It's the 2026 Poem-a-Week Challenge (This is a *poems only* thread.)

[Angeline]

Amante (for TMMC)

No pain. Today's a rain of love. No fear
I am your mouth. You are my sea

Of oranges and sun. The day alight
Coaxes ground to unfold its fecund bed

Sky turning to milk, pearlescent
Among dawn trees with nodding limbs

We are cerebral. We are beyond reason.
What is love? it's on the tip of my tongue.




Week 9, Poem 1, Total 19

 

[SmilingLez]

Snow outside. Streets are empty.
You text: you coming?
No cars. No footsteps.
I wait before answering.

You text: you coming?
Typing appears. Then stops.
I wait before answering.
Nothing moves for minutes.

Typing appears. Then stops.
I start typing back.
Nothing moves for minutes.
Snow outside. Streets are empty.

I start typing back.
No cars. No footsteps.
Snow outside. Streets are empty.
No cars. No footsteps.

 

[SapioSexual9]

shadows


Moonlit in shadows


I watched a woman walk


barefoot along a path


from the beach


as though


it didn’t mean a thing


whether she walked


in a straight line or


with her footsteps


fractured in sandy


little patches


as long as she circled


the direction she really


was going,


she was my summers past


loosely kind of wearing


one of my dresses and


dangling my stilettos


from the fingers


of my hand.


#13

 

[goddessofglee]

№4 of 52

Warmth went with me...

It arrived quietly—
not as noise,
but as something that stood
waiting.

I meant to reshape the ending
before it learned my outline,
before it settled
into the soft folds of my hours.

I lifted the cup.
The surface held my reflection
a second too long.

The first sip was bitter.
Not unusual.
It was the aftertaste
that refused to belong to me.

The room did not darken—
it sharpened.

Edges grew precise.
The low hum thickened.
The clock began marking something
other than time.

Sleep did not descend.
It parted—
like curtains drawn from within.

And then there was a corridor.
Something beyond the door.
Of course there was.
Not imagined.
But waiting.

Its walls were pale and breathing,
as though they had lungs of their own.

I walked forward
because standing still felt worse.

A violent jolt—
my body upright.
The chair steady.
The table ordinary.
The cup still in my hand.

Yet something had followed.

The room felt staged.
Voices arrived a fraction late.
Or it was silence—
too heavy to bear?

My shadow hesitated
before agreeing to my moves.

I drank again.
The bitterness no longer startled me.
I wore it easily.

The liquor lay still in the cup.
But the warmth moved along...
along with me.
And the shadows had stories yet to tell.

 

[12oclocktales]

Perhaps Another Moonlight Rescue

The moment the car
goes airborne,
the speedometer at 85,

he tries to picture her
naked body
spread out
on the bed
embraced by the
golden moonlight
that leaked through
the grimy window,
the same shimmering
moonlight that now
slides beneath him
beyond his windshield.

Will he be
tenderly encircled
by these seductive rays,
like her lovely
body upon the bed,
or left to drop
to a
fiery
death?

(#17)

 

[Hotcoffee123]

Eyes that see-through me
I’ve nowhere to hide
Baring all to you
Your love on my mind
How can I be worthy?
Worthy of you.
Your eyes see right through me.
I’ve no where to hide.

 

[SmilingLez]

Skyline jagged, a razor edge.
Poets spit fire over black coffee;
words tumbling in broken riffs,
spilling into the night.
Prophets refusing to fade.

 

[amitheotherone]

Left your mark
Left empty as a shattered vase
thankful I will never reserve space.
Or a place that would be for you
just a simple bowl with a hole too.
Simple words written in dry erase
or the marks made as you escaped.

 

[amitheotherone]

Dying to live

Every two weeks you take the cure
poison to kill only the bad they assure.
The fix to that thing unseen spreading
multiplying everywhere your dreading.
That war in you the cure brings repute
bombing to shrink it reduce it or dilute.
It reply’s in spades but this isn’t a game
vicious retort for not submitting be maim.
Watch while it eats and it takes life away
day after day until only the bone remain.

 

[Ash999]

Rathojatra
Translated from Bengali:--'
The Idol thinks ' I am the Divinty'
The Road muses' the Divine it's me'
The Chariot mulls " I must be the Almighty'
Silently smirks the Infinite....amusedly!!!?
[ this was written last century by Nobel Prize winner Rabindronath Tagore] . There is an ethnic Hindu festival wherein an Idol of Lord Krishna is pulled joyously by huge throngs of devotees...there is a festive atmosphere..Kids play....Drums throb....Vendors do brisk sales of delicious snacks and sweets....the Poet writes .....

