Best Splay Poems
No larger than a grain of rice,
her face is forming; mouth, a slice.
Her heart, a tube, begins to beat;
at one month, things are imprecise.
An inch now from her head to feet.
Eyes, fingers, toes: not yet complete.
Her neural tube, well on its way.
At two months, things look pretty sweet.
Four inches long, an ounce to weigh;
miscarriage risk drops every day.
All parts are present, there to see;
at three months, fingers grasp and splay.
Her nails and hair seen easily;
eyelid, eyebrow, eyelash agree.
Four months now and six inches long,
the ultrasound clear: she’s a she.
Her muscles build; she’s getting strong.
You thought you felt her; you’re not wrong.
She’s covered with lanugo hair.
At late month five, she hears your song.
Her fingerprints? Whorls present there.
The eyelids part; eyes open, stare.
When she hiccups, you may observe.
Month six births: viable with care.
Refinements to sensory nerves,
reacts to light, from pain will swerve.
She rarely is reserved or still;
month seven, and this gal’s got verve!
At five pounds now, she kicks at will.
Lungs immature, but they can fill.
Eight months, all sharpens, gets refined;
You’re on alert, you know the drill.
It’s nine months now; she’s quite confined.
Delivered, breathes in, and unwinds.
Flesh of your flesh, though quite her own;
Distinctly her, you’re intertwined.
Leaves of the Dead
Les feuilles mortes
They fall like dead soldiers
Dreams knifed in the dead of night
It is as yesterday
Once more
Where love was kissing my cheek
Where hopes had dreams
One could see the blossom of loves desires
Leaves falling in the park
Autumn coldness brings the dark
Death marching towards winters fate
Young love broken at the graveyard gates
Ah now I am holding a cane
I have all but forgotten yesterday
I have no lovers
My friends have all but gone
To their designated places in the ground
Piano keys in soft lit lounges
I remember the vodka stingers and sultry singers
Telling me life was jolie oh so jolie
If only there was love…
Leaves falling in the park
Autumn coldness brings the dark
Death marching towards winters fate
Young love broken at the graveyard gates
At 3am, with burnt cigarette butts
If only there was love
When the metro finds it’s unwitting end
Reality and cubes make ugly paintings
There are only drunks
Dreamers and bums
Thief’s picking pockets of your final instructions
Leaves falling in the park
Autumn coldness brings the dark
Death marching towards winters fate
Young love broken at the graveyard gates
If you can sober up and face the poverty
Of your empty aspirations of hope
Come to the bois de Vincennes
Where Kings and Queens danced and dined
What better place
To splay the butter
So that the knife slides smooth
Whilst the sun fades kissing the seine
Autumn leaves will fall
Dead again
Leaves falling in the park
Autumn coldness brings the dark
Death marching towards winters fate
Young love broken at the graveyard gates
In a magical forest among the purple ice plants
the queen fairy floats by inside a bubble and chants
"Come to me all fairy lights and play softly among your flutes"
hundreds of fairies fly to her in a great multitude they swoop
Soft music from the fairies make the flowers start to sway
bending low and high reaching for the sky they splay
The flowers bouncing each bubble with a fairy inside
giving each a beautiful and peaceful joy ride.
T Reams
Love is the bind between the sighs and cries
A choice made to hold onto what matters
The strength to move within the lows and highs
And hold the fragile heart when it shatters
To fit oneself into a world of two
Release the light to splay upon the dark
And show the traveled path when love is new
To fill the colored world with rainbow's arc
Find a hand of comfort that one can hold
And move from youth to the days of gray
Live a peaceful life as the years turn old
To walk the graveled roads and always stay
If love can be of this, then we will know
The love we shared will leave an afterglow
Enthralled by sunsets and the many ways
I so enjoy their glory in my view;
my eyes and mind absorb the bright displays
which stir my soul to be creative too.
Upon the sea, while sunrays splay their gold,
the sun descends behind horizon's line
to sink, at last, from visions that I hold-
as rays, with deep-sea magic, intertwine.
So like the sunset, my creative soul
reflects a brilliant glow with thoughts ablaze,
en massé to sink in fluid, deep control
where fervid thoughts create word's vivid rays.
My slipping soul sunsets into that sea-
where depth and mystery form poetry.
April 19, 2020
~2nd Place~
Contest: Slipping Soul Sunsets into the Sea
Sponsor: Chantell Anne Cooke
Judged: 03/28/2020
Rules: One original, poem on the theme of how
your soul as a sunset slips into the sea.
