Best Wound Poems
Friends?
Are we still friends?
Can we JUST be friends?!?
Oh such a horrid, charity-stained question!
What a keen and salient dagger it wields!
The pity that you wear like black lace finery,
Is as deadly and whetted a sword as any raised in battle ...
The patronizing look in your eyes presses on its hilt
With the agonizing weight of feigned cordiality,
To pierce the tender flesh of my hopes,
Deep and quick and precise.
Why ... why this last dose of bitter passion??
To ease your careless conscience?
All you've done is make the blade more jagged,
The wound more brutal and raw.
Now here I lay ...
Exhausted in spirit and sinews,
By what I now realize was lovemaking for clemency's sake ...
One last, tender moment to minimize the blow.
Shards of moonlight through the louvers,
Lay like broken pieces of porcelain on furrowed bedclothes,
As my passions bleed out at your feet,
Draining my heart of the realities
Of what I thought we had ...
What might have been, beyond friendship.
My love for you collects in a puddle of one-sided regrets,
And now this dreadful question makes all a travesty,
A mocking, cruel, pitiful farce ...
No, my love, I can NEVER be just ... your friend.
~ 1st Place ~ in the "My Friend, My Love" Poetry Contest, Julie Leigh Rodeheaver, Judge & Sponsor.
Sunny aspirations were not meant to be
As cloudy days appended the rainy nights
And mornings arose with darkened skies
Leaving her behind, in shattered dreams
Still she walked, in your abandoned path
Hoping one day you would turn around
But you kept advancing, defying her call
Searching for meaning you never found
Though she was light, you ambled dark
Ignoring the blue sky when it was dawn
Burning in hot sand tricked by a mirage
Skipping the pond, where lives the swan
Markers of love got washed away soon
Life you chiseled still burns the wound
Footprints of desire that stayed frozen
Melted away with the changing season
Now being aged, you detest loneliness
But memories too have fled your name
July 19, 2018
Placed 4th in best free verse contest by John Hamilton
Placed first in late October 2018 contest by Brian Strand
No entry wound; I know inside
What should be whole is broken
Between the cracks my feelings slide
Where words cannot be spoken
Strange silence speaks within the gloom
Where memories keep taunting
A ghost sits in a lonely room
With no desire for haunting
Where once before I used to go
When I was whole and stronger
I cannot meet there with my woe
So I shall go no longer
I have no need to venture out
No wish to do so fills me
For I am empty and the doubt
Of any fullness stills me.
"The Mortal Wound of the Civilized World"
Shift upwards
speed fast
the choice, Is
Gears chosen by the
energetic heart
fuel the freedom
The point of attention
the “I Am”
an expression
of the same
consciousness
that you are "Is"
we are living
yet contained economies
numbed and played circadian
pinned and
framed
to our walls
day in
night out
repeat
by remote control
thinking we are free
true ignition evades us
until the game is over
We are caught up
in the mortal wound
of the civilized world
humanity
monopolized
bored we are
we are
the board game
(LadyLabyrinth / 2020)
It was past midnight
The moon, a sphere of luminosity!
But she saw the frozen grimace of death
And the nocturnal bats in gyrating motion
Meteors of shame and repugnance
Flashed past her darkened sky,
Cockroaches scurried in her brain,
All the nerves taut and about to break
Her heart bleeding in silence
And her body burning, burning
Agony once subsided, surged back
Stronger than ever before
The cut once healed now
Has turned into a festering wound
Unable to bear the pain anymore
Finding no water to wash away her guilt,
With no contrition enough to ease
The twinge of her conscience,
She drew out a piece of paper
From her locked up cupboard
Which she would never open again
And hastily scribbled something
Without qualms
Without frills
Never waiting for another day
Of impotent remorse,
She set out to a destination unknown
Where Past, Present and Future
Merge and coalesce
Into
The muted whispers of stillness
Placed First
March 4, 2022
“Pick-a-Title Vol. 29” Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Edward Ibeh
A decade wearing you
like a cast
And all I have to show
Is that no
one ever taught me to
be a friend
And so I write…
not for the clamor of being known,
but to keep vigil with what will not be spoken—
those hushed and hollowed spaces
where sorrow gathers like dusk,
unannounced,
unwilling to depart.
I write
to lay gentle witness upon the wound,
to trace its sacred fracture
without flinching from its remembering,
to press my spirit against its quiet architecture
and learn the shape of what endured me.
I write
to consecrate both the breaking and the becoming—
to name the wisdom buried in ruin,
the strange and steadfast grace
that lingers in the aftermath of undoing.
And if truth be told—
I write to recall myself
from the far edges of forgetting.
To gather the scattered fragments of breath and being
and speak them, softly, back into form.
For even here—
in the most forsaken hollows of the soul,
where light feels like a long-abandoned language—
something remains.
Not loud, nor luminous at first glance,
but patient…
and unextinguished.
A quiet and unyielding ember,
veiled beneath the ash of all that was lost,
waiting not for rescue,
but for recognition.
