Best Steepest Poems
Were I to know your depth’s degree
I’d want to dive quite fearlessly
give all the things required of me
to plunge into our destiny.
Were I to touch the heaven’s gate
I’ll even bear hell’s jealous hate
for being in this tortured state
you’ll see that I’m your destined fate.
Were I to scale the steepest height
of friendship's pleasure and delight
I’d want to share our deep insight
fun and laughter each day and night.
Were I to taste your sweetest kiss
I’d want to stay, that I won’t miss
for too long I did wait for this
the moment our souls meet…a bliss.
Were I to hear your heart’s desire
I'd want to touch, feel the fire
the fiercest heat while wind and choir
rise to the highest notes of lyre.
Were I to hold the strength of yours
absorb the substance of your force
I’d want to leave a charted course
and row with passion’s guiding oars.
Were I to ride the ocean’s waves
before it feeds the tempest’s graves
I’d want the shelter your heart saves
for you my love, it’s I… who craves.
But, were you to ask this of me
be your true love eternally
I still cannot accept, you see
…this is my sad hypocrisy.
So I'll pretend not loving you
I'd rather hurt ourselves in lieu
of people who shared our lives' hue
before my world got splashed by you.
KIM PATRICE NUNEZ
What is Your Hypocrisy Contest - 1st Place
08 April 2015
Line of inquiry:
"betwixt the pulse of our heartbeat
simply present, head-heart linking
dwelling in time stretched blissful peace
awareness became unblinking" Unseeking Seeker
He was a charming chameleon, saying all the right things
in that beguiling masculine timbre of his sultry voice.
Allure in his hazel eyes promised things my heart hadn't felt,
but it ignored my head's warning until I had no choice.
A niggling of worry continued to swirl through my mind
that something was wrong. Something I couldn't quite define.
He had shortcomings but to all of them my heart was blind.
I desperately tried but reasoning couldn't keep my heart in line.
Much is written about the rebellion of a treacherous heart,
and how it rhythmically pulses with the need for passion's fire.
It's been the cause of many sleepless nights when I'm fraught
knowing I cannot extinguish my heart of its burning desire.
It has always wanted what it wanted and wouldn't be denied.
It's always managed to overrule what my mind was thinking...
until it'd been crushed and broken, and only then did it confide
that it should've paid more heed to my head and heart linking.
Hearts can be guilty of transgressions. Mine was by betraying me.
Then it had to pay the steepest price that infatuation could ask.
From the grasp of lustfulness, my heart was able to break free.
Balancing the volition between mind and heart is not an easy task.
As father gave the push, my mother whispered, “Fly, my child!”
Resplendent in my feathers, yet was frightened of the wild
unknown for that where I grew up, I had to leave and find
the reason for my wings and claws, and how I can’t be mild.
The rush of warm wind cushioned me as I took my first flight,
majestic bird who gracefully flew to such soaring heights.
From that day on I fed myself and did my parents proud
for they have taught me not to let the prey escape my sight.
For forty years I roamed the land and soared over the sea,
but then the time had come to make the choice that’s hard for me.
Up on the steepest rocky mount, I went and by my own
removed my brittle beak, talons, and old wings painfully.
Why did I have to go through all the changes and the pain?
Those parts were worn and have become my weakness and my bane.
So now that God has given me another thirty years,
behold me after my rebirth, the eagle soars again!
*For those who would care to see,this is a 3-min video on the eagle's painful rebirth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXTrWPvP0iQ
Eagles: illumination of spirit, healing, creation, Divine, Spirit (feathers are sacred healing tools)
PICTURE YOURSELF AS A BIRD POETRY CONTEST - 9th Place
SPONSOR: ANDREA DIETRICH
13 May 2015
Some people think knots are for boy scouts and sailors
Cowboys, hangmen,Anglers and whalers
But knots have many jobs to do
To make this point I'll name a few
turning two heavy ropes into one?
The Carrick bend will get that done.
Do you need a loop at your rope's end?
On the figure eight you can depend.
Are you scaling walls of the steepest pitch?
You'ld be wise to perfect your Munter hitch.
Are you fishing one line, but wishing for two?
The Bimini twist can make that come true.
Please judge your knots by function and form
For if you tie them wrong
Your fish could be lost, Your boat could get tossed
Or your plummet could be mighty long
Here comes the judge contest
Where Man Walks Blindly Crying All Is Lost
As mind ponders on life and its brief span-
Only a gasp in the great fog of time;
Fleeting the days and quests of mortal man
Often in darkness, void of any rhyme.
Walking in pouring rain with sheer delight;
So, so short those pleasures may often be ;
Man born to deep rage and so quick to fight,
Eternally yearns to be truly free.
Sages and poets, keepers of heartfelt thought-
Souls that cry out for sweeter love and peace,
Too often ignored, favoring those bought,
Scoundrels hell will have and never release!
Rejection of truth has its steepest costs:
Where man walks blindly crying all is lost.
