Best Stratum Poems

Cypress trees like evergreen steeples
rise above rows of gravestone woes,
their shadows lie side by side like railroad ties 
across writhing paths banded like snakes;
gravel birth cords sinuous 
sensing the ground   seeking the sun
crossroads of life and death and rebirth;
where mortals breathe and grieve...

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Rest now
O restless heart
released in ebb   to flow

ride the other side of the king tide rising
buoyant your movement in rise with the waves
Rise! to beyond where breakers break long-suffering shores
pitiless the grind of stones and shells to grounds -
ride the quiet swell to...

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I stared into the mirror today.
I saw you -
a needled zealot
hovering around my left shoulder;
Adolph Hitler dressed in 
opium-perfumed swatches.

You smelled like her.
You acted like him.
You looked like me.
Swastika tall and evenly abhorrent.
Syringe-insured yet,
never sharp enough to 
successfully stab 
outside the 50-point cork.

You slithered like...

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The calling gull leaves her nest
her wild magic cleaves the nimbus.
An avian aerialist suspended aloft 
she sails on tapered ribbons of cirrus silk,
ruffled sea breeze ironed ‘neath her lustrous wings.

A wind witch, she defies and defines the  w - i - n - d…
a...

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Today, the sun shone brightly over our shores.
Peering over the forest and meeting the cores
We share fundamental truths across the waterways.
across the grasslands, then onto the Himalayas.

Past somatic feelings are cognitively preserved.
Spirit is the natural extension of cognition.
Spirit and mind foresee the body, the spirit...

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Written April 11, 2025, for Contest Sponsored by Edward Ibeh

Quote: 1/ “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ? Rumi

           2/ "Many times we pick at the bitter, rusty scabs that form...

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Written: Mars 1st, 2024
              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spring sonata serenades a zest of love bloom
Daffodils dance, tulips swing, birds sing and fly
Azure sky, brilliant sun, and young leaves sway
Love serenade, rising sonata, flower dance 
Beauty blooms...

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The night stretches out in front of me 
Thoughts floating between 
loneliness and contentment 
Sometimes I like being in my own space 
Other times I yearn for the comfort of being with you 

Like tonight
The noise of the hands of time 
Moving swiftly 
So loud...

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Beauty of nature is in its dictum.
The world is being stratified,
here life and plants are as the guide,
charming consensus of the stratum.

Hushing tones of the swinging pines,
hikers often do approach,
how the flowers claim for touch -
miscellaneous layers, medley signs.

Transparent water of streams and ponds,
human nature...

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Unable to grasp the the context
Despite her greatest resolve
The Queen Bee frowns at her, vexed
Into the background my girl dissolves

Hive order is a nasty one
Mean girls, stingers in back
Each social stratum is hard-won
Her skills of nuance do lack

Their fell dance she does not get
Not made...

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On this peaceful land where we live comfortably 
with the neighboring villagers sharing the sun and moon, 
stars and clouds, winds and waters, rains and snows;
we sow the seeds on the field, wander in the wilderness 
to spot the games to hunt in the changing...

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Atmosphere stratified over billions of years
Envelopes the Earth with protective layers
Saves the life from damaging solar radiation
Controls the climate and its spatial variation
Burns meteorites or asteroids on their course
So the Earth doesn’t become another Mars.

Mountain peaks pierce invisible atmosphere
Air pressure becomes less and less up...

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Strands of breeze criss-cross the blossomed garden,
like destemmed leaf I rustle aimless on the ground,
don’t see the beauty of the flowers floating away,
don’t find motif on butterfly wing fluttering around.

Currents of wind transect the blue stratum of sky,
like the detached clump of cloud I drift...

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Amulet graced by gems
clad for stratum prow

tawny glyphs
margin of witticism

& quagmire

extravagant dictum
trivialize shores trails

summer ousted
& waves of wrangles

sundered the ocean 
& swapped my spirit

in crimson burst
swirl to scatter

In demolishing ruins 
& twilight crumble 
slump of man

glittering Phoenix fire trail
scribble a cyan-xantos rhyme. 
 
bore a shallow...

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Immersed in the madness flood of crowd,
a verdant valley I find carved out
in the lonesome landscape within me, 
displaced from the psychosis stratum 
of disorienting dissonance,  
attached to the insecure mind. 

Away from the chaos-charged precinct,
I walk on the colored contours of life,
tinged by...

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