There're things much worse than being alone.
Like a stream of cold words cutting to the bone.
Or bruises blooming like lilacs on the face of innocents.
There's always a steel-toed skunk in a field of mint.
Nobody wants to spend their precious days
navigating paths of eggshell. and broken glass.
You don't notice the petals or bells anymore, only the horn of the coming train crash.
Day upon day you dust off the mask
because that's what dusters are expert at.
They put on rose-scented glasses and tap shoes.
Sashay into yet another flinch-battered day.
Hoping there's a patch of robin egg blue.
To temper that vast quilt of blackish decay.
One thing is always in fashion,
that polka-dot pattern of escalation.
Pinnacle of pins and green desperation.
A shallow pond of apology and reconciliation.
Things turn sweet to sour at the speed of light.
A honeymoon never shows you its darkest side.
Once there were diamonds, now there's only slag -
It's past time for a nonchalant lift off that icy crag.
Orange sign weeps stone,
Jagged echoes float upward,
Gravity spins out of tune.
Silent mountains melt,
Crag and gravel softly drift,
Time forgets the falling road.
Upon a crag of thought he rests, a rugged form of silent power,
Engrossed in mental realms while silent moments softly creep,
With bronze-hued strength and shadowed brow, he marks the thoughtful hour,
Forgetting all the world around in contemplation deep,
The fertile mind creates, unleashing worlds within the inner eye,
No longer just a dreamer, but a creator bound to rise,
He dreams the future into shape beneath the heavy, watchful sky.
Michelangelo’s Adonis, for the whole world to immortalize.
I must have lost my friends,
I should not have clicked "send",
I meant to email you instead
My mind was half asleep,
I called them lazy sheep,
now they cut me dead.
I don’t know what it was,
Maybe just because
The mailing list starts with "A"
Now I'm so uptight
I stared at that screen all night
The screen that led me astray
(chorus)
There is no hack
That can take it back,
No magic “undo” key.
Friends may be sheep,
But the cost was steep,
When the truth-teller was me.
(bridge)
Next time I’ll pause and breathe,
Count to ten before bytes leave.
Read it twice before I click.
Because now I feel sick,
I jumped backwards off the crag,
The cats escaped out of the bag.
In social effigy I hang
No sense of humor in that gang
I've become a hermit living in caves
A wild eyed maniac who rants and raves
I still feel the hurt, still feel the pang.
When I hit that key, and the first phone rang.
Fear of the Outsider, the interloper, the alien
Is as old as humanity itself.
Xenophobia doesn’t just apply to someone foreign
And “not like us”,
It applies to anyone who may threaten
Our way of life, the status quo, the norm
And way “it’s always been.”
From local bar to climbing crag, surfing beach,
Ghetto corner, and Union shop floor,
The locals, sometimes multigenerational deep,
Tend to claim their turf
With the worst of human qualities;
Fear and loathing
Sublimated into snide ostracism,
Backstabbing gossip and withering looks
If not fully expressed with seething hate
Slander, bullying and assault.
Meanwhile life goes on for the Xeno
Head down, eyes averted, pathways diverted,
While in their heart
They recognize the love their haters have
For their cherished way of life and ground
Is not exclusive
And no different from their own.
(9/6/25)
Tears of the Dragon Poetry
Contest //Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori
Contest Judged: 8/26/2025 11:56:00 PM
( 6th Place )
Written: August 18, 2025
I stood on the crag where the sea breathed fire,
its winds tearing at the very shape of my name.
The sky was a shattered mirror
each splinter a memory I had tried to leave high and dry,
but still they cut as they fell through me.
In the distance, the dragon turned its head.
Its eyes held storms I had feared all my life.
Its wings-- the weight of every road I never dared to walk.
I thought I’d come here, to vanquish it
But the revelation was, it had come to set me free.
Its roar did not strike me down.
It shredded the silence that had been my prison.
Tears flowed hot and unyielding
spilling the ashes of years into the waiting tide.
The wind rose, not to push me back,
but to carry me forward.
And when the dragon soared away.
Its shadow left no darkness behind.
Only a sky wide enough
for the first flight of my own wings.
She left at the yawn of dawn
Between fog-densed waking hour
And rain-soused grey morning.
Veiled, her image was laced in silhouette.
She stood behind the fog-rain, a dark
Painting, sketched in black crayons of
Languor.
Her breath, one streak of ink
Of a satanic fresco on a dingy subway.
And the breath of the rain was heavy,
Brewed in hauteur -
So was the world between us two,
Lame and proscribed.
She wandered through flighty directions.
Grouches filled her lugubrious lungs,
Blotches on the sludged track, echoing
Her slouch.
She was one mass of trembling grief.
I was one hulk of ruinous pain.
Between us, the funeral of love.
Threnodies held court on the once soft
Yolk of hugs that sensitized an ageing
Romance.
Dawn darkened with the pulse of grief
Rain pelted the senses held by solemn
Consternations, recreating a fruitless
Void of hollow trepidations.
