Best Sulfurous Poems
I tracked along a silver trail
carved out from Earthly dust
by rays persistent in the dark
and midnight wanderlust.
It led me to a bubbling fount
of sulfurous mud and tar;
whereupon I chanced a glimpse
and found a fallen star.
An ancient from celestial realms
ensnared terrestrially
dimly glowing in the murk
I heard it sing to me:
Sojourner of the moonlit way
I sense thy beating heart
I’ve travelled from infinity
now hearken ere you part.
You roam upon this infant orb,
you draw from it thy life,
but I sense greed and evil scorn
and no land void of strife.
I beg you tell me how it came
that creatures such as thee
have found such hatred in thy souls
to punish endlessly.
It’s not so bad, I said out loud
we know of love as well…
as to the fate of mother Earth
I simply can’t foretell.
The ground beneath my weary feet
gave way to empty space
then all around me in the void
I saw the human race.
Starving children, ill and gaunt
were kicked by wing-tipped shoes.
Females ranging every clime
in silence nursed abuse.
In darkness men were plotting war
in light their banners raised
it mattered not which way I looked
some evil met my gaze.
Make it stop, I beg you please!
Why poison thou my mind?
What can I do to stop all this,
is no good left to find?
Sojourner of the moonlit way
I sense thy beating heart
I’ve travelled from infinity
now hearken ere you part.
You roam upon this infant orb,
you draw from it thy life,
and though you’re one of many men
love in thy chest is rife.
You must return to whence you came
you must confer abroad
the goodness that within thee burns
seek first to serve the flawed.
Think on the vast expanse of space
so empty, dark and cold…
and how despite the hopeless cause
star-light you still behold.
So too might thou, if you’ll but try
endure this awful plight
for in the vast expanse of hate
love is thy shining light.
07/16/15
Categories:
sulfurous, earth, hate, heaven, life,
Form:
Quatrain
Burping sulfurous fumes
its fiery belly heaves
and gas and ash erupt
knocking me to my knees.
Beneath the pumice beats
a throbbing heart of heat,
and I can feel its pulse
surging below my feet.
Treading on crackling skin
I weigh each step I take
or risk Icarus’s fate
and pay for my mistake.
I approach carefully
knowing that I could die
for beneath its chard brow
I spy the monster’s eye.
Mount Etna's dragon stirs
my imagination
as molten rock boils in
caldron of creation.
(Quatrain)
11/19/2015
Categories:
sulfurous, beautiful, earth, imagery, metaphor,
Form:
Quatrain
"It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness". By Thomas Jefferson
A place where the zeal of my heart dwells
The appeal of a simple life, as lucid tale tells,
within a framework of some tranquility.
Slower flow and less agony ooze credibility.
A sulfurous fury emanated from the darkness.
Nostrils flared with a fiery, acrid harshness
Roaring voices mutilate the uttermost peace
It is impossible to tango with a noxious piece.
My chest heaves, and my lips unclench in a sigh.
Release suffocating lighting with the word "supply."
I'm blessed in my peace, and that lets me smile
embroidered with power and dominance style.
To admit a stroll when I could spare some time
In a casual way down an uphill road, sublime,
I absorb it all in whilst I walk through the forest
Each idyllic scene unfolds for an hour of rest.
Where I'd stay is beside an almond tree,
Its gentle breeze murmurs as it hugs me
where I'd quietly sit by the windowpane
holding a mug while glancing at the rain.
A place to catch the firefly's graceful elegance
Relax amid a velvety starry sky for your dance,
A little peace and quiet amid life's frenetic pace
So my soul is punter attuned, full of helpful solace.
Written: April 13, 2023
1st place contest winner
Writing Challenge - 'T' Words - Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Constance La France
Categories:
sulfurous, analogy, appreciation, character, emotions,
Form:
Rhyme
Anger
What a sulfurous mess of molten evil
Troubles boil and surface
The singing of fine nerves within one’s self
This pushing of restricted buttons
Annoyance, Bitterness, Harm
Can one truly control it?
Stretching into the belly of the beast
Ripping, Tearing, Gouging
At its pivotal moment
A raging bull in a once peaceful town
Monstrous demons
The evils of your mind
Do you let the gates break open?
Shall you release it to the ones around you?
Anger
When controlled, it is an ordinary burning emotion
Yet, when the chains shatter and crack loose…
Oh the more difficult it will be to pick up the pieces
Categories:
sulfurous, confusion, health, introspection, life,
Form:
A crimson sky, where embers dance and swirl,
A landscape cracked, a world of endless fire,
Where sulfurous fumes choke, and shadows hurl,
And screams of agony forever conspire.
