Written: August 09, 2025, for contest SEASONS NOW AND AFTER Sponsored by: Nette Onclaud
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Aurora sheds her velvet, gleaming flame,
Dusk with iridescent shades fills the air.
Molten winds trick hearts in taking a game,
Grooved meadows grant obedient despair.
The alabaster clouds sparkle with grace,
Empyrean dreams appease the reek ache.
Fertile roots stir zymotic in their place,
Anodyne stars at triptych kindly break.
The swarm is a hive of busy tough bees,
Pavonine clouds, incarnadine with thrill.
Multivocal leaves—ethereal, breeze—,
Rapture in desiccation, soft and still.
Categories:
desiccation, autumn, summer,
Form: Other
The porch-potted have attenuated
into stick insects.
Geraniums are hallowed be dark moons,
Fragility turns to desiccation.
The red tin watering can
is iced over by a fallen sun.
Of a sudden, a yawning dawn
freezes, is pinned
to a fixed grimace.
Unlock the front door,
push a grudging frosted screen.
Slipper bound toes shrink back,
blood drops through ice holes
in arterial walls.
Tropical fruits uneaten,
beds unmade and cooling,
cat hiding under a throw rug,
just its tail flicking a weather warning.
Slap and lock the door,
ignore the creaking porch
as it were a gutted grave.
Upon a kitchen wall
eyes trace a diminishing light,
a trace that once was a warming ray,
now has congealed into a fingerbone
of yesterday.
Categories:
desiccation, poetry,
Form: Free verse
They impregnate both water and soil
with their surrendering
as we do.
After the wilt
cadaverous blooms rattle their bones,
the desiccation a scaffolding,
the skeletal hollows a refrain
of a beauty more everlasting.
The wilting but a pouring prologue
to that last stand.
Sunlight feeds them
sunlight eats them,
shadows dream them
unto death, but it is a death
more beautiful than the sunlight
or any shade,
and when the dark green sludge comes
the reek is not of them,
but of our idea of life & death.
In that last silent exposure
the dead offer up their perfection
uncaring of any discerning eye.
Categories:
desiccation, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Wildfires of fall bring us whirlwinds of flame.
Black-scape throughout, life’s survival or death?
Spring blooms of dogwood. Renewal sustained.
Santana stampedes, she’s wicked, untamed,
through canyons of ages. We hold our breath.
Wildfires of fall bring us whirlwinds of flame.
Now Dante’s hellhound of Hades renamed!
Desiccation abounds where there were fresh
spring blooms of dogwood. Renewal sustained.
What brought this on us, is someone to blame?
Nature or mishap? A crazed soul's arrest?
Wildfires of fall bring us whirlwinds of flame.
Now charred, disfigured but memory maintains
the clear hills of May, June sparrows, content.
Spring blooms of dogwood, renewal sustained.
Flora in peril, all creatures the same!
Twixt ashes or mudslides? These losses attest!
Wildfires of fall bring us whirlwinds of flame.
Spring blooms of dogwood, renewal sustained.
Categories:
desiccation, fire, mythology, spring, wind,
Form: Villanelle
I roam this barren desert isolated with fear.
Solitary am I; neglected and left apart from
those who used to love me. For I am but a
lonely woman who bore a loss too deep.
This infertile oasis has given me nothing
but grief, and I notice I thirst for emerald
fields and cascading reveries to ease my
empty soul. I hear a “splish-splash” and
my yearning to be quenched by love has
overpowered my need to always be so
self-righteous and filled with selfish pride.
my heart uninhabited; I am left dehydrated.
I used to believe in the comfort of passion;
now I am unaccompanied in this wasteland.
I only see ahead of me my pure desiccation.
I am relinquished; I feel a fever with chills
running down my sweaty back and I no
longer will be satisfied nor quelled in love.
For I am wandering this forsaken desert
alone- renounced by the life I once knew.
