dissatisfaction is the only guarantee - whatever the prize, its glow will soon dim, outshined by glittering potential #tanka #TankaThursday

send off the spirit say the ritual, ring the chime and yet ghosts remain in the absences they filled until we, too, may join them #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

the withering of Eden's innocent garden a glut of delights replaced by a single fruit that delicacy, knowledge #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

"...This thing we have, which we call love, is not a thing that we can tell the world about; it’s past all language – terse or overwrought – and it’s uniquely ours, beyond all doubt..." seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/17/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet #SonnetSunday

awakening from an afternoon nap, I learn that I am human, that I have hands and feet and desires. I had forgotten. #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

"neutrality is a luxury, a position of privilege. as much as we identify as citizens of the world, we remain in practice citizens of a place and of a time in which our participation is required..." seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/16/n... #poem #poetry

"Electricity clings to a new world, an egg-tooth penetrating the boundary between life and cold machine, the yolk of human ingenuity consumed and excreted. When octopuses hatch, they eat their mother. Evolution has no cause for sympathy. Only survival." seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/15/e... #poetry

"the bridges I have burnt with verse went up in such exquisite flames; each fleck of ash an eddied rhyme, each mute apology a whorl of heat unraveled by the wind of time." seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/14/a... #poem #poetry

My muse is the sun which makes sense because I'm like a plant or something #haiku

each time love occurs it is unique - unequaled - there is no first love; whenever we fall in love it is always the first time #tanka #MayTanka #NaTankaMo

the ugliest weeds usually have shallow roots go, then! pull them out! #haiku

like a sunflower your radiance captured me heliotropic I couldn't bear the brightness but I couldn't look away #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

in crowded cafes people gather, stare at screens and pretend to work the price tag of the coffee is paid by the illusion #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

wren in the thorn hedge remember where your home is everywhere always

"Our worlds are our experience — and not, as some would say, things of objective fact. When measured fresh, just sense remains intact." seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/10/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet #SonnetSunday

every human being has a mother - was carried like a parasite - and each of us owes a debt that can never be repaid #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

there is not one road but many, compressed and worn by those who travel; there is not one life, but we traverse a single highway #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

representations painted on neural canvas of a distant world the artistry of life in their subtle imperfections #tanka #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

left behind by dreams drops of memory linger, coalesce like dew and evaporate beneath the pitiless light of day #tanka #TankaThursday #NaTankaMo #MayTanka

Today’s #poetryprompt: The Only Poems poem of the month contest for May is a Sonnet! And they don’t mind if you post on social media. Give me a sonnet! #MPPrompt I repost replies Follow for daily prompts

"Yet rhymes, like waves, may glitter in the sun: and meter, like a month, may hold the moon, and verses may burn brighter than the day." #poem #poetry seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/04/a...

"...Such is the fate of humankind’s inventions, and by extension, that of humankind: that power, in the service of pretensions, usurps the promise that has been designed. If humans teach a lesson, it is this: intelligence must bow to avarice." seanpatrick.phd/2026/05/03/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

"...eternal rest, or else an endless dance — these speculations all seem incomplete. Whatever waits, we won’t know in advance. If you are there, I may endure it well; if not, then even heaven will be hell." #poem #poetry #sonnet seanpatrick.phd/2026/04/26/s...

"The wise are not convinced by beauty’s gleam, but purity revealed to them in time; and hold the weight of deeds in high esteem, for evidence outweighs a luster’s shine. Per ounce of beauty in a pound of flesh, fifteen of ugliness await their test." #poem #poetry seanpatrick.phd/2026/04/19/s...

A sonnet of mine appeared in the March '26 Neologism www.neologismpoetry.com/March-2026/

regarding beauty, there can be no consensus - the world's ugliness is self-similar, fractal, but its beauty is unique #tanka

the body remembers what the mind wants to forget – beneath skin, between bones, you remain. the pain of you still pierces through dull memory, sharpened by the passage of time. you are gone and not gone. all that persists is the ache - the nameless want pulling, crushing, unyielding. #vss365

love is not written and ink does not carry love only promises love is not a lettered thing but a blank page to be filled #tanka #TankaThursday

Some poems of mine appearing at alliteration.net (Forgotten Ground Regained Winter '26) alliteration.net/poetry/defen... alliteration.net/poetry/allit... alliteration.net/poetry/engin...

