Ever have a song
Stuck in your head,
Saying you have thirst
For sound koolaid?
Koolaid, you know,
The stuff that controls
The body metronome,
Whether moving the mind
Faster…or stopping it altogether.
Fans become cultists.
Do you have Bad Blood?
Are you Never Gonna
Not Dance Again?
Do you imagine tacos,
Magical tacos, falling out of the sky?
At concerts, do brain waves
Become one wave,
While the masses belt it out,
Swaying lighters to and fro,
Predicting the beat,
Or repeat
What words have caught hold
Over you
And taken the moths,
Flying out of leather folded homes en masse,
Flapping wing beat to song.
A plague is afoot and hive brain has won.
Is that dope, or dopamine,
Helping me work, work out, love life, escape life,
Or take in a better or more macabre scene.
I thought tonight
was our night
to gaze at the Super Moon
and make wishes upon the shooting stars
for our plans, our hopes, our goals
and our dreams for
our destined future together
instead we lost the moon
and the entire solar system
to the agonizing shadows
of the eradicated atmosphere
refusing to share
the essence of their beauty
with us
Bold atlas moths congregate
Around lily pools... then wait
Until stars' resplendent light ,
Awakens their flitting rite.
And winging through air- brushed haze
Each laced rafter all ablaze--
As peak twirlings gleam anew
Like pearled gauze of every hue!
1st place
Christmas rose, Iphianassa suffers in her soul’s asylum, your elixir the only
panacea for fox-skinned maínomai
Lonely sawsan, proud swords erected in red dead rivers of brotherly love,
refugees granting asylum to lost birthrights
Tempestuous mirella, vagrant sadist cutting Cheshire grins
into your fantasies, il mio timore più grande era che io morissi prima di te
Peaceful kardi, atlas moths sway against Solomon’s palms, carrying
pollinated songs to queens of sun-born blackness in Amana’s sanctuary
May we be blessed when we see a luna moth or a butterfly
(at the risk of sounding lyrical)
to be reminded how life is made up
of so many tiny little miracles
She keeps moth wings in jars,
fragile things pressed against glass
like broken promises.
She says they’re beautiful,
even in their ruin.
I ask her why she collects
what’s already dead,
and she just shrugs,
says it’s not about life—
it’s about remembering
what it felt like to fly.
A butterfly lights from flower to flower
with golden wings, he whiles away each sunny hour.
A moth comes out at night, while the world dreams,
guided by the light of silvery moonbeams.
An ant toils away, working hard for the pack,
dressing modestly, he's attired only in black.
I try not to judge, as I consider each bug.
They all have different ways of feeding their mug.
You must never touch a butterfly
and fear its fragile wings
for if you touch a butterfly
what horrors your touch brings
The dust glitters as it falls
and the insect starts to wilt
for like the flowers on which it feeds
its lovely death brings guilt.
But make sure to kill the moth
that ugly, furry thing
it's circling the porch light
like that lantern is its king
you must kill it quick and hard
as it's flying from its fate
the lantern is its only hope
and yet its perfect bait.
But dust glitters as it falls
from the moth's beige colored wings
for only when it's dead and gone
you see life to which it clings.
Soft flimsy red moths
settled like starving locusts
over brittle straw
why do moths fly in circles toward light at night?
Are they trying to shake pursuers, do they feel fright?
Actually, they turn toward source where they see the most bright
Which causes a circular or spiral pattern in their evening night flight.
They shun sunlight
but at night, moths
take flight; wings spread.
More moths play on lamp
While the Man keep watching them,
In His Kingly throne.
a breeze in trees
tiny moths flutter like bees-
cherry blossoms me
mornng dew on a rose-
sleepy moths
start to doze
“the fate of winter moths”
sitting on the stoop, concrete sodden with
the chill of late winter. the air
acquires a coolness like your first breath
after confessional. the Christmas lights
illuminate the porch in a motley of whites
and oranges. the tangerine glow casting
warmth while the sun is taking his smoke
break. Two sounds permeate the crisp air
rising up to my ears like a swan through
inky lake water: the languid boughs
sighing in the wind, scraping their emaciated
limbs together in contemplation and the
fatal buzz of my neighbor’s bug zapper.
It stands watch like a plum King’s Guard,
never resting in his duty; an amethyst firebrand.
The absence of the mosquito’s persistent drone
is chilling, and its deafening vacancy amplifies the
cruel cut of the bug zapper.
In this quiet cacophony
I think that letting moths fall prey to an
undeserved, mauve, electric death is the cruelest
thing I’ve ever known.
I creep back up the
steps and cast a wary
look into my neighbor’s
grimey window and am
shocked to see them
sleeping peacefully.
broken fantasies
inclement weather,
dust hope
all lost
by heartless moths
destroyer of cravings
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.