Date written: October 13, 2018
SPonsor: Edward Ibeh
Categories:
desiccation, loneliness, loss, metaphor,
Form: Free verse
MY GARDEN
It’s only rose rains, no reins.
in my garden redolent
of you preened and green.
brainwashed by balance sheets ,
soul-washed by sour names,
what remains as mine.
remnants ? residue? Desiccation?, no!
a sanguine touch, solitude?, yes!
wanted or bonded
flushed or fleshed,
secretive or secreting
dry like a silver skyline
or wet like winter sweat
its contours solemn-countering ,
confines groping in green, serene ..
come on in..
By S.Jagathsimhan Nair, 13th feb 14
For: Giorgio's Impress me-4
Motif: Romantic
For Giorgio's 'Impress me-5'
Categories:
desiccation, garden,
Form: Free verse
Wrapped in explosives he was unready
for a bruise. A dive at a mound of torso
to unearth the archives of areolae.
Apnoea will come for arbitration
in clenched insinuation :
pull nipples to open the window of mind.
On the forehead a smear of vermilion
brings glare like a third eye.
Real fish in the green pond of envy.
Desiccation of spine excites the rhetoric
blurs the sea of swans. A lone tree
explodes into a spring, not just leaves of old flame.
Silver moon recognizes the battered hill.
A white wolf was cruising on the road
for appleblossoms.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
desiccation, art,
Form: ABC
Will one day be against the law
To grow your body five feet tall,
To have a paunch/To eat too much:
And those too different [or who Pray]
Will be (Most Kindly) put away.
And will watch you/checking if
You have eaten what they wish,
That you wash, and that you wipe,
Doing Everything That’s Right:
Resistance, futile, as the Borg,
Inefficiency – abhorred—
Then as the drone, when you are old,
[Most Gently] thrown out in the cold.
But after desiccation, then
O Soylent Green, you’ll live again.
JVB September 27, 2007 Viksmanshyttan, Sweden
Categories:
desiccation, satire
Form: Verse
Wrapped in explosives he was unready
for a bruise. A dive at a mound of torso
to unearth the archives of areolae.
Apnoea will come for arbitration
in clenched insinuation :
pull nipples to open the window of mind.
On the forehead a smear of vermilion
brings glare like a third eye.
Real fish in the green pond of envy.
Desiccation of spine excites the rhetoric
blurs the sea of swans. A lone tree
explodes into a spring, not just leaves of old flame.
Silver moon recognizes the battered hill.
A white wolf was cruising on the road
for appleblossoms.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
desiccation, adventure, allegory, angst, animals,
Form: I do not know?
Two spirits of passions
From ever separating worlds
Watching and hoping with intensity
Drifting on winds of nowhere
Tracings of comfort and familiarity
Fearing the change that arrives with risk
Ignoring pangs in exchanges of nothings
Yet there exists a sweet fervor between them
That unyielding thirst of eternal desiccation
Two souls of this fiery desire
From existence so indistinct
On parallel journeys reaching for the one another
Admittance revering nature’s truth
Building intensities more than either cares to confess
Each wanting to stake all for a chance…silence prevailing
Passing the eons of eternities boundaries
No end in sight of this voiceless duel of pride
Begging inside to grapple the moment before it passes
Two spirits of passion
From ever separating worlds
If to chance a moment’s gaze to see that they truly are one
Categories:
desiccation, hope, imagination, life, love,
Form: Free verse
The gathering storm rattled snakelike over distant hills,
Heads of dust and debris thrown as charcoal relief
To the vast expanse of the sky;
In the drought of reason, heat radiated a stillness,
Diseased and brooding, motionless as fissured statues
Or corpses in their time of desiccation.
The old grudges quickly stirred, their animation jostling with fever,
Until they burst tall and armoured, bloody hands
Raised up to the heavens;
Ceaselessly goading, provoking war dogs, effected
Reprisals in a rain of missiles, for attrition ruled
The stalemate kingdoms with seething deities.
The storm is coming, a travel of increasing ferociousness,
Laying waste to desert blooms and flesh,
And sat upon the pale horse the name is always death.
Towers of toasted glass and white steel,
Market places, schools and homes…and people…
All fair game carrion before such implicit dominion…
Categories:
desiccation, death, history, life, loss,
Form: Blank verse