Amidst a gentle, refreshing breeze,
On an autumn day in October,
With the amber sun leaning toward the horizon behind clouds of golden-coral agate hue,
And migratory birds crossing silently toward the south and east—in search of warmth and abundant food.
I pondered deeply — tinged with a touch of sadness and the dark like hues of autumn leaves clinging stubbornly to their branches — the answer to this question:
What we leave behind?
I really do not know for sure.
What I leave behind?
I hope good memories!
Or mixed-up of good and bad which I do not like that much!
Or bad talks and write about me. I dislike that!
Or nothing which not good nor bad at all.
In material sense, I leave some money, home, clothes ;
Papers, books, watches, rings, ancient coins, poems & prose!
The best thing is my fame, from honest people perspective!!
That what I would love to leave behind!
The sun shyly peeked over the hill
as the cold air made whispers audible
and dissipation began to rise from the dunes.
The morning breeze stirred flurries of sand from dunes
where shadows stubbornly clung to the face of the hill.
A susurrus from the copse barely audible.
Upon the bench in the lee of fickle dunes
the old brass plaque gleamed in rays cresting the hill:
an inscription of grief no longer audible.
Ridged hill of letters, promises audible among dunes.
Sweltering and dripping sweat,
tillers of land prayed as they gazed
with frenzied hope and furrowed brows
up at a sun that glared relentlessly down
from a stubbornly cloudless sky.
Through August, the days limply crawled
into September.
The heat kept beating
and beating them down
until a few weeks later when
wind began to wail; trees trembled.
No lovelier shrouds were ever seen
than those gray shrouds of clouds
that delivered splattering droplets
which turned quickly
into sheets and sheets of rain.
It pounded ground
and soaked the thirsting fields,
and with the heavens,
the joyous farmers wept.
In a world increasingly reduced
To postures of virtue signaling
It’s easy to side with the vocal majority
Crying real tears, gnashing whitened teeth.
But despite the emotional appeal
Of whatever we’re confirmationally biased towards,
Real issues exist in real time
Needing to be judged on real pros and cons.
History after all doesn’t exactly repeat itself
As much as spiral around a central core
Of habitual patterns
And stubbornly persistent delusions.
The next time you feel
The tug of collective empathy pull
Don’t just look at the banner
Look at the hand that holds it too.
(9/4/25)
Christmas feels like halloween
Im haunted
The air is dusty, the room is musty
In your absence, everything’s tense
Nothing makes sense
Are you coming back?
Am I in denial, or just incredibly dense?
There’s a shiver, dust in the air
Am I dumb? Yes
But have things been damaged beyond repair?
I stubbornly stay stuck in a place
Not wanting to break free
Not wanting to leave the space
Where you used to be
Allowing you room to come back to me
And make it right
But I know your not coming back
Not after that night
Not after that fight
My knuckles are raw from the cold subway pole,
and the guy next to me smells like damp wool and cheap coffee.
He’s staring at a cracked phone screen,
his thumb scrolling past headlines, dinners, divorces.
We don’t talk.
Nobody talks here.
But under his heavy black winter coat,
somewhere behind his lint-covered tie,
a small fist of muscle is slamming against his ribs.
Thump.
It’s a clumsy, desperate noise,
like an old radiator knocking in a basement.
It keeps time against the black tunnel outside the window,
a persistent thudding negotiation with the dark
that just asks for enough time to get to Tuesday.
We walk around pretending we own the sidewalk,
worrying about the rent, the teeth that need fixing,
the text message left on "read."
Every wet breath is a lease renewal
signed in the dark without our permission.
I look at the girl across from me,
her eyeliner smudged from a long shift.
Her chest rises.
The cold world looks the other way,
indifferent,
and lets her have another minute to figure it out.
It’s not a grand design.
It's just a truce.
A messy, fragile truce,
kept alive by a pound of red meat
stubbornly refusing to stop hitting the wall.
I stood as though reborn on mounded dirt,
which seemed so moist it strangely could assuage
the ache from bowels that howled from so much hurt.
Would ground then be my cure for pain and rage?
Enticed, I deeply pressed each foot through soil
till they took root and fixed me to a spot.
My ever-thickening trunk served well to foil
the plots of those who’d cut me. . . . they could not!
My limbs, though mighty branches, could not bend;
stubbornly I fought my transplantation.
I weathered storms that God or man might send,
sightless, living long in desolation.
