Close to this sleeping root, in its flesh of ancient earth,
something struggles silently to become light again, to be born anew from shadow.
And we remain, with our thoughts hanging like a rope torn from the sky,
wondering whether to overlook its gentleness, sweet and annihilating.
A tumbling of black waters follows, over the forehead of my memory,
a shaken clarity, like a lightning bolt that lies, falsifies, and forgets.
Then I barely recognize the electric grace of the men from long ago,
whom I had seen carrying their rusted shirts through the swamp that scorched them,
planting themselves in the ground with arms outstretched like a cross, a condor on each shoulder,
men who wanted to die beautifully, shattering their bones like ancient bells,
their eyes extinguished like burnt amber, silent as icons forgotten by prayer —
and I feel them smoldering within me, like a root that refuses to sleep.
And I walk out into this magical, phosphorescent rain, mystical and cold,
to untie the rope that binds me across centuries and dreams,
to roll myself back into the root from which all that I am has struggled to become again.
On
the
threshold
of twilight,
firefly lamps ignite,
Bewitched children covet the charming, floating gold orbs
abandoning play to chase tiny elfin creatures, capturing joy in glass jar globes.
Blooming phosphorescent glow spills magical light, charming effulgence for hanging wisteria pergola. Perfumed purple clusters scent
sunset duskiness. Fragrance, lamps, and a cozy sanctum form playtime perfection till little eyes grow sleep heavy, fairyland abandoned for soft eiderdown quilts. Firefly lanterns grow still and dull, their flawless light extinguished.
August 5, 2026
Stars or Fireflies Fibonacci Poetry Contest
Hiya Sharma, Sponsor
Phosphorescent planetary
paths petrify prematurely,
Profoundly powerful
photospheres perish
pathetically,
Prominences polarize,
Propagating parabolic
phantom - shadows,
Preterite plasma - bursts
petrify periodically,
Precipitating permanent,
pitch - black primordial -
gloom,
Prototypical pulsars
paradoxically portend post-
stellar doom,
Profound planetary
patriarchs perish perpetually.
A luminescent scimitar
cleaves the obsidian
firmament,
An ethereal calligraphy
traced upon the cosmic
element.
Suspended in quiet majesty,
a vestige of celestial grace,
Shedding a shimmering,
iridescent glow across time
and space.
This iridescent sickle cradles
the penumbral sphere,
As whispering constellations
gather softly from far and
near.
A mesmerizing emblem of
the twilight's quiet, transient
art,
Stirring a melancholic
wonder deep within the
dreamer's heart.
Through the subterranean
expanse of the everlasting
night,
She glides with incandescent
elegance, a beacon of pure
light.
An ephemeral,
phosphorescent crescent,
beautifully designed,
Casting a captivating,
tranquil spell upon all
humankind.
The final, phosphorescent
water slows,
To weave a microscopic lace
of white,
A meditative riverbed that
flows
Beneath the omnipresent
stars of night.
The tide returns to where it
first began,
To heal the jagged, deeply
broken floor,
To wipe away the enormous
life of men
And soften the crinkled
of the ocean.
It is a perpetual, primordial
design,
An everlasting victory over
death,
Traced softly by a entwining
line.
The wave dissolves inside the
open sea,
A brief snapshot of pure
infinity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I drift off to sleep, casting my nets into the dark,
where thoughts dart silver, quick and wild~
a phosphorescent bloom of sharks,
the glint of something half-defiled.
They rise like soup, these shapeless things,
half-snail, half-song, half-broken wheel,
with moth-wing sighs and piano strings
that hum the tunes I cannot feel.
The catch tonight? A tooth, a key,
a lost lover’s face dissolved to mist,
the weightless thrum of what might be
entwined tight with what does not exist.
I reel them in—my surreal prize~
all writhing light with fevered ink,
then wake to find them in my eyes,
still sinking, soft, and blurred at brink.
Painting Black Tears as Inverted Light
let us paint with radiant black tears the shadow of white light,
the passions of unconscious consciousness that think without feeling anything,
the somber beings radiate their phosphorescent darkness and full void,
the desires of penumbral shadows transparent opaque paint the heavy air.
to women sighs full of void adorn their necks empty of air,
the leaders of the idea without thought build the cathedrals of destroyed mind,
a man slave free chained in his prisoner emancipation eternally,
to the resurrection of yesterday's tomorrow today that was never present dead.
the arbitrary necessary obliges freedom to choose without wanting something,
what should not have to happen happened unhappened,
still talking I stood silent with words that scream in stillness,
I confessed my holy sins to the deep rock that floats.
the only one to whom I give wrong right is the truth of clear lie,
the love from facts without facts that acts only in inaction,
the old youth ages with each day that makes it younger,
the life without my sadness happy drowns me in its bitter joy!
