A haunting hallway of portraits,
introspections of who I once was,
multiple players in various roles,
is the true person here? Can one find the woman
intended to be before life harshly assaulted me?
A parody or a performance or, perhaps, a caricature,
a study in twisting realities,
does a genuine being manifest here?
Suddenly shattered glass reveals
the scarred reflection that truly is me.
Nette Onclaud, sponsor
Finish In Ten Contest
Date of poem - June 30, 2026
A Revised Edition
From The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, vol. II, 1850
In the icy air where the stars do sprinkle bright
keeping time, keeping time
with the jingling bells of night
it is there I lay my heart, my lonely heart
Hear the mellow wedding bells
the golden bells of happiness, ringing to foretell
Through the balmy air of night how they ring with such delight
from the molten-golden notes, the liquid ditty floats
A gush of euphony within her dwells
for a future that foretells of the rapture that impels
from the swinging and the ringing of the bells,
to the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Later how they clang and clash and roar in the throbbing air
hear the tolling of the bells, the bells, the bells
in a world of solemn thought, their monody compels
in the silence of the night she shivers with affright
And the lover oh the lover, dwelling deep inside the steeple
all alone,.. tolling, tolling, in that muffled monotone
turns her heart to solid stone, as she listens to the bells
the bells, the bells, the bells...
If I could take it all back
Every wrong ever wrought
Every regrettable thing
Every broken wing
I'd lay it all to rest
In an unmarked plot
Over which I would plant
Quiet thyme
And no-leaf clovers
Lilies of denial
And forget-me-nows
There would be no memorial
No elegy, no eulogy
No monody, no dirge
Not even a calaverita
Unless one is desperate
Enough to count this poem
This nobituary, if you will
No lamentation
No regrets
No go-away birds
No mourning doves
Nor egrets to bear the pall
Only leave the dead featherless
Laid down without down
To comfort them
And the egrets
Stand stilted and white
As nothing
Melancholy
As marble statues
In the silk gray dusk
Like lilies on a grave.
At Last the Hurricane
David J Walker
Ill east winds
wend the wings of
the finality of
the next mouning’s
dawn
on go those chosen
to sing beyond the
redoubtable vail
hurricanes await just
beyond todays horizon
life clinging to the failure
of exceptions
the portent signs rising
and ringing the morning sky
as pliant expectations
dissolve
and resolve
into alternate and
issuable uncertainty
the embassy is met with
the melody of the monody
and the emendation of
the new reality
it is to say
day by day
Life begins
Again and is
Called today
And ends tomorrow
I subside but not the rain
I revel in the falling pain
All my words come out inane
All my thoughts scream insane
I know that this should not be real
But that can’t stop the way I feel
I am unable to reseal
The wound that Time will never heal
The dark miasma in my brain
Comes forward with banners of the slain
My thoughts whirl by on a black train
The dark miasma is my bane
Your death doth tell me to be strong
And I’ve your memory to prolong
But yet I do still ever-long
To sing with you a final song
I place my roses on your grave
And listen to you in the breeze
And on your tomb I do engrave
Your shape in shadows from the trees
I see his book of poetry
Master poet of bygone years
And from his grave he speaks to me
With inaudible words quite clear.
I reach for Poe and read Lenore:
“Ah, broken is the golden bowl”
You must “weep now or never more!”
I knew her not till now, poor soul!
But I’ll recite a monody
of youth, death and slanderous tongues
with intonated prosody
for this youth that died so young.
Clouds, the clouds diffuse a sad and somewhat somber hue;
Wind, the wind bemoans her loss of reins and calm control;
Crows, the crows flee men of straw, sleeves slapping at the wind;
Grass, the grass defends with blades, impaling truant gusts;
Rain, the rain descends aslant from angry ashen skies;
Stones, the stones repulse the pearls, exploding tears of gloom;
Woods, the woods assuage the angst of misty brooding trees;
Leaves, the leaves desert their branches, dropping one by one;
Fields, the fields imbibe a quaff to quench an arid thirst;
Streams, the streams meander, hushed, to distant vapid shores;
Breeze, the breeze intones a tune, a mourning monody;
Sands, the sands, in chaos, dance across the dappled dunes;
Shades, the shades appear confused, alone in lurid haze;
Mice, the mice discern the dawn, their beady eyes ablaze;
Clouds, the clouds diffuse a sad and somewhat somber hue.
Sir –
You saw the drizzles
Before the rains –
The early clouds moved you not!
Now, in a monody
You sweat in singing the solace?
Sir – dear father of new rivers,
The kids saw the stars, your strange stars
Twinkling from their darkening horizon
– Stars with dimmed faces! –
Hiding their stereoscopic visions
Under their dark clot of dimmed lights:
Indeed we saw them twinkling
Coming to the representors –
Then while night fully sucked
Their lights into dead stars,
They witched off some voicy lads
Into their catabolic dungeon –
Oh, Sir –
Those lads situate among the representors
Who defied the coaxing secret treaty;
Sir, they whisked them off
Into the torment dungeon:
Creating a half-empty sky of representors!
Poet!
recite to us
a monody. Let it
be sad. Make us cry for those that
have died.
Remind
us on this day
of mourning, why they died:
So that everyone may live in
freedom.
He always praised and loved the mountain folklore,
Sang songs in sparkling summer or in cold winter.
Ahh, but now the legend shall sing songs no more,
Nor will this li’l warbler listen to his banter.
I have known him so well, too sweet for my name,
When he gently held these tiny hands to play.
Him, Oh I could not forget nor put to shame,
But the selfish touch of fate took him away.
I have lost him, my daddy, to the giant tree;
His echo swiftly fading in the cloudless noon sky.
If the sacred rocks would just give him back to me,
So I might, again, hear him sing ere to sleep I lie.
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