Just how long does a steaming lobster sob?
How terribly do boiling limbs and guts
burn? Like a million simultaneous cuts?
When does its sweltering heart cease to throb?
On who’s authority do humans rob
that creature of its life? Have we the rights?
—the rights to cook a living being? Nights,
(countless), have I questioned this brutish job.—
Yet, even still, I meet no day when not
a hungry shopper comes to claim a kill.
And for the taste of murdered, smoldered meat,
—(we sear our ethics inside that same pot)—
they beg me: “I can’t bear do it, but will
you?”. — — I’m sorry, truly, crustacean…”treat”.
Tug-of-War
Alpha Dog
Carnivore
Locked our horns
Power struggle
Crown of thorns
Neither bows nor bends nor folds
Instead digs their heels
Leans in and holds
Under weights of worlds shouldered
Beneath catching fires smoldered
They juxtapose
Until the end
And so it goes
Protect; defend
Both yearning to submit, surrender
Though, coward, that would them then render
So instead they hold strong their positions
Each declaring their conditions
Never has this strategy
Ended anyway but tragedy
So each side is shocked and shorn
Strewn about, tattered, torn
Daughters, Mothers and Wives scorn
From empty houses
Alone; forlorn
Forever after they will wait
By the fire
Or at the gate
Until the day they receive
News, that from this horror,
There's no reprieve
Brimstone throats burned,
before bursting into combustible myths.
Dragons were effigies,
deeply scorched into hearts.
Forever became extinct, it became,
the lick of a decaying fire.
Smoke behind the ramparts.
Maddened man grubbed for fire,
in the warm soot of flinty roots.
Naked he smoldered to master,
the furnace flare of a dragon's breath.
Long he rubbed his flames raw,
made fire leap, wildly dance,
with a zealot's fervor.
Then it was,
that they made a great war
upon the world.
The journey to rescue my soul began in your eyes
where I traveled for hours
in a warm wondrous afterglow of emotion
trying to find the unguarded gate of your heart's invitation
to come in from a cold world
where you found me a hungry, thirsty, traveler
in self-imposed exile, drifting on dark winds
like a flower with broken petals tumbling away
to leave an empty brown stem, burning away in the sunlight
where the tearful cry of a heartbeat is heard
in the solitary sound of loneliness,
along with emotions of misery
that endures my lingering death of echos
from this...you have given me a reason
to hear the lost melody of my soul
as I lay in your eyes, a prisoner of your kindness
held by your tender embrace
where my long nightmarish journey has ended
as I search through the distance between our eyes
I find an unmeasurable treasure
where my long road disappeared
and my soul began to reach out
to be tethered to the west winds of your heart
as the stillness of time smoldered
in the dewy mist of my traveled yearning
3/20/22
contest Form -J
sponsor Constance La France
I walked on the garden path,
young heart pulsating
with the cadence of love,
fostered dream of permanence
in the transient world
for being loved and possessed forever.
Times turned into an inferno,
my dreams went up in smoke,
blew away the incinerated mind,
a dislodged withered ashen leaf,
disappearing silently undiscerned,
like a drop of uncared tear.
In the ravaged desolate garden
trampling the razed flowers
in the summer of discontent,
I walked a lonely journey
with the smoldered yearning,
buried within mind’s ash debris.
That’s when searching the soul
I discovered the inner divine light,
revealing the real sense of belonging,
defined the heavenly purpose of being,
and by the grace of God I found
the devout course of life so beautiful.
__________________
January 21, 2022
Title Chosen : Up In Smoke
Contest : This Or That, Vol 9
Sponsor : Edward Ibeh
A turbulent stream cascades on dry desert floor
Foaming waters flow up the high dunes in spree
Summer sun burns wasteland to green in the core
The charcoal night lights up the daytime debris.
Life is shattered by time’s smooth flow at its slowest
In chilled winter night I’m smoldered and in strain
A wandering wounded deer I find a tiny bird nest
To lie on sweet dreams I make with twigs of pain.
September 11, 2021
Contest : Nonsense Rhyme
Sponsor : Charles Messina
I felt her before I saw her
She had the flashiest most beautiful red-blue hair
A blue blood, naturally
Her lips were painted a luscious cherry red
Redder than the advertisement girls of the fifties
Was I dreaming? I looked at my assistant.
We sent the other models home.
We knew we had found our it girl
She was wearing a lacy top that accentuated her bosom.
And what a bosom it was.
Her hair dropped over one eye, but we could see her look.
She smoldered.
She was standing next to an oak tree that felt her too.
The leaves on the tree immediately transmogrified from brown to red.
She was magnificent, and we were grateful to find her.
Her hourglass figure I will never forget, and neither will my assistant.
We speak of the mysterious woman often.
She vanished right after we took the photos.
Only one turned out, but it was enough.
