Hopes died knotted when dreams betrayed
and my spirit lay prone in my marrow.
My heart watched love fray until failed.
No muscle of emotional strength left
was even tentatively dream linked.
Now, jailed in my mind-built fortress
are desires deceptively pieced parts
that once tingled my anticipation.
Morning to night, heartbreak guards my
fort’s locked cells where starvation
gives no salvation to dark false posing.
For years, I fell atop love bruising gravel
yet I stayed glitter and tackle saddled
seeking soulmate love on the horizons.
All love I thought breathed genuine
was paradise deception had spliced.
For true love, I would have lived in a cabin,
dressed daily in inexpensive flannel
and felt no jealousy for those living
adorned in silk and loving in a castle.
I saw it being built on sacred ground
a field where we boys had many times
reenacted Custers Last Stand.
Ashen boned jaws were riveted to the sky.
The school now waited to be
a concrete cave where madness
was injected into cringing sponge.
I dreamed once that I was a dog
chained to the school's bicycle rails.
Inside the new school, demented teachers
screeched through split nails.
Each lesson had to be hammered
into my psyche, each day my scalp tingled
with a foreboding.
Yet I knew that the arrow in my eye
had to be pushed in a lot further,
a whole lot deeper,
if my mind was to be ever
totally massacred.
An isolating darkness looms:
A numb yet tingled skin;
And residues of twilight's gloom,
As walls unseen close in.
This place feels sharp, yet vague and stale;
The clash stirs strife within.
My fingers click and spread—a snap!
So faint—I fear I'm dead.
Insipid airs invade my lungs:
The voices haunt my ears;
Adrift in dreamlike black, undone,
Alone, still lacking fear.
Commanded, guided, commandeered
My soul is tugged then shoved;
My anger swells, for loss so sheer,
No helm, no sense, bereft.
To think, therefore to be—I blare!
The real is mine to snatch;
I’ll walk into the tunnel’s flare,
My exit door unlatched.
I could never tell reality from dreams,
so palpable, oil on canvas seems,
and while in both realms, I now dwell,
must I say to one, farewell?
or go on living in Hell?
On a long spring day one hopeful May,
my imagination would display
violet poplars and undergrowth of green,
where emerged a woman, so serene -
magically, from nature, unforeseen.
She spoke to me and I could feel
that she must certainly be real,
but she told me she wasn't there.
I said I didn't care -
she was the answer to my prayer.
As dappled light on my skin, tingled,
reality and dreams commingled,
and this lady fine and fair,
that I swore I saw standing there,
disappeared slowly in the air.
THE CAULDRON
As I slipped into the tub to bathe
I then realised that it was a cauldron
Fire making the water swirl around
But not as it had first appeared to me
As it seeped into my skin and tingled
I knew that I was in a magical liquid
A rising mist infusing me with images
That began to take over my thoughts
I was no longer who I had been before
Someone, or something, not belonging
Yet here in my nakedness I was extant
Imbued with a different focus on life
Maybe never return to my former self
Nor think in that single plane again
But across all dimensions, now aware
Such that stepping from this cauldron
I would see everything in a new light
The impact of magic felt and was, real
So all look upon me now and despair
I belong in all the various worlds I see
With no further need of physical form
I am who I am, and who I need to be
The 2025 cries
It is morning the first after the birth of the new year, the jubilation was tingled with sadness
Outside, the sun shines on our night pale faces
But we feel a certain tristeza the sun shone
Last year to while we busied around doing this and that, only to see we had forgotten to buy butter, and we have to do the dishes piled up
Like a snow drift in the sink
Who will dress and walk to the grocer the little
Shop that never closes, I suggest to use olive oil on toast but is met with horrified silence
As my feet hit the sand,
my toes tingled with glee,
the sun kissed my skin,
the wind was calm,
and the oceans tides raced in to greet me.
Remember how you felt the very first time
your eyes met, then your heart leaped into your throat
Remember how the bottoms of your feet tingled with glee
and as the plot thickened, your breath quickened
Remember how you struggled for what to say
fearful this perfect person might just get away
So special now that he's courting you ~
'cos he's eighty-one and you're eighty-two
This is about a couple I've been observing for
a month or so now. (Parents of two friends
of mine. It's SO cute!)