Robert J. Lindley, 3-02-2016
Syllables Per Line:
10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Total # Syllables: 140
Total # Lines: 14 (Including empty lines)
Words with (syllables) counted programmatically:
Total # Words: 109
Remember the walk we had at a dawn?
You mocked the fog and sang me a song
I cursed the cascade for being so rackety
You cursed the wind for being so wheezy
Arms in arms, walking and dancing
The sun too rose giggling
We passed through a garden, some buds, and birds
We passed some playing kids, nurses and mosques
The steepest mountain we climbed and laughed
The deepest dive we dived, and survived
Whale, sea horse, and shark stood shocked
As with lively skills, we had them tricked
Now the sun is sitting, the moon is waning
Our song is still not finished, and it has started snowing
___________-__________________-___
30th Oct, 2020 (11:30 pm)
Note: this one is about love, and our short lifespan. Offcourse, it is easy to pass through different stages of life when you have a lovely companion, but no matter how much time you get, it will never ever be enough. Death never stops chasing us, even if the companions stay loyal forever ). (I am hell sleepy right now, but wanted to write this one lol.)
A crystal-clear picture!
The embodiment of courage!
An unsung Warrior, vigorously protecting uprooted,
heart-broken kin, and many shelterless,
After a devastating partition of the homeland!
A man in his prime, giving up
dreams of comfort, luxury, indulgence,
Embraces a life of unimaginable hardships,
a life of never-ending toil,
So others feel safe, after a harrowing experience!
A life of everyday struggle for survival,
A life of torturous self-deprivation,
a life of agonizing separation -
From own loved ones,
so others live with theirs!
I remember the powerful hands,
which symbolized strength, offering a refuge,
I remember the devotion and dedication,
the tenderest care, the soulful empathy!
I remember the determined voice which symbolized
assurance, calming fearful souls.
Partition of a homeland - an unforeseen,
traumatic, curse for millions of sufferers,
Surviving with bare minimum, in an
unknown land, for an unpredictable future!
Leaving behind all cherished memories,
precious and prized possessions.
To me, One man symbolized -
how to climb uphill
Carrying a formidable weight,
on the steepest mountain,
And reach the summit
with sheer determination and indomitable spirit!
He is My Father!
September 8, 2020
Winner In Courage - Premier Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Chantelle Anne Cook
It’s the circle of a trickle sliced from snow
at the mountain’s very top.
Widening and lengthening, it gushes and grows,
and at the steepest slopes it rushes - cascading
as a froth of diamonds
sparkling in sunlight.
Splitting where big boulders sit,
it splashes on its drifting way.
Shifting - ever shifting - it tumbles
over countless stones and gravel
or meanders with susurration until at last,
it is a river.
Broad or narrow; shallow or deep,
it can be tempestuous at times,
while other times
it’s as placid as
patches of mellow moonlight spilled from sky.
At last it flows to where, estuarine,
it melds with the destiny of other river shifters -
Oceanic.
June 23, 2021
for The Shape Of Water Poetry Contest
Now for 'A Brian Strand July 2' Poetry Contest
Written: May 2nd, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Seth Pina
Based on the Poem: The Artist
5th place contest winner
******************
It begins as a breath, barely born—
a lucent little longing that should have stayed liminal,
Yet it irrupts, unabated,
threading itself through the chiaroscuro of my thoughts.
I tell myself it is otiose,
a passing flicker, a quixotic quirk of the mind—
but it grows tensile, treacle-thick,
a rumbustious rhapsody refusing to evanesce.
Your name—your very sobriquet—
becomes a mellifluous mantra,
an epizeuxis echoing in the marrow,
a chant I never meant to memorize.
I wander through hours like a wayward opsimath,
learning too late how fixation forms its own theology—
how a single presence can become
a sacrosanct symbiosis of ache and awe.
Every thought is festooned with your outline,
every silence redolent with your imagined breath;
even the air feels janiform,
half mine, half yours,
as if the world itself has chosen sides.
I try to exculpate myself
from this inchoate imbroglio,
but obsession is a sagacious sherpa—
It knows the steepest path
and drags me up it anyway.
And still—
beneath the nadir of night,
in the hush where hubris dissolves—
I feel the truth unfurl:
That obsession is not hunger,
nor hubris,
nor hecatomb of reason—
but the amaranthine ache
of wanting to witness beauty
so completely
that it finally
witnesses you back.
All of me loves all of you;
My Love for you,
Is more than something I do.
It’s who I am;
It’s the breath I take.
It’s my happiness;
It’s the memories we make.
It’s the good times and bad;
It’s the steepest of hills.
It’s the joys and the tears;
It’s the never-ending bills.
It’s the wind that is blowing;
It’s the twinkle of stars.
It’s the depths of the ocean;
It’s this journey of ours.
I’d rather have the
hardest of times together;
than have it easy apart.
I’d rather laugh and cry;
and feel the beat of our hearts.
Hope,
Love,
Respect,
Devotion and pride.
No journey too long;
No desert too wide.
My Love for you,
is more than something I do.
All of me,
Loves All of You.
