There is more in the poet’s craft
than strings of words adorned in the trappings of poesy.
He sees beauty even in a simple thing,
unclothing it, giving it a new cloak,
and revealing the work of art trapped in its ordinariness.
His verses are not just exclamations
from a heart possessed by passion,
nor mere ramblings from a tormented mind--
both of which are of transitory nature--
but are precious moments
captured, distilled, and preserved
for what he hopes is eternity.
Like a doctor who discerns
every cell and tissue in the human anatomy,
the poet dissects thoughts and experiences,
breathes into them new life
and invites others to view them in a different light.
November 9, 2025
Among 3rd Place
Pen Something to this Prompt Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Sotto Poet
Open sky,
sitting on a park bench with one arm curved behind a person;
teething smiles shyly undressing my emotional puristic like Adam re-unclothing in
Eden.
Whatsoever is losed of my ascetic,
may it free our eyes to tresspass into our hearts and breakthrough the binders.
Open sky,
like a shaded orange thingy,
serendipity might bring your meaning by a large dream of two days' worth of sleep
after I crept into your eyes and lost something I can't really tell of;
I think it was unshelved, a piece of my bestselling self; consequence: lost.
Obsequies: died for love, the form of death that kills the greed of my homesickness;
consequence: no return.
Open sky,
clear,
yet the sun will soon say goodbye.
Like good friends we watch his actual goodbying but not without the christening of
our love pudding:
sweet child in arm, the sweetest charm we ever cast...
Yours for all time,
burnt the bridge behind and it's a good thing I can't swim,
good thing, but if I could,
I'd swim in your own pull.
An Edvard Munch reproduction hangs demurely,
yet with a blushing come-hither
disclosing/unclothing.
A Van Gogh print
hovers near her like a sad and troubled lodger.
I sense his self-inflicted wound itching
under the bandages.
Flick goes the duster,
for a moment the diaphanous drape
covering Munch’s semi-naked girl flies away.
In his self-portrait, for an instant
Van Gogh’s lost ear returns.
I am putting the world to rights,
or maybe just my world.
Not correcting, just moving the artwork along
to where it was going, or should have not gone to
before it was set forever inside a jailhouse frame.
Chet lived creepily in the back of the tavern, hidden.
No one bothered him. He lived vicariously through the others.
The pretty barflies who flitted in chatting too loudly.
Flipping their hair. He had a salacious appetite, saw them all naked.
They sometimes waved to his corner when they were drunk.
He did not think they knew he was perpetually eyeballing them.
Unclothing them one piece of clothing at a time in his mind.
Uncovering their secrets was easy; they shared way too much.
His voyeuristic tendencies got him ostracized and secluded from family.
His mixoscopia and scoptolagnia confusing the prissy Baptists he knew.
He might go Catholic, he had heard they were more open. Nah!
Religion was not for him. His religion was this bar and those bar flies.
One of them was throwing her head back now, laughing loudly.
He would dream of her tonight. He smirked at the eroticism she brought him.
She turned and waved. If he was forty years younger, he would be over there.
But he knew better so he stayed put, swigging back his beer.
Somewhere,
an afternoon
unveils with eagerness,
the sun, which swims out of a cloud,
lazily, unclothing bronzed vacancies---
Illustrious, unabashed light
strokes, awakening bliss
that does exist,
somewhere
______________________________________________________
Inspired By Visual # 1 for Nette Onclaud's Contest:" Just Nine Lines"
By Carrie Richards 9/8/13
Petals of a rose
Grace into autumn
And from life
They are swayed
With sadness
The thorn and stem
Embrace soon white
Exposed and brave
Flower bares her spirit
Nakedness to unclothing
Becoming soulless
In a season of grey
Merely one by next
Upon a cold earth clay
Fallen petals
A road crimson fading way
Do I hear footsteps on the corridors tonight
Is there a gentle knock
A firm, persistent knock
Like night unclothing in a stars sweet light?
Who is that lonesome shadow over the hill
Heart so sweetly pounding
Being so filled with longing
I can hear her breathing, hear her so still
Will you speak my name again, so low to me
Like jasmines sweet arousing
Bright sweat and light exposing
I in joy, and sweet love's glowing intensity
I have memories to keep, truth fadeless fair
You may not come again
And I must keep the stain
Life is an iceberg, times are not what they appear
You come to me hesitantly
Like a hot wind
Unclothing the sea
From the negligee of the sun
Raising one leg
Bare
So there are no curtains
Clouding my brain
Over my prostrate body
You climb
Lingering in groves
Of spice
Where the birds
Hard beak
Plunge
Into the soft core
Of mangoes,
And naseberries sweet odor
Drift through the trees
Seducing you with unravished desires
Suddenly there is a quiver
Of condensation
Waking the musty odor of dust
I am wet with rain
Too little to moist
The thirsty thighs of my forest
And so fresh
Without the salty preservatives
Of emerald oceans
My leaves
Turn gold again in spring
Insufficient moisture
In the hollow flock of clouds.
Drunk ... I drank too much th echampagne of words
Staggering like a kite in a wind contrary
I feel heart string tugs and mount again in air
On at the clouds cuddling height
I smell the fragrance of a tropic land
A longing for tree tops ... the sweet aroma of fruits
Where our skin are peeled naked like a moon
My tongue longs for cores of sweetness
In tropical songs when balmy winds blow
My knees sagging in wekness
Drunk ... let me touch the solid world
Of your eyes unclothing light
Let me sit down awhile ... and listen to the night
Teach me passions forgotten in boyhood dreams.
i tear at my clothes to get them off
only to throw them back on once again
due to the hate
lashing from my eyes in the mirror
so overcome by the fury in my eyes
i'm afraid of the picture
they may paint inside my head
it may be better to only
look the other way
when unclothing myself
the clothes cover me up
and cause an illusion in your eyes
underneath is something
i veer away from
otherwise i will see
how grotesque it is under it all
the truth never is what
you want it to be
under it all is certaintly
not what i want to be
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