moon slips behind the eaves
old floors breathe ghostlike sighs
a shadow stirs the stillness
night keeps its whispered truths
Genie, old genie, grant me a wish.
I wish life would get better than this.
For a fortune in happiness,
A lifetime of bliss.
Any life would be better than this.
Dust collecting on the bottle,
My wish so simple, so pure.
Surely it wouldn’t leave me craving more.
Shackles of life,
Ruins in shambles.
You and I are the same—
I, the bottle.
You, the dust.
Trapped.
The feeling of hopelessness and despair,
Trapped by memories
I can no longer outrun.
The loneliness settled like dust,
Covering the dream that once was.
Please grant my wish,
For it is not a long list.
I waited for magic,
I waited for change.
But the dust kept falling,
And the bottle stayed the same.
A haunting mignon. My sweet Musette,
of darkness. A pale silhouette weeping
on cold stones, in heaven’s crypt.
Cracked by the frost of blind angels,
carved from bones, bleeding in the rain
With haloes. Trapped in a holy tomb
of profane.
My eternal call. Half dead, half alive
walking on cracked bones. My reason to
live.
The glitter in the eye, when you are
exhaustly tired. My sweet Musette. My
eternal love. A haunting mignon.
The midnight knew my hidden name
Before she learned to cry;
The moon, a pale and trembling flame,
Hung like an ever-watching eye.
The floorboards whispered, one by one,
Of footsteps buried long ago;
They walked where neither star nor sun
Had found the courage yet to go.
The walls inhaled a silent breath,
As though the house itself could mourn;
Its timbers dreamed of love and death,
Of broken vows and hope forsworn.
A voice arose without a tongue,
A shadow moved without a face;
The ancient bells were never rung,
Yet echoed through that haunted place.
I fled—but every road I knew
Returned me to that shadowed door,
Where grief, more faithful than the dew,
Waited as it had before.
Then softly spoke the endless night:
"You cannot outrun what you keep.
The deepest ghosts avoid the light—
They make their silent homes in sleep."
So here I dwell, and here remain,
Where memory wears a spectral shroud;
For every heart that shelters pain
Becomes its own eternal cloud.
As I slip into the void of this endless black,
Stardust ignites the darkest night sky,
And though I want to I cannot ever go back,
To where our love once learned to fly.
Love seeps from curling words
into a floundering bloodstream,
While amongst the stardust fly birds
escaping farther upstream.
How could I have not seen
Your acidic tongue drips venom slow,
Your kiss concealed the poison between,
It all was lost within the glow.
Now I yearn for eternal rest
Amongst the stars and stardust,
My heart has ceased to beat in my chest,
While leaving you is still the hardest.
Burdened by a boulder,
That once was a star,
Dragged by the colder
End of a scar,
To feel a wish
Bleed from a stab,
To die among fish,
To be pinched by a crab,
Alone in the sea,
Envying the summit,
What I was shaped to be,
I cannot over come it.
Gental despair,
A coffin from sorrow,
A storm in the air,
Killing tomorrow,
Tangled knots,
Numbed by a blade,
A line of dots,
The heartbeat fades.
What is mine,
A thief takes back,
A paralyzed spine,
Wine in a rack,
Locked by a knife,
Yet stabbed at the heart,
Miserable short life,
The sadness of art.
Violin plays a teary note
The wind whispers a sad refrain
Then, through the trees, it starts to float
Violin plays a teary note
Hidden by the night's velvet coat
Owls hoot out a haunting strain
Violin plays a teary note
The wind whispers a sad refrain
My soul is like a dark room in an abandoned house, where phantom piano keys still dance in the air. Where cracked and broken windows send whispering chills down your spine, yet welcome bird nests on dusty bookshelves. There’s foliage from thunderstorms that scatter on cashmere sheets where ghosts of lovers still lay & hazed mirrors on the wall that still ache for presence.
Her eyes still haunt me.
Inside she was living on the edge.
I didn’t know. She jumped.
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
For Many years unable to identify
this haunting whoo whoo sound
Could it be an insect or a bird up in the trees
An amphibian by the creek perhaps ?
or something, else not identified, rising from the ground
The hoot was mostly early morning but sometimes through the night
unable to get vision of this creature
perhaps through camouflage it kept itself from sight
The mystery, finally it was solved
in the middle of the day
When the haunting hoot erupted,
not too far away
In desperation as a result of an attack by a marauding crow
the sound was emanating from a desperate immature creature
A frog? no not really but part of the name,
of a bird, that's how it does feature
In appearance it much resembles some owls
Its called a Tawny "FROGmouth"
a name with several vowels
A few metres from our house there are up to four
perched upon the same branch roosting
and sleeping through the day
They are nocturnal feeders, intermittently the branch is vacant
as they opt to stay away
When the lights come on, memories evaporate. The walls of the room behave. Porous, primed, and paper white. Fear retreats where it learned to wait. And here I stand anew and unmarked. But, darkness does not forget. When the lights go out, the walls ooze and exhale. The dark consumes me once again. Old versions of myself return, merciless. Wounds not yet turned to scars resume their bleed. Guilt and regret dance like shadows. And I let them watch. They do not accuse. Extending their hands as if we once agreed to meet. They ask why I am startled. They have worn my face for years.
when the lights go out—
the ghosts I once left behind
breathe my name again
On endless nights
when the thunder in my head
is louder than
the thunder beyond my window
and the dark denies me rest,
I have to rub bloodshot eyes,
for her young face imprints itself
even beneath closed lids.
The departed have not moved on
from the gravity of this place and time,
emotional chains remain.
What does she want of me?
It was a short torrid affair,
why this lifetime haunting?
You cannot dream someone out of your soul.
Why does she paint herself before me,
and why do I disappear
when she looks upon my worn-out being?
I wash my eyes and often wonder
if it is really I that haunt
her.
A hoarse whisper, at 2.49 a.m.
"It's over-it's over- it's-"
There, he is,
in his dark bedroom,
eyes wide open, but seeing nothing.
Fists clenched with sheets, and nails sunk to the skin.
He mutters it, to the locked bedroom door,
as if it's someone who's listening
to his confession, sorrow.
2.50 it is.
A tear, dull and frozen,
falls from his left eye,
just to land on his shaking upper lip.
"It's over- it's over- it's-"
his hair, wet with sweat,
voice rasp with dread,
with a broken throat and a heart,
he mutters the same,
again and again,
in same pain,
same tone,
to the same silent wall.
His over bitten lip,
now glistening in red.
Iron and salt,
mixed in pain.
He feels it.
He cries, finally....
There, 2.55, sleep is crawling,
not a fitful one, shaking, he falls asleep.
3.00 a.m. it is.
DANG!-the alarm..
He wakes up, again.
Just to begin another day of hiding the suffering,
and suffering from hiding.
Obscurity broken midst night visions
Haunting evil thrust in flight amongst stars
Sleep will not come tonight
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Halloween has come and gone
But some haunting will linger on
El dia day has passed on, too
But like the ghosts still passing through
The seen and unseen in between
The last scene last seen now has, too
We're counting each trip 'round the sun
From the day where we've begun
Our paltry trip around this orb
Delighting in what we absorb
But counting is a trick of man
Presuming each click measures span
Of something that's of great import
That turns the time into a sport
And in the greater game some know
The clock we consult here below
Is an invention we hold dear
Which only counts in this small sphere
Not deserving of real mention
Is our cosmology convention
The Cosmos doesn't count, just is
Not bothered by some fleeting whiz
Or sweep of hand… no passing man
Will count in all that really IS
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