A Valentine's Senryu Poetry Contest
Tania Kitchin
bottle of red wine
dinner and dance lights candle~
a nightcap awaits
Our very survival requires at least some sleep
Collectively we never get enough due to our hectic lives we keep
I think as a whole the lack of shut-eye has affected how we sleep
Our lack of not being able to focus has thrown everything out of sync
We think by not getting enough rest we have more time to get things done
However, the quality of what we do suffers, leaving us stunned
How can we solve this universal problem that would certainly improve our days
Certainly, some form of relaxation that calms the mind should lead the way
Reading a good book before retiring for the night is well worth a try
Some people swear a nightcap works , maybe some old-fashioned rye
Maybe a new high-tech bed with that added comfort would help a lot
I think I will just go to bed and sleep on it ,that's all I got
First picked Summertime cherry
Dew glimmer marble blood clot
Taut fruit platter embitters sweating cheese
Liver pate shivers jiggle jelly
Nepenthe Mountbatten hidden chicken
Lays a tablecloth festive
Red checkered rewashed faded
Season with sea swell returns faithfully
Sickle slender silver moon smile harvests
Follicle forests expanding to full
Bright verve verdancy bursting
Peril of temporal balls
Metered to melt before resuming build
Knife blade moonbeam ripens the coming crop
Basket bulge fibrous beckon buyers’ bids
When the ceremony’s over
Feasting has ceased, linen’s off
Pink penned love letters are scrunched up thrown out
Reform engorged nightcap warmed moon omen
Sun demurred eclipse naps, menopause opaque
Unborn bends branches for Mary
Dulia in bloom banquets
Written for Contest: Seven Ten
Sponsor: Emile Pinet
broad shoulders, six foot three
Rolex, Stacey Adams
suit by Armani
and she said yes
soft spoken, warm hands
piercing eyes, a Harvard degree
business law
and she said yes, yes
a dance
to Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
witty, charming, a nightcap
and she said yes, yes, yes
Mercedes Benz, Pacific Ocean
gated community, ten thousand square feet
pool, sauna, jacuzzi
and she said yes, yes, yes, yes
John Coltrane caressed the ears
Dom Perignon the bloodstream
kissed with the eyes, then the lips
and she said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
wait, wait
grabbed her, cursed her, rippped her dress
slapped her, groped her, pinned her
mounted her, took her
and she cried no, no, no, no, no–no
Often, after a day of walking
in and out of my mind,
I will put on a nightcap,
it's not a substantial cap like a bobble hat
it's more a cowl, a hood, a cloud-basket.
Beneath this dark covering
thoughts lay down to rest
in early graves.
Beyond a high hedge of time
astral lights flicker.
An inner sky gleams a starry gloaming,
I grope for a rope to climb
ascend - become - appear.
Now I can travel like a spy balloon
floating remotely guided into other sleeping heads.
Now a secret I have never told myself:
A few nights only,
I enter another person’s dreaming thoughts
startling eyes that are not mine.
I can visit a strangers life,
share a nightmare
or catch a distant memory
rehearsing its pain or joy once more.
It is a trick of immortality
to be this short-lived.
This free-wheeling and head-loose.
Come the bald-faced light
the night cap spins away like a thrown frisbee,
it is only then
that I don't believe a word of myself.
I remember your ways.
I remember your stays.
The weekends when you’d come home.
Sought the garden out for your dad as he moaned.
Have a nightcap with me, cuddle up like you were three.
You created happiness with your smile.
Your laughter could brighten the darkest of nights.
You loved people, you cared.
You’d help anyone, you’d share.
You’d see the best in the worst.
You’d do your duty even when it hurt.
Your dads garden doesn’t bloom like it did when you were here.
Your little face smiling in the pictures I hold so dear.
Words fail now sorrow lives here
My beautiful Angel… We just can’t accept that you’re not here.
golden streaks emerge
as dusk begins to set in
beautiful nightcap
Whiskey and orange juice,
Peach schnapps and cola,
Buckfast and sprite,
Desperate times called for
Horrifying measures.
Thank god I was not a bartender
For I would have been
Thrown out of the establishment,
However in the confines of my home
Room and bed,
I could sip my monstrosities quietly.
A pain so deep that
It made the drinks taste like
Pleasure,
Anything to keep the thoughts away.
So many candles burned,
Too many colourful lights bought,
Far too many songs listened to on repeat,
Too much liquor consumed,
Just to keep you away from my mind.
Never works, does it?
Even with all of that effort
You were always there with me,
My loneliness keeping me company,
Imagining you by the window,
At the side of my bed,
In my arms.
The version of you that I created
Mocking me for missing you,
Made it sting even more,
As to escape from this,
One must forget.
And I am so very bad at forgetting.
boxed up chocolate sweet and sad
ready to be sniffed and pinched, it’s bad
in the lovely shape of a heart, heartless
and ravishing, ruby red incalculable —
ashes do not lust nor hunger
nor does the adjoining sweet-
heart wish to taste another delicious morsel
instead
plops olives into his nightcap
in the early morning hours
of deeply departed reticence
he remembers hugging
his heart pillow
readying himself
for their precious years
as she rolled up his
compression socks
he held her heart
until it stopped
2/12/2022
god had a nightcap
after creating the earth
and moonshine poured forth
By
David Kavanagh
thus,
like snow,
cold ashes fall
charred history’s
hubristic gales
truth’s torment
tucked into howling
acquiescent innocence.
Empty men
line the banks
fishless rivers
sit idle
barbless hooks
impugn the air
ivy strangled
rowboats sigh
With age color fades
into the weariness
wonder wanders
among the weeds
joy darts through
day lit darkness
hides hope’s
vacant sunshine
time taints
tomorrow’s tomorrow
the calendar’s lie
tri-colored ink charade
mocking the idleness
of one so busy
last call
nightcap dosage
John G. Lawless
©6/8/2019
Got carried away
Boy, did it show the next day!
Hungover at dawn
Date written and posted: 08/15/2018
Three crows pecked away the heart rubies
from an ice cream coned childhood dream.
When the crows weren't gorging and preening
They'd layer black caw over all of the sweet dream.
These three hags, and I, have grown old and bitter together.
Forever taunting from ruby-stained beaks.
I don feathers from a fractured past.
Minted as trophies atop a foamy nightcap.
Time
couldn't contain you,
my ocean!
Not a wrinkle on your sapphire body,
shimmering in the moonlight
encased in your flamboyant phosphorescence...
like on the edge of a dream
you carried us down home,
to our south pacific friends,
past life recollection of yesterdays
where time is a fruitless endeavor
and their white teeth gleam like moonstones,
brown faces a mirage of southern hemisphere smiles.
Just a ghost of a moment in a timeless set of motions,
that eternal nightcap of ecstatic
pilgrims,
til the curfew tolled
and the ocean companion,
waited
with patience through its silken facelift
and took us back
to America
A mile and a half on a trail in the mist
With the bleating of sheep with black faces
Was a nightcap so perfect I have to insist
That it ranks with the most magic places.
The path did meander on pebbles through trees
As the sky kept the darkness from falling
And when we reached the waterfall, how it did please
That I'd answered the travel bug's calling,
To lift yourself out of the daily routine
For a journey with joys to uncover
Is the very best cure for the doldrums I've seen
And who knows what I next will discover?
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