The Poetry Marathon

In those wee days of life on this plane,
milk was one sweet thing for tea and others on its lane.
It was cool to call it miuk, so long as milk showed up;
the corrupted name didn’t matter as it didn’t draw the cane.

One day, bad liquid miuk got into my stomach from a cup.
Its upset put me in its enmity club.
The upset was over in a few days and life went on.
Going forward though, I walked the path of miuk’s discernment club.

Forty years later, I part ways with muik and friends, one by one.
It reminds of things we used to love but now in the class of bygones.
Then it’s fun to watch the young relish the love of those things
while we bask in the glory of our new found dawn.

There is this grip it thought I didn’t have,
a grip I didn’t know I had, until my eyes were born.

There is this strength it thought I never possessed,
a strength I took for granted that I had, until my mind was born.
It doesn’t matter how much of the strength deposit was withdrawn behind me.

There is this joy it thought I’d never find,
a joy I misplaced and never bothered to cultivate.

There is this precision it though I’d never master,
a precision that’s so simple its stupidity blinds everyone who are the way I was.

It fed fat on glee, seeing me goof around on slippery plane.
There is this grip it thought I didn’t have.

There is this joy it thought I’d never find;
one that erects walls of love, light, and laughter,
a joy it made obscure before my face, until my eyes were born.

There is this life it hoped I’d never find,
a life that was given to me in fine sheets of gold, long before I was born.

A gauntlet conceals
the magic warmth in your palms;
still, it comes to me.

Your charge remains squeezed
inside the rugged fabrics,
the warmth heating up.

There is no need for
a physical transmittance;
we connect like that.

I so miss the muse.
Words overflow; scanty words.
Let the muse run wild.

Our paths were never meant to intertwine,
like the thunder that never strikes a spot twice.
Those charmed paths went on a connect on the labyrinths of labour.

The picture of the stuff in that luggage is still clear like crystal –
all other impedimenta stuffed up with wraps of flashes,
flashes born out of the signals that grew into circumstantial flip-flops.

Like a dogged locomotive, the flip-flop is weak and steady,
foraying into impossible turfs, silly wishes, and zealous passion.
Alas, the words always end on the on side of the flip-flop.

Here are two creatures in the dark, each having no lamp to aid the other.
There are feet with dead expedition and a light that refuses to be buried.
If only you shut the window of your heart, not leave it open with flip-flop surrounded by wild flowers.

The muse wages war
against my words,
to rattle them,
eject them,
and lay them bare.

The war rages on,
to shoot my words
into the air,
enabling a scattering effect
that’d make my control slip.

With its full weight
upon my restraints,
I’ll let the words go,
I’ll lose this love of them,
I’ll let them be shot,
sown in centenarian soils,
to be harvested again and again,
a hundred years and more
from all time.

…Craving for a sail
on blue skies and purple fields
rainbow in between…

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep.”
-Robert Frost

It’s right for you not to speak,
for those words you didn’t say spill;
they spill into swollen silences
that deafen all my defenses.

It’s okay for you to withhold your touch.
How much of me is left to melt on my couch?
Not one finger of yours did you lift.
Yet, your touch has left me hanging on the tilt.

It’s best that your ears can’t hear my whispers;
it’s shocking that you can’t hear the screeching of my snickers.
I have taken off on a sprint, coming right into you;
there is a wall between us and you have no clue.

It’s better that you can’t smell the flowers
in the woods, under the tree that towers…
It’s a miracle that your olfactory lobe stopped working,
even as I step back into passivity, limping.

It’s right for you to be in the dark,
for all that we have done nothing to mark
have already been done in that space
called nothingness, where there is no disgrace.

i
On a day that seems pretty stretched out,
with cool sunny splendour and shy wind,
puffs of clouds hang like inverted parachutes,
and the roads smoothen out the spirit of the feet.

ii
A dark hue is splashed across the clouds;
the puffs spread into a full pregnant sky;
its amniotic sac ruptures into full burst
as the earth awaits the delivery of the waters.

iii
It is a short walk homewards;
a dash for shelter, a dance for the elements.
In that mobile surge, soaked up like a sponge,
it flows out of me into my lonely room.

iv
The semi-darkness outside seduces my room into slack darkness.
Happy clattering on the roof, weak shrill by the windows.
In that wetness, in the middle of my extent,
wishes of fireworks engulf my senses.

Hi Everyone,

It feels good to see you here again this year. This will be my third year with this. In 2020, I signed up for the Full Poetry Marathon, but ended up completing Half. In 2021, I signed up for and completed the Full Poetry Marathon. This year, I am up for the Full. I am also excited to be part of the anthology editors for this year.

Like I have often said, I experienced what you might call poetry drought prior to the 2020 Poetry Marathon. I had written poems actively from my late teenage years into my late 20s and then gradually, I began to experience a decline of the muse as work and family began to take its toll on my time. To get out of this, I struggled to have my first collection (which was pretty much all that I had for poetry) published. That done, in 2017, I still found it hard to create poetry. Things went on this way until I found Poetry Marathon in the thick of the 2020 pandemic lockdown, and I signed up.

I went into the 2020 Poetry Marathon with some fright, as I wondered if I would find anything thing to write, for which poetry ought to happen. But then, as it started, I did. I found ideas. I wrote stuff down. And some of them have turned into fine poems today. But here’s the good news! I found my poetry inspiration again. And since 2020, I have been able to create ideas for up to four collection of poems ( some in progress, some to be written in due time).

The Poetry Marathon is a fantastic idea. It is even more amazing to see that it has been kept up since its commencement, for which optimal credit must go to Caitlin and Jacob. The community spirit is awesome. Knowing that you have people who can read your poems from all continents of the world is awesome.

I come into this 2022 edition of this even with great joy. It will be a great pleasure to meet all of you again – returnees and new participants. I wish you all the best of experience as you engage with the 2022 Poetry Marathon. Please feel free to look at my profile here if you like to know a bit more about me.

Here’s to a happy writing!

Ofuma