They cut the grid
into the mountain,
breathing a poisonous cloud.
A frantic chaos,
Staking a fortune from
beneath the eucalypt,
pulling hollow bones
they did not heed.
They bet on success,
Assuming the heavy,
damp silence of the bush
was a kind of surrender.
But destiny ignores a frantic hand.
It woke not as a tremor,
but a shift.
A slow drag against the iron.
The ancient roots waking
their weight,
a deep,
fluid groan rising
through fragile ground.
And then—
the inescapable alignment.
The ancient land would seal their fate.
The land sheared
like a severed cord,
swallowing their plans
into the dark earth.
Within the bruised shadows
of the collapse,
the twisted steel rests.
An eerie monument to fortune lost.
the earth does not negotiate with fortune.
It simply folds the chaos down,
and settles back into peace.
Written: October 28, 2025
I press my palm against your shoulder,
dust-streaked and aged
You unfold before me.
Heat rises from the folds
between the tendon and the tender dough.
I savor a bite of the dough.
reminiscent of the stars I once folded,
now scattered,
akin to lost receipts
in a tempest.
I arrive with my stained skin, as a flyer
marred by hurried typos,
hastily printed
by a restless intern.
Here, I consume you wholly.
A vendor presents grief in palm-sized parcels,
with you wrapped in sensational headlines
That twists the truth.
I swallow every piece of you,
even the mustard staining the captions.
But then the rain begins—my likeness of you blurs,
my ink a wing in flight as a winged creature.
A man in uniform smiles and brushes
the sugar from my scalp
casting it into the tide, a final farewell.
In the deep night, I swallowed myself,
A shard of glass sharp in the throat of silence,
Shards carving the outline of a lost being,
There was a girl who wept like winter rivers.
With a heart split, cold and merciless,
Drowned in the hunger of being too much, never enough,
I pressed my face to the mirror of cold cruelty,
Trying to recognize the eyes of a stranger.
Watching as she bled silently in the cracks of time,
Her silence louder than any scream,
I shed the soft skin of lost innocence,
Falling away like dead leaves in late autumn.
Revealing a skeleton forged from fire and regrets,
I carry with me the ghosts of every lost version,
Each a mark, a wound, a silent prayer,
And sometimes, when night is sharp, I hear their voices.
Broken cradles in the dark, murmuring to me that I'm not broken,
But merely becoming, in every whisper of the night,
Telling me I'm not lost, but transforming,
Like an old song, echoing in the deep silence.
Now I keep a dead rose in my pocket
pressed in old pages of a faded book.
To hold you like a palm stone of garnet
I’ve stuck you right inside the story’s hook.
A frozen bud I can see how we met,
feel my gut fall with that very first look.
I peered into those dark skies of your eyes,
at once the storm swallowed my butterflies.
A giant road is emerging. My sandy path
is ready to be swallowed. Gambol, amble,
ramble, saunter, stride… My way knows
a variety of my gaits. This is a stamped
path in my gene as an elephant corridor.
It’s open for the rat snakes, mongooses,
cats, and men. When I lose my way, no
one will come to me. The machine claws
won’t shiver when they pluck my black
plum tree on the wayside. My silence
will be deluged by the motor cacophonies.
The hullabaloos will petrify the birds and
my poetry. The tortoise lying on the grass
with its head inside serenity is unaware of
the imminent doom. Already molded
in loss, I can keep up my sangfroid.
First published in The Literary Hatchet (issue 30).
The first prize winning poem in the Poetry Nook Weekly Contest.
Through the front Mr. Jonah was swallowed.
In the sea monster’s belly he wallowed.
In the muck and the gas
unhygienic, alas,
was the back door expulsion that followed.
Stones,
Mortar, and brick
Nowhere to turn without feeling sick, stoned
To my stomach
A bottomless pit
Unheard, smothered by a thousand succinct voices' verbose drone
Speaking as they spew toxic, putrid bile in the pit of my stomach
Plummeting, swirling dizzily in circles - a cyclone - cyclically, alone
Booming, the whispering silence of lucidity's susurrate disruption weighs heavily on my thoughts, placidly as it sits
Like boulders, slowly sinking deeper into quicksand - the bottomless pit of my stomach
Swallowed by immovable, inescapable stones,
Mortar, and brick
I swallowed greed too
The seed flourished and grew
And shaped me anew
I could not put on my shoes!
29.6.22
Sponsor: Margarita Lillico
Contest: GREED
You captivate me;
I just want to say goodnight,
my words are swallowed.
bitter cold voices
lost behind woolen mufflers
definition blurred
written December 7, 2021
A man was swallowed by a whale
And lived to tell this humpback tale.
While lobster fishing, suddenly,
Below the waters of the sea,
He felt a bump then all went dark.
In fear, he thought it was a shark.
Not feeling pain, which sure was good,
He was confused, then understood
He’d somehow gotten swallowed whole
By some huge whale out on patrol
To catch himself a seafood meal;
He luckily did not appeal.
For after 30 seconds passed,
The whale spit out a giant blast
Of what he knew did not belong;
The fisherman just tasted wrong.
His buddy pulled him on the boat;
A happy ending, I will note.
Not many do survive, unhurt,
Rejected as a whale’s dessert.
"Reality is something you rise above." -Liza Minelli
you'll beat drugs she said ...
if you only knew, thought I,
life's my REAL demon.
"Swallowed"
Swallowed
in the belly of the whale
epiphany rips my waves
more than a stone ripples 5
12 disciples
bare feet floating on yesterday’s grave
walk on water
Survive
Swallowed
in the belly of the whale
epiphany rips my waves
saltwater tears taste
an elixir
Communion of the Brave
A wake
Awake
Wave
(LadyLabyrinth / 2020)
"The Test" / The Chemical Brothers
https://youtu.be/yhS9LnDoo_w
Lyrics:
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chemicalbrothers/thetest.html
"Je reviendrai pour réclamer mon enfance perdue dans la prochaine vie"
*Super Moon 3/20/19
I was swallowed by the moon
Its brightness captured me
It hadn’t come too soon
Needing light to consume me
And so it did, from a dark winter night
My soul moved to and fro
With its endless moon path in sight
Glimmering all over the snow
Nothing but a lift, pulled me above
From the place where I stood
Igniting my heart with love
Like nothing else could
Heidi Sands
3/21/19
depression breaks the ground beneath our feet without warning and swallows us wholly without remorse. when we come back, what have we lost? if we come back, what did we bring back? darkness takes and stains and does not leave anything unchanged.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.