Flowers fade, and leaves tumble, twirl ~
they fall fragile whirling, dancing, drifting.
Red, russet, glimmering gold,
death's decay beautiful, still, silent.
Wind whispers, birds trill, tweet,
branches broken, groan, moan mournful.
Cold crisp nights, days a warm welcome.
the falling leaves drift
gold, red dancing in the wind
ending in decay . . .
love to listen to the birds
and walk the forest fading
Now torn from out the home I’ve ever known,
Propelled by unseen winds to stray away,
The chilling rain that bathes my form is shown
By moonlight in this dance of swift decay.
I twist and turn as tender veins now tear,
Impelled by gales that push me to the dark;
My frantic tumble plunges down to bear
With sudden force against this rugged bark.
Yet, resting in this comforting domain,
I bow, amazed to know the sun will rise;
A deeper life shall bless the soil again,
Where quiet roots ignore the stormy skies.
Held fast within the forest’s cool embrace,
I fade into the shadows of this place.
Gaze upon the glorious decay.
Gaze upon the glow of pitch blackness.
Cut through the flames, Sword of Hades.
Grow tall and strong my flower,
O’ Blackened Sunflower.
Decay of flames, my Sunflower.
Inspired by my poem “The Black Sunflower” 3/5/2026
Decay is the way all things must go,
To allow new things to grow.
golden seal
a heavy hand
small brides
ink stains the soul
rust c r e e p s through the joints
honor dies
slow leak
foul water,
d
e
e
p mud,
cold promise;
p r o m i s e s
built on hollow ground.
the tower starts to lean...
c r a c k;
dust is all that stays.
We’re ruled by flimsy Nietzscheans
“It’s all too human”, spoke their mentor
So they dehumanized for us
The services, forced us surrender
To the machineries that count
All that we are, and regulate
All that we could have been, without
The guidance of inhuman state
I doubt that Nietzsche saw that far
Although he prophesized decay
A boudoir philosopher
For jaded bourgeoisie, he played
A wise man’s comedy for those
Nocturnal chaps who lived behind
Closed curtains - I tend to suppose
That’s us, those who forgot to die.
After you, the air itself became carnivorous.
Like swallowing knives where the blood spilled within.
The body survives by reminding itself that
this is the only home that will ever shelter it.
Some nights, I hear myself scratching on my own walls,
behind the plaster, like a buried saint.
My love for you has not left; it had merely rotted,
sweet as fruit collapsing under flies.
Numbness is not resurrection,
neither is survival absolution.
But this emptiness in me is honest in ways you ever were:
it asks for nothing except its full weight.
So I entered it willingly, at last,
a dead star learning how to finally collpase -
embrace the void.
*sometimes
the people who tell me I am somebody
are the ones who make me feel like nobody.*
--your lies will always lie still and stiff like the corpse inside me you created.
It will not rot
It will not decay.
how do you steal the life you never gave me?
I've lived and died many times already.
I am immune to my immortality
It smells like ice.
It tastes like void.
It runs on crude and sour etiquette.
It's so esoteric naturally
that me myself is unnatural.
Do not play me with poison
You are not ivy or oak
trust me, learn your chemicals
We are toxins, take caution
See luck in my state of shock.
And so be it, I refuse
to suffer all alone another time
(again and again)
because that corpse you created will never move
nor will i ever forget.
I will not rot.
I will not decay.
Never meddle with the dead.
March9th2023
The street exhales in measured, patient light,
Where footsteps keep a cadence soft and slow,
An I, a witness to the day, walk on—
While somewhere in my mind, a name begins to grow.
A stone appears where none was set before,
Its surface pale with weather, time, and loss;
No hands in sight, yet carved with patient care—
A name, a date, and silence etched across.
It feels so close, yet too far to reach,
As if the thought itself has learned to wait;
A whispered echo at the edge of speech,
Where life and stillness almost hesitate.
A though intrudes, unbidden, keen, and still,
It settles where the quiet held its form;
Not summoned by intent, yet marks the will,
A distant tremor in an unseen storm.
I measure life against what time unthreads,
Each breath a brief inscription on the air;
The body writes what memory still treads,
And fades into the grammar of the bare.
And still I walk, the cadence kept and known,
The sky unchanged, though meanings rearrange;
What lingers is not lost, but overgrown,
A quiet thought, persistent, yet estranged.
My eyes scan the map of our lives –
lived experiences – etched across my grandma’s face.
And her eyes look right back.
But not the same;
The light that once danced to old jazz tunes,
and bold classic blues, that light that is extinguished by name tags at Christmas
donning the shirts of which she herself bestowed the identity.
‘I am sixteen’ I tell her,
again,
and she nods along, but that light does not quite gleam,
dimmed by the brain that cannot stay clean
and I find myself pointing at faces of which she is the blueprint.
Her fingers follow mine,
shaking,
as she tries to recreate, copy what cannot be faked
and I stifle a sob as I find my head bobs as she asks if I am okay.
Silence strangles my words
the way dementia does hers,
and I want to scratch at the very back of my throat the way she wants to remember the name of her firstborn:
An itch that will not be itched.
Not by her pretences or attempted defences, for she does not
remember
faces or names but her love remains, backed only by the assumption that
she should.
For she does not remember the family secrets that her brain will not
reveal –
not even for the sake of this family appeal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tarnish
slow surrender~
iron weeps orange tears.
The patient bite of time unkind.
Decay.
Growth and decay work in collusion
like destruction and rebuilding
righteousness and wickedness
like god and the devil
like heaven and hell
like life and death
light vs dark
likewise
and
so
it is
with nature
with universe
mind and subconscious
the stars and the planets
laws that govern the cosmos
the yearnings, the needs of the heart
the intangibility of soul.
~Contest: Double Nonet Poetry
~Sponsor: William Kelii Kekaula (Sorry, borrowed your Title)
Urban street decay,
let’s get off at the wrong stop.
Subterfuge to muzz
is coercing you to ride.
What else could be left to say?
Golden skyline burns,
ambition dressed as virtue —
dead smiles sharpened thin.
Compassion becomes rumor;
even kindness costs too much.
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