Written: August 16, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Charles Messina
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Pale gale prevails and trails its glowing flame,
Veil inhales and pales, then orates my name.
Moon's smooth refrain imbues the blushing field,
Boon, swoon, the maxims that the stars revealed.
Night's unveiled beliefs inflate and bound streams,
Bright wisps glow on the line of peaceful dreams.
Reels crush shelter, calming signals align,
Wheels flail to foresee the wondrous design.
Nette Onclaud
EIGHT BY EIGHT
31 July 2026
Fog uncorks wet cedar perfume,
then pours it through each waiting lung
where moss rehearses nameless years
and bark remembers rain by scent—
until my breath is not my own
but loam translating root to blood,
as earth inhales itself through me
and leaves with my remembered breath.
Eyes opening;
Gaze slowly focusing;
White sheet covering;
A cold body quivering.
Icy shallow inhales;
Straps binding loosely;
Unable to move or speak;
Yearn for eternal rest.
Forcing another breath;
Strength so very weak;
Free of all addictions;
Search for a final veil.
Pitted face; rotted flesh;
As I slip into the void,
Of this endless black.
Forgotten in the morgue,
just needle me to death.
"Sharp light
inhales beauty
possessing blood
numb and still
leaving no crumbs."
This heart of stone—
crystallized rage, fractured, shimmering to the surface.
Love languished,
longing to embrace the dead.
Hands digging into the flesh of the earth,
reaching in desperation for the corpses beneath.
The seasons turn—
grinding the fragments of life to dust,
until he sets fire to the things he loves
just to dance with the ashes,
to animate what’s been lost
with one last burning.
A hopeless romantic,
clinging to his lover as she seeps like smoke through his fingers.
He inhales in desperation,
wishing for her to fill the void once more—
and with the wind, she fades,
drawn to a place beyond the reach
of hands that still remember how to hold.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One flicker left—the dark inhales,
a hungry throat without a sound.
I strike: the spark’s brief, brazen wail,
a sun too small to hold the ground.
But oh, the shadows flinch, just once~
as if they too recall the light,
before the black seals tight its cask,
and I become the endless night.
Endless is the Road
I have for some time not been eating boiled cabbage, and it is
of not the slightest importance unless it has been boiled with
pork shoulder ham. I just say this because we had dinner at
a restaurant, for once I was not driving since we were taking
the motorway, a toll road where all the crazy people assemble.
Big, powerful cars driven by men who have not yet mastered
the mantra my driving instructor repeated: you drive the vehicle, it
doesn’t drive you.
I dislike driving on modern roads; they go on forever, and I get
the feeling of a prisoner, a man who looks out of his barred cell
window and sees only the landscape’s seasons, but cannot touch
It inhales the aroma. I shall never be free of a past imagined.
I demanded she stop the car; I was going to walk home, a feat
I’m not capable of, I demanded a cigarette – we don’t smoke-
She gave me 5 5-milligram valium, as ordered by the doctor, and after
a break, we somehow got home.
The Rock in which free running brooks flows, has no actual destination, yet it flows freely with the soothing sound that brings calmness to some…
The flowers amongst and surrounding the rocks in turn provide a place to sit, inhale the cool crisp air, the rock of running brook where kids, pets, older folks in no rush, stop by to admire the ducks, fish in the pond where the running brooks opens up into, the leaves have changed color, as one closes their eyes, inhales, listening to the sounds surrounding the water, is letting go of the daily grind their day has brought, and exhales slowly..
The Rock of running brooks flows freely so that GODS children can be present in HIS creation, letting go of a painful past, prehaps a lost loved one. Stress, so you see that Small quaint rock in which the water flows, is so meaningful, Spiritual, HOLY, healing…. Just like OUR Savior JESUS.
Written: September 11, 2025
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Silence of the elder boughs fills the room,
Stillness is steeped with moss and lore.
The room is tinged with dawn breath—
peacefulness before the mayfly melody.
Time, as a chalice, swells and streams,
It's an amber hymn on the bay and shore.
