I truly love it all:
The final days of f-all,
The shadows, looming t-all,
The stork’s goodbying c-all,
The wind against my w-all,
The beach-less orphaned b-all
Deflating, growng sm-all…
I truly love it all.
a warm embrace
deflating the loneliness
of oncoming fall
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
Submitted on November 1, 2025 for contest 1423 SENRYU sponsored by BRIAN STRAND - RANKED 8TH
I want to be heard.
Like a bike dinging.
Whirling by, has a path.
Enjoying the busy howls.
I want to be heard.
Like a harmonica.
Making unique sounds.
Breathing hard and music is made.
I want to be heard.
Like a helicopter.
Which eats the sky with its blades.
And lands on a landing pad every time.
I want to be heard.
Like a bison.
Like a campfire.
Like vanilla extract.
Opening my backpack.
Heaving this bag on the counter.
There are no tools or clothes.
Just deflating sounds.
I want to be heard.
Even if it’s just the sound of deflating.
It's been many months since I saw 'Malice'
In fact, she was hard to recognize
There's a faraway look in her bloodshot eyes
She resembles a Michelin man with loads of spare tires
Her blue and white dress is strained at the seams,
Good god she's put on so much weight
It must be so annoying
that she can't slip through the wormhole
to cause havoc with useless debating.
Perhaps, her ego needs deflating
How I'd love to burst her bubble
after she's caused so much trouble.
They say you never leave the house.
It’s a ghostly feeling by the tv.
When you live somewhere and hate it for no reason?
Remembering again and deflating.
And you’re getting cereal again.
And you’re getting things from places all the time.
Whirling.
They say you never leave the house.
That’s all it is.
They say leaving the house will solve everything.
So you packed your bag and walked to the bus stop.
Forgetting your name, but in a happy way.
I need to go somewhere beautiful, and I think this bus will take me.
That’s all there is.
I don’t know my address anymore!
Pack up everything again and again.
Hooray!
It’s a ghostly feeling by the camp fire.
There’s a whole world and I can live in all of it.
Camping on a bench really solved it all.
It creeps up on me early morning
and again late afternoon
a microcephalic shadow,
almost the length of a football pitch,
Land of the giants view
My childlike head is miles
away and dwindling,
constantly deflating
Proteus syndrome echoes
back through generations
crossing time zones too
Elongated diffraction
casts a very long shadow,
tapering reality
Low sun dysmorphia
projects a reflection of me,
A filtered perspective
revealing my only truth
Those beans I threw away
yesterday were not magic
No golden goose lives atop the stalk
just a grotesque shell,
and one giant (yoke)
flattening all potential
I try look away
but as always
a grain of sand
blocks my view
Come chop me down,
flinch as I fall
Step over my shadow
you’ll need
(seven league boots)
But most of all,
no fixed roots!
wilting in the setting sun
dissolving deflating
undernourished underfed
neglected rejected
unknown
a mystery
if any degree of pampering
can bring me back to life
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
A line of waves
begin their run to shore,
lifting, rising up and flaring
cobra like as if preparing
to strike, gliding forward
until the shallows down them
and they fall, deflating
to a withering crawl
up the incline of a beach,
beaten into tiny bubbles
that burst harmless at my feet.
I am safe here
beyond the lethal reach
of waves and water where,
just a short wade away,
a rip churns ready to drag
an unsuspecting soul
out to sea and far from sight,
slow thrashing limbs and time
to a still and thicken
living breath into brine.
The image troubles me
and sends my thoughts
a thousand miles
and a lifetime away
to when my uncle drowned
trying to rescue a child
swept out in a rip. He clings
to memory, the young brother
of my Mum, though I was
only eight years old.
He was twenty one.
How do you find this place?
Do you find it with greatness?
Do you find it with peace?
Do you find it with proportion?
Do you find it with the least?
Do you find it with wanting?
Do you find it with plenty?
Do you find it with harshness?
Do you find it gently?
