By leaf, love-shaped heart unfurled
With no moral sense attached
Shrinks, warps, and dulls fast
Unblown as unfelt, but sensed
Airily, as a ceaseless
And ever cold blast.
Look,
I’d have to have a moment to
Get my bearings and
Bear down on it and
Bear with me, please
A thought is a comet when the thought
Is a thought about you
And I cannot stop it
It flies through my room when I’m
Gripping my bedsheet and I’m
Breathing uneven
Thinking of you knowing
Thinking of you thinking
I cannot have it
Have you watching from the
Corner of your eye as I
Sit just by the side and
Look,
Your arms stretch
And your legs
Stretch and your voice
Stretches when it carries my name
It warps into a shape
Time stops for me and I
Keep sitting there
I am just there
You’re two steps away and I’m
Begging for you to
Look,
Look at me while I’m on my knees
Pleading to a God I do not
Know the name of or
Know the prayer to
I just pray for the way
Your fingers move and your eyes
Roam across the room but then
They’re in laser focus
I need your focus
I need to bring my best to you
So I can hold it
You watch me like I could hold it
You judge me like
You want me to
And it won’t sting if
It’s too harsh and
Bruises my ego
And it won’t sting if it means
That you will
Look,
Fourteen minutes from Independence Hall
You'll find Hell on Kensington Street
Its a zombie apocalypse, American fall
The worst decay you'll ever meet.
People inject each other with heroin and tranq.
You wonder how the survival instinct warps
Ben Shapiro went there, and his heart sank
He described each loser as a living corpse
He was aghast, he saw people without feet
Rotted away because of the tranq they ingest
Festering bodies, was this once a stately street?
Our founders pledged sacred honor, but did they fail this test?
Prostitutes fill the streets by kids walking to school
The kids walk by the dead, by addicts shooting a last vein
Anyone who advocated for this would be a fool
But we elected one as mayor, isn't that insane?
The DSA platform once said all drugs should legalize
I hope Mamdani gave this up now
But whores on your doorstep, he'll give that prize
Does he know what he's doing, what this will allow?
Plenty of people stoned in New York
But more chaos can be made, does anyone care?
Genie out of the bottle, can't find the cork
Remember Kensington Street, Philadelphia, and despair.
I am the Lily of East London,a legendary,
luminous, lifeforce loaded.
My heart holds heavens, harvesting health
and harmony here.
The oceans obey,often observing my
outstanding order.
I am the vision vanquishing vexation,a valid,
vibrant,vital victory.
My presence warps reality,making dreams
the default state of being.
I am the diamond driving destiny,dazzingly
dominant and daring.
To All The Girls in East London:
Your collective power holds the very fabric of reality
together with effortless grace
Suddenly I've become a widow
Time warps around a surreal new reality
Everything is veiled in darkness
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
Fences yet to mend ,
Will they look the same again ?
Time stains, warps, and bends .
Sniff out the garish lights, loud music, and drunken discussions.
Breach the party uninvited.
Conceive uneasiness and instant disdain.
You try to tango with strangers who quickly slide away.
Somewhere in the intercourse of a reddish night
they feed you to a pack of blue dogs.
Willing to drag you down to their side of the tracks.
Loneliness warps all reason, lowers the standard.
Opens the vein to jagged strangers.
Liaisons come and go like a Roman legion.
They begin the journey bold as muddy devils.
Ranks thinning by the minute, by the hour.
Till only one soul remains beneath a parchment shield.
His destiny is to forever cower.
I sit and stare beyond what's there, besides
"The oval window, a portal to another dimension".
It drags the moon's eclipse off the sun's circle
to show an ellipse with twin foci, in two dimensions not one.
The tension woven into its shape shrouds a duality,
a flip-flop state, steeped in,
and reeking with ambivalence.
An oval coracle holding on,
rocking in choppy seas.
Therein lies a worm hole,
where logic warps to both sides, here and now, together,
where light bends, twists refracts to an oval rainbow,
where time stands still, then back-tracks
to before, to way, way back when,
and on to now and then.
