Young girls all wish and pray for the day they grow and can become big.
Strong enough to carry the gallon of milk, tall enough to ride the Rollercoaster, beautiful enough to date the boy next door.
But, there is a risk that comes with blooming.
Flowers picked and preyed on, humans feasting on their beautiful and stealing their innocence. As you get older, they will use you for your body until all that remains is a shell of a human, a mere existence of what used to be.
So, dear girl, keep your barbies close, and allow dad to carry you in when you fall asleep in the car. There is a risk that comes with growing up and becoming beautiful
New leaf in the wind
Alone, on a lifeline
Highly dependent
Risk of a fatal fall
Not fully formed
Tender,needs love
Small, craving care
In regulated milieu
The tree sighs
Boughs bend
United worry
Small, matters
Time to grow
Space to mature
Love showered
Stronger to be
whooshing winds use trees to shout messages
leaves flutter down like dying moths landing at my feet
sparkle of day feels like a tornado warning
I sit under my tallest oak
expecting her limbs to crack and hit me in the head
on my tombstone you have my permission to engrave
Risk taker from Kansas who should have known better
It's lonely on a pedestal.
It's hard when failure is no option.
Everyone deserves a guardian angel.
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
My own longing too often fabricates my history. Did you love me? That will remain a question I alone can never answer. For my heart’s perception exclaims “yes!” while the true reality, untouched by my desire, remains hidden from me and may hold my deepest disappointment. So I continue gazing at the dazzling threads of my soul, weaving a tapestry of dreams and risks, singing a song of enchantment. But perhaps the magic was never you, only my blind willingness to believe.
A suppurating crater
festers and gapes
in my heart
desiccated by hordes
of plunderers
who gorge on marrow
enshrouded in crevices
where love pleads
for refuge and succour
before gelid goons
controlling a pedigree
of sycophants
reframed to shield
their masters
from imagined devilry.
Tiny little crumbs you offer.
Mostly too little too late.
Surprisingly sufficient keeping you in the game.
Don’t push your luck though.
I can tell the well’s running low.
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
Spring shower,
dew drop flower
in your hair...
I put it there.
But, only, I confess,
because you chose to read this mess.
A dew drop flower rhyme,
might happen any time.
Dear reader, you may snort,
but sorry, now I can't abort,
because it is too late.
Chalk it up to fate.
Every farmer partners with weather.
A dependency that gauges his very survival.
Rain usually a welcome gift.
Wordku; 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Life rests solely on loss and luck's setup,
Tempting you to either win or mess up
Upon chances, stake boldly;
Not hoping the best coldly...
While holding onto heavenly backup.
Boys To Men
Of twenty-one years, the world
A boy's path becomes a man's
He stands at a new threshold
The future is his to forge
With a strong and knowing mind
He takes the first adult step
Leaving boyhood behind him
Girls to Women
At the door of her new age
She leaves her youth far behind
A woman steps out to meet
Her world where she'll make dreams bloom
Future's hers to shape anew
With courage met every day
Boundless capability
Neutral to Potential
To your new, twenty-first year
The past two decades recede
The world is a blank canvas
Your own vibrant path unfurls
Embrace what you will become
With heart and a broader life
The future is yours to shape
I braced my heart
The moment I found you
Too risky, perhaps
But what’s riskier still
Than never daring at all?
To change desired end result
input first needs to be somewhat different
risks calculated for better odds
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
INVESTED
slow
a
n
d
sure
overnight
~ divestiture
Weighed the risks of indecision
Not choosing one way or the another
~ yet somehow getting nowhere fast
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
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