I Take Your Challenge!

To articulate
Those seventeen syllables
In three-thousand lines

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

The white mountain looms
Up beyond a veil of clouds
Yet to be traversed

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Sweet within the fold
Secrets fondled - ”Deep, away…
Lie thee placid, wings”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Red and yellow light
Creeping through the window pane
Bleach dark curtains white

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Deathly winds berate
O'er the sweep of barren fields,
Once green wombs to time

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

The edge of a dime -
Thin as insignificance,
Firm enough to stack

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Noses lifted high
Sad and sweet their lullaby
Singing to the sky

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Said gold Sun to Moon:
“Thou us'st my light to thy boon
Thou'lt repay me soon.”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Said soft Moon to Sun:
“Dual duty be-eth our run
 Through me art thou done”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Perforated squares,
History, and hinges ride
Rolling sheets of taupe

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Mates in chord are we
Ebony and Ivory
Each a polished key

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Glossy photographs,
Dank with mildew, wet with rain,
Fill the empty room

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Positivity
Crossed with mediocrity
Argues neutrally

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Reading for a year
Lies there slanting on the shelf
Naively ignored

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Metaphors in time;
Rhythms that alliterate;
iambs seeped with rhyme

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Tiny, furry hands
Tick like pin-pricks on my skin
With black, mousy eyes

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Huddled in my bed
Let heav'n's wrath sleet down on me
I am even mine

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Agéd as the tree
Still as immortality
Empty as the sea

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Tortured by the wind
She whips across the twilight
Freer than she knows

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

My repeating hours
Circular momentum draws
Captive to themselves

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Silver bodies writhe
In their feebly flaring gills
Water sleeps no more

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Thirteen cents times twelve
Is the price I paid to read
All the last pages

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Like to songs in time,
Downy fur and sunsets are
Worth their weight in rhyme

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

When the winter breaks
On my roof, as cold as ice,
Frost creeps through the doors

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Red fruit hanging low
From rough branch still glistens sweet
Still evades her grasp

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

-Twinkles like the star
As she winds her silver way
Past the roots of trees

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Bed to love and death,
Water rushes like a storm;
Flutters like a dove

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Molding leaves of books
Fan their yellowed peacock tails,
Woken from long rests

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Of the things that spin
Spindles and the potter's wheel
Most attract my hands

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

“All the feline grace
Of a leopard climbing free,”
Says my cat to me

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

From a paper square,
Careful folding-pulling shapes
Intricate designs

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Wonder that a shape -
One minute a triangle -
Next can be a crane

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Sing to me a song -
Gently string me out the notes
Softly lie it down

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Fishes made of gold
Scatter quickly from the hand
And re-form again

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Slathered paint that once
Back-dropped, lush and coordinate,
Now stands peeling there

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Lanterns in the dark
In each depth of cold, a spark
Left in liquid night

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Lights that slip awry,
Wanderer, in awe pass by -
Here thy hauntings lie

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Bailar sin el sol,
Caminar sin luna es
Apenas vivir

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Though the window bathes
Hallways with the snow-stol'n light,
Shadows sleep in bends

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Snake lines in the sand
Rise in ripples, swinging; lit
By impermanence

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Charter in thy hand
Round each ring a silver band
Part'st thine red lips, and:

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Catching eyes between
Partners in a silent hall
Filled with shuff'ling feet

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Lovely is the lock
Golden, from the fallen brow,
Bleachéd by the sun

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

1.
Monsters sweep about
In the bowels of the earth
Fluid and obscure

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

2.
Where the secrets lie
Grandiose, they ebb and flow
With the murk of seas

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

3.
Dark and massive depths
Sway with roaring “hushhh” and “hisss,”
Wet, encircling tides

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

With your nerdy grin,
Awkward jaw, and stammering lips,
Darling, nothing lacks

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Quick to place the pawn
Steep beneath the axe of fate;
Blood behind the gold

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Bare and branching limbs
Stretching toward the summer sky
Raw with rings of black

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Though the hearts beat dual
Babel towers skew the rule
That attracts the poles

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Killing diamond eyes
Once a melody - no more
One can die and live

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

White-washed walls obscure
That which arms and eyes do seek,
Unsure how they want

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Hungry are the days
Eating up the speeding tracks
On toward finite ends

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Spacious though they be,
Any roof contains the mind,
Any sky the soul

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

When sleep blossoms up,
Restful arms to lie me down
Tie as tight as love

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Said the daffodil:
“No gloved hands defer me still.
I bloom where I will.”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Said the Elder tree:
“In my boughs, a nursery -
I bud not for me.”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

(I've gotten into these said-said poems, inspired by my Sun-Moon one up there somewhere)

Said the forest stream:
“In my woodland, what waves gleam?
Empty here I seem.”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Said the ocean tide:
“Mountains thrash my bowels wide.
I crash not for pride.”

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Time-keeper awaits
With a glass of flowing sands
Out beyond the sea

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Heaven rises up
With the smoke of glowing clouds
From beneath my feet

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Rainbows arching up,
Leaping from sharp crystal falls,
Settling into steam

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Hot, my body slacks
Ripples ring my wrists like lace,
Licking at my cheeks

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Dancing, your feet dart,
Curled toes clinging to the earth,
Ankles strung with bells

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

1.
In a haiku poem,
In a brief and structured verse,
This is what I see:

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

2.
One: expression's right
Two: a bed for imagery
Three: a trial in time

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

3.
First a line for eyes
Next a line for symmetry
Third a turn, and end

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Hot and angry tears
Fall like black and withered suns,
Wisping into night

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Hot and angry tears
Fall like black and withered suns,
Wisping into night

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Sloping bodies swirl
Scarred fins flashing in the dark
Unseen jaws held wide

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Blink your crystal eyes
Clear as ice, with passion's heat
Deep in liquid blue

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Flesh to flesh: a touch;
Two blood forms, in each a truth -
Two are two, but tight

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Swirled in fold of black
Her pale face lies soft and lax,
Slender fingers curled

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

In a drop of salt
Infinite green life-bits feed
One onto the next

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Keep you silent here;
Snow and spirits twist the air
In a fragile dance

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Tips his stocky head,
In dangerous silence meets
Eye with burning eye

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

(of Napoleon Bonaparte)

Slight his wiry form;
Human - and the least at that -
Yet he conquers worlds

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

When at face with choice,
Of them I consider which
Would most bite my words

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Should I love or no,
Would that I would care for some
That could turn my voice

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

In a photograph,
Dusty flats of black and white
Pull through a third world

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

In rough, complex thoughts,
Sift we through the points of words,
Drawing webs between

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Rifting of grey fur
Shakes white stars that cling and fly,
Seconds here and gone

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Strains of changing chords
Burn, elate, and pull sharp aches
Out of dying loves

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Waters ebb and flow
With dark-teeming secret depths,
Motion their one proof

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Steel-blue, ice hard skies
Strike a shocking chill that rides
Heavy on my head

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Now that I am loosed
From all sober consequence
…Whence has gone the need?

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Golden in my head,
Your long-awaited sighting
Now emerges brass

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

In the heat of night
Softly blinding darkness draws
Close your distant form

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Furry little paws
Shy and gentle, she withdraws
Hiding little claws

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

In the scrap of earth
One small sprout twines sickly up,
Soon to touch the sun

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

When you voice rings near
Caution shudders to a halt,
Impulse flinging free

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Deep within the cave
Of my ingrown stupor, I
Rot in lazy heat.

Re: I Take Your Challenge!

Sunbeams blossom gold,
Silent petals folding down
Into autumn’s lap