24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Most of my day
is spent on couches
and beds
under blankets,
or on cushions,
asleep,
as I am a senior
aged thirteen.
I love to play
and run around
but I get tired
twice as quickly
though I still run
fairly fast.
Sometimes I hurt,
and fail to jump,
they pick me up
and hug me tight.
I wag my tail,
it’s good to know
they love me still,
for years to come.
Millennia have eroded the once great giants of prehistory into watered down effigies of what their ancestors once were.
While time transformed the lands, the climates, and the creatures into museum pieces, we have pulled one another through.
Through the murky uncertainty that both is and is not, our shared experience called life
We have grown together, evolved together, survived together.
A symbiotic expression; an oxytocin-addiction; a man and his best-friend
We trust them with our homes, our property, our lives, our children’s lives
We raise them, feed them, teach them, befriend them, and love them.
We communicate across a gap greater than mere language, but a gap between species
Effectively relaying messages in ways we aren’t even mindful of,
Through means we are only just now beginning to break the surface of
When they look at you with their big eyes and you see through the thousands of years that have braided us to our best friends
You know that they too are looking through the foggy glass of the ages since the day, that they met their best friend, too.
a wandering soul
lost in a world of his own
a vagabond perhaps,
a kindred spirit
moving free from a world of chaos,
he dares to be different
from a sea of fools trying to fit in.
an era of madness
illusions of a perfect refuge
to a mystic like him,
ridiculed from within
the phantom outcast they label the pitiful man,
for refusing to follow the ordinary crowd
who continually mocks him.
to live like a hermit
far from the privy eyes
of men in vain,
he created a sanctuary
only he can understand,
living in unconventional ways set him apart
from the shallow-brained maddening flock.
his masterpieces can change this ill world at a glance
if only his voice is to be given a chance
no one knows his heart is full of love for mankind,
and yet almost all those he met are deaf and blind
selfish ones only thinking of what they can get,
instead of giving a piece of them
and truly experience life.
Author/Poet Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo
Dilettante
You buy the used books to treasure what others could not,
but scavenge for the comfort fumbling away, as if
on a fishing pole, or the newspaper read by the whirlwind.
Bite your fingertips, go ahead—you cannot gnaw away all
the years your palms have wrought, the indented
circles like tree stumps. How can you tire of drink that you
cannot touch to your lips and still blame the glass?
A heart, christened it your own, probably with a pen and
signature, in your shirtsleeves—that heart, impending
upon a string, taut to the door so none may enter—
how can you yourself flee your very heart’s domain?
Pull the earth away from beneath you, yet not where
the Vox appears from: certainly not much there.
But never you mind, give it time and
all those collective carpets beneath your feet will
be all the earth you recognise. There is an unearthly
sound as a constant, pronouncing words of shelter,
though you cannot witness them at play.
Candidly, of petrified apologies, you enchant apathy
with the lack of tongues, stomping out the
rhododendron ringing. Men were not sustained
to swallow the seas, but greed is the discreet
wallowing, rolling in your aloof grounds. Gaudy hands
reclaim the January sparks, new days that were
never new before, given a time and place
you could never present. Pallor, what a beautiful
colour, matches your eyes, gashing the primroses
with nothing but a hateful gaze.
Hope for nothing in return, that is the greatest
reception. The irretrievable light on a player piano
coated with dust; you never learned its sound, its performance.
The air will not breath for you, flannel shirts
and open country where the emptiness was
your elementary acknowledgement.
Articulated upon that fruitless academia, beads of
tears lost, your shards of selfish vengeance struggle.
Every time you remembered, you would say you hated
the world for every time you once loved it,
all those childish years ago.
Incidentally, the cost was not yours to decide nor
yours to exchange from the bank. You would ask,
Why isn’t my suffering on my hands?
Why would the sky have you here if it were not inevitable?
Honest to heart, if you could give anything in the world,
would you have anything to give or take
since it’s all clogged and collapsible, clouding your mind?
Normality is not a charming place to call home, and the
blisters are but brittles boundaries; beyond the bivouacked
Firmament, confluence became your scapegrace.
