Written: September 21, 2026, not for contest
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What alchemy resides within the heart,
Where every pulse can tincture blood with hue—
Now umbered by wounds of grief's old art,
Now aureate beneath a love made new.
It hoards its red summers, violet nights,
Then bleaches sorrow into winter-white;
A crystal turning grief to fractured lights,
A stained-glass soul transfigured by the night.
Some days it wears the ochre robe of doubt,
Some days the cobalt vestment of despair;
Yet dawn may coax the buried roses out
And scatter molten amber through the air.
For hearts, like skies, are never one fixed blue;
They darken, blaze, and bloom—and start anew.
Mega Five
Mega Millions now five dollars a draw
for some folks not affordable at all
These lotteries originally a dollar to play
At two bucks a pick Powerball all the way.
Kittens up a tree
Four little kittens up a tree
none climb down scared I see
Spray with hose and two flee
Two stay up a little wet to be
Spraying won't work so I go away
but two kittens up a tree stay
Even mom cat couldn't coax them down
up a tree two kittens hang around
Maybe at night two kittens flee
under cover of darkness down the tree.
Coffee Black
Need my coffee black and strong
brewing on the stove top all day long
Keeps me going with that jive
wakes me up knowing I am alive
Pour it hot from that coffee pot
cup after cup body craves a lot.
Forelsket feelings from celestia,
let yourself fall into that blessing.
Cassette mix created just for you,
may coax us into undressing.
Pillow talk so soft and savage,
slow down get a little deeper.
Intro lines are not needed now,
blow me kisses make my soul stir.
Between the shadows monsters hide
as they coax a smile in plain sight.
You can tell that something’s not right,
quick with a touch you let it slide.
One kiss lands and you know he lied,
trapped now it’s too late to turn back.
Wide-eyed to this tender attack
blindness grows the closer you get.
With eyes like dead roses you’re set
to follow this pain off the track.
Moon walking on a night trip;
Sun dawns and the frame skips.
Nurse Springer and doctor Phil,
They're checking cheeks for euthanasia thrills.
Mind's eye is where the drama ends;
Commercial break, it's a cultural trend.
You can still coax music from a beat up drum.
You cannot fire peace from the end of a gun.
All the other kids with the pumped-up kicks?
Haters gonna hate, that's some truth ****.
The total bummer of our wasted Test summer….ahem
Does jar well below par no cigar not even a cafe creme
After another dafter dumber and dumber apophthegm
The tedium of this charlatan medium saying carpe diem
Couldn’t be any glummer still will take Baz to the ATM
Laughter him on a whim mending a forlorn torn hem
We pleaded tree needed to go not the Root but stem
Pretending will be happy ending Bazball’s Bethlehem
ECB & Key glib in tandem fib as random as a Lib Dem
English cricket’s viral spiral now coughing up phlegm
The gory gashes from Ashes lashes will still condemn
Then Stokes says that’s all folks was absolute mayhem
Jokes he’ll back in the 2027 eleven it’s us versus them
After hoax new Kiwi bloke evokes masterstrokes a gem
No longer going for broke a stronger bespoke requiem
Will coax the magic unlike the tragic Bazball "La Boheme"
No superhero cloaks as from acorns grow oaks says Flem
Morning slips in sideways.
Moonbeam dips a cotton shirt
into a bowl of dyes~
colors blooming outward
like shy creatures
learning their names.
She lifts the fabric.
Droplets fall in bright plinks,
each one a tiny skipping stone
across the warmth of July.
On the clothesline,
the tie-dyed shirt sways~
a small carnival of swirl and hush,
its spiral turning slowly
as if practicing
for some future miracle.
Moonbeam hums.
Not a song~
more like a friendly spell
to coax the colors
into behaving.
They don’t.
A streak of green wiggles free
and settles into a shape
that looks suspiciously
like mischief.
Wind arrives,
ruffling the hem
with the politeness
of a guest who knows
it’s early.
The shirt answers
with a soft flutter~
a tiny applause.
By afternoon,
the spiral tightens,
gathers itself,
and glows faintly
as if July tucked
a secret inside it.
Moonbeam takes it down,
presses the warm cotton
to her cheek,
and laughs.
Then she slips it on,
and the swirl settles
against her like a tame comet
choosing a shoulder
to rest on.
Upon an uneven pillar stands an unending struggle, coursing through blood, travelling from one generation to the nex
Through the veil of dawn's mist, weary feet follow the jhum trails, while the ceaseless hymn of waterfalls etches the story of survival into the face of time.
The shadow-laden forest remains their unwavering companion.
Across the mountains, evening fires glow.
With burdens bending their shoulders, they make their way home-yet the weight never leaves them.
The flames die away, and the struggle is swallowed by the weary silence of night.
Within the humble home of the uneven pillar, dreams quietly awaken.
Before the first light, in the deepest darkness, the mountains sow the seeds of an unborn tomorrow, as if each dawn could coax tender shoots from the heart of stone.
Night yields at last.
The path is lit once more, the mist parts, and daylight returns.
Though marked by wounds, the footsteps never falter.