"The vigilant must watch while Justice sleeps, and on some distant day when she awakes her sword will cleave through humankind’s mistakes – but only those that observation keeps." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/25/s... #poem #poetry

"The world is cold today, and bare; and nothing sings beneath the sun, and wind brings promises of snow. Throughout it all, the urge to run: to find some other place to go, and hope to find some comfort there." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/23/m... #poem #poetry

The weight of the world would seem enough to overburden the strongest bridge, and at this crossing-point we hear the creaking of supports and protests of the trestles; the beams all warp beneath the load, but remember in the grip of gravity even light must bend. Dawn alone may break. #vss365

"A mind is not a weapon, it is an ember in the night that craves the warmth of others; we sit and watch the shadows projected by our fading light, and celebrate the ash of gleaming." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/19/e... #poem #poetry

"the day before, we watched the world boil over and drip, and flare, and sputter uselessly and they were still alive, and yesterday we might have done a thing to keep them here, but not today." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/17/t... #poem #poetry

"I do not think that I shall miss the Earth, and of its denizens I’d keep but one: for you, I’d bear the misery of birth, and in your being concede that God has won. Regarding all the rest, I’m not so keen – but you give purpose to the whole machine." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/11/s... #sonnet #poem

when feeling you try to elicit, it's best to be very explicit; the unmissable truth is too subtle, forsooth, for plenty of folks who will miss it #limerick #vss365

it should be clear by now that life is a joke; the setup and delivery are immaculate, it's just that we are waiting for the punchline. someday, when it comes, we'll greet God in tears with laughter and when He asks what is so funny, we'll say "I guess you really would have had to be there." #vss365

steam rising from soup seeking equilibrium as do we all. *slurp* #haiku #DailyHaikuPrompt

a poem that came spilling out today.

the space between things an optical illusion through the lens of time #haiku #DailyHaikuPrompt

wandering slowly and in the midst of monsters through thick, blinding fog brushing against the unknown I met you, against all odds #tanka #TankaThursday

...Yet here, with heavy-handed irony, we’re made to mind the macro-lens. The world is waiting, witnessing, revolving, and here, we humans had our chance. We may not make a move in time to save our species; still the Earth shall turn, and time will tell who lasts... seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/07/a...

"Let all our expectations be forgot, and let us love in instants now and ever: and let each brief ephemeron of thought unite we two, and past attachments sever. Our history is of no consequence, for love exists within the present tense." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/04/s... #poem #poetry #sonnet

All or nothing, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?

"From many, few; who in that winnowing may bear the lost when light, at last, arrives. On winter morns, no quiet songbirds sing, but silence cannot drown them in the spring." seanpatrick.phd/2026/01/02/a... #poem #poetry #villanelle

Woke up this morning still thinking about a book of poetry I read last night and still feeling a bit shook by it. The mark of a good book, I guess.

the world, when it reaches us has been slathered in abstraction - look there, an object, a color, a thing. our brains shelter us from the grim nature of reality (which is chaos) and swaddle us in emotion: "This is separate from that: attend now to this, which is love, which is pain." #vss365

Happy new year.

this world exists in reference; nothing may be without someone to feel its touch, the substance of the yet unseen we speculate, project. And we exist in consciousness, in waking life and half-remembered dreams. where does it go when we are done? and in that sleep, what dreams may come? #vss365

灰となる この身と氷柱 春になる Hai to naru Kono mi to tsurara Haru ni naru It will turn into ash This flesh and the icicles Will turn into spring #Haiku #Poetry #俳句 #詩 #DailyHaikuPrompt : Icicles #Haikufeels : #ash