he was an ironist
hardened with pitiless cruelty and crudeness
she is a sculptress
shapeless assuming his spite
you will never shrink from this breakthrough
put your enthusiasm into that schedule
sanitise the musculus
decode her ordination
to squarely vex their corruptness
(Weekly Magnetic Poetry Challenge • July 1–5, 2026)
Amidst summer’s day
Post middle school finale
In the concrete valley
A vanguard viking lay
We gathered as a ragtag crew
Peeled his corpse off the floor
Carrying him, despite the gore.
To the stream, as we knew what to do
Fashioning a mausoleum of straw
Hoping he felt no disdain,
His grave enveloped in flame
And gently floated away.
It was there I thought to myself,
“What is the meaning of it all?”
Shipping mountains of expanse it gains the above,
a smooth sheen of aphotic immensity
gate-crashes the sky.
We watch as a vast inclination to be enormous
break free of the tenebrous deep.
It has now a ribbed and scalloped identity,
it is the depth made manifest.
I can no longer calibrate my mind, as the booming whale
surges past my physical insignificance.
That night
I could feel my fingernails growing in my sleep,
my thickening backbone stretching to crane upward
into an arching leviathan flight,
while my own shriveled and shed skin
sinks downwards to become mere morsels
for soft-mouthed bottom feeders.
Aquatic colossus breaches with elation,
crystalline baubles spray towards
periwinkle skies as casting flukes sway.
In expanse of brine play the descendants
of millennia old warriors; their songs
eco among the macrophyte gardens.
They know the secrets of ancient sailors,
these Balaenoptera musculus in their clan-pods
carry the wisdom of unknown worlds within Gaia’s
womb. A harmonic constitutional for these
hearts of compassion, the annual migration
will glean offspring to carry on the tradition
and guardianship of esoterica; this star
has come far and whispered her secrets
only to the wise ones.
4-22-2021
ALL YOURS (Apr 23) Poetry Contest
Brian Strand
Sharp pain from dark's letters
Cold days from bodies whether
Where silent haze will not show her
This face that covers
What tartar bitters?
With the knife of a blade
Strikes through cranium's waves
Protrudes through the musculus fiber ways
Where the vines pound at the same
There, on the temple it breaches to stay
Pound above, all again
Attacks at the vest
Rapids at best
Tightens on set
In a Minor chest
Hear that red pumping yet?
By the hard tips; pink
Brush the skin weak
Where the flake spills to force a wink
Darkens the mark that cleared the weeks
Ready to bleed, wash by the sink
Seeking the night
To lose a fight
Destroys that only light
Fade back and dream again
To the emotion that is no pretend
Manipulated by a causing trend
See it yet fall, all till ten
By the numb of a limb
Ask
The end
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