Short Riffling Poems

Autumn leaves
And on its heels
A savage wind
Hunts its offspring
Pursuing their faint scent
Riffling the golden fields
The curtain falls
A slow darkness ensues
The lights dim
In stillness
...

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sunflower of night
with petals washed in moonglow
dreaming of the noon

lavishly lovely
wrapped in velvety darkness
in summer's green hour

the warm breezes blow
riffling the golden petals
milky way's twinkling...

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garage sale
placed junk from the past self 
upon the driveway for 
the passers by to come and 
rummage through
riffling amongst the used goods 
that are no longer wanted by the new self
spring cleaning of the garage of the subconscious 
have begun...

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Riffling book pages, as faces pass by
She finds answers in silence
and understands
All is well.

Sad for leaves getting out of sight
yet still
happy for the humor she found within
She smiles...



This is for all those who've wondered about that silence,
of the what-ifs...but also learned to read in between the lines......

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A photograph of us
tucked into an old paperback.

We took the book to Rome
long ago.

I left it on a bus.

Most likely
it has been destroyed,
by riffling thumbprints.
Paper rots,
the bus recycled into,
spoons and helmets.

The book was once
a romantic novel,
now it’s a ghost story.

Book worms rewrite history -
a very natural process.

...

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I  know not
the why or where
of when
of if she’s ever
coming back again

I sit
in sultry memory
passing kisses
rippling the sea

lifting from
humidity’s wet grasp
hard turgid thrill
of lovers
touching
as they pass

riffling the page-less
timeless sand
artists
of a coolly
passing hand

wispy breaths
of sunset
yets


©8/3/2018

for Summer Breeze Poetry Contest...

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An Incomplete Love Story

Too fast the pages riffled
through dreary decades
innocence confronted
loves lusty laughter
growing faint
in darkened corridors.

Forever’s love
hesitant in a hazy
distant stare,
longing
for a return
of its longing,
passion adrift
on a fleeing vision.

An incomplete love story
written in blank pages
riffling too slowly
too sadly,
too soon,
to end.


John G. Lawless
©7/10/2018...

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gilded hours’
           intense writing,
     sunrise
through twilight years.

fine riffling through strange*
            fodder, of
      poets,
i call friends.

                      mind-blown’
evident
   sharpening
       tool - seed-sown’ harvest.

in rows of yellow corn
                    we
stand TALL together.

10/6/2021

Yalto is a form invented by Edward Ibeh
Line 1-15: 3,4,2,4, 5,3,2,3, 2,3,3,5, 6,1,5 syllables

*Strange as in unknown, from a stranger...

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