The Poetry Marathon

Following the roads that lead along the river,
the turns and washed out crevices that only we know.
Under the shadows of moving clouds in the vast Kansas sky
I kissed you in a ring of watching oak trees,
the first witnesses of my heart presented on bleeding paper.

In the wildflower dance of that neverending afternoon,
I blanketed your body with the wounds I learned to heal
before my hand could hold steady enough to untie the ribbon in your hair.
So I swallowed all of yesteryear’s memories
to try and give you a real word,
a purity from my lips untasted by any others but you.

The trust in your crying eyes,
as if you had seen all of this happen before,
somewhere not too different than here,
in a dream you use to dream when you were a little girl.
And the disappointment of reality became
the tripping step of mad love, falling hard for the imperfections
of all our failed promises.

I never wanted to be what hurt you the most,
or a painful chapter in the story you wrote
with your skin and hair and lips and love.
Is there no other way to exist as close to someone as we have been?
Our pain preserved like rusting metal left in the fields,
where I saw the red tail resting on the fence,
his face turned to the sky,
so that his eyes may better watch
the movements upon the ground.

A moment is all there is.
A time long enough to choose,
a word said, a face turning away.
Trapped, in the air between your teeth,
clenched breath unable to release
all that was lost when the words
were said, when those other words
were unsaid. Trapped in the failed past,
locked out forever from a future which
promised to be brighter than
the hour I currently believe.

Such a small sliver of life, of time,
justifying ages of pain that proceed.
All for reasons that never amounted
to the weight they bore. Still unable to
unload them, imprisoned to that fatal minute,
when all the world changed
without changing anything.

A whisper over the shoulder,
the glancing wave of your hair just
out of sight as I turn to chase
summer shadows across the asphalt.
A memory lingering
in some resonating ache, a hollowness
I felt through the wholeness of my body.
Your face, freckled and smiling,
as if nothing in the last 15 years ever happened.
We are right back in that place,
those first months when everything
was new, the money was steady, our chosen
delicacies in ready supply, love and
wild adventure burning, my words
finding their place, the anticipation of
something thrilling just ahead.

I choose to forget what I know of reality.
I choose to ignore the restless worry
unsettling itself in my stomach, I suppress the notion
that this isn’t real, that this is not how it happened.
I would rather stay here
in this illusion, to see what happens next,
but by the time I can rationalize
my choice, my mind has become aware
of its enchantment.

Delicate wings stilled
by the sugary electricity
of honeyed nectar.
Amidst the haunted greyscale of
enveloping shadows
and imprisoning infrastructure,
Nature sets silent beauty to experience
the world in splendid simplicity,
with citrus colors like a flame of an awakened life
the butterfly drinks–
an angelic descendent tasting
the sweet progeny of ambrosia.

The raining sun shore green
Lazy sex floating in the sunlight
cobwebs stretched between swaying stalks of hay grass
where the wind softly touches each spikelet and flag leaf
pulling, pushing, tossing life about
like some random sailing vessel on an ocean
flooding with rainbows.

The voluminous clouds above
gray and purple, bowing behind my shoulder
a bending arch of light, multi-colored, streaking
as the crown of the trees shower voices from long ago
calling, I hear it, but I don’t know what it is–
some feeling ready to explode from
inside me or something I’ve forgotten and
it’s waiting for me to find her.

Twinkling light on the underplay of leaves
bustling, rippling like a multitude
of insects feeding, chittering.

In the distance songbirds singing
rejoice for the rising day
somewhere between where the blue sky meets
curving horizon, the clouds swiftly pour
over an unknown edge. My footsteps crunching
upon the gravel beneath them
the grain, the green upon green,
speckled with golden Sun
I smell you
I taste you in the fluids behind my eyes
I bathe in you.
My spirit is an ascending orb of light
Bringing life to the primeval toils of earthen homeostasis

Somewhere–
between the breadth of the stars
and the breath I draw between my lips–
there is an ancient connection,
a deep magic that sets the cadence
of the pulsing drum within my living corpse.

Calling to my blood, taunting my spirit to hunger,
beckoning my entire being to come forth, to march,
to ascend, that I may find out what lies
beyond the shimmering veil, yet ever eluding me,
so that in my efforts I may come to know
the full potential of my existence.

Thoughts in the morning, slowly gathering
like a collective pool of water, absorbing descending rivulets
of the past night’s rainstorm, filling, growing,
transcending into vapor by midday–
I am the sunshine’s waxing heat wave
rolling over violated sidewalks.

