The crimson canopy bleeds out its light,
to clear the stage for an eternal night.
We misread beauty in the dying leaf,
a gilded cover for a timeless grief.
For every joy is a borrowed loan,
and autumn reaps, to turn earth to stone.
The twilight deepens, cold and unappeased,
as life surrenders to a slow disease.
No sanctuary stands against the frost,
which counts the tally of the loved and lost.
The heavy fog absorbs the last faint ray,
and suffocates the memory of day.
The branches reach like skeletal despair,
to pull the pitch-black sky into the air.
Whatever shined was merely an illusion,
a brief distraction from the dark’s intrusion.
The final ember drops into the deep;
the void reclaims the promises we keep.
So let the shadows drink the remaining red,
for all things good belong among the dead.
Contest: 2026/03/15 Write a Beautiful Shadorma
Sponsor: Constance La France
Through Author’s Lens: “Where the world groweth dark, the child yet keepeth the dawn.”
Cold winds stir
Silent dwellings wake
Small shoes wait
Pause again
Mothers scan dim firmament
Night draws ever near
Thin clouds drift
Vast heavens hold breath
Young eyes lift
Slowly now
Why cathedral bells recede
Birdsong breaks to hush
Pale dawn comes
Radiance parts mist
Bare trees speak
Low murmur
Children step into morning
Hope stands unappeased
I am a wave.
From far I come to you
Swimming with desire.
In wild curls I come,
Riding with music,
Travelling on sunbeams.
Within my hidden folds,
I carry the thoughts of love,
Wishing to rest on the shore.
Lashing playfully, I come,
Looping into a sensational hug!
But how sad, I can only embrace you
Just for a brief moment!
Over our heads, seagulls wing.
Around us, soapy foams giggle.
In wild ecstasy, I roar,
Crashing my head on your breast.
But I am made to drift away,
Leaving nothing behind,
But a stretch of dampened sand,
Reminding that we have once met.
Can I ever hold you again?
Wish I could once more,
Rush into your arms.
Sometimes I feel,
I am on an eternal journey.
With desires unappeased,
I continue traveling miles.
Let us be a pair of seagulls,
Flying in tandem, you forever,
Staying close to me,
With your wind under my wings!
Unsatisfied sighs
Puff the heart of avarice
-It’s illusive mist
Restlessness pursues
The golden deer- happiness,
But greed is mirage
The unappeased minds
Hug the wicked schemes always
-Blissful life on thorn
The thorny cinders
Though lit up the sinners' life
-Brightness is stopgap
The voracious fire
Waiting for the sinner's soul
Though earth is good nurse
The inferno realm
Reigns immoral everywhere
As hell or mind strife
March 26, 2023
Hell Haiku Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Robert James Liguori
Perhaps apples were fewer in the bowl
Perhaps you needed still further tints
Whatever I emptied my whole almirah
Nothing was left in the blood and flesh
It was a dream we started from
Doesn't dream lead us to reality
Then what for our desire for the froths of sleep
Dream trees steeped in red round grapes
A new gondola in a new creek
Desires for the sea only pursuit
Breaking the waves with tremendous joy
New and newer islands of fulfillment
Perhaps I lacked gold and diamond
Or else why would you suddenly shift
To new shores of pink communication
To new shafts of unknown sunlight
Our thoughts are perhaps always partial
The kernel and further we cannot see
Initially both accommodated the anchor
Our ocean would conquer all mountains
Now we do feel the beginning was flawed
Your nucleus needed something beyond love
Was it a regression to the unappeased childhood
Was it some other fuel than just love
Okay my dear stay satisfied
With the new full moon and new autumn sun
Just keep careful of another darkness
That doesn't call for yet different rays
September 9, 2019
Sometimes love is not enough Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Silent One
Father, grandfather, great-grandfather
I’ve heard your cry
Far from the dungeon
Inviting me to the tearless
Where my plights would be addressed
But you know father,
I can’t come now!
I’m just a mundane street roamer
Roaming aimlessly
On this desolate street of Ai-Igado
In quest of my lost turtle dove
To forfeit to Ichekpa
Which you left unappeased
I can’t lodge in a shattered home
So says the Akpandede*
*Akpandede is swift (a bird) in Idoma language in Nigeria
While the ancients sleep drunken dreams
in an August haze of torpor,
reheated by a relentless sun,
when the grills and water torches light up
the night with feasts of raucous laughter,
the sealed sweat from that riotous time
begins floating upward.
Fastening onto mariner's winds;
coalescing past curious birds;
savoring the sterling starlight;hardening into a glass meteor.
Indurate invader-
that is slapped down with frigid malice
by the unappeased agnostics
who reject such divinities.
Streaking through a dismal, grey cumulus
exposed in an antiseptic freezer,
it explodes.
Shattering it's liquids memories all over;
bleaching the tightened barks of trees;
stringing silver gossamer threads over tiles and pitch;
chattering antennae and chugging chimneys;
smearing windshields with Vaseline vapor.
While we look out and dread
our first tender, numb steps outside,
crunching and slipping with the fearful hangover
of a punishing Puritan winter.
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