She lurched and sidled towards the
Crag-lined route, towards earth’s drooling
Beck... and I knew the funeral
Was over.
In the serf's vase, a blossom gaudily sits.
Within an eternity so heartlessly clipped.
Goals only half met, pocked with regret.
You've come so far-far up from the crag.
The crystal of the dream withering to hagfish.
It was all about the gifts and the voyage within
A silver starfish, a tide pool's lone gem.
Standing on a crag
Frozen against the storm
Wrap another layer on
Rain biting through me
Throwing coins to the waves
Trading hope for affection
Thunder without lightning
Blind on wet rocks
You pull up alongside me
Drawing back the clouds
Peeling off the wet layers
Baring my skin to the Sun
Taking me below decks
Holding me while I shiver
Safe and warm in your embrace
Melting into your beauty
I had prayed
For the waves to snatch me
Take me beneath their black peaks
Bury me on the seafloor
Now I dream of flying
Above the sea
Lighter than air itself
Straight into your heart
I lose myself willingly
in the depths of your gaze,
where light wanes like a bitter moon,
and something black flickers back—
—you are a palpitation I should fear,
dismally drawn to my knowing.
Your dark brown eyes a crag,
carved between skin, devastation,
and abysmal Horror—half-wild,
half-claimed—hungers between us—
—morendo!—
too sibilant to name.
The Queen has a navy
That floats in her gravy,
It’s sharp and its clear,
But it’s sure tough to steer,
For the rudders get stuck
In that thick, grayish muck,
And the lads in the stern
Have a penchant to yearn
For the bright shining waters
All popping with otters,
Yet they smile as they sail past
Her Majesty’s repast,
And wink as they think
That they’d better not sink,
For if sailors go down
In the gravy, they’ll drown,
And you can’t hear them yelp
Through the lard for some help,
And therefore it’s wise
On the ship to keep eyes,
And they sail towards a biscuit
And think that they’ll risk it,
‘Midst butters and jams,
And kippers and clams,
On a crumbly crag
Raise Her Majesty’s flag,
And with hearts beating proud
Face the smiling crowd,
For a deed large or small,
It is better than all,
If it’s done with conviction,
Not merely good diction,
And protecting the table,
Or more, if you’re able,
Brings honor unseen
To country and Queen.
Written: January 2nd, 2025, for Contest, Sponsored by: Constance La France
______________________________
I caught an enormous fish
and held him by the boat
midway to the water, caught in a damp pitch
with a tight hook in the front of his throat
he did not fight, just as I wish to devote.
Bowfin can occasionally be seen
leading the dwarf length of the eel
excess during low tide in between
they're twisting and swinging for real
wrapped in some foils of a green meal.
He grips the crag with twisted hands
an eagle soaring to the sky and sway
close to the sun in desolate lands
amidst the azure universe, may it fey
ready to sink and scoop its picked prey.
In the mists of the giant bark beneath
rise old growth saplings out of crag and earth,
where tumbles an ancient evergreen leaf
from that marvel of great and splendid girth.
That footing seed, that pod, that budding shoot
to spread its shedding crown in fulsome yield,
when ringed trunk buttressed by conifer root
in furrowed skin wraps its tubular shield.
High on sky perch over forest thickets
the sylvan canopy the clouds do climb -
to fell, to log, to mill into pickets
and trusses tempers not this heart of mine.
It does me good (those sap bathed arms bended)
to see your mighty scaffold extended.
Written: May 1992
Emilia J, so lovely and light, no sun-bearing song, could be singing so bright,
In the heat of the day, or the chill of the night, Emilia J, is a beautiful sight,
At the core of the Earth, or the crag-bearing crust, Emilia J, is a beacon of trust,
If you batter your bread, in a bag-tearing bust, Emilia J, is a poetry must.
Emilia J, how great can you be, writing your poems from the top of a tree,
The crows are upset, invariably, but Emilia J, is a blossom to me,
Her writing is finer than rabbits have hares, Emilia J, is a friend to the bears,
If poetry, possibly, prickles your pears, Emilia J, is a poet who cares.
Mocking the dead,
the vampire on the hill, high
above the cityscape. Why
does his cloak wrap around?
It moves with a hissing sound,
blackened on the outside,
blue on the molten graveside.
Sharpening incisors on the crag,
but
the villagers with their worn rags
tight fisted with their goodly lights -
those lanterns, infused with salt
of garlic, compelled forward in the dead
of night. Mockers and murderers, fed
by rage, want to dispel the wine and bread.
Hell,
the strangulation of fire, lava rolling
down the hill. Mocking, laughter -
the shivering of the old church rafters.
The reborn, new creation, settled
on roof-blowing praise. Nettled,
old Nick, the vampire king unsettled.
Mocking the dead,
making his own bed, jutting at jugulars,
darkening the atmosphere, drawing
congregants, unholy. But, someone holy
has his heels on the vampire’s head.
He’s been banished…dead heads’ rolling.
The glorious light of the lamb, consoling.
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