As flushed as ripe plums the fuchsia does swell
Weighted with thick sap its cloak lushly blooms
Passion’s flower sweetly grieves sad farewell
As our goodbye speaks like this summer’s plume
Our waltz in the sun like sultry guitars
Fueled fiery flames to warm us through the night
Hearts lay like cinders to mix with the stars
Embers smoldered while it squandered our light
Sweet rain does fall as tears with our parting
Shadowed skies have embraced our love’s blind fate
Lost in the glow of sad secrets guarding
Ill-fated lovers whose dance came too late
I can ere forget the lingering fire
For burning hearts bleed with lonely desire
May 6, 2021
Summer Love Sonnet Poetry Contest
Sponsored by John Hamilton
whooshing wits woven
crushed tongue cloven
dark age drooled
felon fate fooled
haughty nature's nimble
foiling feasts feeble
salient seal bruised
callous crave cruised
vying voluptuous view
severed passion smoldered
crushed, crimson asunder
squashing lanky lethal
farcical fury fumbled
fiddling fostered fickle.
'20:03:15:09:28
Note: Dedicated to Ovid.
Sprawling aspirant verdance vibrant,
engraves desire on the ashen sky,
spring-saturated spectral exuberance
spreads on my heart’s emerald canvas.
On the arid cinnamon ground cleaved ,
my auburn desolation pervades sly
through smoldered venation of leaves
with the evergreen hopes entwined.
The unseen tears wept in a torrent
fill the lacustrine cauldron of pathos,
forlorn life’s skeletal essence remains
erect still on the eroded mind’s brink.
The cadence of the fervent zephyr
from the yonder vale of yearning,
glides on rhapsody of lilac lagoon heart,
pulsating with the ripples of dream.
Written : March : 14, 2020
April 14, 2020
Contest : Strand No. 730, Any Theme, Any Form
Sponsor : Brian Strand
hoisted hanker trips
cranky cause clipped
soapy sauce seeped'n
in taunted tease
smoldered spiritualism scribbled
on dark dwindles
gaunt gifts sieved
sumptuous seal retrieved
haughty hoists spilled
bounty beards blushed
surmounting syllabic touch
gullible phrases gulped
porous pen puked
drenching vying view.
'20:03:03:14:21
Note: Dedicated to George Herbert.
*Short Shot Shuddered*
eyes seeped'n acme
cussing Cupid's breach;
bounty bow blushed
callous crest cupped
felon feelings fostered
rustic reels registered
short shot shuddered
smirking strength smoldered
mystic emotions murdered
saucy bash squashed
torrent's taunted trash
coursing kleptomaniac crash
twain tuning melody
thrown desires dancing.
'20:01:24:12:49
~Note~ The Greek believed that Cupid, the god love, sent unseen arrows from the eyes of one person into the heart of another.
She woke up early that morning, opened the window that had a view of a blue sea, just in time for the rising mellow sunrise.
The fresh cool wind blew gently on her face as she drew the white linen curtains to the sides.
A ray of the gold sunrise revealed, an already prepared breakfast on the wooden table.
The wind blew off the candles as the smoke smoldered aimlessly through the room.
The fragrance of flower pots by the window filled the room with the familiar aroma that comes with blooming white roses.
The radio was playing and the birds were singing.
She was humming along and together the melodies sounded like waves of fresh waters by the seashore.
The routine interpreted all its greatness to having a caring and loving Mother;
A Caring, and Loving Morning star.
It's the beginning
From here the road
Takes a bend
Like the horse-shoe
Towards west
From here the stretch
Of bare meadows
On both sides of the path
The tufts flying hither-thither
Shadows from the lined trees
Seem lost somewhere
A heron in the pool's mud
Seems to search for food
Looking back from here
Nothing can be seen
The dust of the path
Rubbing their eyes
Bounces back
Wild flowers at the foothill
Seem to beckon someone
Can hear a distant echo
Of a chopped tree's voice
Piercing the heart
It's the beginning
Hereafter nothing more
Nothing furthermore
Here is the end
Skies of the evening
The blaze has
Smoldered to ashes.
(Translated from the original in Assamese "Eyar Porai Arombhani" by Prof. Anita Baruwa)
It is in fire
that each of us is born.
Fires ignited in consuming passion
to embrace the pleasures of the heart and flesh;
fires
rising from the smoldered embers within
unquenched, indestructible burning of the heart;
lips pursed to reveal
the sensual enticing
opening to come forth, give in;
touch the candle flames and burn
endure the torch within,
set the blaze afire
scorch the mind of thought
and melt in the all-consuming charring
of love;
be the slave, the tormented martyr
the agonized hunger satisfied
by the consummation of love
beyond all dreams, beyond imagination;
give in, submit, succumb
there is no escape, you are forever captive,
the slave of love forever
seared in the passionate blazing glow
of the fire burning unceasingly.
Slave to Love Poetry Contest
John Hamilton
July 3, 2019
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