If you wish to conquer my soul in shreds of forever,
Drop your mask and carry me in your embrace,
As a panther, lie in wait for me, not to steal me away,
But to dance with me in the love's palace we yearn for.
The storm inside of me is silently disarmed,
In the quiet chambers, with the murmur of an abandoned river,
Cast my becoming into the future's pastels,
And blend into my passage, smooth as a muse in flight.
If you add to our struggles the salt and bitterness of life,
Wield your character like an art of pure mastery,
Your sincerity will be a lighthouse in the darkness,
And may you wander far from the sneaky chains of deductions.
Rather, go and sculpt your language from mute gestures,
Mysterious, as the eyes speak what words cannot,
And let your steps be guided by robust melodies,
That feed my hungry eyes with beauty and shape.
Now follow the steps that promise ungrasped bonds,
And don't forget the light that must end the enshrouded spectacle,
So that in the end, my soul may be enmeshed in your nets,
And you enclose it in a labyrinth of love, to gift it immortality and the eternal.
I loved him in a Summer's breeze,
though Summer ripened into Fall.
His Winter arms, a cooler squeeze,
a chill became an April squall.
A season's moment left ungrasped.
I thought of love, but love is blind.
Its daydreams easily unclasped.
Untended, quickly they unwind.
He left in Summer, with no glance;
his mythful "white horse" ran away.
My heart, he nicked with paper lance.
I can't recall his face today.
Promises penned in Summer's air
are lost as they waft everywhere.
March 20, 2023
for "A Simple Poetry Contest" poetry contest
by John Lawless
Taken inside the bowels
of bassoons,
tropical heat from
swelling bows.
Sweat labors the brow,
full with carnal dissonance.
The throat is lunged
by a beast
veiled in foliage.
Spewed in a mass of
broken pickaxes!
Kicked again into the
thunder of claws!
In flames of foundries
lost.
Becoming Roman Candles
opening across the night.
But drinking cool women
in the thaw of glaciers,
smoothing their oblong stones,
clear cleansed lemon lime oboes.
Naked bodies bloom.
Raced around a corner
at top speed,
the pounding of industry,
a worker in goggles
forging metal.
Without notice,
still mesmerized by fire,
in the belly of percussion,
paused
by a dawning pond of sullen fog,
a brief dream
shrouded in ungrasped riddles.
Sudden conductor realized
in the grass of tones,
using his baton as a machete.
On a distant hill
A shepherd beckons.
Animated, beclouded,
a restless crow in search,
a cinematic fade-out.
Here, but not touched.
Waiting...
for none but another ending.
Figurative pages are flexed, flattened
and shadows remain ungrasped.
Breath is unready for impact.
Staring at a stationary page marker stone,
I observe the outcome.