You Feel Your
Mortality As A
Result Of All
Tragedy...
To A Future
Devoid Of All
Dreams...
Dreams And Schemes.
You Sense More Intently,
Confronted, Evidently,
With No Sense Of Health,
And The Uselessness Of Wealth.
Where Pride Rips Aside
All It Seems...
Splits It’s Seams...
Where You're No Longer
Asking Who You're Unmasking...
***
There's Nothing Wrong With That.
Welcome Home.
-Gray Squirrel
09-14-2025
To Rewind or Pause Life
Most people are confused as to which one
Others may want to try it out just for fun
If there's any pain involved either one could hurt
Correcting any mistakes that we want to revert
Who in there right mind wouldn't want to rewind the good times
To meditate on the good things and taking stress off our minds
The pause button would be good for making a decision
The world can be an audience with your life on television
By pressing rewind we would all get a do over
Giving our drunken minds a chance to think sober
Both of these words can't win because its an equal fight
That's why we don't have the option to Pause or Rewind life
I sit silent to meditate
gather my thoughts breathe in and out
~ the world pauses for peace
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Sometimes the path is veiled in mist..
A winding road you can’t resist.
But when the stars no longer guide..
You must step back and look inside.
For every soul, a rhythm flows..
A deeper truth the Spirit knows.
The backward step, though small, though slight..
Can turn the shadows into light.
Retreat is not a fall from grace..
It is returning to warm embrace.
The seed must rest beneath the ground..
Before its blossoms can be found.
So trust the stillness, trust the night..
The sacred pause will birth new sight.
One step behind, the dance will show..
The forward way your soul must go.
“This heat clearly
has me beat,'
she said, 'it nearly
knocks me off my feet, and,”
then paused for a rest
long enough I deemed
for what seemed
an eternity
sufficient to warrant at best
a pregnancy
if not paternity test
which put me off my stride
as unable to read
the space between the lines
and in a quandary
not wishing to strain
the body and brain
or neurons scatter
within the grey matter
yet knowing who the boss is
decided to cut my losses
and as discretion
is the better part of valour
to make a confession
I gave up my place plus my seat
picked up the pace
and made a somewhat hasty retreat
BiteSize Poetry Contest no121 // Sponsored by: Line Gauthier
( 3rd Place )
Written: August 20, 2025
Each word a note, a quiet song,
lines rise and fall where hearts belong.
Pauses hum as loudly as the sound,
meaning dances, turning all around.
Rhythm threads through every heartbeat
and soul and melody at last meet.
aromatic pause
then time to push the lever
~ french pressed perfection
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Seasons Now and After 8-11-25 Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pause Between Summer and Autumn
Summer sighs ~ she pauses to gaze on days
When sunlight drips from feathery birch leaves
Whispering of growing large, ripening,
Enchantress turns maize to fields of spun gold
She sways in rhythms of pregnant harvests
Only seen in dreams of the equinox.
As white clouds gather, like storms in waiting,
She gathers new bluebirds in her warm heart
Singing with their harmonies as light fades,
Like that comma of stillness in between
Daylight and dawn, she savors this moment
Before autumn plants frost upon her blush.
Contest: Seasons now and after
Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
Date: 12.08.2025
Feel that pause between Summer and Autumn,
When the universe takes a relieved breath,
Before pulling the leaves to the bottom,
Where they fall to their silent crushing death;
Hear that sigh between Summer and Autumn,
Pregnant with the restless rustle of trees,
All good and ready for what God taught 'em,
Whispering soft the secrets of the breeze;
That break between Summer and Autumn's cool,
Change's needed, so's the time to just lie ~
The in-between time to face new shift's rule,
When Nature grooms itself to dye and die.
School was out, setting her free in summer -
free to tell friends bye, be lonely and cry.
Tears would spill for a best friend of one year
who she had learned would in time forget her.
Most teens knew same place and faces through school.
Military brats do not live that truth.
Summer would decide her joy for school's start.
Parents choose suburbs, not an army base,
to be this year's school and friends starting place.
She hoped the house was in a neighborhood
with teens her same age to share summer skies,
then fall, winter and spring for her next page.
Air feels like silk but, outside there’s a chill
The sun hangs low, like it’s waiting to thrill
Heat’s in my skin humming soft and slow
Gold drips down slow where the late daylight flows
Fields hold their breath caught between green and gold
Half awake, half dreaming stories untold
Dancing right there where sweat meets the cold
Fire and frost sharing the seasons hold
It’s not goodbye, it’s just a quiet pause
Like lovers knowing what’s coming because
One last sip of heat before colors fade
In this in-between that’s where magic’s made
8/10/25
Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
Contest: Seasons Now And After
The footprints of Summer are left to fade
garnished by Autumn as it starts to slow
and steals the sunlight with its dim-lit shade
as the seasons begin to ebb and flow
The Autumn's nip chills its honeyed glow
as the wet leaves of Summer have withdrawn
to leave a pause mid-change of Autumn's show
as it paints vivid colors of the dawn
Summer's green mutates towards leaves brighter
seasons dance together in a ballet
The day between seasons grows tighter
This pageantry of change is on display
For: SEASONS NOW AND AFTER Poetry Contest Sponsor: Nette Onclaud Date: August 6, 2025
*****
Somewhere between the summer and the rain
you left and left me lonesome once again.
The tiger-lily and the bumblebee
are pleased to keep their simple company.
The young black-tailed deer and her spotted fawn
take morning leisure on the fresh mown lawn
Two-by-two life moves through each season's flow,
How each day follows day I do not know.
Snapdragons bloom amongst the marigold,
the sun and rain still color rainbows bold.
But I am paused within Autumn's shadow;
Loneliness becomes my cold bedfellow.
For Jason and his Argonauts, golden wool was theirs to fleece
For the British, Iran's oil was theirs to drill and steal
In '53 the West led Iran's democracy into a tyrant's peace
Now we call the trouble since all part of God's grand will
So many harsh lessons are learned in winter's darkest days
Only to be forgotten as we approach a warm September
Yet in the annals of time the truth is on display
It is incumbent upon us to stop, pause, look and remember
“may gifts of silence illumine our mind ~
childlike heart becoming loving and kind”
~ quote by poet
as we gather pebbles in our heart’s nest
we may do well to pause and then reflect
that all we hold onto death’s tongs will wrest
leaving our deluded soul here shipwrecked
play of life is in incessant motion
where we cannot cross the same river twice
a quiescent heart ending commotion
whence each moment in time is paradise
gifts of solitude strengthen fortitude
that poised in the void by thoughts not decoyed
our aura is with love and light imbued
revealing pure light of Self unalloyed
contrast desire with soul’s eternal fire ~
search for truth within, in silence inquire
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