Written: July 06, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Craig Cornish
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My path was unkempt, with cracked and bent signs
The once-azure sky turned gray, and my muse faded
Cursed seraphs hovered under lifeless skies, weeping.
In the mahonia mist of nestled truths and lost couplets in periwinkle poetry
I shoved in a cacophonous frenzy, confused—
Vade mecum was fetid with an epiphany of deceit
Silence echoed dread, and each scab was a guess
Iridescent smears of fervent deceit,
and Cupid's canopy engulfed the cetacean sonnets
A mocking wind bade shattering moans,
having learned to flaunt their tethered words
With my russet roots, I'm not a flashy flower,
but, I felt awful pain from distant love acronyms.
What if the cloudburst refrain bears no scars?
Or phosphene verses adorned with blue poppies,
might leave glowing traces on midnight shores?
I walked for miles to find that starting stanza.
Yet, despite such raucous, cataclysmic pain,
An earthquake faltered the stratus sky—
Not all who veer from the path must shatter
Obsessed, some must comply with the jostle of life.
Eventualities don't apply to me
(I can dream)
no matter their presence
in the mirrors of reality
Always one step ahead
though the shrinking distance
haunts
like the miles left for a Tesla charge
eventualities be damned
A proud GTO once sneered
at the pitiful jalopies that
soiled the curb
a roaring young engine
never once to glance at
those left behind -
the defunct riffraff
that Pontiac replaced,
now, their value measured only
by the thump of a
Mecum gavel
The showrooms now occupied
by "green" Prius's
and other hybrid youths
who sneer at discontinued
glutinous appetites
While the GTO,
like a deserted lunar excursion module,
waits for the next Apollo mission -
still
I've learned to celebrate today
until my "jalopiness" overcomes me -
eventualities be damned!
The past is a book
of recipes,
a Vade-mecum,
a file that we often
consult in doubt ...
But if so
some if you forget to forget
the past ... poor thing ...
If you don’t have life today,
certainly will not have
no future ...!
Habitually, feeling an itch to write,
I’m introspective: sitting at the table
over a blank sheet, cherishing my blight
and rust, I think: “What if I'll not be able
to write a single stanza anymore?
What if to chuck it all, to travel, omnia
mea mecum porto*… What is all this for:
the doubts, the all-nighters, the insomnia?
What if…" Oh, wonder! In my line of sight
I have the lines: “…feeling an itch to write,
I’m introspective”.
(lat.) "All that is mine I carry with me", the quote that Cicero ascribes to Bias of Priene.
25.10.2019
Itch, Witch, Glitch Or Twitch Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Nina Parmenter
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Vade mecum, standing afore anticipations threshold; joyous awe
While as beholding this blankets golden bed....
Scented late Autumns leaves which lay so still in silence
Restive aneath the solitary branches; blinking eyes
Waiting for a Winters journey to thus commence
A falls brightened reflections, caressing such protege hues
Painting now their truer colours in mint; as they weep no more
Amid the solemn winds which have always been
Solstices arctic bitter, carved by this crescents cold....
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....`Rhydisias' Dawn • £
Bias, one of the Seven, take up neither (when the Persians arrived) an arm
such glorious like the Seven for Thebes,
nor a book full of wisdom of now.
No.
There is a talk he said, “Omnia mea mecum porto”,
as every beggar says and left (in
hidden)
the burning and in ruins turned town.
There is a talk he bought (I wonder what with) the lasses,
who (maybe) the Spartans had taken for their slaves. And he sent them back as daughters.
I even don’t want to think. Omnia mea mecum porto.
The future is theirs with their fathers in
disgrace.
Yes.
He had died before the court passed sentence
(so just) on the chest of the child.
And he says, “For all good thank the
gods”.
*All that's mine I carry with me – Latin
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