Best Vestigial Poems
Written: October 10, 2023
Night Bewitches Sponsored by: Shadow Hamilton
A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our souls. Erich Fromm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the placidity of the night's embrace,
bewitched the cosmos with an arcane grace.
The moon, a silver orb, may induce its rise.
Oozing its ethereal aurora over the skies
Whispers of worm words waft on wafture wear,
As the stars spangle, their nexus is spare.
The night wiles with its vestigial spell,
Drawing us in, under a talisman dwell.
Penumbras plaster pegs poltergeists of trees,
The twilight augury decry casts souls at ease.
Geezers of nightgown awaken from slumber,
Suing solace in the Cimmerian shade to clamber
The eventide sky overawes with a cosmic array.
Stars bedazzle and coxswain us on our way.
Moonlight sumptuous aura in a gentle glow,
Steer us through the shadow as the nexus flows.
Ebony necromancy decry a glamorous sight.
Drawing us close to the serendipity of the night.
In this cosmic wee hour, dreams bear flight.
Our souls are raised, and our hearts blight.
So let us indulge in this nocturnal delight,
As dusk vamps, squirting a glamor of delight.
Let us wander in the moonlit haze,
As sableness susurrous surreptitious sprays
Wee crepuscule twiddles, a plum night symphony
Where conceit phantasm and verity shed sympathy
Allotting an awareness acumen ariose and aureate
Upon ubiquitous utters uncanny unsophisticate.
Lying in the meadow on a long afternoon
I press soft against you and start to spoon,
but the lump at the base of your spine has now grown
(vestigial tail , I guess) presses hard against my places unknown,
so rolling you over and with gentle caress,
your yellow scaled elbow, I adore, I confess,
I trace the large bump on the end of your nose.
I just love the coarse hair and, how subtly it glows.
You sniffle so sweetly, as never ending it runs,
as of lipstick, thick mucous coats your lips, and you have need for none.
So I lie next to you, of your beauty I want more,
admiring your features, almost all I adore ...only one I abhor.
So, though shallow I feel, it saddens me greatly to know I must leave you
for the one thing I hate, I'm sorry my dear but your eyes are just too blue!
03/22/16
I entered a village in Algonquin park
as dusk approached the tattered edges of dark.
And fell in love with the bucolic setting
all except for the mosquito’s blood letting.
The pine smell was redolent riding each breeze
carrying halcyon memories of trees.
And for a fugacious moment I felt lost
amidst the penumbra where I weighed the cost.
I could find a safe inglenook or camp out
a vestigial whiff of pie gave me doubt.
And taking that as a harbinger of treats
to come I headed to a lodge with grass streets.
My ephemeral connection with the Earth
somehow gave my sempiternal soul rebirth.
For I felt rejuvenated young at heart
and with each footstep felt my tensions depart.
Whisper Of Your Soul
(Soul Listens On A Whisper)
Murmurs soft are sensed, mimic nature, diaphanous clouds spread wide
Settle softer than a translucent butterfly on spring light snow
It is the moon flirting in ebullience, fog rising on a thin film on winds side
Lifting skirts or is it veils? Unknown in this muted light of whispers glow
Mist rolls across the bog, pulls along reluctant virgin night
By golden glow, that holds the sky in humble hush, abeyance in a trance
Tracking down the birth of morning, bursting full of light
Barely able to mutter the words, “the light of day”, the endless dance
You feel the vibrant tones, fold over meadows as you go
A vestigial tiny vessel of a virgin’s secret opens here
Chasing dark away along the marsh with pounding heart to know
The open glen is near, fills up in brilliant colors clear
Soft luscious sounds fall silent on the morning air and then
Listen, it whispers on the minutia of the moment something true
Holds on to quiet in the silent glen
Waiting on a whisper Imbued with truth, soft thoughts of you
Created on 12/16/14 for “Whisper Of Your Soul” Poetry Contest Sponsored by Gail Angel Doyle
When I close my eyes you come crawling
stirring up my soul
diving in my dreams
delving thru my seams
Flutter my butterfly with vestigial wings
let me chase after you
where the catail do sing
Fly over hilltops seduced by the sea
slip off to the sunshine
and visions of me
Enter my pasture where waters run deep
place your wings upon my shoulders
and let yesterday's sleep
In my home amidst the bucolic pine trees
My time spent at home is so fugacious.
Autumn has come to my halcyon garden.
Ephemeral summer has said her good-byes.
Migrating birds from Alaska, harbingers of fall,
Consume the vestigial of summer's ripe fruits.
Redolent pines welcome the crisp clean air
Penumbra in the setting sun as they keep vigil.
In my inglenook, I curl up with a poetry book
Which brings me such sempiternal happiness.
