I watched you leave and sealed my mouth shut tight,
And turned my love to poison overnight.
I wanted to scream, to make you stay, to bleed,
But I just stood there, choking on my need.
I told myself that silence made me strong,
But silence was the place where rot belonged.
I should have said you broke me, made me small,
I should have said I loved you through it all.
I should have said you left me in that room,
Alive, but learning how to breathe in gloom.
I should have said I'm angry at your face,
For how you made my anger feel like grace.
Now I confess it to these empty walls
How I rehearsed your name down empty halls.
How I regret the war I did not wage,
How I still love you, even through my rage.
I hate that I still check the phone at night,
I hate that I still dream you hold me tight.
Forgive me I was cruel to keep it in,
To let us die without the truth within.
The thing I never said now eats at me,
It is the chain, the cell, the lock, the key.
It lives inside my throat, it will not free,
Until I say: you still belong to me.
Far right polemic is rehearsed
Hubble bubble toil and trouble
Insanity.. humanity at its worst
Together can burst their bubble
Or in the sh*t forever immersed
Burns and then turns to rubble
As damn it our planet is cursed
We need to do this at the double
Earth’s our home must be nursed
If not then we’re all in real trouble
Climate crises cannot be reversed
Don’t need a telescope like Hubble
The sea rises our cities submersed
Infanticide.. boys won’t get stubble
As all our kids’ futures are hearsed
Just hubble trouble boil and bubble
In AI’s lies we’re now all well versed
Lust for bust as cash must be pursed
I sip regret
Like it’s vintage wine
No chaos here
Just quite decay
And the truth that colludes
To burn my soul
Swearing in both truths
Every smile
Rehearsed with quite pain
They don’t see
what I hold inside
All the storms that rain in me
I keep my demons close by
Trying not to scream
To fulfill the satanic deeds
While letting the restless chase
The noise they choose.
The halo slipped and landed, in the hay.
The fox bowed low, then carried it away.
The sheep were counted; one counted back.
The wool stayed white; the ground slick black.
A wooden gift came from nowhere, bearing no name.
The gatekeeper smiled, with no one to blame.
Inside, soft footsteps danced with borrowed names.
Around the gift, their roaring fanned the flames.
The music hummed; the horns kept perfect time.
The fox and hounds perfected every crime.
Which mask was face? Which face had paid the rent?
The mirror winked, then claimed it never meant.
So lock the door, but leave doubt outside.
For even keys may volunteer as guides.
Question each gift that knows your name.
The brightest bargains rarely play, a fair game.
The inbox filled with some strangers dressed as friends,
Each knew exactly where any, and every, suspicion ends.
One showed my name before I'd written mine;
How long have counterfeiters, rehearsed that line?
The gift horse waits until celebrations start.
The fox still knows which strings to pull apart.
New masks grow old; old riddles keep their guise.
Deceit still knocks, once, twice—asks to step inside.
—A Sonnet—
I dwelt one season, fastened to the bough,
Till autumn's breath divulged my hidden name;
The oak released the covenant we avowed,
And bade my little sovereignty to flame.
I voyaged where the fern rehearsed the rain,
Past lichened stones that kept green books of moss;
Each root composed, through every amber vein,
A slower scripture no man's foot could gloss.
Yet falling proved no forfeiture of place:
The forest hoards the harvest of its loss.
The brook translated gold to dark embrace,
Till silence learned the cadence of the moss.
Now spring unfolds where none have witnessed me—
I bloom as rings the living heart of tree.
They built him where the cliffs outlived the storms,
stone stitched to stone by hands that feared surrender.
His windows faced the horizon,
yet none were made to open.
The gulls called every morning.
He answered only with echoes.
Winters polished his walls into silver,
summers baked silence into every crack.
Travelers praised his strength,
never noticing the ivy growing inward.
One autumn, the tide stopped asking permission.
It climbed the rocks
not with rage,
but patience—
a language granite never learned.
Night after night
the sea rehearsed the same sentence
until the cliffs began repeating it
in their sleep.
No tower collapsed.
No banner fell.
Yet somewhere beneath the oldest stone,
where no map had ever reached,
a single drop of saltwater
remembered
it had once belonged
to an ocean.
And that was enough.
For years afterward,
the castle remained exactly as it had always seemed—
except that every sunrise,
those who listened carefully
could no longer tell
whether the wind
was leaving,
or something inside
had finally begun
to breathe.
poems become
interchangeable
remove
the image
the poem
remains
when synapses
misfire
identity
disperses
before death
arrives
when the hands
forget
the song
the Martin
OM-45 Deluxe
inscribed in spruce
and mother-of-pearl
the third fret
worn smooth
by G
an archive
of vanished
movements
most poems
observe
others collect
surfaces
fallen leaves
frozen ponds
abandoned chapels
secondhand
transcendence
rehearsed
astonishment
mistaking
recognition
for revelation
few descend
into
distressed
consciousness
where nothing
remains
clean
is messier
no idle
observations
consciousness
a spiral
of repitition
residue—
not the subject
only the
substitution
the mosquito
bite
of fungibility
==========
Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
Contest: THROUGH AESTHETICA
Date: 21July 2026
Night mantled every copse in velvet's umbrage,
Till silence gathered plicatures of air;
The moon distilled its argent effluence through leaves,
And darkness mastered the susurrant art of prayer.
