My emotions are unstable
I am filled with hollowness
Dread presenting at every turn
Fear my turning into my friend
The future unknown is my battle
The air feels thick as treacle
The weight of the moon on my shoulders
Life’s adventures turn sour
My mind full of horror
Past instances and present times
Today is not a good day
I feel so alone but not lonely
The world moves fast around me
Betrayal burned deep in my mind
A tear slowly fall down my cheek
No one sees no one knows
Does a tear fall if no one sees it
Written: December 23, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori
*************
Castle Ravenloft looms—
a janiform crown of storm-light and stone.
Its spires protrude as if imploring
a cold, unanswering nimbus.
Below, Barovia lies—
a shabby village where cowslips squirm,
and daybreak, under mists,
offers only a brief farewell.
This land’s spirit is sacred suffering.
Hope and death entwine in chiaroscuro.
Symbiosis curdles into a curse,
and the living move with shadows
as though born to them.
Ubiquitous, gelid mists
embed xenogenesis in every breath,
Their jagged deceit conning the brave and mulish.
Dark, shriveled streets of Barovia—
laden with pale wisteria—
echo with inane, forgotten glee,
an odor of treacle, revulsion, and lost joy.
On the edge between night and terror,
a winsome child may hum a chorus—
a fleeting overlap of sorrow and mercy.
But the mists return, hostile and persistent;
after tasting music, street, and soul,
only the castle remains—
a riddle whispered against
a cloudscape that refuses to rise.
Written: November 06, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Karen Jones
****************************
December can be a seraphic break ... not a trek through squalor—
No wheezy winds, no stygian moods ... no suction of sodden days,
Let it simmer with the warmth ... of rapture and rosemary stew.
Let the nimbus sky festoon the trees ... with blithesome skeuomorph snow—
Each flake is a serendipity whisper ... a spark of pure grace,
Let the river rime ripple ... as a rakish scarf on the hills.
Let the roost resound with stories ... sages, and escorts alike—
While the air sizzles with ... mellifluous sigh and a hint of lard,
Let the rugged year resile ... ratified by insight and treacle.
Let the vault of stars above ... be a tailored zenith of light —
A quixotic quilt stitched by ... Siamese dreams and slack-jawed awe,
Let bleak hours resile into ... symbiosis with joy, not scorn.
Allow the standard hush of snow ... to soften the slur of time —
And a slender sickle of hope ... scythes the stench of the past,
Let December be the soul of ... what we almost dared to believe.
Written: November 05, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Hilo Poet
****************************
He ruled with a rakish grin ... a slack scythe in his sanguine fist—
A pharaoh of spurious gloat ... redolent of lard and treacle,
His laws ratified in rapture ... festooned the sacred with spit.
A seraglio of skeuomorphs ... hailed his wondrous fashion sense—
The riparian fields sank ... in soaked squalor and dysania,
He wore a nimbus of stink ... a stygian sherpa to dire fate.
In his sesquipedalian bragging ... the soul of land grew slack—
Each boast is a blur, each law ... a grieving gasp of suction,
Even the seraphic ibis flinched ... its wings dimmed by his shadow.
With tales of Siamese stars and stew ... he won over the jury—
Though the slack-jawed and gaunt group ... gnawed on serendipity bones,
There was no spark ... just the sizzle of sand in a dying sun.
Now his tomb lies amid a cold dune ... decked with dysenteric myths—
A janiform relic of zeitgeist and treason ... stripped of all zest,
The sovereign ruin ... no ripple, no ravel, no rove of resile.
Written: November 02, 2025, for contest sponsored by: Charles Messina
**********
The man in the elevator wore a nimbus atop his head,
He claimed he was a janiform—half genius, half dead.
A cheerful opsimath mastered the art of juggling spoons,
While humming mellifluous tunes to passing raccoons.
His nickname was “Treacle Tom,” but no one knew why,
He adorned his socks with jelly beans and icy pumpkin pie.
With rhythmic bursts, he danced as a lively sprite.
And gave a lecture on narcolepsy at every traffic light.
Once sipping lifeless tea, he felt a sudden revelation,
That the spirit resembled a rodent caught in vibration.
Though noisome in aroma, his charm was at its zenith—
Could the man in the elevator be a legend or merely a myth?
Just one last kiss, my little stotty-cake!
You are my cate, my sweetmeat, dainty dish.
Be happy, hinnie, for your "Old Man"'s sake.
You've made me happier than I could have wished.
My sugar dumpling, custard, treacle tart!
Let's part with smiles, and try to hide the ache.
It couldn't last - we knew that from the start.
For us, there'll be no happy ever after.
Go off, embrace your future. Love and thrive.
This thing, this fling, was just a young girl's dream.
It was a pudding "de nouvelle cuisine"
- that's short and sweet - but how we raised the rafters!
Remember me. And, (if I'm still alive!)
I'll often think of you with love. And laughter.
