Best Waterless Poems
I close my weary eyes
I quake and tremble
The meaning of life losing its hold,
Losing its wonder
In this magnifying, mystifying Sadness
Where is the river,
Where is the ocean
To drown these sorrows...
The dry formations in this barren land stay tall,
Pools holding life drying in the dinosaur wasteland
I am bones...
I am bones sinking in the waterless chalk
I keep these eyes shut
To hide inside my meditations
My ears have grown accustomed to the silence,
And sensitive to the drops of tears
They dry too quickly,
For the sun is against the moisture
And all for the fossilization of my soul
Where is the river?
Where is the ocean...
I do not ask with hope-
I am too ancient to beg for miracles
To dream, yet, too long I have slept
I ask on account of who I once was,
A land so lush and plentiful
See now only the dryest thrive
I am bones on the brink of history...
The elements have claimed me
Life will return elsewhere
I am become by the rock and the sun
Oh poetry,
why do you not feel me.
I was once your poetic percolate,
the assonance to your consonance,
spilling in silver ink,
upon Earth's raw fibres,
but in your quest for perfection,
wanderlust words are now waterless roots,
resembling a mediocre muse,
cursed from rose tinted glares,
exposing pages of bad grammar.
Since the feather in my quill
set adrift with fireflies in the wind,
conflicting choruses echo
in an acoustic refrain.
In this musical merry go around -
I'm only composed as a last thought.
In chapters of contemplation,
wondering if you feel the art of my heart;
I ponder if I am a
vacant vowel in your 'why?'
An unexplained myth..
A rhythm not seen in your rhymes
or do questions only bring bitterness?
But without the reason for answers,
will there be anything left to express?
I'm just an empty cartridge
abandoned from your fountain pen.
Now only aches and angst alliterate,
as invisible ink slowly dissolves.
I'll forever be an unfinished masterpiece.
A long forgotten poem. An anagram of listen.
There is no metaphor for this grief,
so I say goodbye to poetry
and farewell to my muse.
Time passing all around in the air
Seemingly so without even a care
On the ground an empty turtle shell
Off to swim the vacant waterless well
Watching from inside the tree so hollow
The Pied Piper plays and they all follow
Staring blanks into that black hole sun
Marching prisioners from the lost race run
Hark the demons and how they do sing
Calling out unto the sacred buried things
Echoing reverb in the darkness so vast
Spiral downward crazy how it goes so fast
Searching for answers in all that's unsaid
But left speechless and one of the undead
Anticipating that strife and all the misery
Quietly awaiting amid all that haunts me
Counting the leaves while they do fall down
During the removal of such a gifted crown
Grasping fiercely stubborn for what I may
When all the cherished goods steal away
Screaming silence and left in the wake
As the mirror begins to crack and break
Turning to the darkest parts deep inside
Bravely I dig into that cesspool of pride
Bringing winter's bitter yet sweet icy cold
Touching the shards of glass ever so bold
But the shattered pieces turn into icy stones
And while bleeding among them I cry alone
Copyright by Scarlett Sepulvado Anderson
The sun blowtorches its way into the water,
fragments, and the bottom is an aqua sky
webbed by white-hot lightning.
Here and there, legs hang like halved mannequins
disappearing into a squiggly-bright ceiling,
through which you can make out
the slurred shape of a poolside palm tree.
The deep, guttural grooon-grooon of
the water’s stomach growling is all you hear,
dredging up a similar sound from your subconscious,
last heard while you were immersed, long ago,
in another fluid world.
The water suddenly internal-combusts
in a tangle of arms and legs,
flailing in a fizz of a million tiny bubbles,
some kid having just somersaulted into the blue.
Soon, another’s face splashes down before you,
slightly albino in the shining water,
bug-eyed with silvered goggles
like a child alien from a waterless planet
discovering buoyancy.
Then you realize it’s your own kid,
wobbling from side to side,
toothy, hair waving like smoke
as he dog-paddles away.
You come up for air, breaching the surface like a
graceless dolphin,
and clarity hits your ears,
a momentarily soundless din.
You can already feel your skin heating up
in the blast furnace above water,
confusing because there are beads
running down your face and neck, cold.
You suck a lungful of air and push yourself under again,
but not before catching a glimpse of your wife
drowse-browsing a magazine on her sun lounger,
and the two umbrellas,
the big one shading the miniature one
stuck in the snowy slush of your pina colada.
I'm out of my element, a beached whale
that can't breathe, drowning in a world of air.
A tattered palm-frond caught up in love's gale
surfing upon cascading waves of hope,
I defy the odds of chance and elope.
A lonely calf, I swim to what's out there,
but my impulsive plan is doomed to fail.
A tide of lies drains this waterless place
where love flounders in barren solitude.
A mountain of rot reeking in disgrace
discarded by a putrid ocean of fear,
with a broken heart and a sand-filled tear.
Bobbing in lukewarm pools of platitude,
iceberg-dreams dissolve, leaving little trace.
(Rhyme)
Aug. 9, 2018
I
The word, when said
Makes some go dead
The sound of dog (she)
II
Most beaches lead somewhere
Some beaches lead nowhere
Truth or dare (campuses
Have grassy, waterless beaches)
III
Dickinson: words begin living
"when it is said" (not dead)
Emily knew of flight
In Fight to write
Sometimes leafless tree
looks attractive and scenic
when birds sit on it
The flowerless plant
enthrals everyone when
butterfly flies round
Waterless river
is even more beautiful
when cute kids play there
Tasteless food items
sound utterly delicious
when mother feeds us
Impoverished life
bestows happiness on us
when we boast small things
Lamp posts eyes
through cracks
of curtains
spying
sewing needles
through mine
uninvited
screeching tires
honking horns
sirens
plucking mind’s guitar
unstop.
