Ode Poems | Examples

Fall

It’s gradually falling
Summer is increasingly lolling
The leaves are gently browning
We can’t wait for October’s crowning
When the gold leaves of lustre 
Charm the fold with their cluster,
Flamboyantly trooping the autumn colours 
And socially grouping them with lullers.

Sinatra

Leaning towards the pride of Hoboken,
I learned to listen with both ears —
And my wandering soul—
Whose cellar harbours old kegs of sweet
Songs that warm the spirits and embolden one
With just one hum of that pleasantly unique voice,
So frank and euphonious
That I crave love.

The Funeral of Dogs - Dedicated to Roald Amundsen and His 52 Dogs

I hate to chortle at the sound of broken laughter,
Just like I refrain from weeping when dancing smoke fills my eyes . . .
But when dogs mourn alone,
I chafe my hands with the cold of tears of solitude.
Monuments and cairns I crave among the icy
Terrains, where dogs’ paws leave eternal marks —
The print-marks of an important visit,
Evidence of life on desiccated earth.
On board The Fram they sailed majestically
In the beginning,
Before joining a steam of blizzards they escaped from,
Returning home, northwards, gelid and depressing,
For a funeral of dogs,
The ceremony of age,
Attended largely by silent yaps of strayed thunder.

Ode To Summer's End

The swallow has gone,
Flown away, so has its mellow song
And so forth we go,
into bluer skies—indigo
Tempts drift further till tepid
Southern shades should not bid 
Amid its alibi is incidence,
sun shrinks in appearance
Grayest shadows deepen  
The first cool breezeway creeps in
Much warmth shall be ebbing,
heralding winter's woolen webbing
I count my blessings
of summer’s endings:
Abundance of sunshine so bright
Zephyrs on a tender August night                             
Book clubbing with best of friends,
Labor Day weekend marks summer’s end
As Summer ends Fall shall begin,
and what joyful gifts a winding wind
against glistening skin
Autumns kiss of this kind,
an earthly bliss entwined 
And when the swallow returns,
no longer summer yearns
no longer summer yearns

Survivor Mode

bruises scars and stretch marks
the sum total of diverse past experiences
~ I am strength and stamina


Wordku: 5-7-5 words

AP: Honorable Mention 2025

Night Nurse

Her eyes are laden with drunken sleep, 
Silhouetted by lank, tired hair flimsier
Than the spine of an elderly, broken night.
Tattered, it buries the horrors of night;
Braided, it creases the rows of black corn,
Sweeping swiftly south and downwards;
Ponytail ties the umbilical linking life
And skyline light.
Lissome, she traipses with no lamp, 
Even when darkness confidently pitches its nightingale’s romance 
To district judges seated on the kerb of the apothecary’s creed . . .
With her the night loses its potency,
Its sacredness,
Expelling flies that die out on their own willpower,
Like winged dinosaurs, 
Through the age of decomposing summer.
It's all been analysed before?
The oneiric spell cast upon slow, difficult nights
When the breath smells like the anus of hell.
By the way, I drivel.
Not saliva.
Oh, no!
I drivel on about hissing nights that ought to be lonesome,
Stretched out, dark, and without rays borrowed 
Earlier from a twerking twilight.
Restless nights, worn like silky cloaks, diaphanous,
Seeing through the naked veins of her sweet eyes.

Words of My Ancestors

By moonlight when the moon shone with all her majesty, 
My ancestors told us the story of the Tiger,
Which crouched at every rumble of the jungle-thunder,
Either out of fright or from bravery;
Tiger, male and ferocious,
With wicked fangs,
Tiger which breathed fire upon the foliage that shielded
Our village from the rage of the sun,
Which raped lady antelopes with utter contempt,
Which dined lavishly on forest flesh 
And wined drunkenly on hunters’ blood,
Which knew no honesty,
And which turned wild upon them,
My ancestors,
Season after season,
In rain and in harmattan,
Until one fine day
When the forest trembled with the screams of
The beast, beaten on its own tracks,
With roars of terror ending when the moon
Slid between the witnessing clouds.

Laughter -For Lucille Ball

Laughter creased my face
With the wideness of joy in a darling
Hallooing loudly, Hawaii!
Making me younger with weakly wrinkles,
It warmed my heart with a flaming ring of mirth.
And I liked it.
I watched the waves as they rose and fell,
Like the big flattered locks of a comely
Landlady combing her tresses on a windy, snoopy 
Sunday morning.
And I loved it.
Who are next to be loved?
Lucy & Lucille.
One laughs 
The other winces with laughter
When cold fleeting winds blow over
Our inchoate sensibilities.
And we love it —
Like we loved Lucy.

