Written: September 29, 2025, for contest sponsored by Tom Wood
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I) Sojourn of the Alabaster Mind
I careen through a world of chatoyant light,
Each step is a mirror of halcyon lore.
The pavonine sky and a chimera flight,
Projects sage shadows on an Elysian shore.
A clamor of atlas, a ductile tickle
Elixir of wonder, still need to fickle—
To pursue the penumbra, to not be blind,
And a sojourn for the alabaster mind.
II) The Necrotic Hour
I maunder across the clangor of despair,
A stertorous breath in the stygian gloom.
No nepenthe soothes within egregious snare,
Each cough is a pyrrhic echo in my room.
The airhead mocks my once-mellifluous breath
My Oculus dims in sudden fever death.
No eloquence lives in this loathsome abyss—
My nemesis: the sickness can't be sheer bliss.
Written: August 09, 2025, for contest SEASONS NOW AND AFTER Sponsored by: Nette Onclaud
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Aurora sheds her velvet, gleaming flame,
Dusk with iridescent shades fills the air.
Molten winds trick hearts in taking a game,
Grooved meadows grant obedient despair.
The alabaster clouds sparkle with grace,
Empyrean dreams appease the reek ache.
Fertile roots stir zymotic in their place,
Anodyne stars at triptych kindly break.
The swarm is a hive of busy tough bees,
Pavonine clouds, incarnadine with thrill.
Multivocal leaves—ethereal, breeze—,
Rapture in desiccation, soft and still.
Written: August 07, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Mark Toney
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Corset of steel tightens—ratified pain,
Vestigial breath trapped in ischemia thrall.
The ductile hope failed to placate
This Pyrrhic ache, this woebegone gall.
A sojourn in the squalor of soul,
Where sylphlike dreams maunder, downcast.
Ogle the embers of the miraculous nexus—
A seraphic visage lost, quickly.
Vivacious once, now virile with woe,
Panacea tastes of pabulum, slipshod, and cold.
Tinkling memories coruscate as zeugma—
Bright, yet untoward, they never hold.
Quixotic penchant for connection,
Grasping too late the nebula beneath.
What puissance is this—this throe, this tumult—
When tulle-wrapped love meets a gyre of grief?
Ululation beneath pavonine skies,
Adumbrate every glance, every sigh.
Crimson weave keeps a skirt in place,
Valuable, stained, adorned, and slain.
River,
undulating,
cascading through rainbow,
pavonine, prismatic, shimmer,
like a serpent slithering down the hill.
She hums a song of the mountains,
that echoes in vale as,
rhythm of flowing
river.
Placed fourth
ROLLING WITH THE Rs Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Nette Onclaud
Date of entry: 03/Aug/2025
ELEMENTAL DESIGN
Hydrogen to Helium
A fusion formed by gravity
A carbon-based delirium
Molecularly infinite energy
An ancient discipline known as alchemy
We’re consciousness - the explosion - amorous
We dream of gold from lead and mercury
Fueled reaction in copper with phosphorus
A universal age of prosperity
Bismuth bath. Deficient of iron and zinc
Astronautic laugh – last shine of hope
Nuclear decay –enlightened way – elemental - instinct
Scientific – logical clay – gaseous isotope.
The fluoride, we drink?
Humanity on the pivotal brink
The edge, a precipice.
Lanthanides and actinides
Metals and mysteries.
Shrink down to atomic scale
Our intellect – an accelerated history
Reality?
A holographic projection
Radioactive expansion
A gravitational trajectory
Inertia
Precious pavonine pearl
Our planet, our world.
A place all our elements may inhabit
Terrestrially unique. Diverse and intelligent
The push of inertia
The pull of gravity
The spin of an atom
The spin of our galaxy.
The end.
(written for the periodic table of elements poetry contest) 12-12-14
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