Pentastitch - Title Choice Fog of Midnight Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
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Fog of Midnight
Cold dews swirl
In ebony mists ~
Breath of fleshless shadows
Creeps in veils where goblins dance ~
Spinning gloom
Ten Lines from Ten Poems 12/26/24
Poems used 1)Most Beautiful Christmas Poem 2)Who Am I?; 3)Keeper of the Flame; 4)Dreams within Dreams; 5)Love's Sonnet; 6)Moonlight on Meadows; 7)Yellow; 8)Gracious Grace; 9)Summer Quatrains; 10)At One With
Inspiration
Through the breathless comma of anticipation
I search for words that yearn to walk
A smokeless incense of inspiration arises
Pulled back from fleshless graveyards of bleak
Pale dawn stumbles from midnight to forget,
Splashing auroras of platinum mist
Breathing fireflies into tombs of musky indigos -
Endless effervescence of grace.
Silk ribbons of ice melt into wellsprings
Present tense of the divine dawn.
Bone Beach 10-19-24
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Bone Beach
Over barren beachheads,
Where ephemeral waves roil,
Shattered tides
Wonder of life left behind
In empty wombs that once bore pearls.
A cemetery of fleshless carrions remains
In bleached bone
To build conundrums of calcium,
Birthed in youthful rings,
In relics of festive gluttony
Without tombstones.
Abandoned
Sanctuaries, exposed,
Burn like bare flesh
From raw rays of solar outrage.
Expectant chrysalis of spiral greyness,
Chilled in the journey of cochlear moons,
Builds upon a barren shell a welcoming host
For renewal rising from churning waves -
A symbol of resurrection from stone sands.
New life grows bones
In grey dreams
On cast-aways.
In a world where I do not exist, poetry lies.
My progeny disappears - there are no words.
Exists not a pair of green eyes, only the wind sighs
at that particular point when angels are birds.
In a world where I do not exist, air is arms,
fleshless, without compassion, unfelt. Steam
enfolds those I’d have esteemed with my coat of arms.
I’d be nobody at all, not even a forlorn dream.
In a world where I do not exist, I do not serve.
There is only one me with my speciality.
The sick, dying, those crying, get not what they deserve.
This time and place features an abnormality.
In a world where I do not exist, even my ancestors
are forgotten. Who exists to remember their stories?
How is their time filled, those honeymoon trimesters?
My name, my soul, my spot has naught its glories.
Has my husband found another honey or died?
In a world where I do not exist, can my soulmate strut?
Perhaps and rightly so, he believes that poetry lied.
Alone, forgotten, divorced, devoid of he knows not what?
The wind once whispered,
Some old secret at my toes,
As I danced beyond a human peep,
Inside the dew drop of a rose,
Climbing like that softly,
With a head that wanted home,
And a heart that spoke in rhythm,
Of a time when earth was bone,
The melon sun quenched me
Rising fleshless through the breeze,
As a hundred trumpets bent the limbs
Of a billion frightened trees,
Behold,
I've past here to frequent the natural book,
Where blood is written on the skin,
And no solemn eye can look.
I'm home father,
Come and see,
I'll show you once my only face,
And I'll leave the old mountain crumble,
Past time,
Past voice,
Past space.
Spooky Halloween Rhyme 8-16 Lines 10-19-23
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Haunted Path
Ebony mists disguise a windswept path,
Unseen fingers rustle decaying leaves
Fleshless moans shroud the vanishing footpath
Vertigos of terror without reprieve.
Shadows breathe in a rising rancid breath,
Footsteps crunch like brittle bones in flight
As fleshless hands stir boiling shibboleth,
Dry thunder flashes through this hallowed night.
Bewitched tree roots entangle fleeing feet
Chains of lightning rumble in ragged streams
Free falling into depths of darkness’ heat
Like rusty hinges severed curses scream
Trapped in cloaks of silence so eerie -
Entombed in crypts of muteness, manic -
Dim veils, confusion, cast spells so dreary
Path lost in webs edged in spooky panic.
Self-Existent Light
Beyond the sight of imagination,
Invisible of alpha and omega,
Unseen your non-existent borning daystar
Glory and splendor collide,
Pure sinew of sublimity
Source of ceaseless heartbeats
Flame without source,
Robed in resplendence.
No vacuum!
No space for ebony!
No consummation!
No cradle!
.
Divine edgeless clarity
Perpetual renewal of resplendence -
Wholeness illuminated,
Spring of radiance
Eternity’s original mystery
Needing neither tinder nor spark
Light – essence of the Eternal
Eternally coupled fission and fusion.
Fleshless eternal incandescence
Uncontainable virginal day
Infinite dynamo of electric brightness,
Ceaseless and incorruptible,
Self-contained chalice
Of always,
Chrysalis of incensed endless fuel
Shines from within Perfection.
