The Poetry Marathon

City of stars,

don’t let me down tonight.

I have wishes to make.

Pictures to take.

If I could set myself free,

I could breathe.

Later I will hang the pictures on my walls,

to remember I’m not alone.

City of stars,

your beauty makes me forget my pain.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep (Robert Frost)

I whisper my secrets to the leaves.

Time is lost and I am found.

I’m not alone among the creatures who sleep.

I face the demons in my mind.

The wind creates music within the trees.

And we dance together long past evening.

I float on my back and stare at the sky,

my thoughts are slow as a river,

my heart is calm.

I am one with the water.

Not worrying at all.

The forest has a secret world he

visits when the world is asleep

searching for his true self in

the stars and deep in the

ocean, he travels

from tree to tree;

he isn’t

paralyzed

here.

Rain had nourished the Periwinkle;

a beautiful blue flower with petals shaped like a fan.

The little girl took them gently in her hands and sniffed them

then she returned to jumping in the puddles nearby.

Her black gumboots were caked with mud and she had no care in the world.

A single cloud remained in the sky after the storm.

Her mother took pictures and spread them out on the table;

Admiring each one closely, pressure to choose the right one for the newspaper building.

She has to beat the best local famous photographer in the contest to have her picture printed.

She glances up and looks out at the window,

Spotting her daughter’s lit up face, turned to the sky, her laughter sneaking in the nooks and crannies

of their house and filling her soul with peace.

She can’t help but smile and lift her camera once again.

New year’s eve doesn’t hold the magic it used to.

It’s just another year gone, then another year born.

I write down New Year’s resolutions in my journal and I look forward to that.

But nothing more.

And it’s okay.

Every holiday doesn’t need a party or spending lots of money.

You just need peace to go on.

I yearn for peace.

Hard times were upon us all in 2020.

A pandemic hit.

Many lost jobs and loved ones.

It was an apocalypse that will never be forgotten.

The world was in crisis, some still are 15 months later.

People are asking for continued help from the president.

Some sit on the edge of their seats, waiting for more relief.

Its not over. And yet there was a pandemic in the early 1900s;

the Spanish flu

and people made it through, not untouched.

So as worry levels climb,

there is a promise;

this too shall pass.

Tiredness sneaks in and makes me slow.

Mistakes are made but as long as I make it through I’m okay.

Between poems, I lay down and close my eyes.

Images dance behind yet my emotions are disconnected.

Waiting to hear my alarm to write another poem,

I disappear for a while within the hallways of my mind.

and hope I can it all done.

Ever since I was a young teen, I wished I could be normal.

Have a brain without mental illness and anxiety disorders.

No chemical imbalance.

Lifetime depression would be absent.

Sometimes, I don’t want to be me.

Some days, I’m so tired of being alive.

Few days, I actually feel all right.

Sometimes, I tell myself over and over I’m okay.

Some days, my mind won’t stop.

Few days, I don’t believe my mind’s insults.

I take an anti-anxiety pill and breathe out.

If I was normal, I wouldn’t struggle to hold a job.

If I was normal, I’d be confident.

But I’m not.

My heart leaps along with the violin.

My mind is cleared.

There is hope everywhere.

My cats glance up from their cat tree.

Is she finally writing after a long break?

Get it all out. Ideas bloom in my imagery garden.

I examine from all sides and choose a setting.

Words dance with each other. I nod my head to the music.

We are never truly alone. There is always poetry and books to escape in.

Just bring down the walls

and let the beauty in.