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.
Categories:
oneiric, tribute,
Form: Ode
Majestic night, oneiric, peaceful, quiet, rustic,
fragrant with jasmine, primrose and moonflower,
timeless beauty descending at the starry hour,
a visitor of heaven on the earthen garden.
aromatic boughs, cling, dance, ebb, flow,
welcoming the visitor of divine dwelling,
songs of cicadas fly on nocturnal wing,
an ambiance of festivity and glee.
glorious, hopeful, inspiring, joyful, kindred,
spirits of nature, embrace the enchanting night,
brimming with happiness, a heartful delight,
one with nature, heart, soul and mind.
smiling, trotting, unfazed, vivid, wishful,
night’s beauty, hums a soft lullaby,
a time to sleep as the dreams pass by,
and the magical beauty of night, kisses goodbye.
Alpha Lines Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Joseph May
Categories:
oneiric, magic, night,
Form: Rhyme
Our hands are tied, Death
Since you dawned on us this New Year . . .
Shapely bottles of champagnes have shone
And have broken to fragments with the ululation
Of firecrackers that warmed cold and dark wintry skies.
Now, aphonia sets in from unending lamentations.
Headlines, buried by the chilly bones of winter,
Are barren of good tidings.
A chionophile besieges the rim of a sedulous Yuletide
Grieving by oneiric alleys . . .
I speak of the Friedhof of haunting grimness behind
The curtains of howling winds;
Chants that frequent the disease of frightened melodies, stained
With the aged banality of youthful death;
And the purlieu of cremated souls and consolidated ashes.
Daggers are drawn to paint skulls on canvas slit by the
Whispering tongues of fire
Candles burn their tallow gently on the skin of cancer,
A stinkaroo that stinks with rage.
We do not know how else to turn the calendar.
The edges brim with hostile, burning blood,
Frozen with bits of hate and servile penetralia.
New Year hangs the singed sigil of death
On the bosom of fattened scrolls.
Categories:
oneiric, death, sorrow,
Form: Elegy
The worst of all:
the nestled dream.
Escape the first
with stifled scream,
but all is not
restored, it seems...
You try to flail
or move about,
but none can hear
you thrash and shout.
At last, you find
an exit door;
your thoughts of sleep?
Not anymore...
With one eye fixed,
the gods implored
to stay awake
but as before,
the cycle loops;
you start to snore!
Categories:
oneiric, dream, sleep,
Form: Rhyme
I refuse to languish in obscurity
hiding parts of my personality.
As a target I stood.
Verity will always light up the dark.
A white lightning rod, an electric spark
as what’s solid is viewed.
I am the woman with oneiric eyes,
the one who’s focus is the far off prize.
No nonsense attitude.
Shrinking yourself back into a bubble,
sounds to me like a whole lot of trouble.
Small is never selfhood.
Categories:
oneiric, emotions, feelings, mental health,
Form: Tail-rhyme
MELIORISM
This world stings like the scorpion,
And I will not filter in her tears,
This I said because I’m a champion,
Only throwing jabs, it really wears!
Like the faeces of a chameleon,
She stinks in her odourless sheers,
Truly this world bites in oblivion.
And never to be seen in klaipeda _
The elysian sky has deceived me,
Leaving behind their propaganda;
This dark ominous mangles me...
The tenet of retronym in obscurity,
Why we can walk without security.
The quell for fairness may wither,
As we skulk in together!
The gargoyle mole of pains...
Hardship is loose and unfettered;
As we wallow in this sane oneiric,
That never sought for the kindred,
Of conflate moth of harangue...
The axiomatic mild of the youths,
The automatic bunkum in heroism,
The cosplay to this hilarious pains,
The syringe to my bitter whinge.
To saudade for the shadows of life,
A vain wait for meliorism!
When will it get back bitterly better?
Categories:
oneiric, africa, anger, anxiety, courage,
Form: Didactic
I did make a wasp gasp
with my splendiferous doggerel
that not even I sit well
with. & a note came from hell
penned in a tongue alien to me...
only the vile violet violinist
understood such oneiric idiocy...
& said it was emetic
& not truly good nor copacetic.
Even September agrees
such is the golden music
that easily delights the bees
& can make a wasp gasp.