For you to know my love is true,
I speak my mind just for you,
with my heart to help me through,
such things and what I'd do,
I'd wend through fire, unafraid of death,
put my heart through true loves test,
risk my life and nothing less,
for you dear love there is no quest,
I'd crawl through miles of hot desert sand,
to kiss your lips, to hold your hand,
for with you always is where I'll stand,
to let you know, I am your man,
I'd climb the steepest mountain side,
I'd swim a tempestuous ocean tide,
just to have you by and by,
stand with me darling by my side.
Never forget where you came from,
As you walk in chains,and whips rain on your backs,
As you drag the chains,like beasts and dogs,
As you lie in cages,when the night falls,
As you are fed with leftovers,even that you fight for,
But remember that your mother bore and gave you life,
Remember that your land and colour gave you identity,
Never forget where you came from.
Hold on to life,you'll need every breath,
As you walk the hills,rocky and thorny bushes,
As you go down on your knees,to carry brutes on your backs,
Hold on to dear life,every step shall count,
As you tread the darkest forests,and walk the steepest terrains,
As you act as sacrificial lambs,to protect your masters-
Hold on..
Never forget where you came from.
When they bury you alive,
Remember the earth is your mother;
When they molest those of your blood,
Or act animal on you,
Remember the earth shall swallow them;
When they batter you for fun,
When they use you to satisfy their 'hunting',
Remember the earth watches your tears,
Never forget where you came from.
So like animals you match forth,
Keep on going like you're paid to survive;
As you sweat that of blood and tears as well,
Wipe them off and keep on going;
As you get exhausted and feel like quitting,
Drag yourself like it's good to live like this:
For a day shall come,and your legs shall be free,
A day shall come,you'll head these people,
A day shall come,you'll save those of your kind,
A day shall come,you'll regain to your kind,the lost glory
Never forget where you came from
I spend each wakeful night in search of evasive sleep.
An unwelcomed vigil denies me peaceful rest.
I've need to bury his haunting specter somewhere deep;
entombing forever my perpetual uninvited guest.
Close my weary eyes, appears the vision of his face.
His smile plays over me in sweet unbridled song.
If I could rip out my eyes as easily as tattering lace,
Would insomnolence not taunt me all night long?
How long must I remain my heart's shackled possession?
Will this nocturnal torment never reach an end?
No response have I heard to either of these questions.
My heart is not content to simply call him, "friend."
I've foolishly assigned myself a Herculean task,
To believe from its grasp, my heart will set me free.
I'm paying the steepest price that love alone can ask.
Why, treacherous heart, why have you betrayed me?
Often bullied, more often tried
In darkest hours, never cried
Endless encounters with hope died
On steepest odds, yet never shied
I welcome abuse, give it your best
Hunt like a dog, squish like a pest
All this while, I take my rest
Until forebearance comes to test
For then, you must answer for your screwing
Ponder upon all of your doing
Ignorance is bliss, so is your unknowing
Where I shall take you, no one loves going
Do not take me for where I lie
For my colours deceive the brightest sky
Your pestering shall render your end nigh
(Be warned) There is more to me than meets the eye
If Your Love Belonged To Me
Are there no words that I can say,
No supplication I might pray?
My tortured heart would be set free.....
If your love belonged to me
I'd write poems that would make you swoon,
Sonnets I've rehearsed with the moon,
Your soul would cry in ecstasy.....
If your love belonged to me
When the sun leaves its golden throne,
I'd give you nights you've never known,
Like a tempest riding the sea.....
If your love belonged to me
When the moon's silver rays unfold,
Won't you give me your heart to hold?
I would cradle it tenderly.....
If your love belonged to me
Calm the fears of what I most dread
With words of love you've left unsaid,
You could end this uncertainty.....
If your love belonged to me
I'd travel to the end of time,
The steepest hills for you I'd climb,
If when I reached eternity.....
Your love belonged to me
Lora Colon
January 30, 2015
No Doubt (I think)
If angels should forget to pray,
If mute souls too should have their say,
If all the saints were lost at sea,
My true love’s heart would still be free.
Though vows were taken on the moon,
Though poetry might make me swoon,
Cicadas lose cacophony,
Each lover’s heart must still be free.
If sun should leave his crystal shell,
To flirt with angel Gabriel,
Or long for mermaid in the sea,
In Love I swear he would be free.
The planets glowing sweet at night,
Would not be seen without sun’s light,
Would not exist for you and me,
But in God’s plan they too are free.
And all those fears which make you cold,
When you’re without someone to hold,
Just players with no artistry,
They strut and fret, when hearts are free.
Let’s live where Love just seems to rhyme,
Adjust our schedules to God’s time,
Though some may mock our coquetry,
In love and life we are the free.
Brian Johnston
January 30, 2015
Poet's Notes:
Lora Colon's poem from her site on PoemHunter.com reprinted here with her permission. This Echo Poem is one of many that she and I have co-authored. We invite you all to check them all out now that they are finally published together as I had originally envisioned.