Woodland pond gleams in a verdant jade hue,
Twilight's drifting waltz of many mayflies.
Akin to humming hymns of speckled stone,
Glide in bright weaves, invoking a final sigh.
As they fade in the abyss of ashen shadows,
Untimely, day-born, and evening requiem—
As they recede, the darkness inhales—
a breathless ache, a swirling scream.
The stars blink clear slowly and sadly.
As if to celebrate each soul's downfall.
What briefness dares a scene to bloom?
What memorial does silence breed?
Snapshot! - a shutter impales,
a life to clicks, betwixt inhales and exhales.
Light into pixels, bloodshot in frames
kidnapped for a ransom of sometimes soon.
Snap! - a dry twig fractures under boot,
its echo resounding in forest shot.
Too brittle is the log of memories
we captured when we said we won't.
Shot! - the Sheriff, not the Deputy,
for he blinked and she pulled a face.
Both instantly aged by taking photos
of bygones not let it be, that refused to fade.
Snap! - of fingers cracked the hush,
a starter’s pistol shot with less smoke.
Called all and sundry to attention,
before all duck-dived for cover behind hands.
Between! - the blinks of eyelid snaps on eyes,
the video of endless life lives on,
in the stares and glares of film not shot freelance,
in a trance that freedom can ever be believed.
She inhales the aurora,
breath laced with frozen with light speed
Pulsar fingers stretch through cirrus gauze,
her bodice bending like solar flares.
Astronaut
A quasar shudders behind her lips,
erupting across the event horizon.
Space folds—
she unspools like a nebula unraveling,
luminous in the underworld
aphrodisiac of your vanilla fragrance
Framed moments zoom, a night of review
as vignettes glide on frazzled woodland
of her mindscape like leaves brushed
in violet before moonlight’s pause.
Every motion, every image bursts
into tints of life- stages...
Embers within her flash: a peachy tot
screaming for jelly ; eighth birthday flops,
escaping from the party clown—
How the mirrors of light enter the marrow
and gracefully recite the stories and poems
from parental death, aborted friendships
to love’s waning kiln. The hum inside her
becomes quiet, awake and fearless...
she inhales dusky breath when musings
fall like twigs and brambles on her bosom.
Yet, the air’s chill hugs her shadow,
moistening her thoughts,
eyes reflecting time's montage...
glassy though amiably refreshed.
In a room stitched with silence,
she stands—face painted, lips sealed—
mirroring worlds with invisible walls,
a language of gestures no one translates.
Here, speech is a fragile rebellion.
Her fingers sculpt stories midair,
but the crowd wants laughter without edges,
pantomime without questions.
She remembers classrooms—
words trapped in chalk dust,
voices pressing her into corners
too tight for dreams to unfold.
But tonight, her throat hums with risk.
A single word—listen—
spills into the hush,
breaking the rhythm of practiced quiet.
They stare. The room inhales.
And she, unmasked, speaks again—
a voice cracking through the glass of stillness,
rewriting the script they gave her.
Now the walls dissolve.
The stage blooms wide with sound and breath.
A mime no more, she claims her noise,
filling the silence with her own story.
In between a wand and a warded space
lies an old Book Of Shadows to embrace;
Fee fried foe thumbs,
throw them in as the guitar strums;
Picked over hair follicles and toenails,
A few fast words followed by quick inhales;
Freeze dried pho crumbs,
throw them in as the harp hums;
Now toss in the vibrato of a ghost,
that sound is the recipe’s binding host;
Free fly fall mums!
Fester rich color to smack drums;
Add to that something so easily missed,
subtle allows magic to come undressed;
Fae, fire cauldrons!
manifest the desired outcomes;
In between a wand and the hand it takes,
lies an old Book Of Shadows to embrace.
Madly
but above madness
I rant against dirty light
as I stumble into obscurity.
There’s no rest for the leery.
No escape hatch in sight.
No rescue from inhuman cacophony.
Solitude exhales dust--
inhales dark vacuum.
The sadists laugh
as I tumble into burning horizons,
awaiting a rendezvous
with a nameless Whatever.
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