Like a thieving wind, evasion a poor addiction,
you are the season of tangled webs woven,
cathartic today, nostalgic tomorrow. Those November bruises
are not annual; to ease the pain, you say: Hand me down that
solace from the top shelf, I can never reach it.
You should not have to concentrate joy, let it come.
Beyond a resilient doubt, condemning your memories is
the truant shape of melancholia. Thai candy, simply sweet—
just the hope within calls salt to your eyes.
You buy the used items to collect the hate of others,
and replace it with something new, though it is
rife with abandoned patience. The penance composed upon
the haven of your home, hold it above your head,
let the wind compel it from your grasp. Let go—
those pacific eyes were musing in the mirror for a reason.
Stand your knees from your coiling in the corner,
the room for improvement is next door, and it has
endless space for you to use. The dilettante,
viewed as the unstable, unchanging fool,
it is you who is always changing, but not for the world.
The hieroglyphics are etched
into the bones.
Messages from the past lives or
carrying instructions into the future.
Linquist? Anthropologist?
Who shall read the symbols
as they were intended or
as they prophesize?
Doctors? Physicists?
Who can explain these stories
on my bones, in my living tissue
found by modern technology.
Parents? Friends?
Who will be another to join me
as we decipher
why this internal code exists.
He came into our lives
a black and white whirlwind of joy
He grew into our family
Our love for him was uncontainable
Two years later, on a day of rain
He was taken to heaven
Leaving a hole within me
that can never be filled
I want to know the method, the character of her breath,
the manufacturing of her lungs, how words blend with
her artful smoke. The most valuable pricetag in a packet
of sugarcane wrapped atmosphere staining her outline,
inside out.
Her mouth running, that smell of a running car dashing
around the corner, as if fueled by Marlboro kisses,
dragging each exhale out with another Camel choking
in her throat.
Used to the pull, the position of the cigarette, idle
and kindling between middle and forefinger, while
coughing subsided long ago. Each breath cremated as the
color of coins casually claims her features.
Her husband Winston lit on fire, expendable.
No form of tonic washed down lungs loosely clinging
to the pure air outside will remove the corruption.
Shamelessly in a beautiful addiction, she mumbled,
And my personality not a bit diminished.
Her lips shaped like rugged canyonface, glazed with
weathering, a Marlboro to her pursed lips,
puffing out the littered wind of the world.
Her teeth the door, the cigarette the conduit
for her inflicted ashes to spew,
convert to oxygen, a pack a day.
Faithful companion, loyal friend,
Warm weight at the foot of the bed.
Clattering claws across the floor,
Rushing to greeting at the door.
Eager for daily exercise,
Snatching the ball out of the sky
Bounding full-tilt across the park,
Playing outside ’til after dark.
Proud to show-off each new-learned trick,
Picking up new ones, smart and quick,
Sitting so quiet, well-behaved,
Off-the-leash romp is fun and games.
Friend of my youth, and well-loved still,
Lives in my heart, and always will.
Prompt: Dogs
Form: English sonnet
Meet the detective I hired to find the things I’ve lost
gold earring, jade bracelet, single gloves, my face
which disappears and only seen in shade until eyes are drawn
lips are outlined by two tubes of scarlet gloss, the nose made
less prominent and clear cheeks unblemished, highlighted
bones stark, not puffed out at all.
My face looks like someone else, unfamiliar to me, strange
to family, acquaintances unknown, I’m lost as much as each
item saved in hope for a match to appear now as this
private eye entered the scene.
Mr. Eye questions me, asks where I came from, what town,
what foods I eat, what makes me glad, who I admire, books
I’ve read, songs I like. Soon Mr. Eye believes he can fill out the
rest of me and once he knows my preferences the rest is solved.
Soon the earring has a mate, the bracelet is In its box, gloves are
paired, my face returns and everything is reborn.
Man’s Best friend
Man’s best friend is woman’s too.
Now with this, I give the clue.
To the best companion found.
Friendship with this pet is
Often bound,
to needing extra
time each day for
some little extra play!
Now, young reader,
do you know
a companion that
can win
best show?