Categories:
oneiric, animal, language, music, poetry,
Form: Free verse
from hazy pastel shades of blue
bound by storms
a fiery glow
smooth and shiny
zigzags of xanthous and marigold
zooming the horizon
rolling tyrolean choric runes
exquisitely enhanced wall murals
with a flaxen-colored scheme.
as well as soloists
dazzling tangents and
waves of origami art
tune tones and beguile the waves
to an oneiric shimmer
Written: April 17, 2023
3rd place contest winner
A Brian Strand Premiere No 1209 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand
Categories:
oneiric, analogy, appreciation, character,
Form: Free verse
I found in myself substructures of understanding and they see more than my eyes, they predict a future under the shade of trees in the huge patio behind the house, the light coming from the sunny roof of the world, gills of few fish quivering in the pond of tiles, chairs and sitting on them the dead of my life that talk and disappear replaced by the dead that we will be, the fish bubble up confidences about everyone, the wall is uneven because the roots of the plane trees have lifted part of the ground, I feel ecumenical this moment but my hands burned making the coffee, you in the dream help me politely with damp cloths, transparently cross the empty rooms of the rest of humanity swept by the moving air, the dust circulates through the children who mature, I see very well through the periscope of this oneiric nautilus, I see that the coast is being bombed, the fragments of the offices are paper sentences and each one of them condemns us, days that will still come, because March never comes for a February so expanded by the memories.
Categories:
oneiric, fish, memory, people,
Form: Prose
SHADOWS TRYST
Shadows lead as they sometimes will
interspersed with moments of just standing still
as if deciding “what’s the next right move”
or marching on as if they’ve naught to prove.
Shadows follow as at times they must
stalking - through heredity’s dust
carving their initials in our family tree
you can’t outrun what you can’t see.
Shadows disappear at apogee
no idea where they’ve been or will be
a moment’s torment to make a choice
maintain their silence or seek a voice.
Mottled memories adrift in time
tortured dance of shapeless mime
wisps of whimsy, oneiric mists
then, now, and when, in shadows tryst.
John G. Lawless
7/5/2015
Categories:
oneiric, family, history, metaphor,
Form: Verse
I'm here bordering almost oneiric
in a state of somnolence in an invisible fire
wearing the personification of a hellish realm
obsessive and compulsive in the unknown...
I turn the hourglass counting grains of sand
to validate my existence pondering am I a victim
alone and depressed tonight...
Are you as lonely as I am, perhaps?
do you wear the narcissistic smile
in the shape of the crescent moon?
Que tal, La Luna
I whisper to the night in disintegration
"Your sleepy lullaby has failed me tonight"
just as the opiates that fall from your eyes
in steams of gleaming silver dreams...
Euphoria fades with shallow thoughts
in glass silhouettes of burning embers
making a pile of ashes so unique
no insane arsonist could have imagined...
Comes the dawn to end this paralysis
leaving me wondering am I just a marionette
that even opiates or Xanax cannot cure...
On the corner of my night table
empty bottles mock me...
Categories:
oneiric, addiction, dark, depression, ,
Form: Free verse
Wisdom wild wavering wyrd, wonder of winsome ways
Ostentatiously opportunistic, Orpheus oneiric orchid,
Marvelously mystical mirth maker making man amaze
Ardently argumentative, and artistic accenter; avid
Nymph. Naturally nurturing nostalgic nidulation days
How do I praise the sweet excess in you, the grace
Oozing milk of kindness, compassion that bore me
Obdurate beauty more profound than the pretty face?
Dance dear dreamer devoid of drums drizzled memory.
Categories:
oneiric, tribute,
Form: Acrostic
Mind plays itself shuffling with words thereby -
Imaginations are much creative, justifying realistic;
Heart often cries - instead tears falling from sky
A smile often brings the daylight, justifying happiness naturalistic.
She plays by his garden of roses and dances along with the jonquils -
Her voice! Is often likened along with the birds sung…
Yet when she abhors his feelings -
He often resembles with the world of iniquities
Along with the bright sky that provoked darkness.
He then makes a life out of grief
And thinks as the earth is no more as it is –
He imagines the birds to fly with him
And the clouds to give shelter –
He imagines the rain to pour with tears
And the blue roses to bosom in winter –
He imagines the ocean not so vast
And swim with the world within it –
He imagines the mountains not so high
And climbs along desperately to his last breath.
He then faces a journey that’s seen differently
People around him but he expects himself to be lonely –
He then counts the number of days with no more distress
And writes down everything with all oneiric images.
Categories:
oneiric, imaginationworld,
Form: Free verse
In fluent argot like a profound inchoate
Chthonic patronizing blood paroxysmally folds in curdles
You illuminate none but yourself with a pleasant scapegrace idiocy
Dishevelled and voluble in dark ages of medieval filth
Legerdemain to my vituperate wills and wanders
Anything in purge of the death of proclivity, namely yours
Crepuscular black skies, fugacious and oneiric...you dissolve them
Caviler
Caviler
Caviler
Abate your breaths
Categories:
oneiric,
Form: Free verse