Something that, against all undoing,
still inclines itself skyward—
still remembers the sun
as if it had never been forgotten.
And so I write—
to bear witness to that remembering,
to call it gently by its true name,
to follow its faint and faithful rise
until it becomes light again.
Woe am I to whom your words have torn bits
Out from my heart only to smooth, console
Until I have again untangled wits.
Needful, I beg you patch this jagged hole
Drilled into my heart by your darkened soul.
It’s a sad day
when we forget Warriors
who've fought our Wars
a price they'll pay
brought home—changed
the soulful smile you miss
the nightmares you can't fix
chained to what they’ve endured
lingering trauma
what they have espied...
that boy who perished at sea
the soldier felled on the beach
brothers separated onto ships
both only sons of fraughted parents
what broke the heart...
whence the contract procures
is the clash of wills and the turmoil of man
whither they are bound, it guarantees
they’ll part with their
limbs torn
in drowning seas
in roiling crimsoned tides,
in disastrous flights
fallen from smoked skies
from the harshest deserts
of the desert storms
in extreme heated days,
in cold sands at night
in wide open terrain
their landmarks barren
I lift my head as I lay in bed this morn
thru my curved bay window
I peer out from my drowsy squinting eyes
to catch a glimpse of the black bird’s mimicry
he squaws a plaintiff’s alarm song
O low and behold…
I am the only one
parked on the Tuesday side of the street
reckon those came to forget
not one on my block had any memory of it
they aren’t touched as they should be
by simple procedures we must do
to celebrate, honor, or remember
to stand by the land of the free
to respect a marked day
It felt abandoning…
‘the importance’
‘the meaning of this day’
‘what it stands for’
‘what men and women died for’
Today is Veteran’s day
PTSD turns to psychedelic therapy
Promising body of work
Treatment resistant
High in the veteran population
Removing red tape
To research
What was approved,
alters perception
Function
Reset neural connections of brain
The Trauma
Fasttrack it
Stanford’s founding—88% reduction of PTSD
—Dr Vin Gupta
I Am Anaya
November 11, 2025
Veterans Day
When my mother died
My craving eyes rained
And tormented soul cried
Blood sucked and energy drained
The sky fell, the sun eclipsed
It was a horrifying dark day
The fragrant breeze turned into easterly wind
O God! Orphaned at the age of twelve, why say
The spear of loneliness pierced my heart
Causing deep bleeding wound
Pointed at me was misfortune’s dart
All my hopes and aspirations drowned
Seasons came and seasons went
In the desert of heart autumn never changed
Gardens were filled with bloom’s scent
The butterflies with colors artfully arranged
My heart remained a symbol of despair
No one ever shared my grief
My cancerous wound alone to bear
I searched and searched but no relief
(Winner in the Member Contest of Destroyer Poet judged on 6-20-2012)
My heart was skinned when you left.
And the sutures were just removed.
I have been to the doctor and the healing.
The scar is a reminder of the thrust.
Today I met you for the first time, you seem so nice and friendly. Too many years have passed, as you grew from a kid to a lady. Too bad the family was not closer, many miles have separated us all. I gave you so much, then you lied and took from behind my back. How does one do this to family, even if it is in name only. You are like a festering wound, raw and hurting the ones that love you.
Date Written:3/11/2022
6 Place
4.) Festering Wound
Pick-A-Title, Vol 29 - Poetry Contest Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
please my heart begs you stifle each false thought
i see wounding words forming in your eyes
spoken false words will shape us more distraught
than the swelled tussle we now realize
best we speak core truth lest we spin crosswise
i urge healing sincerity from you
not jabs to maim me thoroughly dark blue
let your heart tenderly engage with mine
that our fine love may strengthen its purview
of harmonies value in its design
One word, thoughtless voiced, can pierce like a dart.
Unknown to those who ventilate can leave
festering wounds upon a fragile heart.
You spurt out things and deem you're being smart.
Think it doesn't hurt? You're being so naive;
One word, thoughtless voiced, can pierce like a dart.
It's far, far so easy to tear apart
clueless that the other could receive
festering wounds upon a fragile heart.
A stranger, lover, teller at Walmart;
Don't yell or rant because you have a peeve.
One word, thoughtless voiced, can pierce like a dart.
An argument there was no need to start;
because in the end, what did it achieve?
Festering wounds upon a fragile heart
Pause a moment before you speak, restart;
think about your words, do not disbelieve;
one word, thoughtless voiced, can pierce like a dart
festering wounds upon a fragile heart.
Pick-A-Title, Vol 29 - Poetry Contest placed 3rd
Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
Date wrote: 12th March 2022
Traitor thoughts return
again and again
to the blackened pool
that has become breeding ground
for my memories of you.
Like fingertips to a deep gash
testing for tenderness,
waiting for healing,
impatiently scratching at scabs and scars.
Loosing angry blood
from freshly clawed skin;
pricking nettles of pain
into my defeated heart.
Ripe with infection; never to heal
you have become
...my mortal wound.