Amidst the rocks on the edge of the land
Casting its light, a faithful friend stands.
Low in the shadows of the crests and troughs
Lies hidden danger when seas are rough.
But this lighthouse spreads it's loyal beam
To alert captains to what can't be seen...
A metaphor for a friend like you
Who generously lights up those around her too
Who shares her light of joy and love;
The darkest shadows you rise above.
Thank you for reaching out your hand
Like the faithful guardian sheds its light from the land.
Three girls who drank from grey troughs
cried hard and rasped with loud coughs.
Cold cops raced to swoop
The girls took a poop
On top of their heads with scoffs.
divine epiphanies dawn
glimpsed by us from time to time
osmotic penetration
stirs in our heart a love rhyme
ego offers resistance
striving for pole position
futile is its insistence
burnt off by bliss ignition
all we need is pure intent
the universe does the rest
granting scent of love consent
troughs too become a bliss crest
Dreams evolved from the tusk of night
into the speckled mist of dawn.
Rye-buttered toast and fresh roast are on.
Window filled with silver sparkle.
Birds chirping from boughs of their emerald church.
It's been a good day... so far.
It's been a good day ...so far.
Heartache is briefly sealed in a mason jar.
No vamps sniffing at the nape of the neck.
No auto wrecks, freak accidents, nor death.
The goldfish is well flaked and blows me a kiss.
It's been a good night... so far. No black phone calls.
No specters in the corner of the eye or bathroom mirror.
Only worn eyes that know the spring as well as the fall.
The silver swells, bloody trails and purple troughs.
Age has no dominion over wisdom or discernment.
I'm rapidly approaching my final home.
There's still so much more to do and to learn.
Only the goldfish knows that precious things are never forged from gold.
Frustration
Moody in its own reflection
Confusing to the inner mind
Bubbling thoughts of strained distinction
Bold and soothing, equal measures
Ferocity and shushing sounds
Thrust from mouths in contemplation
Syllables of three marcations
Peaks and troughs sequencing structure
Signify ensuing fervour
Consumed by anger, filled with fear
A burning sensation deep within
Erupting like a fevered lava
Written: November 02, 2025, for contest by: Robert James Liguor
**********
The frozen core of human activeness
where the temperament recklessly smiles,
sludge cascades from the blade's edge
A joyous opsimath emerges,
reminiscent of rebellion and aged books,
sturdy and infused with a grin.
His unique calling sign is the "lard of law."
He wears robes adorned with nimbus designs
and stands before a wall of questions.
He gathers information from insightful individuals
Every conundrum is a breach in the law,
And every victim wants to be obvious,
He repeats sharp retorts to the sentient
To the obstreperous, the zymotic throbbing of history.
He says that justice is not banausic.
She is a lissome Nereid,
dancing with eurythmic elegance through garbage.
Though weariness grasps the morning,
and moribund minds look for troughs, not summits.
He persists on—
a sherpa of the spirit,
bestow the noisome into view
where enlightenment flowers akin to vernal fire.
Justice is not a flaw,
It's beginning
It is Nemesis
the tiny thread that links,
the strained heart to the flimsy earth.
The grass waved hello
the birds called back.
Telegraph poles stood still
like tall slender trees.
the birds liked that.
the crickets a constant tickle in the ear,
swathes of brown grass bouncing back after drought,
three troughs haphazard on a patch without
any grass. Bare dark earth.
the raven makes its cry
under a bright grey sky,
on a swampy, sweaty day .
my dog companion at my feet
"Come on then, let's go home."
Yesterday is wrapped loosely
in the barbs and silky vapor of memory.
Tomorrow is a Mahogany wall of steep hope
slippery anxiety.
The Present is an awkward roll on an ocean.
of crimson crests and sable troughs.
Perfumed sails and bow-crushing sirens
Flashes of flippers and fins.
Sudden slashes and clicks.
The tapestry of grand sudden sorrow.
Life is a starburst gift.
Conceived in the gilded soil of angel hearts.
Living in the salty eyes of swells and troughs.
Living breathes to bend you into and out of its will.
From valley to mountain to the misty hills.
Life speeds up into a crimson tangle.
It slows down into thick blueness.
Life is about feeling like a king then a clown.
Juggling brief victory and endless loss.
It bends you into things you could never dream about.
The bending is acceptable; we paint it the human experience.
Sometimes we glass seeds in the devil's beak where nothing ever grows.
The soil will eventually join the sea
bringing everything back home...
like it was always meant to be.
no more time
to shed
tears
no more lies
to feel
truth
no reason
to be
nice
nothing left
to fear
loss
no vision
to see
God
In Spring
In spring water troughs
fart all the
musical notes, butterflies go to
Collage school, four-leaf clovers babysit
bulldogs, placemats collect bits of
string to
make balls, lichen await letters from
royalty all over
the world, sticks go for
runs, not to
lose weight, but just for
fun.
Intrinsic motivation
The cogs to elevation
To tick over and over
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock
To persevere, persist and permeate
Whatever life may throw
To ride the peaks & troughs
Till a perfect storm of dastardly acts
A kangaroo short of a circus
Came home to roost
An existential crisis…
Begone…asap
To begin anew
Intrinsically motivated
Muscle-shirt man took his cell phone for a walk.
His mutt was just a four-legged afterthought.
Sniffing out voles and angels from the wildflower troughs...
Muscle shirt man jerked him by the neck over and over again.
I was trapped by Muscle shirt man's loud cell phone drone.
And the mutt's giant wiggly bulldog anus.
I slowed down to gain them distance.
They soon disappeared beneath April's green Avalanche.
Pleasant pulsations manifest;
boons bestowed by bliss magnetism,
wherein troughs, which once were the crest,
biding their time in body prism,
resurrect at our heart’s behest,
creating for us a new ism.
Pheromones strike joyful poses,
shape shifting in a dance sublime
on a path that’s strewn with roses,
wherein betwixt love’s blissful chime,
synced with a rhythm God composes,
in repose we heavenward climb.
Grace in-pours through heart’s open door
but drunken delight keeps no score.
The migratory mind indomitable,
the spirited surfer on surging waves of life,
creates the curled crests of fractured moon,
and the dark troughs of sinking fallen stars.
The swell recedes with the ebb of time,
seeking the secluded depth of the past.
The shifting sands etch the seaward footprints,
contoured as the corroding design of decay.
The time arrow finds the destined course,
seeks the serene topography beyond the shore,
away from the eroded wilderness abandoned,
where emptiness engulfs the hues of hope.
In the weed-webbed terrain deep within,
piles up the wreckage of life unlived,
turns the flushing garden to template of wasteland.
The pathway paved outside its frail fence,
waits to be walked fascinated,
reach the mesmeric meadow of tomorrow.
The innovative memory then invents
the arcane acumen of alchemy,
glitters gold in the rusted existential ruins.
Marigold blooms in the aureate junkyard
on the scrap stack of the bleak being,
with the touch of the Midas mind.
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