot sized gluteus Maximus offers one benefit.
Ease to squeeze into tight spaces without getting stuck.
This tiny tushy accompanied by a vestigial and
teeny-weensy Weiner schnitzel of a phallus, which
undersized cock a doodle do doth bulge into
an erectile state within shooting distance of
coveted warm, wet and wooly private world
property of each and every woman.
A pair of skinny (flamingo like) legs (covered in
adequate hair) now completes this general character sketch.
A pen travels across paper; a line appears to follow.
Curiously growing eyes; anxiously follow its path.
Muscles and tendons taught; cat leaps and the sketch is gone.
Nature is a sketch
of the tenuous hold we have
on formidable time.
No season stands immutable -
each an interlude - one to another.
Demurely, summer gives way to Fall.
Bereft of leaves, brittle branches rattle
against a crisp blue sky.
When winter enfolds us all we dream;
the collective dream of spring.
Eight word sketch
For John Hamilton
10/31/17
3rd Place
Hibiscus drooped, sheds
Petals in the gust of rain ...
A broken heart dies
Swallows swivel rain
Above water stifled grass .. .
Memories of joy
Light covers the earth
And dust make rainbows appear ...
I am that poem
Sky and tablecloth of stars.
—Memorial Day Elegy—
The grave site
where the men and women of patriotic spirit fought bravely
in the battlefield and fell for glory of the nation,
abandoned everything that they have, buried
at an age that is too young to die lie as headstones.
No matter with how many brilliantly shining medals
to decorate these warriors
and to honor them with all kinds of eulogies,
alas! sad as ever, they just stand there without a word
as the tombstones identical in size and shape.
The warriors were, though, not that strict
that evil must be paid with evil and good must treat with good,
held arms because the nation was attacked by the enemy,
and security was at stake;
to them, it doesn’t matter whether it is good or evil,
they have to restore this national emergency
with whatever means available.
The warriors, therefore, without the slightest hesitation,
dashed in the middle of the gun smoke and bullets,
into the battlefield where the cannonade tears the ears,
and blasting fires pierce the eyes.
The warriors,
who fought with every means to protect nation,
even traded their lives for nation’s security,
now stand there as the tombstones
with relief and great pride,
looking proudly at the fluttering nation’s flag,
that they protected with all that they have;
during the day
beckoning the passing clouds,
at the night
calling twinkling stars,
telling the stories of how gruesome was the battle
and how hard it was to fight.
A charcoal sketch of lonely eyes;
Stygian grey reflected lies,
Desolate haunts that drift from where
the graphite raven sets her stare;
Trembling pleas her god denies,
A charcoal sketch of lonely eyes,
Feels embers dim to chalky coal
and onyx smolder through her soul;
Her screams are muffled by her lips
so tightly sewn by fingertips,
A charcoal sketch of lonely eyes,
reduced to tears of silent cries;
She prays for light as darkness draws,
once more gets groped by daddy’s claws;
So now in skies as raven flies,
A charcoal sketch of lonely eyes.