Short Rouged Poems

smoke ring from rouged lips rises, lassos the moon...

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tropical raindrops in the open orchid
labial portals
loosely folded
a rouged acceptance

a decorative wheelbarrow
as green as wet moss
tilts to see

small pungent gardens
listen
to their hothouse fevers...

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your kiss is sweet as nectar
as it rolls from your rouged lips
like fresh plums picked from nature

so tangible as grapes
as they burst in my mouth
delicious, sweet, filling

wanting more from you
desiring one kiss
just to be from you...

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Soft light plays on
my shameless, lipstick rouged
lips - it's a party.

I hear OverDoz
advocating a “last kiss”
somewhere in the night.

Some faces always 
find a favorable light
- like the movie stars.

He’s gorgeous, with a
new iPhone-like appeal
- the consensus choice.

I’m looking through glass
at a candy I can’t hope
for this Halloween....

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Silently she arrived 
on rain bowed streams, in shamrock eyes.
She filled the ponds and fluffed the blossom
stuffed milkweed pods with puffs of cotton.
She nudged chorus frogs from emerald dreams 
gifting rubied songs    to the forever-greens. 
She rouged away the last snow flake 
brushing pastel hues into robin eggs.
Then she humbly drifted far away
into the gilded heart of Etain....

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the greatest misfortune of {us}
is that you only seem to recall 
a few black pages of our relations
nonchalantly tossing aside the gilded chapters
that made up the volumes of our past...

your miscalculation...you sought to suck satin 
out of a denim man  
always a shade less than your expectation
a texture that rouged your mental skin..

and of what cloth do you drape yourself in
nowadays...

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God must be playing marbles with the planets...
its earths turn to be in the palm of his loving hand
for millennium mankind had his chance at the loom
endless wars, lust and greed is all he could weave.
Now we're perched between Gods thumb and forefinger..
Soon he'll flick us to the outer edges of his patience
branded a cold and hopeless snot ball of darkness,
as he reaches for another sphere, rouged with potential....

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Blush
fair skies 
mist Sol-kissed
citrine seduced 
mimosa clouds bask
dreamy in champagne light 

golden-god’s sparkle fills
chalices roused and
rouged as poppies
hail dawn with
unfurled 
whorls


Susan Ashley
August 16, 2021


~ First Place ~
Premiere Contest: Merse 
Sponsor: Malabika Ray Choudhury


*rouged: verb; French; colored red*

*image: Nature Wallpapers > Fields > Poppy field at sunrise*...

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The evening 
is soigné in outfits of rumpled elegance 
at the tables and on the bar stools, 

resplendent with a necklace 
of glistening notes from the piano 
in the corner,

rouged by the blushes imprisoned 
in our wine glasses.

Let's stay for a while then,

until the blushes have flown to our cheeks,

the patrons are back on the streets
or between the sheets, 

the pianist has played the last song,

and the night is done, 

or waiting to begin, 
its shyness shed....

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