Pure light
Pure love
Pure font
Undimmed Eternal
6-8-23
Contest: Self-Existent Light
Sponsor: Unseeking Seeker
Aroused within me
Re-awoke as 'twere
Fine senses, fleshless ones.
Make one feel deeper.
All of you lovelies
Honourably blest
Hovered round, so rained upon
Tearily know this.
Blushing, for amaryllis.
More abashed, dearest!
When birds sing sweetly ,
bright notes fall on deaf ears.
My sightless sockets
no longer watch the setting sun descend
in orange splendour
behind purple hills.
My fleshless limbs reach, suspended
in un-returned embrace,
and hope sleeps in earth’s damp bed.
I once walked in your place, above,
treading soft amongst the stones,
my mind fixed firmly on the stars;
warm wind stroked my face,
framed by a pale blue sky.
I gave no thought to those below;
long chains of lives laid out in rows.
I brushed aside insistent whispers,
growing louder year on year;
Time’s breath at my back,
closing in an ever-shortening shadow.
I am so close I could call out to you-
stretch up to grasp your ankles as you pass;
but my soundless cries are impotent
as dust on stone
scattered by the merest breath of air;
all thoughts dissolved
in earth,
and flesh to grass.
Thin Kin
by Michael R. Burch
Skeleton!
Tell us what you lack...
the ability to love,
your flesh so slack?
Will we frighten you,
grown as pale & unsound...
when we also haunt
the unhallowed ground?
Keywords/Tags: Halloween, skeleton, body, corpse, corruption, death, dark, darkness, grave, graveyard, unhallowed, ground, pale, haunt, haunting, thin, kin, frighten, frightening, scary, horror, terror, slack, flesh, fleshless, bone, bony, unsound, haunting, autumn, fall, October
scared
stared
to long
in the mirror of what was supposed to be
me
then
when
looking
under the beard and fleshless smile
me
but my eyes passed
the casting gaze
glazed by bright
smiles dimmed
me
i saw you
you saw me
further study will enlighten and align me
to no longer be
me but us
From my bathroom throne
I overlook heads of trees
men for all seasons
who sway and still
like felt and feathered burghers
dependent on his lordship’s
words.
In glowering times
they cloak themselves in mist,
hiding like fleshless nerves
from courts and kings
and the kings’ best choristers
the birds.
'Twas the night of hallows eve
Outside I heard screaming,
Children were trick or treating,
They were happy halloweening.
Came the knock upon my door
Loudly, it rapped twice.
Sweets in hand I opened it,
To be greeted by a scythe.
A grim reaper, I said "I love it
Your costume's such a blast,"
A voice said "fool, I come for you
For tonight you breathe your last."
Laughing I cried " brilliant!
Your voice is scary too,
Hold out your goody bag
For I have treats for you."
He reached out a fleshless hand
I smelt his fetid breath,
This was no trick or treat,
In his eyes, I saw death.
Entry for
Halloween Night Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Tania Kitchin
21/10/18
Of the rescued orphan was the last he wrote;
twas a very fine end, till he boarded his boat.
Relishing in triumph of a tale well told,
he set out for some fishing in the salty cold.
Through coastal fog to the open sea;
of the hellish nightmare he rowed free.
His euphoria tho, would be cut short.
He was taking on water and miles from port.
A garish screeching as the sun was blocked;
a cloud if seagulls swooped and mocked.
He knew in an instant what this meant.
The devil was close; it had caught his scent.
Déjà vu as his craft was sinking;
of the hellish nightmare he was thinking.
Then to his dispair, the tiny boat was gone;
just he and the devil on the barren sea alone.
Then it lifted him up for one last ride;
Ahab's bones still lashed to its side.
Plunged to the abiss where the Pequod lay;
a phantom crew lommed waiting for this day.
The crew complete, they could sail once again;
a ghost ship manned by fleshless men.
And there the devil where it would forever be;
just ahead of the Pequod on the mystic sea.
The tale never ends for the orphan and the whale,
but could never be written by Ishmael.
A suave gaze, woolly texture, embellished its gaiety gesture
The charmeuse moon, perched like a napping heavenly dove,
Clothed by swarms of floating stars, glazing its snowy allure,
Glimpses from immortality’s repose, a peek into celestial treasure trove,
Cashmere sparks chased, encroaching vestiges of darkness’ wilting cover,
Grotesque shades stealthily evanesced, like an absconder jilting a straylover,
Rustling forests fanned their chastity, into earth’s soothed solitude,
Only courting birds would through the soulful stillness intrude.
Fireflies roved like blazing butterflies, mountains gleamed from sparse distance
The night, suitor clad by fleeting flirtations of splashing romance,
Demulcent breaths of pulsating night, inducing like zephyrs opiate,
Fleshless caresses of moistless touch, evoked tranquility tunefully satiate,
Heaven’s graphics, sculptured in mortal picturesque of majesty astral,
Earth at night, an idyllic paradisiac mirror, of vistas ephemeral.
© Maverick Nyambu
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