Short Starkly Poems

Unfiltered grey eyes
Starkly contrast on black page
She seemingly glows

Russell Sivey...

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paths lead to sorrow

                               rooted starkly in the heart

                                                 repeal out desire

Written May 3, 2021...

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The man I once was
is a visual echo
fading into naught.

There was a time
I felt achingly hollow
and pressingly weighed.
starved and stiffed by doubt,
gone far past the sunken place
to deeps starkly dark.

Eventually, 
time did thin the choking void, 
eventually....

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through my window I watch for signs of her
but my muse cannot be seen
in starkly barren trees

I thought I caught a glimpse of my beloved
in a winter dove’s white breast
but then she soared away


Written 1/20/14 by Andrea Dietrich
for nette onclaud's Through My Window poetry contest
(double kimo)...

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So starkly silent now
So bare
The branches of the tree
In nakedness
It stands not shivering
Despite the winds
Of shame
It is immobile
Inert as death
And deathlier pale
With nothing to let to hide
And this oak
So formidable before
In the merest cycle of his love
Stands finite and frail
Amidst a brown trash heap of leaves....

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This Poem is for the referential poetry contest and was inspired by Cotton Pickin' Paradise by Tim Ryerson



Well north of the bustling city
before the crackle of nights winter fires
hard hats, black backs and frozen fingers
shiver starkly in time with their iron picks
sharp strikes upon the icy earth,
shattering the frozen northern stillness...

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As the geese flew north
Their honking cries
Could be heard
In clear Autumn skies

Heading home
For a winter
At Heartstone

Filled with stories
From the south
A gentle wind
Pushed them ever northwards
Grey wings, beating with ease

On a starkly beautiful day
Forty two geese
Flew through winter sun
To Heartstone
Where they will stay...

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scarecrow’s pale shadow
  moves across the brittle corn…
        harvest moon rising

               <<**>>

       autumn’s fiery dawn
  gently stirs a caldroned lake…
       mallards flying south 

               <<**>>

           frigid cobalt blue
starkly frames a weathered nest…
         leafless maple tree


        non traditional haiku...

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Darkly starkly sober
Winter’s cold solstice dream,
warm wealth of crisp greetings
anticipating bleached transparent white blanket,
Earth’s decomposing Season
Advent of timeless reason
hibernating bipolar consciousness
shy Owl Medicine’s silvery metamorphosis
bellowing full moon Moose Meditation
echoing wild wicked esteem
thru dark sober winter’s bold....

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I did not bid you come
Nor will I call again
The door to freedom
Is the privacy of pain.

So what stirs me awake
In dead sweat of night
What convulsions shake
My memory from flight?

These walls cannot prevent
Images repeating
The predator do not relent
Me, starkly fleeting.

You come and go at will
From nightime to day
On streets or on window sill
I cannot turn away....

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Quite overlooked...
Such lovely things

So fragile and quickly fading, they are...
Into precious forgotten memory

A candle flame, 
           extinguished by a breeze
A petal 
           as it flows gently upon the wind
A flock on geese 
                starkly silhouetted, 
                          against a white cloud

These things that leave us behind

And in their passing, how soon we forget
The wonder of it all......

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When distance circles the shoreline
Painfully , a numb breeze  decries
How our lackluster glance mirrors
Frail changing of hesitant eyes.
Across night’s starkly blunt  edges
Fondness dangles like threadbare reeds;
Knowing warmth is not forever
When moonless summer’s  rapture bleeds.
~

My spirit homeless now admits,
This fleeting affair… love resists.


10 Lines, 5 Words: Rhyme II
Sponsor: Laura Loo    1/17/2018...

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Lady of the Night

Blessed be the ardor
of violet words
uttered in the heat of night,
whispered untrimmed,
urgent as convulsion's
approaching strains.

Where is the one
who tricked in heels,
turned on the lathe
of the procurer's sloth,
with waxing age?

Truth dissolves the mists,
banishes yesterday's lies,
lifts the curtain of darkness
to starkly reveal
the procurer's delight
is no longer there. 

The lady of the night 
at last is free....

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William had a whinging wife.
William was a fool.
When she begged him for some water,
For too wet her whistle.
William tossed her in the pool.

William’s wife Wilma,
Looked at life quite starkly.
She whimpered and she whined.
While William was the whimsical kind;
Full of whigmaleerie and malarkey.

William had the wherewithal,
Which made them quite wealthy.
Wilma was no whiffler,
And didn’t merely whinny.
She whinged about her William and his methodology....

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Cosmic mystery trails the midnight sky,
you flare bright, dissolve without a trace;
we who witness you gaze up and sigh,
you leave a look of awe on every face.

Ghostly portent from the mists of time,
aglow with starkly silent icy light;
wonder that dances 'round reason and rhyme,
the stuff of dreams and fancy's fickle flight.

Dawn settles gently on the window sill,
displacing thoughts of stellar eccentricity;
but in our hearts and minds we ponder still 
this sacred, quiet electricity....

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