Pebbles in the stream
water carves their jagged skins
grinding them to smooth
time's current erodes all forms
each grain spilled feeds entropy
Age carves us rougher—
wrinkles, fissures, furrows spread,
chaos marks the skin;
it knurls the gnarled into grips
that drags daylight into night
For a rock, a tree
disorder unfolds; same way
each form cracked to dust
on path worn to final ash
as time decays, all texture
the beach is public
but the beach house is private
when the sea erodes,
which is saved; you can't save both
saving houses erodes the beach
The owner's ten-story building
Rises up, whooshing, growing vast.
While the worker's humble two-sloped roof
Erodes and wastes in the wind's fierce blast.
Subtle strings are pulled,
Truth distorts, free will erodes,
Trapped in their design.
©bfa051725
In memory that wouldn’t get upgrades
You stay, and you’ll remain there till I go
One day wasn’t circled on your calendar of dates
Now empty is the room we used to know
The August Macke painting on the wall
Your table, stuffed with papers, vapes, remotes
And signs you left of missed video calls
Remain in memory, that in its turn, erodes
The visual memory of you keeps our time
When we were close, as close as we could be
You laughed your head back – when this image will decline
You’ll take me where you are now, I believe.
Amidst illusions of eternity, do they fear death or the loss of vanity,
walking through existence, raising fragile monoliths of silent legacy,
believing their names will echo through the ages, as if permanence were a gift,
not a delusion woven from desires, a dream lost under a bitter sky.
But history erodes with precision, turning emperors into mere footnotes,
changing scholars into misattributed quotes, shadows lost in the night,
if even the architects of civilizations succumb to silent oblivion,
why would they assume exemption, when time steals everything and erases all?
Do they fear death, or the realization that they were never essential,
that they are but echoes in the shadow of eternity, whispers lost in a forgotten tale,
facing the truth that we are all fleeting, like leaves in the foreign wind,
that the need to matter becomes a whisper of powerlessness, a dream at the dawn of destiny.
Flood of anonymous agony
inundates the debris of hope,
weed-webbed wasteland
of receding reverie
erodes in delirium
within turbulent essence,
wreckage of life piles up,
unlived,
transforms rapture garden
into winter badland
of foreboding discontent,
perceived.
Future meadow waits
to be sauntered
sanguine,
invents fantasy alchemy,
making magical gold
from ferrous aspirations,
gilding rusted crust
of weathering present,
metamorphosed,
marigold ecstasy blooms
in the Midas-touched mind,
mesmerized.
Wrapped by golden rays
of garnet sun,
setting sublime
beyond the content ocean,
entranced mind rolls
in twilight zone
on sapphire life waves,
broken,
yearning psyche is drawn
within the anguish trough,
crashes on existential shore,
shaped by the shadow
of pearlescent past,
petrified
in the collapsed sandcastle
on the beleaguered beach
of the stilled time,
enfolding the blanched grains
of aureate dreams,
d i s i n t e g r a t e d…..
A perfect storm on its treacherous course,
The wonder of nature and its powerful force.
In the storm's eye, it is calm and serene,
It's the mayhem around that lies in between.
A power unleashed that knows not of grace,
When ravaging landscapes, whilst leaving its trace.
The heartbeat of thunder is a symphonic sound,
The pandemonium surrounding is fierce and unbound.
Yet here in the eye where silence resides,
Is a moment suspended as fury collides.
When inside the vortex, its strength and its might,
The power of destruction is a wondrous sight.
A world splintered into fragments and out of control,
In the eye lies its chaos, looking through its porthole.
Amidst all the turmoil, as the world, it explodes,
You see plans for the future, as hope it erodes.
With a future uncertain, with an end always near,
As time it stands still in its own stratosphere.
Remember, time that is lost it is never found again,
Each second is a treasure we find it hard to retain.
