my ...
fingers are
tactile moonbeams …
and like that porcelain light
I let them dance upon you, bare -
tiptoe across your shy
places with a
delicate (but deliberate)
adoration ...
many, the times they've made
this dermal sojourn
yet each is as if the first -
softer, sweeter, more
sure that the journey is as savory
as it’s delicious end …
each inch, it's own mystery
here-and-there your flesh jumps and
rises as you coo and sigh -
little bumps follow that spread
to the rest of you
like moonlite spattering the sea …
but your sea is mine -
an ocean of tender integument
beneath my touch …
much deeper
and darker
warmer …
and where I
long to …
drown.
~ POETRY AGAINST POVERTY ~
( photographic art created copyright-free by the author with Gemini AI / Meta AI software )
Hard-etched frozen windowpanes
never two adorned the same.
Soft morning light filters through
setting jeweled fronds aflame.
Bitterly cold arctic winds
blustered around overnight,
spattering frigid patterns,
ornate brush strokes of delight.
A silver sylvan forest
where fairies carouse and dance
beneath bright crystal fern flags,
an impromptu frost romance.
Sharp icy fingers crackle,
poking downward from the eaves;
a short few hours of magic
then the glory melts and leaves.
July 16, 2026
For Pattern Poetry Contest
Sara Kendrick, Sponsor
Feels like grumpy faces when I close my eyes.
Unflattering flour on an unflattering apron.
Sandpapered down thoughts.
Flies.
Feels like a garden filled with sand, and maybe creaking sounds.
As if there’s a ghost of a swingset.
Sticks in the grass, but some are alive.
Growling, chomping apple pie with teeth.
It’s all grandma’s house,
Weird bugs, sticks coming to life, torn up scarves.
The vases in the closet.
She used to live here by herself.
We had said for years the same pestering stuff.
Even the willow tree snapped at her.
The feeling is as familiar as gravel in her driveway almost flying into my eye.
I think 92 was it.
Feels like her apple pie spattering near my burning feet.
Flies.
The mellowed out wallpaper.
Hair.
It was the night before her 92nd birthday.
I said “92 is coming for you,” in my sleep sometimes.
Would wake up with flour in my eye.
A feeling like apple pie slobbering on me.
Feels like grumpy faces-
Not grandma’s but her childhood friend in my double vision.
She knows what there is, over there in the light…
Flies…
…eating a Juicy Apple Pie handmade by some stranger.
You lose a million times.
Just like the sinking feeling you are.
Splotches, and splitting.
Losing as much as possible.
A millionaire can keep all his money in a suitcase.
Fall like a camera filming a day in the life.
Spattering money all around.
Just like green paintballs.
A mill on the outskirts of town.
Has straw and hay, itchy, and painful.
I live on the hay bale.
A million seconds at a time.
You lose a million times.
You do. And you’re not proud.
Even if you make a dollar a minute.
You could get hurt.
Lose them all.
Just like family.
If I had a million family members.
Like splotches everywhere.
You lost a million dollars that day.
There’s really no explanation.
You are a little proud.
That you were a millionaire for a million seconds at once.
The sinking feeling.
A dollar doesn’t get passed up.
If these bales of hay were money…
I would be cut up but not as itchy.
Splish splash splash;
It is a colorful blash;
A brown leaf floats in a bathtub,
Does a leaf make noise, I doubt!!!
Yup!!! A little colorful leaf,
plunges into the bath;
Makes a sigh as a sign of relief;
Soon, other leaves join the path
Spattering the drops,
They do hop;
Here, over there,
And everywhere.
The leaves play, they giggle;
They spray , they wiggle;
They make fun, they relish;
O! I could be these leaves, I wish.
Hey! Wait!!!
How come the leaves look so cute!!!
Oh, they are Munias!!!
Scaly breasted Munias!!!
Like the splashes they splatter,
My worries they spatter
Cute little munchkin peers
Make me shed happy tears after years...
02-June-2025
Weary Is My Mind
I promise, I swear, I will never, I will always
That blaring sentiment of a pattering ghost that I detest
Among the empty hollowing of her mouth and eyelids
There lies darkness deep and unending that I fell into once,
never again.
Baffled and naked, afraid and convinced I was nearing my hearse
She runs screaming, yelping in madness as her body falls dead
Once I thought I knew, but as fate would incline
The truth would be only a weapon and shield–vulnerable. . .
never again.
The prating sound squawks as death marks before her squalid breathy voice
Her pupils' contract like a viper’s hint at prey, pouncing, and then devouring
The blood is left spattering and spurting among my grey, hollow walls
Only her wedded can clean out the muck as I have given up,
never again.
Coiling around me with her slippery scales, the precipice of my demise
The sword and the shield once though best, were only cardboard copies
My soul is shattered, and my will is blank, giving into her sweet, nectary venom
The forefront of my being is gone. . . crushed under a blanket of rue
For Weary Is My Mind
The snow lies sleeping in the shadows
Crisp greens bursting through
Unfocused, my eyes blur the world and suddenly there is a spattering of colorful dots Peeking from the earth as it stretches and yawns.
Wake up Mother Nature! Up, up lazy bones!
Revive with a warm rain shower
Break your fast on Autumn leftovers that Winter has preserved for you.
Time to dress in shades of green, the sunshine yellow of daffodils, the cheerful, innocent white of daisies, and cascade of wild flowers in blue, pink, red, and purple.
