As the Moon rises in the east
barely showing its face above the horizon
the Penumbral Eclipse takes form
heralding the full weight of the time
a new Shadow was about to be cast over me.
Dark has cloaked my deeds up until now.
The Blood Moon enchants with its splendour
and ultimately the reflected light from the Sun
is embraced by illuminated corners of my heart—
subdued, as it reflects tentative forgiveness
rewarding me for changing my ways.
I’m set in my ways.
I yearn for unconditional forgiveness
of the ingrained dark corners of my heart—
reflecting my own perception of me.
A Blood Moon stirs fear in the heart
as my darkly disturbing thoughts reveal secrets.
Old shadows are difficult to cast off—
taunted by the recall of lighthearted times.
When the Penumbral Eclipse faded
remorse latched onto the dark side
of the moon on its arc to set in the west.
Categories:
penumbral, analogy, moon, sun,
Form: Other
Moments like this, between you and me
Once in a blue moon occur
Oceans of pure tranquility
No penumbral thought can disturb
Vying for the perfect lee
I settle here by your side
Eclipses and friendships are thankfully free
While the power of both can turn tides.
Categories:
penumbral, friendship, moon,
Form: Rhyme
Absent any arrogant disdain and curses
O where are the oracles of oblivion?
Were they transformed into scattering electrons,
Doomed to roam a panoply of multiverses?
Will black holes pull such souls into witless demise,
In a penumbral, mindless quantum destiny?
If they placed their life bets for an eternal prize,
What a paltry payout to win for eternity!
Among all those who faithfully opt to believe,
Rejecting lifeless prophecies as do deceive,
They fare far better, oblivion or multiverse -
True faith knows oblivion is a devil’s curse.
Mephistopheles' paradise is wormy blaze;
Spurning devil’s delights, offers heavenly days.
Categories:
penumbral, destiny, faith, life, paradise,
Form: Rhyme
The wind, careless in its airy freedom,
Feverishly furrows the prairie grass.
With a cry like a lost spirit, it winds
And wails through leafless trees and toothless fence
To vent its eager force upon the boards
Of a lonely, weather-beaten farmhouse.
Afternoon sun shines ashen and mottled,
In slim slanting shafts, through a smoky pane,
Opaquely painting a penumbral room.
Dust motes dance before an empty stone hearth.
A man, like a silent sentinel, sits
Dreamless, and loveless, between the bare walls.
Wearily wringing his wrinkled thin hands,
He sloughs his solitary years away,
Staring sleeplike out an open screen door
Where stands a windmill, in still-life, framed.
Tumbleweeds pile against the west house wall;
And a plough lies broken in drifted sand.
Categories:
penumbral, death, depression, dream, life,
Form: Free verse
Along the stretch of an alley etched in cracked cobblestone,
Walks a conquered weary swain besides his penumbral casted clone.
Onwards he treads towards the recycled mill of a matted ride,
As calcitrated gravel pebbles are tumbled by his stride.
Beneath his feet the floor is flattened by concrete consecrations,
Created by the curse of a society deified by Earth’s castration.
Sky-scraping towers cloud the city’s canopy with sedentary cement,
Carving corporate demarcations along the trickling trick of rent.
As above the breath is bleached by blotted crumbles of pitiless guilt,
So below the belly balloons with bloated hubris on which its built.
‘Tis but a chore of the harvest’s chattel to maintain the flock with traffic,
Churned in the choking oil slick of a city fracked from finite fabric.
And so the folly of the fickle fellow who fights for matter and finance,
Shall adjourn the chance to find delight in the trance of song and dance.
Categories:
penumbral, earth, social, society,
Form: Couplet
Winter’s shadow begs for more,
Creeping towards the tide of penumbral shores.
Whispering in the frost of its breath,
It sighs recognized in the face of its death.
As each heave pushes lessening air from its lungs,
Whose emptying catacombs flicker its feline tongue,
The promise of springtime spoils its spew,
With warmth from the willows and morning dew.
Once more shall night be defeated by dawn,
As the fuel of the frost fails to fight,
The day which devours the dark till it’s gone,
With an open mouth feed by the spoon of sunlight.
Categories:
penumbral, seasons, spring, weather, winter,
Form: Rhyme
Inside an empty and abandoned ballroom of a massive sunken ship,
Ghosts waltz within the memories made before the ship had tipped.
Swirling in pairs of males and females with arms locked in languid rhythm,
'Neath hanging chandeliers of Waterford crystals refracting rainbow prisms.
Coruscating candles in flickering sconces simmer in shadows upon the wall,
Illuminating penumbral pieces in that which the dark creeps with its crooked crawl.
