A bird is flying in the sky,
Moving toward the jungle side.
All alone, with no support,
Its only guide—a dim moonlight,
Stained by drifting clouds above.
Winter’s season is in bloom,
The trees hold no more nests—
Once a haven, now abandoned.
Snow falls without a pause,
Branches empty, heavy with flakes.
The bird flies toward an unknown fate,
Against all odds, with a lion’s heart.
A creature of flight, it shows resilience,
Until, in the quiet of the night,
It disappears from sight.
2025 Poetry Marathon Mile 14 Contest // Sponsored by: Mark Toney
Contest Judged: 9/6/2025 12:49:00 PM
( 1st Place )
Written: September 04, 2025
They said the songbird
her wings twisted and torn
should quiet herself...
that the sky held no place
for the fragile or the worn.
Yet she kept a sky tucked inside her - a
place untouched by any hand.
At daylight she let her voice rise
and though her body stayed earthbound,
her song lifted past the edge of flight.
The wind slowed to listen,
branches bent nearer
and the horizon seemed to pause,
stirred by her willfulness .
Each note unlaced an old wound,
each chorus pushed against the walls
of a world that once turned her away.
Her feathers never mended,
yet her dream grew wide enough
to shelter every broken one who followed.
From her we understood:
reaching the sky
was never about wings at all.
Beauty of Fall
Flight of leaves, of saffron hue,
A crystal beauty, before winter's view.
1407 UNTITLED HAIKU Contest // Sponsored by: Brian Strand
Contest Judged: 8/30/2025 9:18:00 AM
( 5th Place )
Written: August 28, 2025
dusk on the river
a heron lifts without sound
shadows drift behind
There's nothing like the fragrant, handsome man
Who drifts into my bright imagination.
I will chase him down wherever I can,
As a sacred spark of transformation.
Perhaps his spirit lives within my mind,
And he lifts me up when my real beau cheats.
That star-eyed angel is gentle and kind.
We meet afar, in astral projection.
Why care for men who cheat in daily life,
Who scroll through screens to charm the Internet,
Forever chasing some beautiful wife,
But not having found their true model yet?
If my angel finds me, I will be free
Since he has already enlightened me!
Plump black velvet plush
fluttering flip book of flight
reveals concealed blush
Tears of the Dragon Poetry
Contest //Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori
Contest Judged: 8/26/2025 11:56:00 PM
( 6th Place )
Written: August 18, 2025
I stood on the crag where the sea breathed fire,
its winds tearing at the very shape of my name.
The sky was a shattered mirror
each splinter a memory I had tried to leave high and dry,
but still they cut as they fell through me.
In the distance, the dragon turned its head.
Its eyes held storms I had feared all my life.
Its wings-- the weight of every road I never dared to walk.
I thought I’d come here, to vanquish it
But the revelation was, it had come to set me free.
Its roar did not strike me down.
It shredded the silence that had been my prison.
Tears flowed hot and unyielding
spilling the ashes of years into the waiting tide.
The wind rose, not to push me back,
but to carry me forward.
And when the dragon soared away.
Its shadow left no darkness behind.
Only a sky wide enough
for the first flight of my own wings.
For Sir Brian Strand's 1402 Poetry Contest
7 August 2025
\o o/ up and down we go,
\___________/
|||||
____|||||____ laughing through the air like birds ~
/ \
/ \
__/_________________\__ weightless afternoon.
/ \
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
clapping their wing
with
effortless grace
the
seamless flight
of
the
black butterfly
spiraling
through
the
baritone blue sky
let
us
walk by fath
and
not by sight
. * *
* * ***
* * *****
* * ******
* * ******
* * *******
* **************** nothing but blue skies *
/ * /* /******* /* /* /* /* /* /* /* /* /* /* ****
* * ************ the landscape is a surprise *
********** the route this plane flies *******
* *
* *
* *
* *
* *
* *
A blackbird flies before the moon,
A life shall pass away;
A death, a bird,
Together stirred,
Fused in a lunar ray;
The wings of a fate falling soon.
Pink clouds with feint zigzag veins
craft a stunning desert maid’s
muse in mirror swivel guise
as she pondered in set pose
how welkin palettes loiter
when a tense eerie inkling
sighs “I’m this windblown notion”
Atop the edge where silence leans,
A figure stands — the dusk between.
No name, no face the canvas shows,
Just wind that hums what no one knows.
The sky explodes in molten fire,
A final gasp of day's desire.
It stains the clouds in crimson breath,
A masterpiece that flirts with death.
Does he await or does he grieve?
Or dream of flight he can't achieve?
The brushstroke speaks, but not too loud —
He’s part of sky, yet not a cloud.
He watches time with open chest,
The sun, the fall, the endless rest.
Yet still he stands, the final spark—
A question burning through the dark.
I look at the sky as an ocean of freedom, a realm of boundless flight,
where birds sketch their destinies on the blue canvas of infinity,
and I wonder why I remain where wings are just unlived dreams,
but the mirror shows me the answer, a truth hidden deep in my heart,
for my wings were never broken, just taught not to open.
Every time they flutter, a voice whispers to me of gravity,
of duties and guilts dressed in the cloak of false love,
carrying in my chest cages built from old promises and unspoken rules,
their doors have always been open, but fear shouted louder than the wind.
I have grown roots in places I should have left long ago,
I called them loyalty, I called them home, but they were just the comfort of familiar pain,
and now, I lift my gaze to the sky with longing, not because I cannot fly,
but because I have not yet learned to believe I deserve to be among the stars.
Slowly walking the path of life,
winging with challenge, joy, and strife.
I came upon a butterfly,
floating, flittering in the sky.
So lightly gliding through the air,
I came to a stop, just to stare.
Created with such symmetry,
designed to live a life so free.
Like a butterfly’s flight in wind,
harder at first than in the end.
Life is seen by our perception,
If not aware, by deception.
Like butterflies, go with the flow,
We’ll be shown what we need to know.
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