It's a New Day, with the fresh perfume of the clean breeze lingering as Spring comes swirling and twirling by.
Spatter Riot
Percolating slowly through the thin orange sheep skin,
The poison of chaos oozes through widening pores,
Bringing to boil the spattering seed of evil.
As Another July Day Dawns
Stippling . . .
The leaves of the trees
S p a t t e r i n g …Their
Silhouettes
filling my window
(Barely to be seen while stll so early)
The dark dots …
of the remains
Of the night’s
Weeping
leaving hymn spreading —
with its soft graphite gray
blanket background
Rippling
(as if caught in some
Lasting
d r e a m
Unwilling to reach its
e n d i n g
…Leaving
and so to be sliding aside
for this day’s gracing
Dawn
sun to rise
~ coaxed by the fading background grays
Now
blushing
into neon light gray/white
flakes
of dawn spattering like a Christmas in
July snow with
This
r i s i n g
Tickling
my poet’s tongue…
(c) sally young eslinger 7/2024
I am an early riser, usually between 4 and 5 a.m.
That's my quiet time for reading, and thinking,
And sometimes writing.
I especially enjoy it when,
After a pre-dawn shower,
I can look out my window and see,
In the apricot light of dawn,
To the spattering applause of rain,
The miscreant predatory night
Being borne reluctantly away
In manacles of rainbows.
There are whispers of neon swirl and spinning.
Early morning chirps amid rippling vacillation.
Shades of rainbow with pearlescent spattering.
Ruby tunes in the midst of songbird perception.
Early morning chirps amid rippling vacillation.
Melodies emitted by psychedelic wind whistle.
Ruby songs in the midst of songbird perception.
Glyphs of the cryptical script cut in the crystal.
Melodies emitted by psychedelic wind whistle.
Eerie outlines hopes and dreams in artwork.
Glyphs of the cryptical script cut in the crystal.
Glow with sonnets of a rainbow made of spark.
Eerie outlines hopes and dreams in artwork.
Onto a gloomy sky that was swamped with rain.
Glow with sonnets of a rainbow made of spark.
Is it eminently feasible to experience all the pain?
Onto a gloomy sky that was swamped with rain
Shades of rainbow with pearlescent spattering.
Is it eminently feasible to experience all the pain?
There are whispers of neon swirl and spinning.
Written: May 29, 2022
Each time might be the last,
The last I see your face,
Sad and smiling eyes; the last
Your lips mouthing promises,
Goodbyes, eager to go,
Certain of return, sure of this place.
It's different when you're old.
Blossoms treasured that may for you
Never come again, a song of birds,
A patterning of stars,
Each moment bursts on consciousness
And burns its possibly last
But not enduring sign.
Finally scorching through with
Gathered, accumulated intensity,
The beads fall scattered to the ground.
I sit, unable to respond
To the tasks of the world.
Imperious spattering and singeing
Like cold sleet slants against the face
Burns, melts, evaporates...
My son, my son, soon it will seem
That I have wandered off
Having somehow forgotten you.
May 12, 2022 2022 Poetry Marathon 8" Mark Toney
Morning Sounds
by M. Griswold
06212000
I awake in the morning to all kinds of sounds.
First of which is me, snoring profound.
Next usually comes a burp and a fart ,
but generally speaking, I can't tell them apart.
Then comes the alarm clock ringing at me,
causing screams of confusion momentarily.
Banging frantically in the half darkened dawn,
I cuss to put an end to its clanging loud gong.
My other half rolls over and groans,
then lets out a big fart all of her own.
Sniffing in self violation she painfully moans.
God help the poor fella that shares her home.
A symphony of flushing can soon be heard
as we each take our turns at depositing turds.
Followed closely by snorting and hacking
as we clear our nasals of the snots unpacking.
A chorus of gargling, bad breath to be cured.
A shrill sheik or two of reflections mirrored.
Brushing of teeth brings that wash board effect.
Then the spattering of paste in the sink to eject.
After all that audio abuse, we finally arrive at this,
the best morning sound of all, a first morning kiss.
It makes it all worth the torture and horror to ears.
Of all those god awful sounds made over the years.
The city that never sleeps
Is drenched in moonlight
And seems a dim reflection
Of it's sunlit version
Halted behind the doors
Leaving a seni-colon on the streets
That'll run and roar next day
City that never wishes upon shooting stars
Cannot touch through eyes
Magical glow of fireflies
That drips as yellow lights of lamp posts
On dull window panes
Where the moon sighs in boredom
For distant lovers no longer need him
To send messages to one another
In the forest of concrete
A city that breathes ambitions
Handful of time it never has
To see whom they have left behind
Paint brush in night city's hand
Spattering dim shades all over
25/02/2019
Looming ...
The possibility of crisis
Life-as-you-now-know-it-ending crisis
From a crystal azure sky, shining ...
The ominously dark anvil of disgrace and horror
Like the knurled hand of karma
Crashing through a sunny window
And washing you pale and empty with oily blackness
A diabolical knot in the stomach ...
That has no ease or definition or finality
Riding you like the horsemen into hellish oblivion
A cold finger on blue steel, squeezing
Bound for naught but ruin ...
And the spalted spattering of gray matter
Vitality and brilliance and talent of a rare ilk
Turned to stains and puddles and clots
By their own ... inane ...
Ignorance.
~ 6th Place ~ in the "Contest Number 440 Any Form" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Sponsor.
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