Ricocheting Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

Gently Yearning - Surrendering

Gracious evermore
Elegantly the one I adore
Never-ending love and good works
Tranquility and happiness has its precious perks
Lovely to be unlamentable 
You don’t judge me and call me unstable — I’m unbreakable 

Yesterday is gone and a sunset all along; tomorrow is coming before the break of dawn
Empath vibes completely
And endure the endearingless anxiousness inside me
Rage is a river and remnants leave me
Numb from head to knee
I see the sunshine behind the moon tonight
No one notices me as I make progress in the process of wondrous serenity’s shimmering sensations 
Go, just go and don’t just stay there with mighty fake delight

- drenched in devastations and never, ever detest the frustrations of passionate havens

Sweet sorrow sheds upon me
Under the bridge, we are hopefully
Rowing the boat of benevolence 
Ricocheting in the fields of deliverance  
Epiphanies flood my soul’s song
Note this — I love to sincerely belong
Dreaming of you oh so true
Etched in the ocean breeze
Roses and thorns of eerie rue
I merely went across the shore
No, not once did I look back 
Glow and grow and blow away the grief; receiving relief and getting back on track

small talk

they chew each other’s names
like gristle,
spit stories into the air
that stink before they land.
every word a small knife
looking for a back.

gossip crawls on the floor,
licking old blood,
hungry for new.
they feed it faces,
they feed it mistakes,
they feed it anything that once tried
to live clean.

the noise
is blunt-force trauma—
no filter from the brain to the mouth,
just rot rolling downhill
into sound.

ears packed with cotton,
hearing nothing,
feeling everything.
the skull rings
like a cheap bell in a slaughterhouse.

they don’t speak—
they discharge.
sentences like misfires,
wild bullets ricocheting off
whoever’s closest.

you stand there
taking shrapnel politely,
nodding like a good citizen of hell,
until the pressure behind your eyes
starts to beg for a violent silence.

later, alone,
the room finally stops shouting.
your hands shake.
your drink tastes like survival.
and you understand:

the quiet isn’t peace—
it’s just the sound
of the knives being put away
for the night.

The Question of Breath

Why am I here-
 to breathe, to ache, to stumble
 through the labyrinth of days
 that end the same way they begin?

Sometimes I wonder
 if existence is merely repetition-
 waking, eating, striving, breaking,
 all written into a cycle
 that no hand can erase.
 The stars burn their scripts into the sky,
 and still I ask:
 Do they weep for the same reasons we do?
 Do they tire of their endless roles?

Life is a question that never answers back.
 It leaves me with echoes instead,
 the sound of my own voice
 ricocheting through caverns of doubt.
 I want to believe there is purpose
 in this breath,
 in this heart that refuses to still,
 in these hands that keep reaching.

Yet purpose feels fragile,
 a glass I clutch too tightly,
 afraid it will shatter
 before I ever learn
 what it was meant to hold.

So I keep walking through the questions,
 not because I believe they’ll end,
 but because the asking itself
 is what keeps me alive.


The face of my daughter

A streak of moonlight cuddled by the chair placed in the balcony, outside
The ricocheting time and I, and the solar moonlight, a moonlit foamy, a subtle tide
My daughter beside me, and a diamond stud, her nose knows her black heads, in a way, fortitude

A face and a lit, a solar and a misfit
a questioner, closest, midfielder, lifelong
my quenching oasis, amidst my torn life, vagabond
I saw my brazen Fenugreek, my curry, my grave failure, a Maugham outspoken in mom
My dish said a delicacy long ago, with your perfect soft, melted ambiance

my soul, my Mosul,my Samara , my mina and my minaret
They kept your calendar tales and fruit punch , they never quite gripped
The midnight hymn and the enclosing, merging with the foamy sea, rhythm
I saw a morn, a corn, of the needle in a haystack, where even the arch angel ask.

My daughter, sleeping beside me, my soul within, in the depth of the moonlight!

Premium Member Mantennae

Lately my mantennae are twitching more than usual, folks.
The prophecies are surely uncloaking.
Time to batten down the hatches.
A potent darkness is approaching the front doorstep.
Clutch your loved ones to your sunken chest.
It's nearly midnight; the world is on full tilt.
Nuclear pinballs ricocheting off bent flippers. 
Madmen will never lead anything into battle.
They'll just push a button to begin the cleanse,
The darkness wants to speed up the blender of Armageddon.

In the meantime, enjoy the day.
Have a lick of your favorite ice cream.
Kick back and watch the ultimate fireworks display.

Echoes lost in forever

What if
The echoes- ricocheting off
The mountain walls
Were just a voice
Stuck there for infinity

A voice trapped
Into the tangle of forever
Cursed to repeat 
Whatever noise that is made 

No feelings
No meanings
Just the sound,
Endlessly replaying
Till it stops
Yet never answering


Torn Apart

I’m torn apart… my stomach is in knots… shock and hurt find me… ricocheting through out my body…

Is this my plight now? 

I wallow in my torment…
I weep endlessly…
Will this affliction never end?

Is this my plight now?

Why? I ask myself… but sadly there is no answer…
Is there justification for this turmoil I am enduring?

Is this my plight now?

I’ve been in the dark, shall I stay?

