Contest Name: 1501 Sept 2026 part 4x4'
Sponsor Brian Strand
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How I hunger for the connection
that I always break
or fail to make.
Its absence is an emptiness
invading my personal space.
Deafening silence rings my ears
and making my head throb and ache.
Whether surrounded by people or all on my own, there's no change
Though its presence is unwelcome, it persists to overstay.
Insistent that within its grasp
is where, forever, I shall remain.
Imprisoned behind the bars
of its isolating ways.
Feeling crushed beneath the heaviness of its invisible chains.
Wheezing shallow breaths, suffocating and in pain.
Asking, telling, screaming, yelling; it just won't go away.
Neither will it set me free nor permit me to escape.
Sentenced my whole lifetime as its intimate inmate.
TACTILE
By Frank Daub
Tactilis – the Ancients said.
“Capable of being touched” –
There is a heaviness in this word,
That awakens the soul – too much.
Of lost proximity, hand
Touching – hand?
Or
Love
reaching the empty space
Of an unresponsive land.
Marriage
The body still crossed by yesterday’s gentle fatigue,
and yet the mind light, moments drifting,
as if something had moved between us
and refused to fade.
Yesterday, a movement brought us together,
one of those rare moments
when glances answer each other,
when gestures take on a meaning larger than their form,
when one feels that time itself
paused to let us breathe.
Each one, in their own way,
carried a part of that light —
in a smile,
in a silence,
in a hand resting on another.
And this morning,
in the heaviness of bodies still charged with celebration,
a clarity remains,
like a discreet thread that still connects us
to what we shared.
And perhaps nothing is truly over,
for what we lived
continues to walk within us,
like a softness that seeks no name.
In the silence of the day that pushes us,
something remains,
a simple heartbeat,
a simple link,
and that is enough to illuminate our paths.
Joël Charvillat
Like the first snow,
Like the rain
Like the dead red leaves of autumn
Everything is gracefully falling
Into place
The way I did things before is gone
The character that did them is gone, too
I blow her away like autumn leaves
I cast her into the air like softest snow
I let her heaviness flow like water
Seeping into every in-between
Rippling, touching everything
I laugh as I go
Mother Moon whispers to me
That I am her daughter
And she has prepared a place for me
Upon her ivory shores
Where I can gaze in perfect view
At our father, Great Sun
And I’ll soak in every detail
As if the battle’s already won
The trees stand still and tall
Still, they are falling
They are shedding their old layers
They are girding their waists with ringlets, they are
Shaving bald their heads, they are
Preparing for the bare, still night of winter
To adorn themselves at dawn
The trees are standing still
Like the first snow, I am softly falling
Into the arms of grace
Like the trees, I am silently rising
Stretching out my unused wings
Darkness
envelopes soul
rising screeching thoughts instilled
missed unseen jagged light escapes
heaviness weighs my heart
In the sun-washed corners of childhood,
light gathered gently,
and like marbles,
laughter rolled loose across the floor.
We learned the first language of closeness~
small secrets traded like treasures,
each one stitching us into the same early story.
We wandered our backyard world
as if it were vast, unchartered, and unnamed,
drawing borders with sticks,
letting the garden hose become a river
that carried our shouts downstream.
Hours blurred into water and sky,
and time slipped past us
with the ease of sand falling
from into an hourglass
You colored everything
turning ordinary days
into wild invention.
I followed the bright arc
of your imagination,
gathering its shadows,
spinning them into tales
that stretched themselves
far beyond the fence line.
Now, standing at the quiet edge
of my grown life,
I still carry your laughter~
a small weightless charm
against the heaviness of days.
You remain my true north,
steady in every remembered moment,
every thread woven carefully
into the fabric of the life we shared.
BOIMA.
Pelo e rwalego meloko,
Mogawo wo o sa fetošwego ke nako.
O wa ka mangwele—
fela
wa se khuname!
Botiipane ke matlaka
a go gana go robega phetšong;
Lenganego ke kotse e tiilego ya sebopego,
e sa letlanywego ke tšhošetšo.
Boima bjo—
bo go tlema fase bjalo ka thaba,
gore moya o se ke wa go tšea.
English translate
HEAVINESS.
A heart carrying whole generations,
An unyielding stance against the drift of time.
You fall to your knees—
yet
you do not bow!
Stiffness is the dry stem
that refuses to snap in the gale;
Starch is the crisp, unruffled shield of form,
unwrinkled by the threat of collapse.