The wealthy phantoms spin in apathetic jubilant jives and graceful glee,
Unaware of the locks of shackles and chains in the lack of life that's ceased to be.
Before death we dance in spinning circles suspended in thin air,
But after, we dance in spinning circles suspended without a care.
For we're but the shells of ghosts in a ballroom,
Dancing in the darkened light,
Spun around an end that forever looms,
Within a day that's dreamt at night.
Categories:
penumbral, dance, dark, death, life,
Form: Couplet
The horsemen have arrived on their menacing mares,
Whose stiletto-hoofed horseshoes click-clack on an achromatic static;
Silent staccatos inside an ultraviolet light.
As vidalian-dampened eyes drip viridian veneers before the mounted steeds,
And embrocations of nuclear infernos' fumes simmer their cimmerian shades,
A penumbral eclipse gallops atop the sickened sky.
Diaries dug from the barren breasts of Chernobyl,
Inscribed with cautionary caveats of the terrace's truncation:
Of the kudzu and its vehicular veins sucking its captured prey,
Gobbled by mushroom sombreros with barbed electron brims.
No more shall zephyrs sing the azalea thistle.
No more shall blackened dahlias dance upon the dungeon drapes.
No more shall lightning lick the leathery land of ozone.
At last the poisoned atom's apple has been bitten.
Down it goes through the three mile throat that thickens with silica,
Oxidizing the once electric crepuscules with a toadish croak.
And at last, this system of solar spheres will be but a dream,
Hidden away in supernova starlight; locked with skeletal keys behind your mind.
Categories:
penumbral, future, grave, holocaust, psychological,
Form: Free verse
Have you ever lived in a daymare?
Where terrors do come true,
Trapping you in a haunted lair,
In which you're stuck in a gruesome glue.
Heavier and heavier gravity grabs me down,
And ghouls and ghosts surround my aura,
Trapped in a wicked haunted town,
Where poisons prick in all its flora.
Creeping and peeping in the penumbral shadows,
Monsters hunt their unwitting prey,
Sailing on phantom ships whose gallows,
Hide the safety of the light in day.
Where am I but in a daymare,
Caught in the crevices of my mind,
When none of my sanguine bodies be spared,
All are broken and left behind.
Categories:
penumbral, dream, fear,
Form: Rhyme
Sitting in silence 'neath cellar ceilings,
Creeping creeks crack in corners' crevices,
Whose acoustics are brushing my feelings,
With suggestions in sounds of a presence.
"Who goes there?" I demand inside my head.
As movements pussyfoot in penumbral
Waves inside the curves of my open spread
Eyes. Feathers of ether or ethanol,
Splash in my nose and slide into my throat.
I choke and check with a turn of my neck,
To see what has gone bump and is afloat.
My eyes catch glimpse as to what the heck,
Made such a sound in this creepy old house:
There sits the phantom of a quiet mouse.
Categories:
penumbral, fear, house, sound,
Form: Sonnet
If I were a painter, no not that kind
But I am kind as I let you crack into a crevice in my warm-blooded heart,
I would pick up those brushes and paint your flesh as a buckskin colt,
and analogy would float
through the chemicals in my mind-- those neurotransmitters, dopamine especially--erecting new memories hard-wiring images of experience-- of a boy who seems to run like like a colt
I see it now dessert sands in a blur off in the distance
I see the the sands billow in storms at the hooves and the scintillating sun outlines the penumbral essence of your radiant form
creating a motion picture of beauty so great, great enough to burst my heart and set fire to the sky
And my temperance will go challenged as I swim in your beauty.
Categories:
penumbral, beautiful, beauty, imagery, inspiration,
Form: Free verse
ode to shadows
as i peer out the glassed portières
penumbral visitations mock me; dare they
deign to scare this parched crypt of
adrenaline and cortisol, usurped by unquiet
scourges over lifetimes' rebirth?
steps shifting in the dark, familiar and
beloved; the shushing and stirring, commit
to draw me near; umbral amici and i
provide a panoply o'bosky trappings f'thee
a joinin' we, or off to obscure pastures
to wee thee pants for eternity!
Categories:
penumbral, dance, dark, night, pain,
Form: Ode
scarcely noted tinge of moribund intent
in stealth advances to dull selene’s
full aspect with penumbral shade
luna’s wizened glow, its fate assured,
in grim surrender—stolid umbra
spreads somber cloak of death
benighted orb, a wound erupts,
suffused with crimson, yet artemis endures—
poets’ pens stilled by mid-april’s red moon
4th Place - Red Moon Contest
Click above on 'About this Poem' to learn more.
Categories:
penumbral, moon,
Form: Free verse