There is a void I cant seem to close,
Into it all this turmoil flows,
Like a tender storm rushing forth,
Mingling all my midnight thoughts.
Those moments I have you, the moments I dont,
The moments Im inside you, the moments I wont,
Im feeling discarded locked in a dome,
Where do I now call home?
Your walls are built high,
Your tower beyond my reach,
And still I try,
To be a driftwood on your beach.
Here I am: nothing built on nothingness,
Inching towards something for a moment of bliss,
Kisses on thine eyes,
lips on your neck,
How quickly time flies,
While a ship is wrecked.
The remnants left in the deep,
Treasure chest in the ocean's keep,
Worn, beaten and if time has been kind,
Will never lose their luster in my mind.
I hold on to something that made me feel alive,
And if memory fails, I'll open my heart and take a dive.
Yet another vestige of love lost
whetted cheeks and swollen eyes
life's cruel moments wreak havoc
within the softness of one's heart.
A heart stops beating with malice
the breath gone in a rattle and hum
final whispers and the brain quivers
dormant pulse and a bluish pallor.
The tempest roars insatiably loud
a body can be lost, never to be found
great ships disintegrate upon granite
lives are left, penned on parchment.
The Reaper stares jubilant from rocks
as a grand lighthouse loses once more.
Clothing and splintered wood float by
as rubble and rabble left on the shore.
In a stormy gale, glows a freakish orb
slapped by the tail of a golden stingray
harbinger doomed in a soulless sky
tears in the torrent beget a dark night.
Once again, I apologize.
In a trip they would regret,
they sailed on the Mignonette.
Because their diet was so light,
they worked up an appetite,
and amidst the pitch and yaw,
they ate Richard Parker raw.
Jellyfish
Once I had a wild wish
To be a jolly jellyfish,
A quietly quivering jellyfish
Shivering in the sea.
I did not crave to be a crab,
A sideways-scuttling, crusty scab
In sluggish sludge and dismal drab
At the bottom of the sea,
Nor wish to be a sucking sponge,
Sea-sway drudge of the fathoms' plunge,
Dredging supper from the soupy gunge
In the dungeons of the sea.
I might have wished for shark or whale,
To lord the oceanic trail,
My dorsal fin a regal sail,
Imperial in the sea;
Or dared to dash through the dolphin waves,
Gliding where the wild seas rave,
Dive to a shipwreck's sunken grave,
Sunken deep in the sea.
Instead, I wished for a jellyfish,
A parachuting jellyfish,
A gossamer drift in the seas' vast dish;
That's what I wished for me.
I see you torturing yourself
living in the past
reliving ancient history
Rehashing memories
to the point that they're
warped unrecognizably
I won't correct you
I refuse to engage ~
where would I begin?
Whatever feelings
I once might have had
are long forgotten
The reality is that
we separated ways
a million years ago
It’s truly sad that regrets
is the burden you chose
over living a fruitful life
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
The ship of dreams, a fragile, drifting thing,
A tattered sail, where love once took its wing.
Arianna gone, a whisper on the breeze,
Leaving only echoes of the heart's disease.
You search for solace, in the fading light,
A lonely figure, lost in endless night.
The memory of her laughter, a haunting refrain,
A phantom touch, a lingering, sweet pain.
I wander aimless, a soul adrift and torn,
By shadows clinging, where love was born.
The world, a canvas, painted shades of gray,
Since she departed, vanished without a trace.
We seek solace, but solace turns to dust,
A bitter taste of ashes, lost in gust.
A flicker of hope, a distant, faint gleam,
Perseveres in darkness, a fragile dream.
Perhaps someday, our paths will intertwine,
And love will bloom, a love truly divine.
We wait, and listen, for her soft refrain,
To mend the broken, and ease the aching pain.
The ship of dreams, a fragile, drifting thing,
A tattered sail, where love once took its wing.
Arianna gone, a whisper on the breeze,
Leaving only echoes of the heart's disease.
initially I saw no humanoid qualities in the beast
he was a throwback, not orangutan, but not man either
his eyes were frighteningly dark with glowing suns in the center
how could I communicate with this being?
I heard a thought in my head that I knew was not mine
okay, he can implant thoughts, so is he reading mine?
I tried to be more careful about what I thought
desperately not looking at his jagged teeth
they were stained a crimson red
was he a cannibal?