Do you find it with malice?
Do you find it with content?
Do you find it with purpose?
Do you find it with intent?
Do you find it compelling?
Do you find it dull?
Do you find it intriguing?
Do you find it annulled?
Do you find it gracious?
Do you find it cheap?
Do you find it deflating?
Do you find it steep?
Do you find it at all?
Do you find it not?
Do you find it lacking?
Do you find it alot?
Do you find it enlightened with pure strength and its might?
Do you find it blackened with no end in sight?
Do you find it faster than the speed of light?
Do you find the noose has become to tight?
Don't rush Spring
because of everything it brings
Each day in a season is valuable to explore
To live, to love, to experience more
Find the light shining in the snow
or when it's cold, enjoy warm cocoa
There's always something in a day
to see, to experience, to share, to give away
Go with the motion of beauty, its offer waiting
To appreciate as it is, before it disappeara deflating
Heidi Sands
1/25/24
(C)opyright
flowers
abloom, flory
loving, wedding, growing
bouquets, blossom, inflatable, bouyant
deflating, bursting, tethering
helium, colorful
balloons
Near the fountain stands the male
In iridescent glory,
But his mate begins this tale,
A true Manhattan story.
These same ducks have made their home
Outside a high-rise building.
I see them swim or sleep or roam;
The truth requires no gilding.
This morning, early, as he waits,
The female, with intention
Of what she now anticipates,
Insists on prompt attention.
She marches right up to the door,
By which a doorman’s standing
And opens up her beak to score
The meal she is demanding.
In full regalia, he complies
And grabs a baggie waiting,
Then shoos some pigeons to the skies,
Their hope for food deflating.
He sprinkles breakfast for the pair,
Who gustily start eating
And I walk on so I can share
This urban morning meeting.
I genuinely like myself for most of the things I do
And it brings me joyous pleasure when it pleases you
When we do things for each other it seems to work just fine
And trouble will come calling when I think too much is mine
We’re in this life for sharing, to that there is no doubt
Wisdom, inspiration, humour, all have their unique clout
But being home and lonely has a vocabulary of its own
Lonesome thoughts hauntingly dictate such a different tone
Sadness, depression, and grief, such strong exhaustive notions
Stopping me in my tracks, conjuring such negative emotions
Attacking my sensitive ego and deflating my self esteem
And feeling sorry for myself, what does that even mean
The words that I am thinking and playing in my mind
Should be of greater wisdom, inspiring and more kind
Making me feel better and making you feel better too
Holding us together like a delicious emotional stew
embracing the trumpet blast heat
a boy and girl
hide and seek
midst tall grasses
rising like promises at dawn
vibrant lightness of limbs
in a green reach
lush
effortless
two youths
seek
rush
conceal
never quite hidden
nor wanting to be
in verdant bits of impulse
rotating
rolling
aromatic blooming that bridges heckling trouble
with energy deflating
in a random shuffling of touch
she ruffles his hair, tufts of flaxen straw
to trace sweat lines on a sun-brown cheek
as if happiness could be cupped like water in hand
in this field
absolved from the discord of home
their plain surface vows
comforting
like the grass rolled flat
under surges of joy
Poem composed March 26, 2022
snowman three meters high
an inelegant formation
of grizzled snow packed in lumps
needing refinement
stubby tree-branch arms
glutching fastened balloons, blue and yellow
bobbing in the wet licks of wind
snowman towering, gently twisted
desperate grit to thwart a winter's thaw
as blue and yellow balloons bounce near an icy chest
like a slow tempo beat of heart
plundered sense of capture
quirky
resilient balloons
scripted bits of childhood charm
not yet swept aside by tempest
nearby
snatched away by breezes
one red balloon traces the street gutter
like a beggar foraging returnable cans
red balloon smitten with blotches of mud
deflating in the mercenary chill
its gentle sway like a cheeky concept of self
unrestrained
in the vagrancy of night
Poem composed February 7, 2023
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