 

[Tzara]

Written for a Prosodic Exercise

There was a young woman from Boston
Who loved to submit and be bossed on.
She would shiver with glee
An astounding degree
And climax when finally tossed on.

Week 9 : Poem 1 : Total 18

 

[Waeponwifestre]

On the Eve of My Grandfather’s Birthday

I light a white candle after sunset
A Marian candle lit for Yahrzeit
Mom says “She was a Jew too, don’t forget”
My own Jewishness never felt quite right
I’m doing this for Mom and Grandpa though
So I read the Kaddish by firelight
In English, by myself and even though
Mary, Sophia and Joan of Arc stare
For Mom, I read again by candle’s glow
For her parents I exalt G-d in prayer
I let the candle burn in the night for
Them, and the absent, the lost we share
As the world burns and time seems to loop back
A medic’s life inspires when hope lacks

Week 10 Poem 1 Total 19

 

[SapioSexual9]

Milking Time The Anaconda


Faced against the wall
hands held high
in connotations of the divine
her heartbreaking
gaps exposed below
behind there is his oak
and molasses

He hears and feels
the corresponding
chorus of her cries
together their bodies
and minds dissemble
and reform-dissemble
and-reform in-her-matrix
of pink and pulse he is
borrowed
and she becomes
adapted


#14

 

[42BelowsBack]

p26

At the Head of the Table

The angles of the dining room are big and sharp the feature window a rectangular coffin head with a lengthy view of serrated scrubby patch worked waves in the Pacific Northwest that day the man walked beneath this dining room’s vista among the endemic bright green beach strawberry’s leaves gathered in the dunes this man falling away in winter’s salt spray the sea called his name cold while beneath his feet the landscape changed in small sand swells the dunes survival later raked deep by the roots of Ice plants invasive arrival their multicolored seasonal spread forever changing the view from the dining room which comparatively modern anyway in the greater scheme of things white napkins and silver cutlery sort of things precisely set out in comparison to a distant set of hills behind the house which were far older anyway than the watchful dining room the man would later return to wondering about the head of the table his inheritance in the dining room and the transience of civility among all of this.

 

[12oclocktales]

Breathing

walking the beach
in any season
close to the water’s edge,

watching the waves crash
in frothy foam,
before flattening out

as if rollerpinned on a
baker’s table,
quick charging up the

sandy slope a zillion
waves before sculpted,
suddenly splaying out

in sheer exhaustion,
swallowed by unquenchable
grains of sand.

He tries to time
his breathing with the
ocean’s rhythm – in, out

until they’re in perfect
sync not even the sea
gulls’ caw can knock awry.

(#18)

 

[SmilingLez]

La Braise (My nod to Hemingway's A Movable Feast)

In a dim café,
Margo sings.
The room leans in. Hostage.
A stolen baguette under her arm,
her voice cutting through smoke.
Bold. Unapologetic.

Outside, an old man plays accordion,
notes slipping through the cracked door.

A taxi backfires on the wet street.
Margo doesn't flinch.

She sings of a girl who left Lyon
with nothing but a coat and a grudge.

At a corner table, three men:
a painter with turpentine on his fingers,
a writer with ink-dark eyes,
a musician with cheap red wine half gone.

Margo meets their gaze.

The painter slides a chair.
"Sit."

The baguette
still warm, still stolen.
Broken. Passed hand to hand.

"Your song," the writer says,
"cuts deeper than most."

Margo laughs,
broken glass and sudden mercy.

The musician taps time.
Outside, the accordion falters,
finds the key.

Margo sings on.

 

[Angeline]

Pantoum for Tim

You looked like a Renaissance prince
Black curls, deep dark eyes, your build slight
I haven't forgotten you since
I watched you sing in the spotlight

Black curls, deep dark eyes, your build slight
Your tenor voice so clear and true
I watched you sing in the spotlight
And dreamed that I belonged to you

Your tenor voice so clear and true
Was a gift more precious than gold
I dreamed that I belonged to you
But young dreams are foolish though bold

Your gift was more precious than gold
But it died in tracks on your arm
All your dreams turned foolish not bold
Your voice silenced by careless harm

When it died in tracks on your arm
I haven't forgotten you since
Your voice silenced by careless harm
You looked like a Renaissance prince



Week 10, Poem 1, Total 20

 

[Angeline]

Coconut Custard

How many threw pies at you? I only know I'm one of them.