The air is thick with ash, a choking haze,
A stench of burning flesh, a reeking blight,
Where molten rock, in ceaseless, fiery blaze,
Consumes the damned, in endless, dark, cold night.
No solace found, no respite from the pain,
No comfort in the endless, burning pyre,
Just endless torment, a maddening refrain,
A skin ablaze, a heart consumed by fire.
The tortured souls, their bodies contorted, writhe,
In agony eternal, forever damned,
Their voices rise, in endless, burning scythe,
A symphony of pain, a gruesome, burning band.
No hope remains, no solace in the gloom,
Just endless suffering, a burning, endless tomb.
Categories:
sulfurous, christian, dark, evil, fire,
Form:
Sonnet
I press my hands into the ruins of you,
fingertips cut in the quiet rot of ancient wounds
that have never quite been touched.
Beneath splintered ribs,
your earth is sulfurous in suffering—
your volcanic pulse muffled under sediment,
heart-rages arrested in amber.
I carve through your marrow-deep dusks,
knuckles bloodied on the bedrock of guilt,
digging past rusted veins and forgotten altars,
until my hands unearth something
promethean and glinting—
not relic, not wreckage—
but soft golds of you,
burning like a mantra
like a last prayer.
3.8.24
Categories:
sulfurous, blessing, devotion, extended metaphor,
Form:
Free verse
Changed climate is not a surprise
With drilling for gas on the rise
Where can life forms hide
From carbon dioxide
And methane let loose in the skies?
Neo-druids auger gas wells
And add fluids with sulfurous smells!
Are poisons they've tapped
With their magic wands trapped
Evermore by sorcerous spells?
Votes and news seem not relevant
The unrelenting elephant
In all our best rooms
Is fossil fuel's fumes
And toxins we can't circumvent
Categories:
sulfurous, allegory, business, funny, health,
Form:
Limerick
At the bottom, in her clutches, you’ve found your new home
Her ghostly embrace makes you feel more alone
Spaceman, at peace in the depth of your night
On glamour and glory, you’ve gotten too high
And somehow you slipped and crashed through the sky
...one day you just rocketed by
Earth’s son is drowning in a tub with the chills
The water is draining, blood laced with pills
One of her many eyes saw your descent
While eating the shrimp from a sulfurous vent
Which, until she’d seen you, had made her content
...her heart boiling out through cement
And while you were down, she baited her hooks
She made you feel hopeful with helpless, sweet looks
And nested your spaceship in her hidden crooks
...blowing kisses that warm like chinooks
And she pulled you in close when you started to sink
And confused you with needs and a cloud of black ink
Disarming your valor with sweetie-pie blinks
...with fish guts and sea-rotten stink
Orbiting so long gave you the spins
You splashed down through brine, and the ocean’s slick skin
In barbed tentacles you’ll sleep with your twin
...in challenger deep growing fins
Categories:
sulfurous, fishing, love, romantic, sad
Form:
Free verse
the chimney stacks
of the old power station
claws at the belly of the clouds
and with its sulfurous billowing
it bellows its stench
tinting the clouds, yellowing nicotine stains
as its cadaverous fingers clench
and releases, as it pleases
the painted nails
sport red flashing lights
as the bellowing smoke
for airspace fights
the dawn is cracked open
under the grey steam-pot lid
like a rotten egg
and the horizon is broken
into blocks
between the pedestal legs
of the spindly chimney stacks
progress clangs and clacks
on blood-rusted
unused train-tracks
the scars of progress on an old landscape
- weals healed over in ageless veldts
whilst weeds pimple between the stays
a last gasp of green displays
the gangrene death
of nature
oozing from the suture
as we break the past
to build the future
Categories:
sulfurous, nature, technology,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
THE FART POEM
A rose is a rose
By any other name.
A fart is a fart,
It smells the same.
A puff of air
From a dainty derriere,
A blast of gas
From a hairy ass.
The smell of beans
Passing through your jeans,
A deadly silent sleeper,
Bottle it! It's a keeper.
Of course, there are some
Who look down on the fart,
Considering it rude,
Instead of art.
A burst of methane
From the criminally insane.
A wet one,
Don't want to get one.
A foul discharge
From uncontrolled bowels.
The scum of the sphincter
Crude, nasty, vile stinker!
But such criticism
Is most unfair.
It's not as if farters
Are putting on airs.
They're proud on what comes
From their faithful rectums;
And they don't give a hoot
If some don't like their toot.
And to their critics they proudly send
A blast of hot, sulfurous wind.
One past gasser said put on my tomb,
He blew out a candle across the room.
Parting shot:
Some say a dinosaur fart
Could shatter a boulder, tear it apart;
But they died from the gas that out of them poured,
Giving a new meaning to killed by assteroid.