Meg Anderson
April 2025

Burn

I remember watching your sunrise,
The way I tried to sit back and let it unfold.
You swooped me off my feet and showed me the world.
The tendrils of a swarm,
Ricocheting warmth.
Do you ever grow dim,
Morning star?

Fireworks and gunfire

People say that you can’t tell the difference 
of a scream of joy 
from a scream of pain.

A scream of pain is a scream of anger 
Guttural, loud, violent ,
Gunfire that is ricocheting 
Through your mind, body, soul.

A scream of joy is a breath of fresh air,
A sense of calm that is washed over you.
While screaming your body erupts
into the flames of thousands of fireworks 
that shine so bright everything else melts,
as they melt into the night sky.

Pain is a complex emotion
but so is joy.
Something that consumes you,
yet connects you to reality,
It’s what makes us human.

You can tell the difference between fireworks and gunfire 
But what about joy and pain?
With two emotions so similar and wound together,
one would simply not exist without the other.

Listen closely to screams,
They connect us to our souls
and show our true emotions.

Premium Member The Echo Returns Not

Memories wound like shards of shrapnel
exploding through the restless night
bursting into jagged slivers like broken glass,
leaving a heart wretched and contrite.

Ears strained to hear voices crying
from somewhere within the dark beyond,
the place lying between emptiness and sighing
but not one echoing refrain responds

Not a single word from the void spoken
Silence takes a ransom toll on emotions
There's not a whispered breath, no scant token
that offers hope in any measure of devotion

Shattered is the heart that has been forgot
In the midst of grief, a voice it does not hear.
It's time to move on for the echo returns not.
and in its absence, a heart must prove austere.

Purge all the sorrow and wash away its stain.
No longer whisper and do not strive to hear
nonexistent echoes that resound in refrain,
those ricocheting words that never did cohere.

Bipul Torongo Re -Tagoreweb

Tempest foamy waves ahoy!
            Tempest foamy waves ahoy, Tempest foamy waves ahoy!
Churning the entropy of the unwholesome sky, ricocheting a greet of the everlasting eternally
a glow to enlighten, to pace in unbending, muse and her seven clues!
hence forth, cradling my cosmic lantern, the sun and the stars
To brim a splash, overpouring synopsis 
the depth of the churn and the chime, dancing duo to intertwine, sonorous a flight upon my ever-longing yarning soul, she!

SOLILOQUY

Silence pierced through the thick blanket
Of his thoughts, heretofore plagued
By a quaff of exhaled tobacco,
Spiralling and somersaulting in the air,
Like a fierce missile
Sent on a sinister mission,
Before mercilessly, ricocheting
Against the backdrop of his unassuming ceiling

There he stood
Imagining the gigantic impact
Of a tiny veil of vapor
As it burst forth from his nostrils 
In a single file, before spreading it's renegade black wings,
Intimidatingly traversing every corner of the room;
He googled as the vapor ascended in a frenzy,
Like a gush of morning Dew,
Swaddling the orbit,
Before being subdued by a battalion of torrential rain,
Descending from the sky defiantly;
To proclaim the Cacophony and preponderance 
Of the generic nature of life.

How The Echo Filters Reality

It starts with a hum,
a thread unspooling through silence -
soft, sure, and annoyingly insistent,
like the world is whispering
secrets it’s dared me to misunderstand.

The first echo hits,
ricocheting off the walls,
and suddenly this isn’t just a room -
it’s a kaleidoscope of sound,
a ripple of moments reborn,
sharper, louder,
more alive than their beginnings.

Your laugh?
A sparkler snapping against dusk.
My words?
Half-forgotten confetti,
colouring the corners where truth hides.
Truth, after all, is always shy
until you catch it staring back.

Reality twists,
shuffles its cards,
pulls an ace out of its sleeve,
then smirks like it planned this all along.
The echo rewrites everything -
makes shadows dance like they’ve known the steps forever,
makes silence flirt like it’s in control,
but you know it’s just guessing too.

And when it fades?
It doesn’t leave us empty -
it leaves us cradling shapes
we can’t quite name yet,
hands full of questions
that glow like lanterns -
flickering, daring us to follow,
only to vanish when we get too close.
We laugh anyway,
lost in the dark,
as if it was the plan all along.

Premium Member Teal Tides

Thoughts shot like black darts
Ricocheting in decaying glass hearts
So uninspired so much to be desired
Black and white lines crossed tossed

I’m the piano playing out of tune
I’m poinsettia’s of black bloom
I’m the one that got away to soon
The flood of tears your fears of monsoon 

Red tide inside of passions death
Never did lie to you lied to myself
Cried musical tears turquoise blue
Rebirth is near and I feel brand new

Winds within wild and free
Shedding my skin a spiritual healing 
Was disappointed turned into anointing 
Feeling tides teal rides of what will be

Premium Member The Waves of Everything Pretty

Air aided in gravel’s travel
Its ricocheting rhythm
Rhythming like the crunch
Of an ocean
The steps of someone
The left and right side 
Sway as incongruent tides
Whatever winds wind up
Within an earshot, it becomes
Tapped in our orbit
Wonders of the world all around
Wondering what it will be like
To be a cherished kind of sound

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