One sad day, some years ago,
I got news that my father passed away.
He lived a long and happy life,
so I felt joy and sadness on that day.
Perusing a box of photographs and things,
his drawing, a poignant feeling, would evoke.
In his childhood crayons, it was beautiful -
a tree that seemed to be an oak.
Between a person's years of birth and death,
there's only a hyphen left to show,
but, in my father's unexceptional life,
he left something more - I know.
My brothers and I, quite frankly,
I would not celebrate.
Many fathers before and after him,
by having offspring, regenerate.
Yet, when I was a boy of nine,
My dad would, my brothers and me, provoke,
by planting in our front yard football field,
a native sapling, a California oak.
That tree is now my favorite brother,
huge, but kind and strong,
hosting an entire ecosystem,
with squirrels, and birds, in song.
In their short life upon this earth
many want to build a legacy.
Here is my advice for them and those.
On a sunny day, go plant a tree.
There is a hyphen waiting for my end,
To close that form engendered by my birth;
That year that shall its long imbalance mend,
And mark the measure of a life on Earth.
One may take pity for that broken bar,
Well-grounded left, but rightward hanging bare;
An absent fact a symmetry doth mar;
But it has patience, time shall make it fair.
O, such a little thing it is to see!
Two numbers with a hyphen are too dull;
But think, before you pass, that there go we,
And once, within that hyphen, dwelt a soul.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I traipse along the seashore
where the tide forgets its name,
where the seagulls cry like lost receipts,
where the sand, pale as a sleepless page,
whispers: Look down. Look down.
But I search the horizon instead~
that bluish orange hyphen between here
and whatever comes next.
The ocean licks its lips,
spatting out a shell, half-cracked,
a confession in porcelain.
Is this you? the waves murmur,
rolling their r’s like a drunk god.
I hold it to my ear~
hear the static of a thousand voices
and the hiss of dead radios.
A crab scurries by me, dragging its life
like a piece of baggage with damaged wheels.
You’re overthinking it,
says the wind,
but the wind always says that.
At twilight, my silhouette stretches long,
a black rope thrown toward the sea.
I tug. Nothing tugs back.
And the moon, that cheap spotlight,
clicks on—illuminating
only how far I haven’t gone.
Poem published at creativeramblings.com/writing-prompts/writing-challenge-27/ on February 22, 2026
Graceful elegance
fashion - to aircraft design
Colorful plumage
Author's hyphen with quill pen -
the wind is beneath her wings
if tears of the sun were the metaphorical keys
to unlock twisted trinkets of the searing sky
would you feel the festering forest~
homing arctic orchids within these veins?
or am I to remain detached and numb;
caged in a cursed collision
like an evanescent epiphany
of a misled marionette ~
screaming for a cathartic elixir….
tonight my intuition is a passive-aggressive gaslighter
manipulating the inner voice ~ like a pathological liar
freezing the floral clairvoyance…
while curiosity keeps crawling
amidst crestfallen opium
I ponder: do frost and flame, as I breathe in bleakness~
transcribe how the echo
within the fog filters reality
curated in the midst of melted angst
fluctuating like stone-blind blackness~
a drop-dead delirium kissed by the darkness
of a silent sepulcher?
I’m a prisoner of splitting supernovae
caught in polarized pyretic disruptions
for everything feels like exaggerated deceit
when truth seems like a mere dot above~
a hyphen of irrational ratios
carved from calculated confusions,
betrayed by the violent strings
of my violin heart…
A semi-colon connects two thoughts together
An exclamation mark screams out its cause
You don’t have to wait until the end to breathe
a comma can give you a pause
A question mark begs for an answer
Quotations usually mean this is not mine
A colon tells me there is a list
or the second and first parts are combined
Then there is the hyphen, En dash, and Em dash
It’s really hard to tell them apart
The hyphen is the shortest and Em is longer
to explain them I would not know where to start
Don’t forget about parentheses and apostrophes
Slashes, brackets, ellipses, and…other stuff
But my favorite punctuation is the period
it tells me when enough is enough.
In days of old so I’m told Theodore Roosevelt did explain he had no use for the hyphen in any American name.
And now one can see how the hyphen such a tiny grammatical mark has pushed us apart.