When your body tingled, in concert with your mind
goosebumps flowing up and down your spine
Electricity surging through you
to fingertips intertwined two by two
When you seized your partner's head
locked into kisses, 'twould never end
And lighter than air your feet swept along
to the melody of a distant song ...
You never pictured the finish line ~
standing next to Father Time
fallen maple leaves
raise to hold those falling fresh ---
storm stares in silence
tall trees dance in breeze
love birds on these sleep so soothed ---
hounds howl bewildered
nerves and veins tingled
grass blades hide in morning mist ---
Blossoms pay homage
13 November 2022
Divorce robbed him of surprise,
left him disused,
parts of his brain tingled less,
he grew blasé, he had to improvise,
extemporize parts
that were less prone to rust and mold.
It seemed he was a bare broom,
one that could no longer sweep away
a rising sense of purposeless.
Then it was that a new surprise found him,
he began to make yesteryear trinkets
knickknacks held together
with a duct-taped nostalgia.
Walking sticks and old-school picket fences
were carved from the bones of his memory.
Other doohickeys such as
paperweights for light-headed ideas,
or knickknacks to fill in
those awkward holes in people’s lives.
Success returned, so did a new wife.
She had a lever, a jack,
to hydraulicly lift him up
when he occasionally sagged.
She used superglue on all his loose bits.
It’s wonderful what a new lick of paint can do.
THE SCULPTURE
Dream girl carved by Pygmalion: Sculpture.
He framed her face with charm of bright Moon light
His painful passion brought pearly luster
glistening on her wide eyes in delight.
Superfine cut by chisel with skilled stroke
designed curves of body on perfection.
On each point emerald emotion broke.
Elegant statue stood on completion.
Sculptor desired the statue as his wife.
His yearning tingled on earnest prayer.
How could the statue be blessed by life!
Her eyes blinked, she smiled at her creator.
Statue turned Galatia in rapture.
Dream girl carved by Pygmalion: Sculpture.
05/18/22
Orphan sonnet
Contest by Emile Pinet
One morning the door was knocked
I glanced at my watch briefly as the latch was unlocked
There in a box made of wood balanced on the brick wall
Was a tiny man laying quite still trying not to fall
It wasn’t a coffin as he was still alive and breathing
He didn’t have any clothes on he was nude as if bathing
But then as my arm tingled from sleep, the dream
dumped me coldly on a damp cobbled stone street
I glanced again at my watch it now had no hands
Its numbers had moved around, their order inverted
I noticed a child with far away eyes crying, it had stolen
the watch face, the tocks came before the ticks, they
escaped in a stream along my tingling wrist and arm
down into a field where colours smelt of Pine,
a bird caught some of the tocks, and devoured them all
It made a nest in the wooden box balanced on the brick wall
I glanced once again at my watch on my wrist
deep inside i viewed an interesting sight, a moon shone full
In another skies night.
I saw it being built on the sacred burial ground
of a field I had died nobly upon many a time.
Dark girders arose riveted to the skyline,
ashen boned concrete walls constructed
by unseen hands.
I still looked to the green field where, as Custer
I had made my many 'last stands'
yet it, like my naivety, was being erased.
I dreamed that I was a dog
chained to the school's bicycle rails.
Inside the new school
demented teachers screeched through split nails,
yammering edicts at small cringing minds.
When they installed the glass
and painted the new school building,
a foreboding stole upon me.
My scalp tingled,
I knew that the arrow in my eye
was going to be pushed
a lot further inward one day.
The first drops of rain, a herald
Of good things to come.
The mix of rain drops and dust
stirs...
The fresh smell of nature revives
the senses.
Natures cycle turns full circle.
The allure of fresh vegetables
Tingled up sensation of past
memories are revived.
It's a new season of fresh fruits
vitamins filled.
Natures cycle turns full circle.
The rustling sound of a mix of
leaves and rain alloyed in the
hushed melee.
How exciting the nature, change
produces.
Natures cycle turns full circle.
Hazy clouds billows spiralling
cloudward.
The sense of rain, sun rays shunted
out.
Hissing winds, swaying trees dancing
to the rhythm of the waves of the
wind.
Nature cycle turns full circle.
As dark clouds touch down mother
earth.
The release of sandy dust pellets a rain
of dust alas!.
At last the rain has announced its
permanence.
Natures cycle has turned full circle.
(Written 17th March 2015)
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.