A solitary moth unseamed the cerulean hush;
The brook rehearsed forgotten silver speech.
Earth wore an almost sacramental nap of shade,
While dawn arrived too reverent to breach.
You had it all wrong.
You were never a fling,
And there was never an ex.
You were his first—never a flex.
We warned him not to simp,
That it was a sign of weakness;
That men must never love,
That body counts matter more than a GPA.
We warned him
You would make him vulnerable.
Now he finally sees why.
We said he'd want to marry you,
And every word came true.
So, did you feel the same?
Now he knows
He was never the only man.
But was he the main?
Were we really honest?
Is this the true meaning
Of love is blind?
Must love make us blind,
Or are we simply blinded by it?
He rehearsed his pickup lines:
"You're hotter than lava."
"I hate my last name—can I give it to you?"
And you smiled...
Was it genuine?
He believed we'd never lie to him,
And we always warned him about you.
But mistakes make us wiser.
Even so,
He would still choose you again.
Ere Dawn resumed her immemorial trust,
And vested earth with its hereditary fire,
A quiet ordinance, older far than light,
Passed through creation's unrecorded choir.
No seraph stirred.
No sceptre changed its hand.
Only possession loosed its last command.
The cedar kept its patriarchal shade;
The river held its testament to sea;
The stars maintained their sacerdotal watch,
Yet none rehearsed the grammar of the free.
Each thing fulfilled
Its undisputed part,
Without one covenant of "mine" at heart.
Then at the vesper table, long made holy
By homely fidelities no years could sever,
She brake the loaf, prepared the waiting bowl,
And reached to serve her absent love as ever.
Her hand grew still—
For love, at length made whole,
Could not distinguish giver from the bowl.
Then Light, divested of all need to shine,
Found every soul had always been its own.
A mangled man's
remains,
remain dismembered.
Scattered limbs
laid amongst the
litter.
Littered
ligament lies
amidst tense
muscle,
resting cuts
lay tender.
I really
try to not
remember.
This I
wish I
was lying about.
I can't
I magine
mans lying about.
Torn asunder, ripped
apart by chainsaw
teethed razor.
Rehearsed excuses
always sound best
on scratch paper.
Throw it away or
save it for later?
From behind ear
whisper bubblegum's
last flavor.
Hope all is better
before a blue
member come rapping
upon thy chamber.
They won't just go away.
It's best to
answer, then
answer what they ask.
Then they'll leave you
alone.
To go
about your day.
left in disarray,
disagree met dismay.
Where is the
line that
compromised game
last time?
The best thing about you is that you're my sister
My first friend, my best friend
I wouldn't want anyone else to play that role in my life
You play it perfectly
Every act, every sentence
Like you rehearsed it like such
I love being in your presence
Each moment with you is a memory I'll never forget
When we grow up, I won't see you as much
We'll go our separate ways
And probably only see eachother on holidays
But I'll always remember how our hugs used to go on forever
How we always seemed happier together
Cause when I grow up
The thing I'll miss most is you
The cartographer arrived after dusk,
his satchel swollen with unfinished weather.
He unrolled a map upon the kitchen table
where rivers wandered beyond their names,
where mountains drifted nightly in their sleep.
"You have drawn this wrong," said the widow.
He smiled.
"No land is ever where it believes itself to be."
Outside, rain rehearsed its ancient language
upon the roof's attentive skin.
The mapmaker dipped his pen into darkness
and sketched another valley between two heartbeats.
All night he worked.
At dawn, the widow discovered
that the road to her grief had vanished,
replaced by a footpath winding gently
toward a meadow she had forgotten existed.
The cartographer was gone.
Only the map remained,
and on its farthest edge, in careful ink:
There are countries within you
that no empire has measured.
she get off by what she's wearing
I like her best with nothing on
she'll forever tickle my fancy
long as I can keep her in my arms
whats the need to go out dancing
we can do it here at home
a specail night with such decription
is just you and I alone
Concerts coming we rehearsed singing
I sang her a serenade
the background singing hummed do whu swinging
til I cued them to sing
I got all caught up in the dancing
I stumbled from line to line
my lady stepped in for me
got my back on track and in line
what this fussing about this being fancy
when the nights with you
I love the audeince we're entertaining
keeps us fresh and all renewed
They walk in spotless, pointed shoes, through burned fields
hands in front, folded in prayer.
Their talk drips honey, over the graves they dug themselves.
calling it mercy.
They are artisans of fog,
blurring horizons with smoke and mirrors.
Every wound they make is a misunderstanding,
blamed on the victims of their attacks.
They weave fig-leaf halos out of denials,
as snakes unwind and recoil in the grass.
Their smiles are taut, righteous, and rehearsed
eyes gleaming with the confidence of a practiced con.
They speak of love, but leave heart-shaped tattoos,
as mementos and curios in their wake.
To face them is to stand before a mirror,
that swears blind your reflection never existed.
They fear no reckoning.
For the wrongs are always someone else’s.
Their smugness is deaf, dumb, and blind,
born of sacred, frozen certainty,
worn like virtue naked on face and sleeve.
They polish ashes and call them grace,
reclaiming the fire for yet another fight.
They dress the wound, deny the blame,
their forgiveness ever lame—
in virtuous disdain.
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