(Inspired by "The Persistence Of Time" by Salvador Dali
The bare bough and the brown bench
hold the warped watches like wet satin
with the metal losing its toughness,
the tree forgetting its foliage.
The sunset sky stretches into fluid stillness
where time dissolves into the cyan sea.
The golden cliff rises behind the reverie,
at peace with the quiet crumple of time.
The sleeping creature on the sands
sprawls as a pale brutal form
with the burden of collapsed time.
Memory endures the design of ductile recollection
as the mirage of elastic time
slips through the sands of perpetuity,
losing its rigidity, its mechanical domination.
Surreal vision turns time into absurdity,
yet morphing into fascinating mirror of illusive fluidity,
a metaphor for the triumph of memory over time.
Written: July 6, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Nayda Ivette Negron Flores
An inward journey is not a road
but a **return** —
a slow aurora rising behind the sky,
a hush where the heart begins
to hear itself again.
It is the moment you stop
careening through the world’s clamor
and feel the subtle susurrus
of your own becoming.
It is a lantern lifted
in the labyrinthine dark,
revealing not monsters
but mirrors —
each one a mythic reminder
of who you were
before the world
told you otherwise.
It is the quiet courage
to clear the noise,
to sift the ash from the ember,
to find the single, ductile thread
that still thrums with truth.
It is the place where your pulse
finally speaks without fear,
where your spirit, long beleaguered,
stands up again
after falling seven.
Embrace the journey
that doesn’t invite you to shift
into someone else —
it calls you to recognize and reclaim
the luminous self
you have always been.
Time in ebony night stops to flow in aloneness undefined,
where infinite pathos in the congealed instants wanders
on the shadows of the past, void perception in seclusion,
gets shaped by strata of darkness, framed in psychic canvas.
The dispersed grains of darkness drizzle down silently
from the cauldron of the infinite blankness of eternity
that my sky starts to shape at the edge of ductile dusk
since the beginning of my time lost in the crypt of isolation.
The silken tapestry of the black blanket spreads slowly
as the twilight dissolves at the hinge of the hazy horizon
like the timed rainbow melting upon the sinking skyline,
where the silhouette darkness dances with the flowing night.
Sonorous sound of silence echoing ethereally in night sky
wakes up the sleeping stars one by one to sparkle bright
on the bejeweled crown the amorous ambiance adorns,
as the moonbeam strands weave dulcet dream of you for me.
Each stardust-sequined silent night I wait awake alone
for you to emerge lively out of my dream like an angel,
walk through the pining corridor of my craving mind,
as I let my thoughts drift in the emptiness of night’s silence.
Written: September 29, 2025, for contest sponsored by Tom Wood
***********
I) Sojourn of the Alabaster Mind
I careen through a world of chatoyant light,
Each step is a mirror of halcyon lore.
The pavonine sky and a chimera flight,
Projects sage shadows on an Elysian shore.
A clamor of atlas, a ductile tickle
Elixir of wonder, still need to fickle—
To pursue the penumbra, to not be blind,
And a sojourn for the alabaster mind.
II) The Necrotic Hour
I maunder across the clangor of despair,
A stertorous breath in the stygian gloom.
No nepenthe soothes within egregious snare,
Each cough is a pyrrhic echo in my room.
The airhead mocks my once-mellifluous breath
My Oculus dims in sudden fever death.
No eloquence lives in this loathsome abyss—
My nemesis: the sickness can't be sheer bliss.
Desultory winds
chimera in throes of doubt
effusive, disconsolate
-clanging in hills stout-
Ductile mind bends sound.
virtuoso of the void—
sweet, zoetic, browned
Written: August 07, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Mark Toney
***********
Corset of steel tightens—ratified pain,
Vestigial breath trapped in ischemia thrall.
The ductile hope failed to placate
This Pyrrhic ache, this woebegone gall.
A sojourn in the squalor of soul,
Where sylphlike dreams maunder, downcast.
Ogle the embers of the miraculous nexus—
A seraphic visage lost, quickly.