This weight—
it anchors you deep like a mountain,
so the wind can never steal your breath.
With the heaviness
of empty hearts,
we walk,
and in the darkness,
a hand finds ours...
Time does not interfere,
and the world pauses
to let a bright thing
pass through...
and we are given
a glimpse of heaven.
I am already thriving happily
and living extremely freely
without any heaviness around
to sabotage my good vibes
Yet past people still linger
because they never learned
the true value of letting go
Which is why I left them behind
and decided to move on happily
Without them to hold me back.
heaviness of rain
causes footsteps on back deck
waiting for light tap
Ceraunophilia - 7-13-26
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Summer Storm
The day grows dark, ominous with rumbling,
We watch a hood of humid heaviness
Slowly slide across the face of dusk
With wispy veils of mist, a harbinger’s whisper
Turns green leaves silver in brooding twilight stillness.
In slowly rising chords of chaos
Crickets hide and even air holds it’s breath
To listen for the steps of a far-off symphony.
Our eyes grow ready as sallow clouds swallow dusk
When the rising perfume of summer rain
Fills our nostrils with it’s signature
And raindrops sizzle on sidewalks
Dancing in frenzy, faster - harder.
The sky explodes to our delight
With brilliant shards of light in spirals
Then shakes the night with belly laughs, delighted with itself.
We run to open shutters wide
And lie upon the bed
To watch this full born summer storm
Plunder midnight with crashing waves of booms and fury.
When you’re down in the dumps
And life’s giving you lumps,
It’s so nice to have lunch with a friend;
For occasional slumps,
Like a log’s many bumps,
Make it hard with a smile to pretend
All is dandy and fine.
Sometimes problems combine
With the natural ways that you cope
And your pal throws a line,
Which you take as a sign
That you’re not at the end of your rope.
So you sit and you eat,
Which itself is a treat,
And compare what’s been driving you nuts.
Though you do not compete,
Each admits to defeat
By not climbing up out of your ruts.
Still, a heaviness lifts,
One of friendship’s best gifts,
(Which can also take place on the phone).
Though the stuff that resists
Cheering up still exists,
You, at least, feel a lot less alone.
teardrops are shape-shifters,
changing the instant
they slip free~
tiny pilgrims
already seeking
what they’ll become next.
spiders collect some of them,
drinking them delicately,
then spinning our sorrow
into silver webs
that glisten like forgiveness
in morning light.
some harden into marbles~
miniature worlds of color
swirled from emotion~
grief becoming something
you can hold
without breaking.
some rise as pixie dust
soft as breath,
bright as mischief~
the raw material
of small miracles.
some drift upward as moonbeams
their heaviness forgotten,
their ache turned silver
as they join the quiet
of the night sky.
some sew themselves into wings
effervescent, glowing~
the soft architecture
of angels
who know what it means
to fall and rise again.
and the rarest tears
vibrate together~
a trembling chorus
that becomes stardust,
then dreams,
then the gentle light
that guides us home.
Some days the world feels two sizes too big
Yet I walk through it like a ghost in my own skin
Nothing dramatic
Nothing loud
An unexpected heaviness settles into my bones
The kind of ache that doesn’t shout
It just whispers getting up will be a battle
Even the small things feel sharp
Light hits wrong no matter where I stand
People ask how I am doing
I give them the version they can hold
The one that won’t make them shift their eyes
The one not prompting a helpful response
Inside it is quieter than it should be
Darker than I ever admit out loud
A place where I try to keep moving
When every step feels like quicksand
The songs I urge for,
hold the heaviness you breathe in to me,
How you paint poetic parallel pieces,
in a porcelain poison photography,
Place the gate of my fingers,
on your chaotic contradictions,
Let them explore vigorously
Beneath and beyond the boundaries of what could be,
In a room full of our piercingly powerful dreams,
Let us be the object to these unfinished tasks
taken to treat our new found ecstasy,
So choose us, between hell and earth.
and with fire, flirt with my demons
that profusely starve for you,
Bursting into our very own heaven ,
written from the tales of our souls,
Carve me, for I too have held wounds,
Hurt me , because you hurt too,
Shall we sing our pain
in an unstoppable sonata?
I see the beauty in the orchestra,
It’s untamable, yet leashed,
Irresistible, although weak,
You are a dangerous dare,
I could never share,
The addiction , your words
have brought on to me.
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