An oval belies uncertainty,
spiraling like sand,
down in an hour-glass
down the plug-hole, down into the sink below,
collected in an oval coracle,
an egg yet to hatch.
The Enemy Within
"All cruelty springs from weakness." - Seneca
Oh Yes.
There is an Enemy Within.
It lives within, feeds upon, you.
Senseless, yelloweyed
It informs all you do.
Born of your Hate, Pride, Ignorance
It warps you daily,
Makes every decision folly.
The pity of it is,
You spent a life rewarded
For every vile transgression
Cheated of every lesson
Worth knowing.
So when Darkness comes for you
- As soon it must -
Its black shape, the shape of your inhumanity,
Will be awaiting by your bedside
To claim you,
Unlamented.
Right and wrong are basic concepts, and like
night and day, it's clear what sets them apart.
Fight or flight warps my vision and clouds my
sight when I stop listening to my heart.
My world is changing so negatively;
I am scared of what tomorrow may bring.
Sky-high prices fuel inflation, while
sly grifters promote bitcoins, memes, and bling.
Folks are tethered to smartphones that act like
yokes around their necks, keeping them in line.
Hoax or not, climate change is happening;
oaks and elms are dying, replaced by pine.
Crime and anxiety are starting to
climb, and everyone's filled with dread and fear.
I'm afraid the world is primed for war, and
time is fast running out; that much seems clear.
Candles wax time pulls it to Earth,
drops cool stilled hardens in seconds,
a fire holder girth, warps obverse,
candles wax time pulls it to Earth,
vapors prompt darkening observes,
fire loses fight gloaming transcends,
candles wax time pulls it to Earth,
drops cool stilled hardens in seconds.
I walked the winding way down your memories.
We live in the age of perpetual documentation -
a blessing for the socially inept.
Every abstract gives insight,
but I crave the full portrait,
you in your every shade and hue.
I wish to know you better than breathing,
but I fail even to take notice of where the edges of my posters line up.
And I put them there.
What a shame, what a shame, what a shame.
When will I grow good at being a person?
How could I ever fill in the yawning cracks?
Anhedonia warps my mind and my memories,
but something remembered shines through -
thoughts of those dear to me,
occupying me from dawn to the witching hour.
At last, rays light the gray horizon.
Maybe I’ve a reason after all.
ghosts haunted the room walls,
they seen us do the crime,
time passes with each line,
nightfall to daybreak early call.
worm for the early bird,
shovel and spade,
if they ask plead the third,
we knew about the raid.
placid the face of a blind man,
daredevil hearing a tune.
corpses hunger for their monger,
graffiti on a speechless tomb.
war is not the answer,
the solution is not cancer,
core of a nuclear winter,
momentum of a collider splinters.
black hole warps the fabric,
the shirt of a hillside maverick,
painted blue with memories
old times of lasting rhymes.
where did the palm spring
gather information on dreams
for the wishing well to run dry,
where was I_?
Historically the books are written by a well-known writer
The characters are formed to choose the sense of flight or fighter
The library of the mind stows away the facts from the fiction
The sequence of events unfold, memorised with restriction
The nature of the story, can cause the mind to cry
The loss of peaceful innocence in those days gone by
The imagery of barricades in a crowded stark front room
Foreboding silence and tension create a sense of doom
In the old terraced house, there’s a closure of ranks
As the fighter steps forward and the other flanks
The pushing and shoving in the silent stark room
The circle decreases and a flash warps the plume
The memories jagged as they cut like a knife
As she’s hit by the boxer and fights for her life
The dry autumnal street carpets red and gold
The crunch of the leaves cushioned the blow
The flash of the memory vivid and sharp
Innocence held with such disregard
The nature of the story, can cause the mind to cry
The loss of peaceful innocence in those days gone by
time slips through our fingers
most unapologetically
ignoring our pathetic pleas
cycles of sunrise followed by nightfall
seem endless yet each day not resembling the next
at least not always, maybe never
but there comes a day for us all
when time stops, stands still
inflicting a wretched pain
it seems like the end
but it's not really
we somehow carry on
till once again time
slips through our fingers
this time almost apologetic
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
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