Fingers reach to stroke calligraphic symbols,
a clicking chant of plastic keys stamping
vernacular collaborations, aching incantations
desperate to invoke the truth beyond incestual
emotional blends that, in their most faithful realization,
are beyond what words can describe–
I am the dancing branch tips of a great
slumbering tree awakened by the pushing wind.

Mental estuary churning, the lowest fathoms
of the Void swallowing itself, immaterial and ethereal
initiating one another, troubled yet tranquil,
serpentine serenity effortlessly flowing–
I am the ancient waters of creation set to
flood the world into a new form.

I am the swelling purple tissue of
a newly acquired bruise, a forced feeling
punctured beneath binding armor, worn to protect
but confined by its embrace, then self-penetrated
by a willing hand seeking escape.

I am the ebb and flow of philosophical hypocrisy,
guiding young voices to find rising sound
amidst the roaring resonation of a
technologically dependent culture, turning within
to supply the antidote to informational overdosing.

I am the slowing of time, drawn around
the parading chaos consuming itself
all around me. The refusal to surrender each moment,
the deep reflection uniting me with a grand discourse,
pulling me along the supreme plotline,
dividing me into every alternate ending,
and becoming an amalgamation of all possibilities.

Looking forward to creative purging tomorrow. Participating in this marathon really helps motivate me to pull deep from within. The feeling of camaraderie of writing alongside other poets is inspiring. The prompts work for me, they help me try to do something different and new rather than the familiar writing habits I fall back on.

I surround myself with plenty of healthy food options (lots of fresh fruit and nuts), I work out here and there and take hikes on my property to initiate my poetic intellect. I have plenty of my favorite poetry anthologies and books within in reach, and inspiring movies ready to play. AND MUSIC!!! All this is maintenance, I actually prefer silence when writing.

My biggest challenge with writing poetry is getting too wordy and long. In fact, I don’t know that I have any talent, its really more of an obsession. When given time to rework and revise, my poems grow into lengthy spoken word pieces rather than poetry. The Poetry Marathon has always kind of forced me to do these one-shot type purges that keep my poems raw, unfiltered, and succinct.

I would like to be able to participate from my phone this year, but I am having trouble with enabling cookies through the Word press Browser on my Samsung S9. If I could write from my phone, it would make me a little more mobile throughout the marathon. But I can hang around the old desktop, I was planning on doing that for most of the marathon anyways.

Good luck to all!

Returning to thoughts of moist earth,
the thunderstorm has come and went,
Its smell hinted before the first poem I wrote
And now here, composing the last poem for this day,
I write of the puddles it left outside my window.

I write for the heavy boughs of drenched leaves,
a deeper green awakened by the adorning droplets of water.
I write of the daybreak, still blue and grey,
cloaking every familiar shape I can detect,
Everything that stands outside is wet,
cool, dripping, awaiting the rise of the sun.

For a storm did come,
and it sloshed its thunder across 24 pages,
Drenching each hour with romantic saturation,
And like the nature outside my window
My mind is wet,
cool, dripping in blotches of ink, awaiting the rise of the sun.

I write for the circular pools of sky scattered across the ground,
Crystal clear rainwaters reflecting the morning clouds,
That when angling my sight just right, they only refract emitting morning light,
And so I see streaks of silver waterlight shining across the ground.

And in my head there just might,
catch shimmer a few ounces of streaking light,
enough to capture an idea worthy enough to write,
And appreciate the storm that was here.

There was a way she held her head,
cast her eyes across the interior of her hands,
then looked to me for help to understand.

There use to be a presence upon the mattress beside me,
a softly breathing heat that I would listen to before returning to sleep,
a quiet comfort I never fully appreciated at the time.

There use to be a laughter,
a smile occupying my passenger’s seat,
playing with the radio,
and fumbling maps from inside the glovebox.

There used to be a sound of water pouring coming from the kitchen sink,
the splash of dishes,
the sound of heated oil in a frying pan,
the smells that hint of culinary plans luring me to watch her operate the stovetop,
hoping to get a taste of the specialty she makes.

There use to be a side of me,
that laughed with full bravado, fearlessly,
unafraid of tomorrow’s emptiness,
unaware of the length of eternity.

There use to be a love for card games, coffee shops, and rain soaked walks in cemeteries.
Now there is only a love to live within those memories.