Under the canopy of the pine trees we lay -
from the poem 'Under the canopy of pine trees by Eve Roper
UNDER THE CANOPY
Under the canopy of the pine trees we lay.
Fervent scent gives undertow noses a heady sway.
Four eyes closed, we swallow the coniferous forest.
Love thrives in our paradisiacal protraction of rest.
Blinded to adversity, verdancy thrives in aurora splay
As our minds run into the river of sunlight to play.
We make promises — nothing sovereign outside our love.
He squeezes my hand, our engagement rings think of
Only this moment, the splendor of our crashing lips.
Our bodies envelope each other like an eclipse.
The force of nature — the arcadian elixir, its bliss.
I shall nevermore forget the chill of reminisce.
4/10/2020
Poetic lines from a Poetry Soup Poet - Eve Roper Poetry Contest
Sponsor - Silent One
The phantoms of Glen Affric call
from deep within the histosol,
where time and matter’s slow decay
of misty glen and ancient fray,
conceal Mackenzie ghosts in wait
with weapons drawn to greet their fate
of claymore blade; of Celtic cross,
to shed the blood of William Ross,
and stain the sphagnum bryophyte,
his soul to cut and extradite.
Amidst the whipping hilltop squall
is heard their eerie battle call,
where shadow soldiers groan and splay
upon the hazy, darkened brae.
As well, the loose of blood and spate,
to curse the earth and consecrate,
the peat to quench; the land emboss,
forever running red the moss.
We start at the end, with the warmth of his breath on her skin
Baulked by proximity, he never knew how to begin
A golden-tainted obsession, bitterly laced with lead
Transformed rapture to quicksilver the instant Cupid fled
A moment held, made static, tender touch met with distress
For seeded in her veins, lies a stem of the wilderness
Pursuit stalled just in time, yet time itself recalibrates
Supplanted upon breaking, a laurel shoot germinates
Oh, what should have been the faintest touch cannot be undone
Rooted in the throes of escape, bound to bask in full sun
Sinews harden to fibre, each pulse springs a bonsai tree
Bark chokes her voice box; silent screams nest in the canopy
Locked in abjection, as her praying hands first plead then splay
As liberty, though not consciousness, is taken away
Overruled in evergreen, contortion as regal crown
Petrified white marble shall become her eternal gown
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the god Apollo mocks Cupid for wielding a bow, claiming it unworthy of a child. In retaliation, Cupid shoots Apollo with a golden arrow to ignite love, and Daphne a chaste nymph with a leaden one to incite revulsion. Though innocent, Daphne becomes the target of Apollo’s relentless pursuit. Just as he is about to seize her, she prays for escape, and her body is transformed into a laurel tree. Bernini’s stunning sculpture captures the precise moment of this metamorphosis
Ragged thoughts marching like stoned centipedes.
To the slag heap of the lost.
Intertwined with eternity's brine.
Waiting to reunite with meaning.
A lightning strike- mind o fire.
Insomnia rapes the dream.
Splay the centipedes across the page.
Like autumn leaves o'er vampire graves
or twitching feet in a gyrus maze.
The destiny of brilliant beams
is the outback of the furthest ... reach...
Sadistic magicians pulling diamonds
back into centipedes.
Stiff pleated fronds in concert rise
to wax under the April sun
and trill their canticles begun
in verses jade that they comprise.
Chartreuse of thorny branches splay
a tumult to belie the grace
that on display they interlace
like rose stems on a breezeless day.
Atop the thatched denuded bole
gush fountains cast in cardamom,
an opalescent diadem
that glistens on the mossy knoll.
In thus exuberant array
do cloistered peacocks mime ballet.
1/20/18
He would enter the corral in the thick fog of mist,
up long before daylight would christen the air
The skies would be coral, and the sun glazed the crest
Dust clung to the heels of his old leather boots,
and gathered in shrouds around the hoofs of the mare.