NOTE: This may very well be my last poem on Poetry Soup if I am banned
by the censors. But that's ok. I just thought that in the midst of all the
angst, misery, and depression (including mine) some might enjoy a
hearty laugh. By the way, Benjamin Franklin loved fart humor.
Wounded Healer
Submitted 8/30/09
Written 10/16/08
Categories:
sulfurous, funny
Form:
Rhyme
Once in a while -in a moment
of immense sulfurous clarity, when
every grace I locked in my dilated pupils
begins to form lesions, yellow-running
tears through the deepest, lusty scarlet –
black and white would be a relief.
My mind billows like sheets,
silken, swathing whore-hues
over my perception.
I have to turn my head, hold my eyelashes together
with two fingers
hoping reality is more palatable
in the abstract.
On the edges of my eyes, where the
tawny evil beckons, bending
streaks of light, blurred through my subconscious
I see myself continue.
Unfamiliar limbs flowing over the sidewalk,
never missing an ill-fated furrow,
the cracks that I know will break me
before they seep poison into my mother’s back.
I’ll set aflame this fool’s-gold heart in
my crimson-stained fingers
and hope I don’t burn myself down
like the insanity with her claws on my eyes,
holding every torch high and shrieking to the
heavens for
fire, fire, fire;
No pretenses, just destruction –
hope ashes don’t lodge in my throat
like the drunken revelry,
the celebration: saliva and child-sobbing
unending in the streetlamps
gag-reflex mercy from the pitiless
that preceded them.
Categories:
sulfurous, recovery from..., sad
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
As Commander of the weird
Member of the phurst church of phun
An ordained member I am father and I am mother
Of the rubber chicken
Juggled between one George Bush and the other
Between camps, I break my foot,
They threw me up, North
I made some friends and begged
To be dragged around
In a wheel barrow or
A Greyhound after I stole the eighty bucks
Or eight hundred dollars for one way
Not knowing the way back
Stealing a thick book from a library in Oakland
I wasn’t running away
Snuck out the back door
To be smuggled southward in a van
Insulting a beautiful Cambodian woman in a yurt
That was not my yurt but someone else’s
Rolling around the desert with a mushroom man
Showing my butt for photographs just for a laugh
Hot Springs pool up we drive a million miles in a day
Naked women with strings show uteral decay
It’s ok, the sulfurous water cools as it moves downstream
Riding a UFO back to into the desert sands
We break into a dark secluded box
I am an elf, we know the task at hand
Exploring, we find a family is lost
So we show them the way out
Into a raging sandstorm we jump 2 stories down
Into the midst of another labyrinth
Which is much brighter
Full of people talking too loud
We walk around for the rest of the first night
Categories:
sulfurous, memory, truth,
Form:
Narrative
Spontaneous sulfurous stigmata sinisterly surfacing
Membranous molecules meticulously masterfully marshaling
Tangible tempestuous tears tangling thoughts
Radical revelation revealing ruinous rots
Pious priests patronize punishable penance
Impious illusions intrigue impacting independence
Narcotizing nefarious noxious naves navigate
Prioritizing pains portal pandemic perpetrate
False fixation fumigates fragmental fatal fury
Defaults determine damaged destructive demons dreary
Jan.18.2020
Eight-word challenge 1 2020
Sponsored by: John Hamilton
Placed 3'rd...Thank You
Categories:
sulfurous, conflict, psychological, self,
Form:
Alliteration
THE RED DRAGON
clad in black, she shakes with fear
the still of multitudinous lights
very far - up close and personal
she could sense its intense heat
shaking like a Chinese dragon
this enormous red snake
with seven crowns
on seven heads
and ten horns
lights flicker in s.o.s.
hoping to be saved
the special, the unique, each one
the atmosphere becomes engulfed in smoke
acrid, sulfurous, indulgent
beginning of a long end
the sky turns blood-red, flammable
eyes more terrible than a gator’s at night
scales that slash the blackened sky
you can hear the creak of a hellish tail
the swish and swash, the cracking of whip
(i hear the scream of each extinguished star)
two-thirds of the stars weep that fated night
weep for the earth and all of mankind
they weep for sin and shame and suffering
5/18/2017
Categories:
sulfurous, bible, stars,
Form:
Free verse
My eyes watered
from the sulfurous stench of your disdain
as you turned those empty eyes my way
My skin crawled
from the leathery touch of your insensitivity
as your talons absently clawed my flesh
My soul shivered
from the the cold wind of your indifference
as you flew away on your mighty wings
The fires that may burn in Hell
to warm a Devil I have not met
hold no fear for me
For I have lived all these years
in the cold, cold shadow
of the Devil I knew
Categories:
sulfurous, metaphor,
Form:
Free verse