again and always
a compromise convincing
but
regretfully
nauseating
(Weekly Magnetic Poetry Challenge • July 6–12, 2026)
Oh Moon, high above
Long associated your
Luminance with human love; your many phases
Simply uneven reflections, heated blushes of
Of our often less than perfectly performing hearts —
From your lofty altitude, can you give a hint,
Where has my love traveled? Since I drove
Her foolishly away, my heartstrings regretfully
Unraveling —
Dear Moon, can you not flash a code for me,
Project before me a hopeful beam that I
May follow? Give this foolish, remorseful soul
Relief from his own self-imposed hollow.
Please tell her of my longing, in your many dreamy ways.
Tell of my sorrow, clearer to me my own darkness, now in
Lightness days. Tell her using your best romantic displays.
Perhaps your graceful gleams will find a fond
Opening for me, if one yet remains in her distant
Heart? You, Mother Moon, bringing strays together, investing
Love's all – to see us then so sadly, thoughtlessly apart.
In the bitter museum the past is on parade
in postures of reproach. Vast corridors
display a thousand ways of being ashamed
and illustrate the progress of despair.
Behind their glass, the mannequins of once
exhibit all the wealth of worlds now gone,
and frozen in their accusatory dance
the avatars of loss are labelled Done.
In the bitter museum extinguished dynasties
of hope set forth their monuments, inscribed
in that dead language, laughter. Vanished breeds
of joy are shown, regretfully alive.
The relics seem so real they almost leer.
In the bitter museum the dust is streaked with tears.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
regretfully, as I wave goodbye
a single tear drips from my eye
This was something that I
had always known would be one day
There was nothing
either of us could say
This once magical connection
could never have been saved
Both swore we were willing to change
But after the ways we each had behaved
The pain & doubt could not
be erased from our brains
Souls bonded by fate
magnetically drawn to one another,
Had set the stage for the most soul changing, eye opening, painfully magical escape..
The worst curse
of being human
is thinking too much.
Doubt is born,
then resentment,
then your own hatred.
Regretfully,
I’ve created
what I never wanted:
a pain of the soul.
When you’ve had every chance and all resource in hand.
When you’ve been in good graces and known where you stand.
When you had God in Heaven reach down just to line it all up,
and you still found a way to fail. How could that be?
You look back in disbelief, regretfully
and feel like a failure, jinxed by a charm of bad luck.
Then you’re forced to ask yourself, “Should I go on?”
You wonder if maybe the timing was wrong,
that if you keep going, this time will it finally work out?
Cuz now there’s an omen that’s lurking behind,
waiting to take you down time after time.
It’s hard not to think that way, wondering what it’s all about.
But success in a very real sense is defined
as - starting things over again, one more time
than whatever the number of times it is that you’ve gone down.
Leave that omen behind in the re-view of life.
Drive off and keep going. Don’t even think twice.
For now, you know better in all things… this time around.
When we arrived in a new world after crossing the sea.
We were all seeking independence and an opportunity.
Families would find it challenging, making it rough.
With a lot of hard work, it would provide enough.
The intention of this progress was to add more.
Not just more for those who are money's whore.
The patriots understood social contracts you see.
They left us with a limited government, and liberty.
We are now waking up and taking a look at privation.
The question is what happened to the state of our nation.
Regretfully, "we the people" were sleeping, fast asleep.
Our eyes were closed and there was not even a peep.
Are we completing a circle of Representative Democracy.
Taking us back to a place where patriots fled, Autocracy.
Still angry are those from all those revolutions from long past.
There is greed wondering how long this democracy would last.
Will America, the land of the free, be taken without firing a shot.
With no invaders, are we being destroyed from within, we forgot.
Edward J Ebbs 02/11/2025
From this angle the bushes do not conceal them.
Are they hinged or unhinging?
Each body is a prison gate for the other,
both seem stuck together by a pungent lip spit.
Feathering fingers pulse-play over gulping skin.
Greedy eyes zoom in,
unbuckling muscles sift and trowel,
modelling the creaming and palpable.
This public act despoils the evening
yet it also sweetens.
I feel the need to rut,
to suck inward all this carnality,
to sup upon this liqueur of spiced flesh,
even though my cupped hands
remain regretfully or not,
unsullied.
Reel me in, I’m feeling further
My Desmond daze reaps a soulful yearn as you cross my plain
Reaching out yet only my eyes feel you
She’s God’s oath
Betwixt my folded arms that stitch, twist a soulless gaze In which I cannot define
More-so, Regretfully refined
But as I realize that she was right
The moment has come for her to exit my life
She’s everything horrible about perfection
Winter’s perspective of autumns lesson
She’s every color of a supernova
An explosion to only bring me closer
Her mouth a blade to make me fall to bits
Touching her means cherishing your fingertips
Sweet violet tendencies
Wasn’t it Eros who got in the way of his own arrows?