Take me to the Sonoran
steal into a hut
while its inhabitant
hunts
fall asleep in its belly
hidden
from rattling reptiles
hunting grasshoppers
coyotes
the howling hunter mouse
monsters, giants
the Gila, the Iguana
scorpions!
Take me to the Sonoran
illumed by the Saguaro
opening its white petals
at night
a lamp post of
candelabra flowers
where lizards
on waking
take sunbeams
showers
savoring magic
of orange red
golden yellow flowers
winking at sunset
and vanishing.
Honk, honk! Screech!
Splash!
Spilled my glass
of chamomile
slumbering on the sandy
waterless beach
of the Sonoran.
Third Place Winner: Brian Strand-Premier 1196-3/11/23
First Place Winner: Brian Strand-All Yours-3/12/21
Third Place: Debbie Guzzi- Exotic-7/22/17
A Desert-Like Heart
Full of emptiness
droughty
love is absent
misery rules
no river of joy
water's scarcity
a vacant-void
abandoned
like a refuse
ignored
like an uninteresting entity
loneliness reigns
whom to love ?
who loves ?
nothing to cultivate
because it's waterless
no growth
no life
no taste
but isolation
a shameful galaxy.
Drencho POET Loads
It's odd to realize that ones life is best described experientially, as a series of discoveries in an irreducible phenomenon cast in viscus matrices.
"These Days": The superficial and arbitrary way with which we sever experience and consciousness, yet neither emotionally, nor intellectually, are we cognizant of the ephemeral boundaries.
Time, as a biological value, carries over into our social constructions, but there, its value ends. That it is "a-prior" is hard to argue with. That it does not extend into the intellectual realm is also too plain to deny. How odd, its ready departure in the face of intellectual or emotional pursuits.
"These Days"- fraught with time's non-contingencies; The seemingly unrelated images and concepts merging to suggest something more than their singular aspects would allow ~
a broken dream assuaged by the coffee machine's sharp scuttering; a waterless complaint, and her image; no longer the bright charged view, fading in forgetting's white-grace, but content to become instead, the liquid shadows of empty-spaces, where time floats down in dangerous obedience to an undiscoverable gravity, like the broken feathers of a silent, celestial war
The Illuminated Muse
by
Ingrid Showalter Swift
You light up the circuits of my psyche with lexis
vibrate within me
daze me
sway me without weight or measure
I breath in the misted air of salt and gesture
and in it you lie in wait
You fill my cells
with oxygen and mercury
the temperature rises
my bearings drop
my center settle casts away
to an island of green palm breezes
waves of art washing…poetry like walk way stones laid and lead ...before me
and I am the eel in the sea
the elk on the prairie
I am an elephant
tusks and trunk held high to sky
baroque-ing out my demands to the dusted waterless ways of the Serengeti
Rise up in me…as the ground rises before the tectonic hand of God
Rise up in me atomic
Equatorial in clime
Tornatonic in impact
I am ferocious
in my thirst
Run me down with your intent
annihilate all argument
and end the war between us
forever
for you are simply
a blue sapphire flickering in the firelight
Tumbling blue hues in a washer of stone
Flares of luminosity…raking the sky to a plunderous pink
a radiance
like an alien ball in the forest
…illuminati imaginations....
trailing sparklings that follow the fairies into the dark wood
You are warm milk
into which I fall
to the creamy center
float on clouded dark dreams
chewy and sweet
the toffee reminiscence
of….morning coffee…and black birds in flight
and you are the birth of child
in the hands of heaven
you are everything arcane ...nubile and blessed and damned at once
and you alone drive my pen
to wagon wheel and weltings center
.
Desert
powdery waterless
withering drying unrefreshing
aridness thirst rain spring
living bubbling refreshing
deep well
water
Cherished by many desperate with no joy
Within the heartbeat of exclamatory rough homeboy
Finds peace too merry and blue sky solitary
Walking on all four and not seen as he tarry
Clothes wet with sweat and thwacked toes overlaid
Feels beaten, tired, sleepy, baked and guilty afraid
None by to elevate him hence
And missing a lot to commence
Only alive for a borrowed time
Regrets poverty a giant crime
Fights the inner frustrations she intends at ease
Marries a toothy refuge and breaks it to meeting this peace
At a waterless shore he withholds the power he sought
In friendless state, pale, unwise, and dug minds wrought
And no more feels seated on or carried like garbage and thrown away
Always find choice in what you love and not be met halfway
Trace brightly your footsteps if you can
But run away from them and accomplish a life span
Warm air dances in the prairie
In a hot sunny day
Arid smell comes across the barbed wire
To harm my mind
Relaxing under the evergreen
Viewing the heat of the summer scene.
A rice farmer with sunbaked skin,
His old sandals secure the feet
From the drought land.
He looks up to the bright sky
And down the waterless canals
The shallow of the Mekong River
Mother Nature or the face of Destiny
Deal with the fruitless harvest
Have to beg to feed the family
Like in a few recent years.
Warm air dances in the prairie
Blurs the farmer’s shape
Then he disappears in the air
I grasp and uproot the dry grass
The nostalgic dream has just passed.
Heart's throbbing for discothèque
airwaves,
pulsating electronica polyphonics--
rolling;
waterless waves splash
everyone present.
Motionless reminiscence of Ibiza
and surrealism, triple-distilled,
aesthetic kinetics--
and men and women sweating from the vibes.