© Connie Marcum Wong
Note: This poem is dedicated to my oldest
daughter who lives amidst the pine trees
above the Russian river in northern California
mountain home. I wrote this for a challenge.
Poetry Challenge words
1) Bucolic means In a lovely rural setting
2) Fugacious means Fleeting
3) Ephemeral means Short-lived
4) Halcyon means Happy, sunny, care-free
5) Harbinger means Messenger with news of the future
6) Inglenook means A cozy nook by the hearth
7) Penumbra means A half-shadow
8) Redolent means Fragrant
9) Vestigial means In trace amounts
10) Sempiternal means Eternal
I am empty of empathy
come sympathise with me
Cue the violins,
or just fiddle
like a bad-tempered Roman
Offer me hope:
bring flamboyant symbols,
cheap gold pendants with wings
Maybe a big gaudy
unflappable albatross
nothing too flash,
mind you!
Take my hand,
lead me towards the edge
it’s time to fledge
Sidle me onward,
watch as I waver
Try not be over-critical
of the albatross
He’s become a hanger-on,
too far gone
and addicted to flattery
If I drag you down
or appear inhumane,
it’s all secondary
I’m merely feeling depressed
by a pouch in my brain
A séance sensed
it was next of kin,
X-rays revealed tiny pleats,
masses of tissue within folds of skin
An exorcist said it’s
my vestigial twin
Google diagnosed
(Visual agnosia)
taking shape from within
Oh! And the indifferent
chatbot I confided in,
has begun self-harming!
The tail of a beaver, bill of a duck
yet they pull it off with honor and pluck
made with spare parts
they capture our hearts
with DNA tests that read WTF
©8/31/2018
for Any Animal Or Creature Limerick Poetry Contest
"Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it." Quote By Rumi
___________________________________________
Several tears, one after the other.
A sob wave pulls me forward in a gossamer haze.
unable to breathe—shivering with inure fear.
Why do feelings spiral out of grasp and ravel?
or worry keeps raging through my mind?
consider a world devoid of vestigial musings.
Complete silence; I am gasping for air.
wheezing, heart pounding, lungs screaming.
for breath, I cling desperately to the blankets.
My most arcane emotions flow unnoticed.
No lyrical ariose tunes to soothe my spirit.
in the lack of an auric metaphor
How would my day be lacking canorous poetry?
Clangor skin was covered in spiked tears.
Fingers rub my chimera, and eyes ensue.
Without poetry to calm, my anguish will burst
Without the cooling verses, I was crestfallen
Without a voice to express, how would I wish?
If artists believe that clay may depict furtive views,
Poets prefer paper and ink to immortalize their muse.
WIPEOUT
You cannot imagine us today as we were -
Almost simply a vestigial memory; but once
We were numberless and roamed the landscape freely,
Harmless and beautiful creatures, each graceful,
But most impressive in herds of ten thousand,
Grazing the short grass plains, following the seasons.
In winter moving south, returning in spring:
Shoals of us swimming the mighty rivers,
Herds of us trotting to the high pastures in late summer,
Flights of us in the early morning mists of the
Towering fortress mountains which sheltered our beauty
From all enemies. For millennia we lived in peace;
But the hunters came and took one of us as a trial; then another.
Then they took us in our thousands, for our skins, for our horns,
Until only a few remained, and were herded into one tight valley
With no escape. One by one the weapons of the hunters
Cut us down till only Bighorn, the last of our race, was left standing.
The chief hunter took careful aim and unleashed his weapon :
Bighorn fell dead and with him died the race of the unicorn.
Written: June 22, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Silent One
Quote: Your name is upon my tongue, your image is in my sight, your memory is in my heart. Where can I send these words that I write ? By Rumi
*******************
Remember Me—
Not as a wimpy palimpsest pressed in dust,
but as a melodic requiem
Swelling through sycamores,
a voice that thrums in amber air.
Stands out as brilliant, warm, and vivid—
candles in our memories for days.
I was your hubris and nemesis—
your panacea of song,
a sylphlike sigh whispered
woven in the welkin’s velvet veil
pure awareness of your heart.
Do not shred me into ephemera,
nor replace my passion—
with forgetfulness
I am the obelisk in your memory’s scope
the oculus through which eternity gropes.
Since death may alleviate with deceit,
Since shadows unravel the nexus of our days,
my love wincing, scintillating—
a sumptuous aurora
that presses the stygian night.
Remember me—
in the whispering calyx of summer blooms,
in the susurrous lagoon
where cicadas chant,
in every wistful whisper of wind
that morphs weariness into wonder.
I am not lost,
but vestigial luminous flame
a perpetuum pulse
a virtuoso of silence
hunting for your sapphire necklace
everlasting will,
singing still—
commit me to your memory.
