Fainter Poems | Examples

Fireflying

Through dusk’s shadows they soar,
flickering evening lights,
flies flashing cold fire,
bugs unleashing lightning,
micro-luminescent,
miniscule miracles.

Though fainter than candles,
clustered firefly flocks
flash brighter than stars
in summer night skies,
sparking joyous wonder,
fluttering till sunrise.

In our darkened world,
can we shine like them,
glimmering in the gloom,
gifting goodness and hope
for all those who grieve
until a new dawn?


(First published in Feed the Holy, 19 March 2025. See also my poem “Candlelights.”)

The Seas Took What Couldn't Be Saved

Disconsolate obsidian waves crash over crumbling dunes,
Sweeping afflicted grains of sand back into the depths,
Dragging my paralysed soul with them.
Engulfed in despondent riptides,
I gasp for oxygen amongst rippling currents,
As a fiery moon hangs precariously overhead.
Blood-red reflections illuminate the stark waters,
While calls of the lost sing to me,
Like sirens beckoning sailors to their doom—
Louder and louder, until it becomes unbearable.

Flaring arms fill with cortisol,
Burning, tangled within suffocating seaweed.
Farther I get pulled from the shore;
The horizon is growing fainter now with every somber beat of my heart.
Isolation shrouds the thickening atmosphere.
Saline leaks into my mouth, drying my tongue as I frantically spit it out.
Hysterical laughter escapes through lips without realisation.
Dehydration overcomes.
Sanity slips with each sip of water.
My larynx sharply tightens—
Barely a noise can be uttered.

Yet the siren calls of the irretrievable continue to crescendo,
Pulling me into an empty expanse, everlastingly.

Sick

Slowly, sanity slips through fever-laced dreams.
Layer by layer, I fall deeper into unknown rabbit holes.
What was up is now down.
Colours melt, dripping from the night skies,
Pouring onto my fracturing cranium.
Hallucinating, I walk upon a fragile field of wilting roses.
As each petal dies, so does another memory in my delicate mind,
Leaving behind nothing but specks of dust floating within empty space.
It's getting harder to tell if I'm still alive in this nightmarish scene.
Beads of sweat mix with humid navy breezes sweeping across me.
My breath hangs precariously all around.
Voices trying to wake me grow fainter,
Disappearing amongst delusions.
Ties that bind my soul eroding,
I feel my flesh burning, puckering.
The illness wraps its tentacles tighter around me,
Refusing to let go, dragging me six feet under.
As the ground cracks open, the faint thread finally snaps.
No longer can my soul return to my mortal coil;
It will be left to rot among the foxtail and weeds,
Consumed by Death's cursed grasp.

Dust Quells What Time Tells

Dust coats mementos in treasure trove
In a veil that palls recall with a shroud.
It dims the past with repast of neglect,
That taints memories with fading, settling light.
Echoes become fainter, scenes blur,
The sharp clear focus softens in the listless mist
As dust pervades relentless, unstoppable
It quickens the quell that time tells
Neglected memories to fade, be lost and begone.

Snuffed out Star

I hear that he was very talented
At the Elite schools he attended
With flying colors his exams he passed
His parents expectations he surpassed
And a new record in his school he kept


His future looked very bright
Which was only right
Afterall, is it not right for the bright?
That their future be bright?
And that is the expectation, right?

However, it was not to be so
And with a heavy sigh they all wonder
How life could change so much so,
And in a  horrified fascination they ponder
How it could have happened so.

For the bright was no longer
As the light grew dimmer and fainter
The parents held hope no longer
As with heavy hearts 
Their dreams from them escaped

For their son was no more
Torn from their grasp mercilessly
A young bud recklessly destroyed
Its life carelessly tossed away
As dust in the wind.

Stare Into Nature

Listen quietly to the dripping water.
Hear it slow down drip by drip.
When it stops it means that the ground is in settled order. An overflow of water does not exist.

Now listen to the trees and the wind passing through them. 
Hear their sounds like a choir of varied tones.
Concentrate to hear the birds all around us singing their songs of rejoice and delineating warning zones.

Now, come back here this time next year.
You’ll hear the water drip and the sounds of the trees. 
But, the chorus of the bird song will be fainter just like the flowers that miss the bees.

Year on year we stare into nature. Year on year we promise what we will not give.
Soon the bird song will be sounded into history and life will be colder and duller to live.

EMPTINESS

I speak my thoughts...you do not hear. I reach to touch...you are not near.
I matter not to you, nor to any other. I am invisible...you do not see me. 
I have no face; I have no substance. I try to speak, there are no words...you took my voice! So, now I huddle, fetal form. I strain to hear the dullness of my heart as its beat slows and fainter gets. Now even I can no longer see a speck, a shadow left of me. I am void.