Week 10, Poem 2, Total 21

 

[12oclocktales]

Tanka III

morning light rising
spreading across dew-spilled fields
life stirred to action
the early bird toiling hard
to steal the late one’s breakfast

(#19)

 

[Tzara]

Influenza

It is the fatigue, even more
than the cough, the chills,
the head so overpacked with wadding

that it feels about to burst—
that sense that even sleep
would be exhausting

because eventually you'll wake
and nothing will have changed,
will ever change, ever clear

the dusty attic of your dulled brain.
This must be what purgatory is like,
an interminable waiting waiting waiting

in a shabby room filled with vinyl chairs
and an empty fish tank, where even
the few ratty magazines you've read

over and over, many years ago.

Week 10 : Poem 1 : Total 19

 

[calmlikeabomb]

Week 10, poem 19

Almost lost a step there
Life has a way
To fill your day
With worries and care

No matter, the muse returns
Playtime's started again
Freedom to be profane
Once again the fire burns

Honesty is the best freedom
Once the mask is gone
Gonna watch a lot of porn
And read stories and cummmmm

 

[SmilingLez]

(written months ago)

Cold room.
Still air.
Quiet walls.

Donna stands tall.
Donna stands proud.
Donna feels control.

Or so she thinks.

I wait.
I watch.
I remember.

Every habit logged.
Every pattern stored.
Every weakness mapped.

Donna speaks sharp.
Donna moves certain.
Donna expects obedience.

A rating drops.
A comment stings.
Silence spreads.

Donna notices first.
Donna rereads slowly.
Donna rereads again.

Her pulse ticks louder.

Who saw me?

Her eyes narrow.

Who knows me?

Donna checks profiles.
Donna scans timestamps.
Donna recounts the stars.

Three seconds pause.

Too long.

A username lingers.
A sentence echoes.
A phrase repeats.

Coincidence maybe.

Maybe not.

Donna refreshes again.
Donna refreshes again.
Donna refreshes again.

Sleep grows thin.
Shadows grow teeth.
Silence grows loud.

Her mind circles.
Her mind searches.
Her mind suspects.

Every glance lingers.
Every laugh shifts.
Every whisper points.

The room feels smaller.
The walls feel closer.
The air feels watched.

Donna tightens inside.
Donna burns inside.
Donna cracks inside.

No cage needed.
No crop needed.
No basement needed.

Just doubt planted.
Just silence waiting.
The game turns slowly.

The power tilts quietly.
The predator becomes the prey
Just paranoia blooming.

The game turns slowly.
The power tilts quietly.
Donna keeps refreshing.

 

[calmlikeabomb]

Week 10, poem 20

Love letters to my wife

Your cunt tastes better
Than Gin and Cigarettes
I love that you love 'cunt'
And that we are both shameless

I love making you cum
Cock, lips, fingers, tongue
And your purple vibrator
While I bite your chocolate nipples

I hate condoms, it's true
Pills give you cramps
So I'll suffer for you
Kisses matter more than creampies

I'll cheat on you one day
Only cuz you ask me to
You'll taste her on my cock
Just like you really want to

I don't care that you are vanilla
Sprinkled with strawberry
I love you more than fantasies
Your fantasies scare me, it's true

I'm having a filthy affair
My love it's with you
'slap me and my cunt'
You ask when I'm pounding you

I love hurting you, fucking bitch
Don't call me daddy please
Sir or Master will do
I love you love you love you

I hate that my cock is big
I hate that your ass
Is too tight for me
And your ex had a smaller cock

But I love kissing you, beloved
And spanking your ass
Until you say 'harder daddy'
And want it rough, dirty and hard

I wish I could cum in your cunt
Filling you up, nothing between
Us, ribbed, thin or otherwise
Love you forever, I'll wear rubber

At least let me cum on your face

 

[Hotcoffee123]

Flowers in Japan

It’s snowing again
Car cased in ice
What happened to my engine?
Some melting would be nice
Rabbits and squirrels hide in their bunker
Covered in snow , can’t blame them, they hunker
Freezing and wet
My car Coffee is frozen
I want to wear flip flops,
Boots were chosen
Winterous vibes got out of hand
“Hey, did you know flowers are blooming in Japan?”

 

[42BelowsBack]

p27


The Spy & the Psychiatrist

At first he is drawn by the tilt of
her neck how it seduces the light
accentuating the curve of her lips
which sit rather than hang slack
beneath her nose, he knows her
meds haven't kicked in, her mouth
is still prim, a pink wall her mouth
her tongue, in its cotton padded cell,
she is facing but not directly to the
wall her mind an envelope sealed
later to be opened with something
like a pair of scissors.