The Invisible Strings of Black Light
I sing my mute blizzard on the stiffened string of full void,
the shrill echo of silence gently undoes time's curtain for me,
like a luminescent howl from a transparent sarcophagus,
that aspirates my breath through the pores of an effervescent abyss,
cacophonic symphony of angels with wings of calcified plague,
conducted by white crows singing in psalms of evaporated matter,
adorned with the phosphorescent keyboards of the abyss-color,
that blinds with its radiant blackness any lucid non-seeing,
abstract paintings of crystallized tears in dried blood,
a hypnotic rodeo of petrified butterflies in arrested flight,
metaphysical courtesans of a sterilized and eternal amor,
king without crown in the kingdom without throne and without stern,
where love is an amnesia that remembers everything in forgetting,
and presence is no longer needed to always be living disappearance,
my sinusoidal trajectory through a crystal of solid fog,
that wove our eternity into an exploded second,
to the nectarous curses floating through your granite thoughts,
the mosaic of my solar nights with fate's luminous catastrophes!
I believe in oceans
because I read
I read that they are green, and gray, or blue,
amethyst when daylight packs its cloudy bags
I believe in oceans
that they are more than waves and water
that there are beings who breathe inside them
plankton that drift in the current
algae, seagrass that wave to invisible companions
jellyfish, dangerous and translucent--
I believe in these.
Giant clams, who slam their engraved doors
on breakfast,
Phosphorescent jellyfish, undulating their many legs.
I have mused on the brittleness of crabs
and whales so colossal
that a planet might have swum by.
I tread brokenly on the constant earth
bruising when I fall
gulping the uncolored air
anxious for the future
believing in oceans.
You entered my silence like a violin bow dragged with blood through shattered stained glass
I sewed your laughter under my eyelids and lungs, and the light transformed into myriads of fragrant wounds
I coughed wild moon petals for weeks, my mouth full of the echo of your ever-burning footsteps
There is no cure for you, you are the high fever that shapes bones into transparent crystal bells
You are the imperial chandelier fallen right in the middle of the sonata, when the air still trembles with flame and glass
And I lean daily among the shards, gathering your syllables like phosphorescent fish above my heart
I taste them with fear, checking if they still smell of sound, if they still shake the rooftops of my orbit
Every morning I bandage my lungs with sheet music, hoping that silence will flow from me
But the silence breaks anew and your echo returns like a kite torn by a storm
So I clutch your broken glass in my fists, to make it sound like the violin again
From the drab green-brown worm of caterpillars and pupae,
Emerges the phosphorescent butterfly so pleasing to the eye!
But, why oh why, are butterflies so superbly colorful,
That we admire the fleeting flutters and flashes as wonderful?
Is it to say: "Be warned I'm toxic don't you dare eat me!"
Is it to attract a mate or mimic leaves, or flowers, Tweedledum dee?
For the worm which once crawled on leaves with heavy down-trod tread,
Knew what splendor with patience lay within to burst out ahead.
Like the ugly duckling shun by clutch contentious, and mum,
That transforms to a magnificent white swan glistening in the sun!
Alice said: "When you have to turn into a chrysalis and butterfly on queue,
I should think you’ll feel it a little 'strange', I would, won’t you?”.
“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar, with a leer and sneer for all to hear.
"You'll get used to it in time,” as it sucked its hookah into gear.
The world is your mirror, its stage such delight,
You're drunk on the elixir of endless limelight.
Ceaseless is the obsession for attention.
Baseless without foundation, a hollow pretension.
A dazzling array of endless phase shifts,
Keeps any analysis at bay in the mists.
Always in your face, so hard to dismiss.
Always in the media, a relentless hit-or-miss.
There's no let-up, no pause for reflection.
An endless light show, a blatant vivisection,
Of all sucked in by the Emperor resplendent,
Whose phosphorescent gall is transcendent.
Comfort belies not upfront, where the bright glare blinds,
But in the glowing lingering embers of the afterglow.
In the afterburner of the karaoke sing-along song.
Humming the back-story concoction of memories
Translucent and phosphorescent.
Tarrying perchance, in a happenstance dance,
A wake, lingering long, along into the night
On the back-burner, dimmer set to simmer.
I walked beneath the streetlight, then, slow paused;
the yellow phosphorescent glow had caused
a strange shadow to hover above mine;
hesitate a while, then did intertwine;
a margin which it long ago transgressed;
an unwanted, and uninvited guest.
Streetlights, nightlights, the shadow is the same;
it is my shadow, mine, I am to blame.
They’ve never felt the pull, the calling deep and low,
Of waves that brush the shore with secrets kept below.
Nor tasted salt on lips, nor felt the rush and sting
Of tides that swell and break, and all the storms they bring.
They know no whispered songs the ocean sings at night,
No stars reflected there, no phosphorescent light.
To them, the sea is vast, a plain without a sound—
They never touch its soul, its depths unfathomed, bound.
But those who love know well, and hear in every tide
The surge of whispered dreams, where lovers' hopes reside.
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