The Cat's Cradle

'Cat's Cradle's' a string game,  --forty inches
enables a noose. Fastened end, handles
it's stable. Weave string through finger-pinches
finagles new patterns that'll form like, 'Candles.'

'Soldier's Bed' is another fine heartburn,
bolder threads perfect, designer fashion,
shoulders had carried the full weight in turn.
Old sage said, "Time waits for none," new passion.

'The Manger' is the fourth well-known styling,
form major curves, though new sorts of concerns,
the nature, be wrong for Christ's smiling,
become fainter, --drinking trough, hoofed beast yearns.

Hand strings, a challenge that'll be quite scheming
that springs unexpected hurdles, loopers
then straying's toward taxing twist-seaming
planned strips; string game for two-handed troopers.

Center

A really wrong place for who must hide,
All the roads leading to center wide…

Where the sociable prays to be dumped,
As he would never be skipped nor jumped…

The opposite of periphery
Of many things their territory:
The consistent and the slippery
Absolute substance and frippery…

Center is the place to meet a king,
But around one they form a ring;
To do a king harm pretty hard:
The watched from all sides by Good Guard…

Far from the center you are fainter: 
To be noticed, then, trust some painter;
That’s why a center one should enter,
What’s more! At the center men gentler…

Still, the place one needs shrewd mentors
Against frivolities and banters:
Fanciful reflections on centaurs
And chains-hating. full freedom chanters…

Where Nations’ Capitals are cited
To foes strain before they are sighted.

Romance From Satan

Our first romance was Satan’s pressed buttons
In my presence, her blouse lost three buttons.
And I, helper, to fix back the buttons
While she had it on and watched my patterns,
Leave giving my eyes to meet a buxom 
They were just bound to decide was awesome!

Knocking opportunity quite handsome,
My coughs, then, began to be troublesome…

Also, the handiwork of her red lipstick,
On her lips lodged for who would heavy ones lick.

With her closer, time bomb began to tick,
Nothing to stop me, save on head hit stick;
For some minutes swallowing saliva 
Like had ex-lover a Charley Iva:
The lipstick proved her good painter,
My chances of making U-turn fainter…

Now with my child; what type of character?
Please, if it’s female, watch her character!

Just explained I have a pregnancy,
My rejoicing victim Neighbor Nancy.

Endings

What on day trekkers looms
Up, foggier
Should no less dispirit
Pal, what, fainter
Ahead, life-journeying
Descends into.
Your home, does it not lie
There, beyond, too?

Hair Dye and Others

For The Massively White-Haired
And comments on it he'd heard:
The ever youthful old,
Who cannot his vexed arms fold;
Could keep wishing to head hide,
As folks troop out for a ride...

For those Nature ate their pie,
Who would soonest breathe a sigh
And they must recover it
Or fall into nearby pit...

One thing to like about Dye:
To Disliked colors Good-Bye;
The fainter ones on garments
That keep igniting laments;
For Grey Hairs and sickly ones
Every strand changing at once...

Dye for seekers to not die
And help their busy roads ply.

Off, Dreaming

Afloat, presently
This bed o'er.
In darkness, starry swirled
This bedroom.

Mouthed mirthful music
Heard, fainter
In trying to catch up
To match it
With that, faced me, day-lit
Earth, below.
Til dear, angel-sourced for
You know whom!

The White Cockatoo

Far below,
a solitary,
white cockatoo
is flying along the valley floor.
It seems lost, separated 
from its flock.
It turns
this way and that
as if following some
scrambled map printed
on its brain. It is so small
and insignificant
set against the immensity
of these mountains.

I can just make out
the ragged notes of its cry
carried through
the deep hush walled
along its way. I hear
alarm and fear woven
into its constant call.
Now, it is getting further away.
I try to hold the sound's
thin tapering thread
by cupping my ear,
but now there is only
the whisperings 
of nearby trees.

Its stark, white,
flapping form
is growing smaller
and fainter as it tacks
into the darkening reaches
of the afternoon.
A tiny, blurred speck
hesitates, flickers briefly,
then is gone.
I stand for a while
as shadows thicken
and fill with cold,
my eyes transfixed
on the point of its going,
letting it go
to fly with almost all
of my life.

Forgetting Life

The wind confides its loneliness, 
Whispering cold to each naked cheek.
A measuring spoon of stillness against 
Each sound we swallow.

Nary a force in the universe can bring back 
A lost thought. Life’s flame bending softly to 
The touch of every thoughtful, thoughtless breeze. 

Like the first snow we cling to every passing moment. 
Warily, one by one, as the weeks roll heavy onward, 
Like ripples on the water, footprints in the snow,

Or the fainter sound of a drum that beats 
Inside the heart of us all

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