Love of Horror

Love of Horror

When shadows lengthen, and the moon hangs low,
My heart beats fast, a thrilling, eager glow.
For whispers chilling, and for blood-red gleam,
I find my comfort in a waking dream.
The creaking floorboards, the unearthly wail,
A twisted plot, a terror-filled tale.
No gentle rom-com, no drama's soft embrace,
But monsters lurking, leaving not a trace.
From classic slashers to the psychological fright,
I seek the darkness, bathed in eerie light.
The jump scares jolt, the tension holds me tight,
A delicious shiver in the dead of night.
So bring the ghouls, the vampires, and the fiends,
The ancient curses, and the nightmare scenes.
For in the horror, I find a strange delight,
And slumber soundly, dreaming of the fright.

Bamboo

Grant me rest under your lissome stems
Let me hide from the raindrops — shiny globules
That drip with tropical hauteur,
Rain that harms the ribs with cold rebukes.
Welcome me within your greenish lair, from
Your cane roots to your starry leaves —I insist on visiting
In your prime, so fresh with dew and so green, like
The envy in the gritty eyes of singed composts,
When waving rays of the shifting sun
Bathe the narrow venues formed by adjoining stems
Up, up and up the stairs and dome of the jungle.
I pray to shoot up with you and befriend the skies.
Oh, such elevation!
Fill my gourd with green wine;
Make me drunk with the spewing colours of life.
My heart is open to receive light —from misty dawn to
Dusk crowned with your blessing.
Let it rain on, I pray.
My palms are spread out like your leaves — I borrow the
Innocence of your frondescence.
Carve me flutes from your nodes, and, from them
Raise the cadences for summons, to be accompanied by
Drums fashioned by hands greased by the gifts of
The forests. . . .
Raise the joy, the frenzy, the tone of the ceremony
Raise, raise . . . upheave them
To royal heights — such as yours.

White Wilderness

I recall the yelling but silent voice of winter
that broken December when the lights from
lanterns shot up from their wicks with the
fading strength of departing glows abroad.

Twilights hastened through the spine of
receding days, halting the approach of a
wayward Christmas.
The wilderness around us yielded froths from a
puking snowstorm,
fastening laces of Hell with strings of abundant
sleet.

Ode to the Other Self

Though you're oblivious to the outside,  
You reside somewhere on the inside.
You're a part of me,  
I become a turbulent sea.  

You arise from the unknown,  
You shoot your arrows,  
And I bear the sorrows—  
These are not seeds I have sown.  

You hide in the stygian night,  
You carry out your bidding even while I'm in the light.  
I fight the unseen,  
They remain invisible on the screen.  

I journey across borders and into new territories,  
I wander through meadows,  
Which fall into various categories.  
You sometimes emerge from the shadows.  

You're my inky self,  
Dwelling in depths beyond the pages of a book on the shelf.  
I'm a mirror of the strange—  
Through the continuum of time, there hasn't been any change.


August 6, 2025.

And Then There Were None - For Agatha Christie

I’ve only desired to light old lamps with young wicks
(the tongues of flame must be blinking hard with vigilance)
Across dark, mildewed alcoves that smell of ink —her writing ink —
But one thing led to the other, and the ink I
Found froze in my eyes, the bottle instantly petrified among desert ruins.
I searched, from my village to Nantucket, borrowing
The courage of voyaging storms, seeking earnestly her quill feather,
Just to caress her pretty face with it.
But the power of distance arrested me midway and warned me
Of the dangers of costly adventures.
I hankered after a trained parrot —an amanuenses of note—
With less brilliant plumage,
Electrifying elocution,
To detect to me the protocols of her language.
But that, too, failed.
The parrot was either born mute or chose to be.
I did all I could? to seek, to find, to locate, to identify items
Belonging to her —bric-a-brac of a telling age.
And then there were none.

To the War Veterans

Sirs, my hands are aloft in greetings
I salute you
My legs are together in attention
I hail you
My hat is off my head
I revere you
I thank you with the two greatest things I have:
My heart and my soul
Like the aggressor who lacked the edge to wear you down,
I lack the words to say thank you.
My heart and soul which you have touched so dearly
Do so for me.

Night Watch - For Rembrandt

The stars have descended a little lower, to keep us —
My kinsmen and I —company on this night watch
On a newly roused African night.
We filch a little bit of the effulgence of the waking moon,
Reluctant, with the invasion of jealous clouds, their plumes
Fragile with inconsistency.
We rely on the luminescence of each other’s eyes and the trust
In our hearts
Tinder, broken by flying flickers of fireflies,
Shine through the breath of darkness, dis-virgining the chunky yolk
Of secrets and the clout of night, so corvine.
Every breath keeps us warm and frightens the monsters lurking
Around the lean corridors of the enchanted thresholds.


The heavens stare downward —witnesses to a stifling explosion of
Will; so are the crepitating crickets and cicadas —in prayers they
Egg us on, and through borrowed liturgy of nocturnal canticles.
The heartbeats in us make silenced music —loud only by the essence of
Gaiety and humming drums lightly tapped by ancestral fingers,
Helping to warm our hearts and will in the face of the severest darkness


Made lighter by the glows of slow-running lights — the broad painting of
Dawn.

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