He threw back his head and howled
it was a mysteriously infectious sound
I threw back my head and howled too
we might not be the same species
but it was kismet that we landed on the same island
it had been a day since I saw another survivor from the plane
a tattooed teenage boy who had run off into the jungle
a few minutes later, I heard shrieks and screams
I plan to stay here, I told the beast, as I built a fire.
He gave me a slow smile and I wondered if I would be his dinner.
Shipwrecked
He was Japanese, smiled politely
and took his shoes off
I smiled also, it was the right thing
for us to do, shipwrecked sat
in a rubber raft of the type leaving
Tripoli
Libya, where we murdered Gaddafi
and made a mess in the smaller
states he helped
All this because Tony Blair and the
loathsome French president bored
money from Gaddafi but didn't
want to pay it back
We had harpooned a whale with
a pen knife and a cycle pump
but we didn't have soy sauce and
let the beast go
A blue balloon in a sea of calmness
The setting sun teased us, throwing
gold coins into liquid jade.
At dawn, the Japanese gave me his teeth
and swam towards the rising sun
I gave the teeth to an elderly shark
that, in gratitude, piloted me to Mandalay
where i met another loser selling
pink oversized bra, suitable as tents
for the bombed-out people of Gaza
green plastic buckets and Nottingham
scarf,
The Japanese sent me a postcard offered
me, a Toyota at half-price
Racial harmony is about
common respect
Foreboding of a tempestuous storm,
it blackens as it draws near,
a cumulonimbus in towering form,
extending to the troposphere,
So cast off mooring and slacken the line,
break free while there's still time,
'cause I'll pull you under if you don't let go,
Save yourself and abandon ship,
I'll take on water and sink too quick,
in gales of winds the swells arise,
these waves will break and so will I,
Roars of thunder and screeching wind,
sheets of lightning and pelting rains,
walls of waves will batter within,
until our stability wanes,
So cast off mooring and slacken the line,
untether your heart from mine,
'cause I'll drown us both if you don't let go,
Save yourself and abandon ship,
I'm taking on water and sinking quick,
in gales of winds the swells arise,
these waves are breaking and so am I
She came aboard my sinking ship
a death blow to the bow,
attempts to bail and keep afloat
this mariners tattered sails.
Plot a new course and navigate
in storms and angry seas,
this vessel lists in the swells
life plundered by piracy.
Now this new maidens charge
is to steer starboard side,
for a new sheltered port
with rising tides.
This once scuttled ship
ill winds cast adrift,
is now tacking leeward
this sailors gift!
Abandoned at sea,
dismantled, wasted-
carcasses of ships
join the huge graveyard
on Shipwreck Beach shore-
battling waves no more.
Submerged in the depth of the abyss,
motionless nor missed;
the ship is submissive to a fathom's organisms.
Time has lost all realism.
Amid a quiet grave,
its heart pulsates within the labyrinth iron hull.
“Current, bring me the horizon.” It silently whispers.
Slowly ascends through freezing brine,
bow cutting through seawater surface,
waves lap against the floral coral dressed hulls.
It starts to breathe,
tremendous echoing sounds,
creaking,
snapping,
sloshing
as the water draws back washing over its deck.
A shadowy image upon its bow,
feeling the cool caress of bliss salty tears
flowing down her cheek.
A slave adrift,
at the mercy of the turquoise sea.
3/8/2022
rewrite
There I was, stranded in a hull
Talking to a skull
While trapped in the Maw
of the deep
Cold Water at my knees
I started to plea,
"Why Sell my Soul to the Deep?"
While dead men say nothing
Cold Water at my thighs
Now i started speaking lies
"The doors creak shut, i tried,"
Empty black eyes gaze
Salt in the mouth, i began to taste
"I deplore you and this cursed ship"
All while the water rises in haste
Destroying the little hope left
Cold water at my neck
The lights now flicker and spec
Nothing more can be said,
as black surrounds me on all angles
A last goodbye to you on the deck...
Winds growling the misfortune....
RMS titanic twisted in the blisters...
Let the coffin in glister...
Recalling our ancestors' flute...
Off the ships under the sealed seabed,
Cape of Good hope lurkes the will of fate.
Seagull hissing to the Symphony of Seas,
Carnival of cruises,
Had I known your last dreary,
I would have written miles of dreams...
If the tempest of time torments your life
in the shipwreck on the rough sea of strife,
with the perennial hope you’ll again float,
if you find a sacred place on the divine boat.
Life will get the rhythm of waves rolling free,
if you make the serene soul a seamless sea.
June 15, 2021
Contest : Bite Size Poem No. 7
Sponsor : Line Gauthier
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