Earth
Trembles
A little
More each time with
Each barbaric act
We open up the sore
A glacier shrinks silently
Temperatures rise, its tears fall
Land erodes as each wave battles cliff
As we all edge further to the abyss
Notice given but rejected as folly
Earth unleashes its deadly armour
Brutal, unforgiving force moves
Relentless, without mercy
Drives humanity back
Self healing begins
Nature rises
Like Phoenix
From ash
Fly
Earth
Trembles
A little
More each time with
Each barbaric act
We open up the sore
A glacier shrinks silently
Temperatures rise, its tears fall
Land erodes as each wave battles cliff
As we all edge further to the abyss
Notice given but rejected as folly
Earth unleashes its deadly armour
Brutal, unforgiving force moves
Relentless, without mercy
Drives humanity back
Self healing begins
Nature rises
Like Phoenix
From ash
Fly
Pale blue, pale yellow, pale green.
Flowers die,
Plants, birds, animals,
Why do you need a name?
There will be dust, storm, cyclone.
In there, what will you wish for?
This trail, this narrow path, this green belt,
But something erodes them,
We can’t trace them back.
Now a metal road, wide, it’s heartless.
We are travelling fast, faster than light,
Are we? Will we ever be?
Will you be the next? They ask.
Either way, it’s an end. A sad end.
……………………………………………………….
When an Angel Cries
Do you know when an Angel cries?
When it hurts so badly that tears fill their eyes?
There from on high
They can only wonder as to why
They can feel that familiar ache of the coming pain
Then the Angel's tears begin fall like rain
They see the lover's heart begins to break under the strain
As the Angel's tears fall praying for the betrayal to refrain
It too often begins with those little white lies
That's when bit by bit trust erodes and true love slowly dies
Because of those tiny things you should never say
To hide the wrongs done to your love in some way
Had you only thought, you knew it was going to hurt, and bad too
But in that moment of weakness there were only thoughts of you
And the heavenly host of Angle's cries
And it happens too often when love, the most important thing, dies
......The loss of Alexandria,
the burning of Ashburnham House,
the Grand Library of Baghdad
which the Mongolians tore down,
the countless Aztec codices
that the conquistadors all burned...
just thinking of the knowledge lost
sometimes can make my stomach churn.
Even Shakespeare claims a ‘lost play,’
this is not bound to antiquity,
Scott Joplin’s opera Guest of Honor
has been swallowed by history.
Even some tales by Hemmingway
disappeared in a lost suitcase,
happens still in our modern age,
a quite avoidable disgrace.
Only God knows just what we’ve lost,
and isn’t keen on sharing it,
what we still have is half the tale,
we’ve lost so much wisdom and wit.
It can fill a curious mind
with a sense of tired despair,
paper rots and the stone erodes
until it all just goes nowhere…
Perhaps, these days, the bits and bites
will keep all of our knowledge better,
after all, don’t the people say
the Internet is forever?
Isn’t it?
….on an unrelated note, I’m gonna go post this on every poetry forum I can find…
We’re all important in different and various ways
But we shouldn’t ever get to caught up in our own significance
or self-importance
Whatever we believe, we are transient
Whatever pigeon hole, box or compartment of our lives, we are transient
Friends, strong friends, we may bump into but rarely do we seek or
be sought out with any regularity
We hear ourselves say “we should do this more often”
but we rarely do
We are all guilty
Work environments, once left, people quickly fade
An acknowledgement that the world moves on
Quite rightly so
We are transient
Even with families, that most permanent of connections,
time erodes any permanence
Most can remember our parents and even grandparents
but how much beyond that
We are all of us, transient
Our lives are relatively short, for most our legacy is even shorter
Very few people have any form of permanence in history
This doesn’t mean we are irrelevant
To the contrary
We can be important and influential in a number of ways
It’s important to remember
Who you are
What you are
How you are
Be true to yourself but know life for what it is
In not so many years, no one will know any of this
Thinking
of you,
of a time
before the blood of grapes,
in tides of red,
erodes
the tombolo*
of us.
Wondering
if the past
in the future,
flowing over
like a disordered rogue wave,
deposits swashmarks
in the sand of me.
*A bar of sand joining an island to the mainland.
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