Self preservation did this much for me-
old loved ones passed and I remained a tree.
the firmament
generously bled violet
at the moment of truth;
our love-light,
a diamond
brightly sparkling in the dark.
granted we've tasted both
the nectar and bitterness of a world
that tried to obliterate
the steadfast foundation we built,
yet, we stubbornly grasped...
onto the rope of endurance;
your knuckles white
and bleeding into mine,
w i t h s t a n d i n g
the sinews of the passing years,
where weaker threads
would snap and fray apart.
we learned
to map and anchor
the rhythm of our trepidations
deep within the soul...
it's a bond time can't erase.
we are but two travelers
on life's serpentine road.
now look where...
the lilac blossoms glow...
a promise
sealed by everything
we survived;
no longer merely a ghost-light,
or a dream,
but a ribbon tied...
around a jacaranda tree.
The sky sneers at me through the curtain of clouds
I strain in vain to see if a star is flickering
The night stands stripped of all munificence
As I turn and twist on my bed,
I know for sure insomnia stubbornly
Keeps her reins on my poor self
As I lie sleepless with my torso weighing a ton,
Whispering my anguish onto my pillow
With darts of pain stinging out from my swollen eyes
I know I have lost sense of every passing hour,
But intensely feel every moment….
My ear drums are slit by the sirens of ambulances
Their blinking lights flashing in darkness
And scrawling strange graffiti on the walls
Down in the patio, I hear the swish
Of paper flung by the paper boy
Thank God! The night has ended.
But is it not for another night’s painful litany?
Yet I dream of a bright dawn
At the end of every night of distress!
ORGANIC IMPRESSIONS-:-
ultimate
perceptive
longings
idealise
identity
into PIVOTAL FIGURES
stubbornly
fanciful
excesses
theatrically
sentimental
with ALLEGORIC EMPHASIS
strictly
defined
exampled
praised
inspiration
Hands hold tight to the loose ends of hope
As we toil and crack, night and day,
Hoeing up bits of earth and its fragile retributions.
Our crops and little beads of sweat drip to waste
On the ground’s boiling soils.
Eyeh is another name for a deceased generation.
The ones that sprout stubbornly through restive
Delays get re-greened, losing vibes of communal
Watering, ceremonial baptisms.
Birds build their nests in haste,
When bent cusp-blades sprout secretly at twilights,
Behind ethereal curtains of dawn falling
To the consternation of treacly, bitter syrups of time . . .
Is this continuous planting . . . and delirious season?
Has it come to that —when drunken war mongers
Form weapons from slats of pallid bamboo stationed
At the guard posts of violated yams and their flaccid
Tendrils?
I fear.
Such suzerainty over yellowing crops
Transcends the coats of black dust hiding from the disease
Of identity.
It is still planting season, brethren.
The deafening sounds of cannons shake the stalks yonder.
There's a smug dance of weevils on the graves of tubers.
Today I decided to block a poet
To date I have only blocked three
My style is wild and I know it
But I was accused of AI poetry
I didn’t exchange nor feel ashamed
An honest purple poet I am
For some on this site rage baiting a game
It only works if you give a damn
Just because my energy is love
Rather than to stubbornly fight
I focus on creating from energy above
And lift up poets and comments with light
I enjoy each person’s opinion here
We all have a right to express and choose
But on my God I do no fear
If you’re combative I will cut you loose
I’m not even the best writer
To be accused of being AI
Simply must be a sad fighter
For I block them out my life
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fruitcake—a relic
of old kitchens
and
winter hands.
Each bite carries
memories
of my forgotten aunts,
their sugar-dusted aprons,
and their
pertinacious love
wrapped in
parchment paper.
Stubbornly sweet,
and dense.
Cut a thin slice,
let it dissolve
slowly
on your
tongue.
Time becomes edible.
I have reasons to worry
stubbornly I refuse to send mixed messages
~ a smile I might shatter
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
When I lift my eyes, the sky offers no stars,
only missiles parading with arrogance.
Before me, mountains of corpses rise,
my pupils dilated by human savagery.
Humanity has been consuming itself for millennia,
and I bear the guilt of all those cowards
who watch peoples fade away
behind screens, instructing the purveyors of war.
I arrived in this macabre dimension
like so many innocents cut down by bombs.
The Earth groans under the assaults of unbalanced men,
who plunder its entrails,
who sow hatred, death, and chaos
since time immemorial.
The oceans vomit waves of cadavers,
the hurricanes carry the scent of desolation and fear.
Nations crumble beneath the laughter of tyrants,
and children, bare-handed, learn to count
the bodies falling into the mud of oblivion.
I walk amidst these ruins,
listening to the groaning of stones,
a powerless witness to the unchained pride of men.
Crushed hearts weep for their torn roots,
death swallows secrets that no one tells,
and the sky has become nothing but a theater of fire and iron.
In this open-air junkyard,
the sparks of love persist, stubbornly burning,
like a breath even death cannot smother.
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