In the silent passing of hands from one generation to another, the same burden endures.
After countless seasons, through silence, storms, and time itself, the uneven pillar still stands.
Sulfurous pipettes steamed the last omega-crystal, the sore branch leeches its last resplendence of the season, and bookish kept in the bow of the festoon of leaves, and simple guurlick fabled and abreeze, and so the fruit spins eons and greater fawning realizations. If it was given perchance a look that it does actually have like saphire light that is without blueish asks, lesser boughs keel and balk and besties look for the lowest mark, and coax when next the wicked wind, that throws this fruit from timid limbs and unfurls that one waxing pearl, the low hanging fruit artfully yearns.
The womb of time.
It’s a comical concept.
Comical in a way of deflective desperation leaking out of the cage of my pores.
Comical in a way of pleaded abscond for an imaginative haze of a malformed paradise.
Comical in a way of plagued persecution to the oppression of my shards.
The indigo of the infinite blinds me with a clarity that deceives the wound of my dune.
The desolate certainty to my porcellanitic skin stretches in my ears as I surrender to fate.
The arch of my feet revise the pattern of the engraved, arctic fragments of your permanence.
I find my days blending together; a unition of the void’s contorted chains, embedded with the velvet coax of my blood.
The deliberate, eradication of isolation rings in my ears; a vibration of torturous branding.
The piano notes cry desertion down the hollow of my throat; an echo of futile promise.
The path of my violent fragility demands austere through my follicles; a frugal of fatal mortality.
The womb of time.
Get me out.
The womb of time.
Let me stay.
The womb of time.
Hold me forever.
I learnt a new word today.
Catatonic.
The vexatious coax of its accuracy sanctifies the burden of my reluctant existence.
The vacant faith of its salvation glorifies the redundancy of my timeworn stagnation.
The inertia of my own consciousness rouses within the weight of my repulsive apathy.
I am absent.
My reflection in the window distorts into a portal.
The pale of my skin shudders, an ashen pallet of abasing beauty.
The tremors of my skin winces, a demeaning pallet of humiliating fortune.
The curve of my lips stitch shut, a confined pallet of overflowing tincture.
The violent, lilac fuse of deprivation pounds my crimson in a bloodthirsty famine of a desperate call for condemn.
Yet, the only paragon unearthed is the vacant, potent inevitability of saturation into the voices of my own void;
I will forever remain in an absence of my own conceded mould.
She turns the radio dial with tired hands,
chasing a voice through the crackling dark.
Every station fractures into static,
a snowstorm of sound that won’t let her in.
She leans closer, as if breath alone
could coax meaning from the broken hum.
The world feels distant, unreachable~
just her and the staticky hiss of unfinished thoughts.
Then softly~
a thread of music slips through the noise,
thin as a pulse returning after silence,
a single note glowing like a lantern
held out by someone who somehow knows her name.
She stills herself, listening,
the melody rising, warm and unafraid.
something in her chest loosens~
a knot she’d carried so long
she’d forgotten it was there.
The song widens,
filling the room with a light she can’t see
but feels, unmistakably,
like hands lifting the weight she never spoke of.
She closes her eyes.
The static falls away.
The music moves through her
like a truth she’d been waiting to remember~
a quiet, holy clarity
that finds her exactly where she is
and asks nothing
except that she let it stay.
Vernal Equinox
This is a day for picking up
that cast-aside poetry book
about dreams deferred, its clarity
a balm to your chafing heart.
This is a day for cabernet or single
malt scotch, as you sit, dressed in
flannel PJs beside a crackling fire.
Let the day-long rain clean windows
wash streets, coax roots, feed seeds,
kiss buds keen to burst into blossoms.
Let Winter’s protracted discontent pass
and Spring give birth to hope.
The thunder screams outside my window.
The low, rumbling threats seem to decipher the knots of the obscured gag in my throat.
The white shocks my room with a stark, sudden white, coating the walls in a raging light.
I look out the window.
I ask him what’s wrong.
He screams again, louder this time.
The scream seems to coax itself onto the cracks of my skin, solving the puzzle of my silence.
The rumble tries to pulsate beneath the callouses of my skin, quieting the throb of my silence.
The white appears to alarm the calamity of my skin, triggering the mortification of my silence.
My silence.
That is all I find in the brown of my skin.
That is all I find in the amber of my eyes.
That is all I find in the silver of my rings.
A silence sculpted from an ignited plea for obliteration.
The weather is an old wind-whisperer,
beckoning beside the cedar trees
murmuring into their bark and roots
to get the wind back on stage
to play its part, within the ring cycle.
He bargains with the brooding clouds.
Rearranging the props and painted scenes,
trying to coax a shower of rain
to soak my head and ruin my coat,
forcing me back into winter clothes.
An old wind chime rings
recasting the storm backstage,
summoning the rain on wind at dusk
to mock the clothes I chose to wear.
But I'm riding on the north wind,
drifting warm, happy to be care free,
skimming like a skipping stone
across the silvery shimmering sea.
Oh wayward wind—please carry me
where the weather suits my clothes
far away from the cold wintry chills
back to where the warmth of sunshine thrills.
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