Cinnabar remittance ailerons squall federal cobblestones. Lank alpine squint modest. Nectarine grimace, cloys toothsome.
Coiffure chain rod composure anemic, primogeniture Swedish cotton murk optics
Rodeo riding maiden broadcaster network metaverse falconry. Boreal voyages legalese.
Simper treacle blanched anecdotally. Goofy balm, beardless tease, healthy as a horse, real bee knees.
I can only feel this cold sensation brush against my feet
The warmth crispen my fingertips
As you walk on by
The aromas that I smell around this environment
My sight
Indescribable
I feel enable
Lesser
Wasted
A reject
A project gone wrong
What are you?
What can you bring?
What can I do?
My hands clasp sharply around my cane
Guiding me
Through this treacle
Do people laugh at me?
Look at me?
Point
Examine
Judge
I wouldn't blame if they did - I would do the same - If I was in their shoes
I am parade of failure
And nothing more
Incomprehensible
It fathoms the mind
Can't translate
Look through me
Can you see me
I am even here
Do I even exist to you
I wonder
Ted is a novice when skating on ice
Kept slipping and falling twenty times twice
Body shattered and battered
And his teeth were all scattered
Prayed the tooth fairy will give a good price
Soups and soft food is all he can now eat
But he fancied something that is more sweet
Poured treacle in a large cup
Then quickly drank it all up
Feeling sick, vowed he would never repeat
He felt very hot and started to fret
From every pore he was pouring with sweat
He went outside to cool down
Some wasps where flying around
And saw his body as a sweet object
He screamed loudly, hollered, blubbered and cried
As the wasps were all stinging him with pride
His body grossly swollen
And dignity now stolen
Wished instead gone for a horse and cart ride
14.09.23
Flagrant bird Bernadette feathery flair flamboyant
Towers over average plumage
Parades tassle twist pantomime pow wow warbonnet
Cascade costume illuminating
Cheyenne crowned showgirl, a flurry of torso tumult
Statuesque neck festers fatalism
Stiletto weapon punctuates staid with societal revolt
Rouses a Lady Marmalade rythm
Elusive vermilion mouth majestic Bernadette buxom
Slinks sequined by beside suited
Patrons in shadow of taboo troublesome seduction
Stubble rub struggle translucent
Sashaying aves, aloof eaglet suspended in feminine
Bouyant slow swirl drape tailed koi
Hypnotic bronzed bends transmit treacle pheromone
Concocts a carbonated cider void
26th June Too sexy!
The seas today were not a short, sharp chop
but were syrupy soggy soft like black treacle,
clinging to the hull like on a spoon, clutching and sticky.
Warily I sailed on, aware of the tenuous tug
and drag of deception in the compliant welcoming.
I, as an alien in the wetness of sea,
knew that the warm softness of the seas's clutch and cuddle
may belie a hidden tumult,
a change of face
on the whim
of a mere breath
of wind.
Due to his callous disregard, he divided her intent
Wanting to be loved was rapidly replaced
With needing to be nurtured
Windscreen scorch, midday duco seared her palms
A lost Christmas scarab lurid green beetle
Gripped Flora's taut forearm
Future she craved wavered toward steely necessity
Untitled as lucre of lake illusion luminous
Looming in her frontal lobe
Angel held urns runneth over, soma sportula pour
Treacle tips intoxicating as cherry kirsch
Accommodation on aileron
Conveyed from kookaburra sarcasm to city suzerain
Mirror tower monuments collide in clouds
Encourage worldwide rivalry
Flora's inclination for comfort drives acute delirium
Arid Arab cobalt coast melts cultures mosaic
Gamey gourmet, cutlery gleam
Her new wrist cuffed, convict of antique timepiece
Lost Duat archived exchange rate temporal
Khepra hands kissed henceforth
12th March 2023
Written for Contest: 'K' Word Challenge
Sponsor: Constance La France
pancakes barbara with cream
a buckwheat galette
haddock,prawn savoury wraps
brandy crepe suzettes
dribbled with treacle
Flip,flip Hoo
Ray!
Some languages are fluently translatable
but only by how the mouth
utters and shapes them,
they are too musical to be not sung,
like Gaelic; it was my mother’s tongue
and her grandmother’s elder tongue.
Romani is acoustically spell-binding,
Grandfather was a gypsy
horses naturally understood his voice;
it’s an Indo-Aryan root language
like Yiddish, a colloquial melodia
in Ashkenazi/Aramaic.
My own genetically challenged branch
of a familial tree of tongues
is half-Jewish – the wrong half.
These lips follow only English,
a language with too many roots,
its tongues are all blended into
a raucous silence.
There are many multilingual wounds
and they all bleed like dark treacle
out of a hide-bound dictionary.
She no longer speaks to me
Since I went and stroked her knee
Being carried away
During afternoon tea
When she went and stole my heart
With beef and two veg
And treacle tart
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