Where goest thou soul?
have you split again
into your kaleidoscope frame
in the body so vestigial contained
what if there is not one Other
but many that enter inside
waiting to stake claim
Where goest thou poet?
the higher self penned
it seems you have been contracted
to Groundhog Day again and again
Perhaps you are God, and in you the Matrix,
many souls enter your vessel
like a hotel door rotates and it swings
Where goest thou observer?
you stare at a wall, praying
like a wailing wall waits
for its prayers to be called,
head bowed, knocking, knocking, thrice knocking,
the mind opens its humble Shushan Door
where its Eastern side unsealed, shines so much more
and in walks The Stranger
the reading and writing of messages, bled
palms outheld, barefeet marked,
you have inherited the stigmata
all of a sudden you understand
you have been bookmarked,
alike for a while, shelved to be read
when It counts,
at the closing moment
of the main truth, the do and the dare
you are seated as if religiously waiting in Sunday school
passing and failing the tests, and failing again,
The Stranger smiles
as if you are the only one that imagines
The Stranger Is there,
The Stranger notes the notes you are passing back and forward again,
the teacher out front, has their back turned again, unaware
you pass The Stranger a note,
on it is written, “Get me the Hell out of here.”
The Stranger laughs and agrees
I follow The Stranger's lead like a child waits for a Saviour
to save the day, make it cool -
not a word spoken, yet the exchange, clearly heard,
the Door is wide open, and
out in the playground I am
again, throws me the ball,
I take the shot
The Stranger’s no fool
Candide Diderot. ‘24
Shushan/Golden Gate.
The decrepit Winter door drudges open drearily,
And with it, delivers a deluge of drunken delight--
Soft succulent sapphire skies violate my visions,
I stand suffused with muse and mystery in moiety;
A masked man in vast lands of vivacious vehicles,
Each infusing ineffable idyllic ideas into my mind;
Black and blue sockets, eyes beaten by the barrage,
Blinded by the balmy birth of a blistering breed;
This season on Earth, first fauna felt after the melt,
Helps herald the harbingers of heavenly halcyon;
Spring-suede-sod serenely softens somnolent steps,
Woken from within Winter's weary woebegone walls;
Lunges of my lithe legs leave languid lassitude lost,
A grimace graciously gone I gambol glorious groves;
Ethos ebulliently erupting into opulent olfactory scents,
Precious-painted-petals, the smell of perfumed petrichor;
Vestigial vents of weather'y whiffs and feather'y sniffs,
Revolvers of rhapsodic rays release heat upon my rust;
Consummate creations cascading comely conflations,
Slowly saunter splintered shadows of snowy sorrow;
A demure dalliance decadently drizzled in dulcet desire,
My forgotten fear of yesterday's forever falling flakes;
An everlasting elixir of eloquently enchanting equinox,
Fixes my frostbitten flaws and forges fresh life until Fall;
March 17, 2016
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.
when on a lark, this primate shut his eyes
until sight formed slits doubling up as a wink
this earthling stared hard and scrunched brow
unintentionally mimicking,
the familiar Auguste Rodin statue
likened to a pose when one doth think
perhaps said captive pose pondering
(similar to me) about life on other planets
while I stared at lunar surface
akin to a disc or dime sized skating rink
awash with luminescence
and imaging himself whisked away
by an alien, synonymous
to the peculiar millions miles distant pastische
manifested entity than didst slink
a non hue man feline looking cat in the hat
comical creatures decked out entirely in pink
soft halos conjured up saintly mink
or...a far fetched thought suddenly
came to form in my mind,
that this har creature a found missing link
whose nocturnal glowing facade exploding charade
possibly a message
or motion nothing more
than routine smoothing out an anatomical kink
on front and back oh head resembling
a Doctor Zeus characterization,
viz a harmless rat fink
hm...maybe a vestigial progenitor
of former birth by Gaia now extinct
though from afar, the b52 shaped being
aye espied as fur ball affixed
with a long elephant like snout to drink
and appeared to lack occipital orbs,
yet evinced possible mode to see via a chink
impossible to restrain me noggin
appearing to nod and blink,
--------------------------------
hence entranced my attention fixed
from faint (perhaps a feint)
flickr ring meant as playful faux
role playing lunatic humorous acting wry
impossible to decode explicit antics
(of spacial cosmic guest),
no matter eyes nearly shut tight visual
wondering if non verbal communication
of mine correctly interpreted
meant to kibitz and vie
despite impossibility to validate,
a continuous effort yours truly did try
fixing thy gaze, nee straining
with alm aye might to esse spy
if cheap trick concocted entire visage,
which might not constitute life form
(admitting this chap to prevaricate,
and be full of baloney),
himself prone to confabulate
(dropped one to many times on the head)
when this rocky lunar image,
a moon scape comprising nothing
boot ham and cheese on rye.