You’ll never cross
the maelstrom
if your courage
has been stripped
Or trip the light
fantastic
when you’re crippled
at the hip
You can’t escape
the jungle
when the path
leads further in
Or greet the
new horizon
in a darkness
— mired in sin
(Dreamsleep: August, 2026)
“My soul is a black maelstrom…” ~ Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet.
Molten lava spews from my eyes.
My mouth feels dry as the scorching desert sand.
Fear, like a heavy boulder, sits on my chest.
My heart is chasing a Chimera.
A pit is forming in my stomach;
My head is riding upon a vortex.
Conflicting thoughts swirl through my mind,
forming a surrealistic whirlpool.
Grim and gloomy feelings shroud my being,
Permeating a fatalistic suspicion of society at large,
Dragging me down the road to depression.
A sense of emptiness is mushrooming within me,
Like the morning miasma blurring the view.
All hands of hope have been withdrawn.
Every moment henceforth
is pregnant with some novel challenges;
Tackling a new task overwhelms me,
and despair prevails over my soul undeterred —
Bogged down by fate,
Tethered to my faith,
And mired in a spiritual quagmire,
I am unable to claw my way back up
to Mount Calvary.
~Prompt 2: "As I slip into the void of this endless black."
~Contest: Venom and Stardust: A Birthday Prompt
~sponsor: Sara Jama.
~Screwed XXIII Poetry Contest by Rob Carmack
Mutant metronome’s
stygian riddle
inscrutable fixation
spuming
clustered clairvoyance
honing snoopy
quest querulous
quicquidlibet
tamper connived
sinewy stratagem
plimsoll plot
“sneaker” of
wily webfooted
nefarious nudge
at
tenebrific toll
maple smoke
screen screed
clandestine
cobwebs cohere
mohair marinated
muddle
subdued thespian
herringbone hoodwink
skewed camouflage
perused pearl
inveigling
skulduggery rife
underscored cadence
persuasive
percussive rattle
ubiquitous underbelly
prop to
dodgy dialogue
muted ritardando
silhouette streak
dangling magnet
mired in
gauche guesswork
subterfuge sciophobia
inkpot
amorphous machination
fiction wizards
emblazon
indices incipient
embryo empiricism
mouldering
cabinet coterie
spookish svengali
minatorial
repercussions
incurvate
sniffer dog
detective
poirrot’s prognosis
clouseau contingency
that
rivetting mystery
Written by Gail DeBole
on May 6, 2026
Updated on May 11, 2026
Here I go...returning to REM.
Most of the time, it acts like a friend.
REM deals with feelings that should be addressed
Before they become an unwelcome mess.
Some of the time, REM makes no sense.
Mired in mystery with a hint of pretense.
Other times, using recurring themes
It offers an outlet for feeling extremes.
REM often zigzags through my life's times
And reminds me of moments left behind.
When I awake, sometimes I muse
Over the people my dreams choose to include.
When I awake, sometimes I muse
Over the vagueness my dreams choose to include.
It's true that I only know REM from my dreams.
But it acts like a friend without malice or schemes.
Seemingly unsolvable problems REM solves for me.
Without REM, where would we be?
261.
My 41st Leaf
Removed thee from twig
That is not so big
If closely observed
It's stylishly curved
Unfamiliar one!
A Nuk-Nuk owns thee
Not able to see
I am with classmates
Enriching our faiths
We're with our teachers
From beach I've just been
Where sunrise I've seen
Beautiful morning
So fresh everything
Ninth day of third month
On Baybay seaside
Domicile beside
On landscape simple
Ad mired by nimble
Adjacent to porch
It's our Retreat Day
This pretty Sunday
MAT Soc. Sci.
This moment we're nigh
As Filamerians!
-03/09-10/2014
(Dumarao)
*My Toladas Collection
Anthropology studies human societies,
human culture, humankind, human us.
You were the anthropologist that sifted through
the baubles of life I mired in the fissures
of the way I spoke impedimented English.
But you were my diction that weaved between
the w’s I mispronounced and the ph’s I forgot to shape.
I reached for the dove's excalibur to accept that you, my love,
have bewitched the melody against the carnage that consumed
all my adoration for you, only to be transfixed
by the Black Excalibur in your virgin hands.
And I had to relearn how to survive, how to stand,
resurrected from being a cold, dead man.
I am the Romeo that breathed first.
In the doomed book I refused the poison.