Vivacious once, now virile with woe,
Panacea tastes of pabulum, slipshod, and cold.
Tinkling memories coruscate as zeugma—
Bright, yet untoward, they never hold.
Quixotic penchant for connection,
Grasping too late the nebula beneath.
What puissance is this—this throe, this tumult—
When tulle-wrapped love meets a gyre of grief?
Ululation beneath pavonine skies,
Adumbrate every glance, every sigh.
Crimson weave keeps a skirt in place,
Valuable, stained, adorned, and slain.
"Cheating and trapping others are malicious. One must never try to cheat, if he/she wishes not to be cheated" ~ By Poet
At the GATE of a viscous net,
The sly spider waited alert.
A fly flitting closer on SHADOW wings,
Was caught in the dewy JEWEL studded strings.
When about to be wound round in ductile rings,
The fly with a cursing MUTTER made a fling,
And flew to freedom on filmy wings!
Ductile banks are eroded by swelling stream,
on the surging water the dislodged soils ride,
unsure if they’d disappear in sea with dream,
or would create a new land somewhere with pride.
Lost love the broken heart can’t ever redeem,
on upwelled tears the distraught emotions glide,
unsure if they would get lost in soul opaque,
or would build a new heart that won’t again break.
The itch to love
and satiate pride
swallowed too long stifles
breath
without emancipation
A tragic capitulation to self
Pride, perhaps acerbic,
leaves morsels to ruminate
and loves to regurgitate
coy ceramic dalliances
and Venusian masquerades
Masked in smiles
And toxic
This love,
These loose granite memories
Ductile innocents
And hasty lulls
These shining sunsets
And supernovas
Must rest.
The dispersed dark specks drizzle down silently
from the cauldron of the infinite blankness,
that the sky shapes at the edge of the ductile dusk,
since the beginning of the titular time.
The silken tapestry of the black blanket spreads slowly
as the twilight dissolves at the hinge of hazy horizon,
like the rinsed rainbow melting on the crumbled cloud,
from where the draping darkness flows with fluid night.
The sound of silence echoes in the night sky ethereally,
wakes up the sleeping stars one by one to sparkle bright
in the bejeweled crown of the argentine ambiance,
where the moonbeam strands weave dream of you for me.
In the stardust sprinkled bewitching night I wait fervently
for you to emerge out of my dream like an angel,
walk in the craving corridor of my mesmerized mind,
as I let my longing drift in the air of night’s amorous allure.
At the centre of a viscous net
The sly spider waited alert
A fly flitted closer on buzzing wings
Was caught in the labyrinthine strings
Alas, wound round in ductile rings
World
One
And all
Blessed and kind
Nature and souls bind
Clings, remain soft but not fragile
In God's hands, no strong marbles clutches the ground ductile
No boulders can silence the caves' echoes in the Cordillera of man's gifted lands
Seas and oceans combined, grounds drifting like blind, storms and clouds may rage over sands but floods cannot capsize arks of men as God and Love prevails.
"Peek-a-boo," Chucky said to me
Seek and hide, we played
Meek was I when I hid
Leek I smelled as Chucky swayed.
Agile Chucky prowled inside the house
Fragile was I when I shrugged
Tactile is he whenever he talks to me
Ductile was the glass floors when Chucky got mad and thugged.
Gold
metal
so precious
yellow color
it's praised by many
used to make jewelry
both malleable and ductile
conducts electricity well
was once used to mint coins for money
it's traded on exchanges and high-priced
All Quiet On The Frontal Lobes
A battle was fought: his Medulla oblongata versus an electrical socket.
The electrical appliance distributors made a racket. So did his screams.
But its pure, scientifically certified - who am I to besmirch and mock it ?
From now on his ol' rumbustious spirit won't be harbouring q.u.e.e.r. memes.
It'll be pliant, malleable, ductile. The vibrant brio, fizz of magnetic emotion,
Will have dissipated with the deafening circuit of cerebral electrocution.
They'll be no more fuss, no mayhem from his once truculent warrior soul;
The trenches are filled with the fallen, but walking graves no longer howl.
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