Contest 2026 - 04 - 02 While Beautiful Tarzarma Sponsor Constance La France
A Therianthrope’s Harsh Winter
Snowflakes sunk into my soft fur
I purred as my fur began to puff
the puff wetting my once so soft fur.
I fluttered as my fur began to puff.
During the Nightengale, when its cold,
When my head is filled in the slough
tarnished in scuff making me less bold.
My lips shuddered in the freezing snow,
flakes flowed and i decided to bring my body to a fold
from hind legs to long legs nestled in snow
wallow in the warmth, losing my wool
soft skin leaving me in a soft glow
I run against the snow and its cool
running back to my home and no longer being a fool
drugged winter fighting against the null
A Therianthrope’s Harsh Winter (Alternative Ending)
Snowflakes sunk into my soft fur
I purred as my fur began to puff
the puff wetting my once so soft fur.
I fluttered as my fur began to puff.
During the Nightengale, when its cold,
When my head is filled in the slough
tarnished in scuff making me less bold.
My lips shuddered in the freezing snow,
flakes flowed and i decided to bring my body to a fold
from hind legs to long legs nestled in snow
wallow in the warmth, losing my wool
soft skin leaving me in a soft glow
I run against the snow and its cool
running back to my home and no longer being a fool
Muse
You changed me
there was something
so wonderful about the hope
and the fantasy
There was pain
for such awhile
overthinking and regrets
because, love
And then we spoke
after too long
you inspire me
in joy and pain
I stare at your pictures
like works of art
until they blur
surrealism of my heart
You love me, I know
we can still laugh
can still love each other
just differently now
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The clock hands move,
but do they really?
They carve circles in the air,
pretending progress.
We name hours,
divide them like cake slices,
yet hunger remains.
The river doesn’t rush;
it only looks that way
when you stand on the bank.
Dive in, and it holds you
like a lazy afternoon.
Mountains shrug off epochs.
Stones forget their own weight.
Even the sun, that punctual tyrant,
is just a slow blink
in Something’s endless eye.
We measure, we mourn,
we clutch at seconds
as if they could be kept~
but time isn’t a thief.
It’s the room we’re all standing in,
barefoot,
unaware the floor is falling.
Everything is temporary. Maybe it's not even real...
Life, this life...
I think you know, we have already been here.
Post-apocalyptic existence.
Utopian dreams.
Uncertainty at the surface,
the shift in between.
Contemplation and choice.
Birth.
Life.
Death.
They are all one and the same,
sharing the same knife,
to carve out the same name.
The perfect petals puncture the fabric’s purple-blue,
And silver-platter fins paint the water every hue.
A globed sky has thawed, ripe with pine and sapphire stars—
And the glinted sheen of the oil graze on your lips reminds me who and where you are:
South; below the electric-white moon,
Bright enough to bleach my bones and leave me a fool.
Both sun-blind at midnight, rainbow scales in the night light,
Finding the love in the cracks of your paw—unlimited, yet finite.
Newborn, yet aching, with nothing left to give,
With famine’s touch still singing, but no love to let live.
It was my intention to escape you before we met again,
But the bends of the grizzly river flow, uncaring and unwavered—
And now your soft claws have my head, again wishing to be savored.
follow the poolside shadows
Venus of Delphi
daughter of bitter waves
peek through the peephole
of my glaucous thorax
open your byzantine eyes and
spurn your locomotor ataxia
one glance at our vitreous hands
– a sight for blind sore eyes
one brush of our riveted lips
– gone astray in malformations
one ponderous confession later
– immaterial as a shadow of the lash
let the weeping corpuscles lie
swarm and jostle in the grotto
rattle and blather away our days
I’ll wait for your recriminations
fall asunder under your touch
fastidious in my entomology
let the bouquet glide downstream
the scytheman is still in his kingdom
then we rejoice in endless daze
the lingering beaten with bravura
Hell
is 'o'
Hell'o'_____
Simple: sell the kids
for food
\black is now grey
and white is dead /
wash my skin / oh no \
i am human once again
How time eats ass
and memories feed mouths
i hate my head again
inside i took years
to wash myself
now I am filthy again
Once again i am sad
but to be sure
i kept myself home
when i went outside
Best to keep jewels
inside the velvet cloth
besides my scrotum bag
Once more the silence crept,
on dusty shelves
where thoughts slept
My eyes, they crack like
brittle glass—
another day, another mask
I sold my smile for sheltering nights
beneath the stars,
where love takes flight
But shadows hum inside my chest,
no peace, no pause, no place to rest
Hell'o' friend, the mirror cracks
I see you there, behind my back
Wash me clean? Too late to try
The jewels rot, and so do I.
:: 10.12.2024 ::
wave wave wave
a mouth an ocean
tongue slobbering like a big slobbery dog
licking my face
wave wave wave
zave mave jave
licking my face an ocean wave
mouth of the boisterous dog
vave kave bave
wave wave wave
I drown near too near
but by the dog save
and to the shore gave
or the mouth my grave
wave wave wave
the growth that all a person has
sinister growth like fungus or tumour
sprouting protruding
scrouting grotruding
a growth growing
with light
black black black
flat flat flat
mirroring our dances
echoing our chances
fat skinny glances
strouting brotruding
black black black
flat flat flat
but watch
for a person’s without a person
the growth that all a person has
black black black
I walked through a tunnel
like a finger rubbing around
the inside of a wine glass
round and round
fround bround vround tround
round and round
through the tunnel as a funnel
speeding up
kround zround jround pround
I walked through a tunnel
down to the darkness
down and down
bown hown rown zown
down and down
round and round
dark and stark
I walked through a tunnel
to myself who wasn’t there
I, as paper man
in paper town,
grey, saw
a cardboard cut-out
of a mirror,
the reflection
was a busy world
it didn't look real,
those colours
and restaurants
being watched
by eyes over there
over there
where the eyes are not
their ethereal glare
nefarious
unseen, ready
like puckered lips
this eyeless wraith
with lidless eyes
nowhere, peering
beyond their death
there are eyes staring
that are not there
these shapeless orbs
surrounding
I am one of those in a world that stopped
whether it was for seconds, fractions or millennia
but the engine of time broke down mid action
mid conversation, mid thought
and for a beautiful period we were all framed
in a snapshot that may have lasted eons
and some called it enlightenment
and when the buffering released us
all was as it was
and some claimed epiphanies
the only giveaway, a distant house alarm
a lady of swollen years
sat knitting with glorious colours
she said her name was
saint something or other
I didn't quite catch it
must have been the gum she was chewing
her lipstick was smeared
anyway I asked what she was making
she said stain glass windows
for the cathedral being built behind her
I wasn't going to believe her
but I couldn't help it
she rolled her next joint
with incredible conviction
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