Begotten to lay alone forever
Begotten to write my own little words
What an unusual way to whimper
“I need you tonight”
I watched kitty inch closer to the fish
For you see she jumped upon a desktop
First a stool, then to a chair and then swish
My curious one had no bounds to stop
Back and forth she tiptoed around the bowl
Front to side she shadowed the five Lil golds
I couldn't see kitty being a troll
Yet it's her nature to see what unfolds
I gave her a little more rope to play
After all she outgrew her mouse and ball
From trust she looked to see if it's okay
My eyes regretfully did say it all
Go, go and explore but please don't you touch
Let those little fishes swim swim in joy
Can Lil kitty please show restraint and such
Yet kitty did find a way to be coy
She waited for me to let my guard sway
She dove into the bowl and caught her fish
To my kitty it was only cats play
Now a puppy instead would be my wish
7/10/23
Start Jamming Any Rhyming Form Poetry Contest
Sponsor-Eve Roper
Photo Chosen-Kitten Looking Into The Fishbowl
I don't know the way to prostrate properly
I don't know how to make supplications discreetly
The droplets just drip down my cheeks
That's how this thing mercy seeks
I know my faults, so I feel guilty
But I know my Lord, He'll so benevolently
forgive my sins, if I ask regretfully
My sinful past can't hinder my path
Because my matter is already dealt with and
I don't need a man to hear or attend
It's me and my Lord, and He does listen
I wrong and wrong, repent and repent
I cry and cry, and I return again
See His forgiveness, He always forgives
And not to mention, the favours He gives
Air, water, clothes, food, and family
He has never seized, whether I am faulty
And provides all these bounties solely
This is my Lord, my God, my Allah
Nothing is comparable, He's the one and only
A common phrase in athletic circles,
Speaks to the value of a short memory.
Designed to move on from costly mistakes,
While avoiding that painful slavery.
Regretfully, there's a side-effect,
Causing repeated offenses taking place.
Where the perpetual forgetfulness often
Resembles, the stupidity on every face.
This cycle shows a lack of learning,
Allowing ignorance to blindly lead.
While skillful rhetoric veils the reality,
Giving shade to those in need.
The conflicts seldom clarify,
Any memory that stood before.
As the past attempts to be re-written,
With a clouded history to ignore.
So powerful is this illusion,
Where what is seen is not believed.
That the truth becomes ambiguous,
In the shadows of those deceived.
Yet optimism is still abundant,
Piercing through every now & then.
As those afflicted eventually recall,
To a point where they remember when.
I sometimes try but obviously am
bound to more often than not fail
To hide behind my cocoon spun
silken webb of lie's
For fear of otherwise being exposed
that I doth not possess any or little
or no intrigue or mystery at all
Besides what you see cowering
dastardly in front of you here before
you now
So mistakenly I take a bow forgetting
rather I should have been curtseying
instead
But regretfully for me my head over
rules my heart
When like baby I feel trapped and
am unable to react and am forced
into a corner
As fear has stolen from me my
confidence and silenced my voice
so I dare not wish speak out
As I am so frozen statuesque dumbstruck
to the point I can not even in or through
the graceful ambient language of sign
Have the ability nor emotional depth
to display the sense of inner turmoil
pulsating through my veins down to
my core
And the reason why what not only
I but the world sees now in I is
Someone suffering from a terminal case
of Imposter Syndrome
Remain polite she's only a friend
Do not judge you do not know the end
Only come at her request, no surprises keep it best
Keep what you see deep inside
She does what she does only to survive
When she gives what she gives take it in stride
Little things add up as you set them aside
You ask "Does she love me? No, she could not."
Being poor and survival easily forgot
In my world I've seen men step aside
Never in my life could I desert my pride
Somehow words and promises
end up being kept
Missing words become reasons
they secretly wept
A woman is a woman made by God
as a whole
Emotions arn't missing they're just waiting to unfold
On my side I waited for the one to commit
too poor to ask a hooker to reluctantly quit
Then the day came she asked me to leave
Erased from her life I regretfully grieve.
{For Kenya}
Naked against the winter sky
their autumn finery lies moldering
beneath the season's first snow.
Where now the innocence of youth
and the boldness of summer?
How fleeting do your days appear,
too soon they are consumed.
Regretfully I marked your passage
while looking forward toward tomorrow.
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