Late: The square?holds its panting between
?the last bus and the first argument.
Nowhere / ‘online’ - @someone is ‘winning’..?
A face, a flag, emptiness trending; always.
We desired a just world -?rights, dignity, ‘progress’; doors?that open to merit.
Enlightenment still flashes warning
from the distant rocks - through darkling fog.?
The doors? Gone.
?it will not be alright.?
it is cold.
?the square waits: quiet, tense.?
you are here,?
so am I.
No one has ever come here to stay -
Be it a flower's bloom for a day,
A few weeks of a butterfly's beauty,
Or years of man's endless duty.
So, let go - let go -
Why this trife?
All is washed away
On the seashore of life.
What will remain
Is the wave-washed sand -
Awaiting new footprints
Freshly to land.
the mist attenuates mountains until distance inherits the burden of lost memory
A One-liner
Contest Judged: 8/28/2026 12:49:00 AM
Sponsored by: Suzette Richards
(1st Place)
There’s somethin bout death
that don’t sit right with my soul.
It’s a bit much
to think that one day
the draft won’t flow,
the birds won’t sing,
and the feel of her smooth skin
against the callouses on my fingers
won’t feel like magic.
There’s somethin bout death —
the way it creeps into memory
the same way high school sweethearts do,
sudden and smooth,
leavin in the wreckage
that old craving
to taste life again.
Ya see, I’ve spent my life
fillin the hourglass
with love notes and apologies,
makin sandcastles,
leavin footprints
on the shores of hearts
I couldn’t reach.
There’s somethin bout death
that feels like a song —
and I’ll sing out of tune
till it all makes sense.
As sun beams barged in, I saw,
Tiny drops glistening on flowers like globules
But under sun's incinerating rays, they died.
Don't forget, impermanence is life's undeniable truth.
On an old tree, cranky and high, Hung this pathetic and chaotic life, As charming as a golden ripe fruit, Yet as hard as the rocks beside the mountains.
Often, as the tide draws high, Footprints of desperate, grasping men Scoured its root, Seeking the magnitude Of the endless gains of life.
Life is frail, yet so beautiful. Days are like the sun, But they grow dim when nature calls. Death ushers into a realm of solace, Yet life struggles, Fighting to stay in a futile battle. Nothing is too much a gain or loss, Not even the earnest fight Against the unprecedented escape from death.
Do not take too much or give less, For life bears its own scale of weight, Balancing your ways With dictates that may be insufferable.
Still, this pathetic and chaotic life Doth have something to offer "The best heaven we see now" Though hanging on an old tree, Cranky and high.
In Kyoto's gardens, cherry blossoms fall ??
Like delicate snowflakes, ethereal, beyond all
Sakura's pink, a fleeting sigh, pure delight ??
Beauty born, lost in morning's golden, radiant light
From Tuscany's hills, cypress trees ascend ??
To Santorini's sea, waves whisper, secrets send
Golden light, a moment's ecstasy, heart's refrain ??
Wind whispers truths, echoes of timeless, sweet strain
In Marrakez's medina, gold threads weave fine ??
Weaving stories, whispers, mystic, scented vine
Muezzin's call slows heartbeats, soul's true, inner pace ???
Impermanence reveals life's hidden, precious space
In Rio's samba, hearts beat fast, joyful fire ??
Carnival's moment, fleeting, pure desire
Fleur de rêve blooms, fades, yet leaves a trace ??
In goodbye, new dawn gleams, with promise, love's warm, gentle face
Moments linger, like autumn's last, golden kiss ??
Echoes of what was, whispers of what is
In impermanence, beauty's subtle, secret might ??
A fleeting dream, a memory, a whispered, heartfelt night.
I walk the beach alone
I draw the contour of your face
~ it simply gets washed away
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: 1st place 2025
Among the sky,
Among the earth,
Among the sand,
Among the dirt,
Among the sleet,
Among the snow—
Rests impermanence,
our only home.
When I leave,
don’t cling to my name like a treasure—
let it settle into the dust
where it truly belongs.
Feel the walls we built,
not to grieve
but to recall
that they once echoed with laughter,
that they kept the world outside,
and us within.
Walk the same shore,
but don’t picture my steps next to yours.
Carry me off like the last wave of the day,
making room for what’s yet to come.
What I cherished doesn’t need me,
and neither do you.
Carry only what feels light enough
to release.
Version #1
Petals float down like dreams,
landing gently on the ground,
vanishing before we rise.
Version #2
Petals descend like whispers,
landing quietly on the earth,
lost before we open our eyes.
And just like that, it slipped away.
(9/3/24)
From quantum whispers,
a universe awakens.
A birth in stellar nurseries,
where light ignites.
Appearance and disappearance,
a dance of creation,
a cosmic ballet,
everlasting and fleeting.
Invisible to our limited sight,
a mystery in swirling existence.
Permanent yet ephemeral,
a cosmic puzzle,
beyond our grasp.
What traces remain?
when the stars fade away?
when galaxies collapse?
Are they truly gone,
or merely transformed?
Hidden in spacetime’s weave,
in the universe’s memory.
Appearance and disappearance,
teachers of impermanence,
choreographers of existence.
You are the heartbeat
of the cosmic symphony.
You are reality’s breath,
ever-present,
always shifting.
In the quiet of early morning,
a dewdrop clings to the edge of a leaf,
a fragile globe reflecting the first light.
It trembles, a breath away from falling,
a brief testament to the night's embrace.
So too, our joys, gathered like rain
in the cups of our hands,
slipping through fingers no matter how tightly closed.
The laughter of children fades into silence,
the warmth of a sunbeam dissolves into shadow,
and words spoken in tenderness
are carried off by the wind.
Yet, in this transience, there's a beauty,
a sharpening of senses to the grace of the ephemeral.
For in the knowing that all is fleeting,
we learn to cherish the moments,
to hold them close,
even as we let them go.
Like the dewdrop at dawn,
glistening and gone.
("Spinning Earth", 2016)
The Impermanent
What is impermanent, by definition,
Doesn’t last and can’t remain,
And what is not impermanent?
Yet each of us has a lingering thought
That something must be.
So we habitually project this intuition,
This inner knowing of the most holy,
Onto the everyday and profane.
We think maybe we are somehow permanent
Or maybe what we create, what we accomplish and achieve
Will somehow become so.
But obviously these are vain hopes
We all know deep down are not it.
Still we know that something must be
Beyond the bounds of change,
Something that is, now and always,
A constant source of solace and guidance
An IT that is somewhere within us and without us.
We know, but cannot say, what is true
Not because we don’t want to, or lack the words,
But because what we intuit
As the changeless has no name, no concept
Beyond mere labels which by definition miss the mark.
This is the original sin we all share, after all,
The lack of ability and facility
To grasp the ungraspable
And so we settle instead to grasp in vain
The impermanent.
(1/8/23)
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