And you married Count Paris.
Our doom painted blue and red on human society.
Now the anthropologist observes purple remains
stained on the ink of dirty historical papers.
Anything, flower or face
Glass-domed, or that behind
If as icon, mired;
Or what of it, Beauty, book-kept
If as tale inspired
Once focused on, is brought to light
This core, divine, in us;
Longingly pulsates.
Thenceforth nothing but Heaven's
Aspiring to sates.
Before helping one who appears
Stuck in the mud,
Stop and think a minute.
Make sure he’s really mired
And wants your help,
And not just wallowing in it.
This time of year Santa’s tired
He fell asleep by the fire
His pointy ear elves
Jump in to help
So on Christmas he won’t be mired
Cult of satan, popes and prelates kings princes, and pawns broking power.' Banks
And generals, a shaking is occuring, boundry's face an un-bounding..Kevin Annett, is pounding.
.on the black door of denial. Will there be much un-robing? Twenty six solid witnesses.' Court
Proceedings, i c c now
in process satanic ritual, pro-action; against is happening Responding; answering to too much sin.' We await the interaction, legal lawfull
Confronting sheer evil, of this world i grow
Tired, yet refuse to be mired.'
Swadling encrypt the contrarious slopes of a mired
entity coursed veinous stammer spurts bled
across a court of an unchallenged befitted named
as valor cornered the bleached to be razed
spirits encapsulate the branded sole championed
glory dazed betwixt ears of an abandoned
waning light fills purple sighs 'ill eve succumbed
bitterness spilt the downtrodden weighed
hung kicked a life out of bound the final scored
The sonnet form's antique and mired in dust,
Why should I strive thus so to write one well?
If bard I be then learn new styles I must.
Will I achieve my goal, who can foretell?
So here I sit again with pen in hand,
Attempting some new quatrains that will rhyme,
Entreating Muse to guide my falt'ring wand.
The formula, so strict, takes lots of time,
But I'll persist 'til fourteen lines are writ,
One final couplet crowning three quatrains,
Persistence now completing this last bit.
There's something 'bout a sonnet tests my brain.
Yet I prevail, these fourteen lines once one,
The prize obtained, this poet's work is done.
Lamentations alone cannot stop
the bleeding of the land at the ankles,
nor stop the tears of Deluge
Grief matters little in a prophesied
pogrom, for a general death is
not reckoned with evil —
And prophecies shall remain with rain
forty days and forty nights;
And the empty trenches of Desert
shall be filled, her sands mired
upon the gluey spittle of the rains;
Even oases shall puke their water
upon broken rocks —Desert treasures.
When the sun lies in witness to this
history, with ancestral brown drums
saluting yonder,
lamentations shall be futile.
Lori Steindorf Copyright May 19, 2021
Shaking my Magic 8 ball
Yielding the same answer
No, no way, not today, not likely
I know it's not working
With the situation I'm in
I've been here before
Why am I sweating it
When Ive given it all I have
And still not getting anywhere
I don't need a talisman
Or any sign to point me to where I need to be
This is a little upheaval
I'm a nomadic spirit. Not roots attached to a tree
Times have changed; it's no longer the same
Nothing left to anchor me here.
Time to move on; right now won't even register in years to come
What would age me, drain me and wear me out
Is to walk on eggshells in a life fraught with drudgery
Every day, living a lie, mired in self-doubt.
I always have options
No use in staying where I don't want to be
Life is long when you're miserable
I choose to be happy and carefree
Time to unearth what I've buried for years
I must do this for myself
Conquering my sense of inadequacy and fears
I've fretted over this before
And I'll power on through again
It's up to me to rely on me
It pays to be my own best friend
At sunset, orange frescos on the west wall
Sink gradually into the bowels of hills flung
By distant wavelengths of a backward illusion,
Which yells silently at concupiscent terns,
Yodelling and returning from carnivals of the
Wild. From the faint glow, a rainbow stretches
For a cuddle, musing over a curious world,
Ditched by diaphanous tarradiddles of the odd.
Shadows on ground level travel on painted
Tars, recreating their bosoms on surfaces
Raven-black and soot-framed.
Seagulls welcome waves in one cracked voice,
Honking the horns of billed staccato.
Among able-bodied patterns of bituminous tracks,
Rivers, ponds, pools seek their faces on sun-flushed
Mirrors, which laugh at their fatuous inclinations
Mired by the sputum of drained rains.
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