We are all Americans who may hail from distant shores but now this is our home worth protecting and fighting for.
Do not let the hyphen define you ,where you once were is now behind you.
Let us join together one and all for we are Americans
some poems ask to be naked
they have no use at all
for punctuation
not even for an en dash
an em dash nor hyphen
they play with a flowing grammar
that must be read like water
or paddled through on a leaky canoe
the poet can then hide behind
these unchained words
while demanding to be truly heard
while of course
all the suggested literary pauses and in-breaths
can be just a matter of spacing
it is quite a scrabble game
one played with disjointed symbols
on blank tiles
a stylistic approach that can
if done right
be thought of as avant garde
or pointlessly regressive
but
we all like a nude
a form without garb and baggage
and perhaps some of us wish
wish we could walk on water sometimes
Michael Miguel Hyphen Ex
Knew the alphabet to letter p
The which he’d scan learned
Over a bowl of fragrant tea
On his journey to the earth
Which he’d spotted from afar
Whilst herding sentient blossoms
Around a not too distant star.
He found the United Nations
Before extending the hand
Of universal friendship
From it’s fraternal band.
He listened to the talking
For three months and a day
Then Michael Miguel Hyphen Ex
Very sadly slipped away.
In a few eons he thought
This will be a worthy place
After the self destruction
Of the ruling human race.
He left a little sentinel
With a message to send
Twenty seven nano seconds
After mankind’s final end.
On all pan galactic charts
The earth was coloured grey
The mandatory coding for
Pollution – Keep Away
A baby is born
Two dates separated by hyphen
Hyphen or dash: that's life
II
We fall in love -
One day one, or both, will die
III
We are born -
We learn; even think deep thoughts -
And die.
Straighten the spring within the edges
Brighten the sky within the abilities
Hyphen the words within the statements
Embolden the nature within the directional
One, a hole, a dot, a singularity
Two, twin dots of eyes that look back at me
Three, an ellipsis falling short tersely
Four, connect-the-dots to make a square, shapely
Five a quincunx, criss-crossed diagonally
Six, a double hyphen of dots, two lines of three
Sexism was chasing a
gibbous moon whole night.
I ask the virtuous dark,
will you be a hangman ?
Targeted love was a bliss
for a dying man. You need
to walk on a fine line to
attain the liberation.
Despite the coveted prize,
killing was more convenient.
There hangs a tale, you
cannot play the tune again.
Without the hyphen, the
other side becomes blue.
A belief starts the tremors
in the sleeves of a headless moon.
Satish Verma
- Dying Mother-
Perched on her stool but getting there
Angry at paper that just does not care
Onion unlayered in the last of her skin
Paper be angry, paper be thin
Blotched and embattled, unwashed and pajamaed, the bladder goes dry on the floor Not telling her why, two teeth left in a mushy jaw
I am still alive but who knows what for
Walking swollen ,chapped and scaled , stuck like Mother goose
Hearing goes harder than misunderstood
Drinks from the vine the everyday bottles ghost from the past
Wherever i am going I am getting there fast
Will they buy my a casket, or burn me with gas
There's comma 'tween now and forever and a hyphen just before hell
The nothing hereafter gets as good as it gets
FISH TO FISHES
They changed the "many fish," it is now called the "fishes"?
As in more than "one wish" for our dreams, as in "wishes."
In the apple half cut to halves, that we have to have,
Or one foot, to many feet, and calf to many calves.
No hyphen in Email and gone from Walmart?
This rule was to make the two words stand apart.
The words with hyphens we've learned and we know,
they may join or part, in this Word-Art-Nouveau.
Where to put a period or comma whilst in a quote?
Do we put them inside or outside, do take a note.
The British go outside and the Americans go in,
The rules seem arbitrary and get under your skin.
Then there are Homophones that we have to spell?
They can sound the same but our ear cannot tell.
Two too to, and flew, flu, flue, what shall we do?
Memorize, look it up, it's madly askew.
Ain't hour English easy to speak and two right?
The essay chore will keep won up half the knight.
Adding Latin and Greek, and French so to speak,
Every language applied, they finally tweak.
By Edlynn Nau
© February 11, 2016
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