Billowing were clouds, and a whirlwind of grief
that followed the storms of long hours awake
Endless were nights without the refuge of sleep
while he waited for sun to arrive and relieve
Caressing the flank of her sleek narrow, frame,
his favorite mare, Queenie, was the color of dawn
He would gather her reins, for a moment of calm
then, bury his face in her rusty brown mane
He'd watch as the light slipped over the hills,
smoothing the shadows, that haunted his world
Without ever knowing the worries we found
as we saw those same shadows, splay rapidly down,
drowning his eyes, with dark circles and frowns
Grief and the love of his horses, would ride,
together, off center....wherever, to hide,
and soften the hours, that waited for night
For the house was a shell, and the bedroom, upstairs,
became the forbidden, without her to share
The nights, ever long, were just waiting to tear
open the wounds that couldn't be shared
Up at the sunrise, and out until starlight
Where shadows grew stronger, and nights even longer
Burning the daylight, until light was in ashes,
then thrashing the midnight, with the darkness of mourning,
wading through dust-clouds, to see morning's light
Waiting for something to make it alright
____________________________________________________
4/28/15
Dedicated to my Dad
My muse, he comes and wakes me in the night
in urgent tones he whispers in my ear
my thoughts are kissed by him and take to flight
and all the while his words come fast and clear
At times he takes me to celestial heights
with stars clandestine to dance and play
at times he guides me to those inner sights
my cloistered passion shrine, he'll gently splay
each virgin thought that lies within my soul
with patience born of love he will undress
he will not stop until the rhyme is whole
and till release is come, he will caress
My muse, he makes the sweetest love to me
and from his seed is birthed my poetry
Eileen
The blood and lapis daylight sets
in ether. How the mind resets
brutality of winter chill
with February's codicil;
what gossamer a dream begets.
I hear the crickets in the dark,
their clicking takes up where the lark
has been. The flagrant marigolds
have huddled into twilight's folds,
on sanguine nightfall to embark.
The eastern zephyrs fall and rise
with rapid movement of my eyes
and echo whispers midnight makes
of blood white trails on moonlit lakes.
In silhouette I recognize
a dogwood, though can only sense
its glowing coral consequence.
The blossoms tell me they comprise
sweet spawn of sun rays in disguise
and capture all my heartbeats hence.
Now honeysuckle is entwined
on crisscrossed pathways of my mind
with jasmine in a potpourri
to conjure shamrock reverie
that leaves the pewter scape behind.
Around the lambent dogwood tree
alone upon that verdant lea
buds can prosper, bees will hum.
As though seduced by opium
I greet a vista I can't see,
at least not quite. I know it's there
and feel the dogwood everywhere,
behind me, flanking left and right,
an omnipresence in the night,
like answers to unconscious prayer.
Now high upon a clovered scarp
the tree is standing clear and sharp.
In silence I see restless blooms
play music that my ear assumes
is chiming dulcet as a harp.
Such Efflorescent star bursts splay
like windmills on a gusty day
that in ebullience do portend
a vibrance that will never end
and all my reticence allay.
In waking to a winter storm
that's February's gelid norm
I long still for my fulgid tree,
resplendence that surrounded me,
but only meet a turbid swarm.
I rise and pull back hermit drapes
to see the torrid flurries traipse,
yet through the chaos can discern
the leafless frame for which I yearn
beyond the window storming scrapes.
The dogwood stands just as before
unclad upon the icy moor
with nascent berries undeterred
as though through humble verse and word
like daylight through an unclosed door.
2/23/18
Strength Thru Adversity
Gregory R. Barden
The chartreuse pearls hung on the pregnant vine
as whispered jade of leaves in autumn breeze.
The necklaces of trellis did entwine
like clefs of absinthe notes in verdant keys.
Limes envied grapes reflecting fervent sun,
bright clusters for musicians then to splay
in shamrock fields with fables to be spun
of emeralds and pears in harvest play.
Cerulean spread 'cross effulgent sky
when came the time for plucking of the harp.
Lithe fingers did each picker then apply
and place with grace refrains upon the tarp.
In peridot the countryside rejoiced
while to reprise fruition gave a voice.
With Big Bang flash, our Universe was spun,
exploding with a force that quickly spread.
Now, science does predict oblivion
when all the energy of stars is dead.
Just half of all these energies remain
of what there was two billion years ago.
Two-hundred thousand galaxies now wane
with weakness of that surge which feeds their flow.
Survival of all living forms is moot,
for these evolved from Big Bang cosmic brew.
And in the end, the only absolute...
oblivion, the final stage...adieu.
Where stars and planets whirl in bright array,
the darkest, black oblivion will splay.
December 8, 2015
~2nd Place~
Contest: After Forever
Sponsor: John Lawless
Judged: 12/22/2017
~2nd Place~
Contest: Oblivion
Sponsor: Rob Carmack
Judged: 12/19/2015