The Poetry Marathon

Her hand ran smooth across the polished table surface,
Turning to hide her face from a direct assault of the camera.

She laughingly tosses her head over her left shoulder,
showing us the elegant profile of her figure,
Draped in flowing folds of ebony.

The sharp cut of her cheeks and nose
Hint of an underlying royalty,
The darkness of the room illuminated by the exposure of her flesh,
Projecting the pale cream of her skin,
crowned in red,
she parts the moment with all the grace of an actress.

Her frail portrait generating an unspoken allure
to the soft skin about her neck and chest,
Her bosom delightfully clear like a frozen pond’s winter surface.

Her stare went on for miles,
penetrating every obsolete structure
daring to be caught in her gaze.

Eyes that spoke of reservoirs,
deep wells within the vision chambers of her skull.
Her lips set motionless,
as dangerous as the stacked coils of a serpent.

The silence in the room was only broken
by the radiating electricity sizzling
the immediate airspace around her body,
as she was fuming with the quiet rage that murders you while you sleep.

Her eyebrows raise with a turn of her head,
unblinking eyes await an explanation,
penetrating your best attempts to ignore her frustration.
They say Hell hath no fury, and I’d rather take my chances with damnation.

Decrepit buildings strangled with ivy,
leaking roofs where water creeps in, then dries,
and rots plaster and splinters wood to fray.
I welcome the ruin of civilization’s structures,
I secretly applaud the falling of the rain.

Sidewalks fractured by roots writhing beneath the concrete,
Shoots of grass penetrate the cracks of many driveways.
The vacant lot’s asphalt is crumbling, collecting water, and birthing weeds.
And I secretly cheer the patient revolution of the vegetation.

The ancient expanding void,
Speckled with celestial fires that birth
the formative elements of worlds.

The unseen strings of the space-time tapestry,
enveloping the reaching distances of original source energy,
and surrounding the antimatter within finite points of gravity.
Continuing the song of the Singularity.

The repeated reuse of elemental recipes,
fused at the center of stars and in the collisions of galaxies,
all manner of cosmic destruction brings creation
to continue the song of the Singularity.

Insurmountable distances
that make light surrender to measurement,
allowing fading rays of extinguished stars
to still be visible past their time.
To shower the Earthen sky at night
with stories of an illuminated past,
and continue the song of the Singularity.

To bid me to look for as far as I can see,
into the deep space midnight of interstellar majesty,
and realize the frailty of my place in the grand scheme,
To recognize volumes of knowledge as unreachable possibilities.
Knowing that I, too, continue the song of the Singularity.

The oak grain deepens by candlelight
in a corner of the bustling room.
Beneath undisturbed dinnerware,
the place settings set upon
a vacant table for two.

In the middle of an insignificant month,
on some random, middle day of the week,
tables sit people conversing about their meals,
but at the table for two,
there is no one who eats.

There is no apparent significance of today’s date,
And the table for two sits alone in view of the on looking balcony.

As customers leave the evening grows late,
There is no one who comes, and yet the table for two still looks inviting.

A table for two, a reservation was held,
But what unforeseen circumstance
Has delayed these anonymous guests?

Perhaps there is a name on a list somewhere
With a number to reach the party involved.

Perhaps there is a babysitter who canceled at the last minute,
And now a young mother and father are tending to sleepy children.

Perhaps there is couple arguing in the parking lot outside,
Having never left the car since they arrived,
Neither ready to surrender or come step inside.

Perhaps there is a car stalled on the overpass, broken glass,
with unconscious passengers running late for their dinner plans.

Never the less their seats wait,
to celebrate a moment that won’t come,
To be served meals that have grown cold
By candlelight cast askew,
For no one is coming to claim their seats,
at this vacant table for two.

Regret’s lingering hand still clasped to the remnants of atrial cities,
Ruinous tombs suppressed beneath the corridors of vena cava catacombs,
Halls of hollowed entrails are a tangled labyrinth of intersecting lava tubes,
Where feeding worms devoured their own escape routes.

They eat the wilting decay at the edge of ventricle petals,
Leaving disfigured chambers to swell with vitiated blood
Pumping thinned oxygen to struggling organs with an unaccented cadence.

I have gained an emptiness that aerates the paralysis of grief.
I have gained a tolerance to pain I can no longer feel burying its wound inside me.
I have gained a new resistance to the misleading folly of intuition,
I have gained an immunity to love.

In a world that waits for the next grand adventure,
I fly by the free spirit of my heart,
never to age, never to compromise my morals
in sake of stability, fortune, or gain.

I live to chase the sun, and laugh throughout the night.
To crow the loudest,
and strut my boyish bravery to the mermaids in the lagoon.

I seek sanctity in the trees, partake advice from faeries,
laugh at the fumbled will of aging pirates,
and lead the boys in hunting,
and in preparations for war.

I am the Orphaned King of the forest,
In a land that never dies,
I parade beyond the stars to my never-paradise,
And have no need of any complicated things.

There is only one hole that I can’t beat,
She left it in me long ago, before I could speak
I do not understand the spell that a woman can weave
As she sings soft lullabies to babes as they sleep.

A mother? A lover? What is it I need?

Lunacy is a phase measured by celestial recession,
Boldly illuminating the beast within,
Its hands itching with malevolent intent.
But I must not give time for the hunger to grow
Or spare a moment listening to the story of my teeth.

And yet senses are growing keen,
and muscles are yearning to run.
The roiling fire in my blood
sings a primal howl in my heart.

Then the withered hand moves to grip the hypertrophic wrist
Repress, repress the beast within!
But without duty, useless, and a needless part of today’s modern dissent,
my purpose returns to the animal nature of my origin.

To hunt, to kill, to roam unencumbered,
to let awaken the monster from conditioned slumber.
It is the awakened animal, mad with instinct
that cannot be shamed by the expectations of society.

There is no spell they can cast, no rhetoric they can speak,
that will settle the parts of my heart that cannot be tamed.
Monster versus machine, I reject the locked cage that was taught to me.
And herald the moonlight, which serves as the key.

Psychedelic ramblings of thought frogs croaking,
choking on the elegant chorus of the midnight orchestra.
Deep in the velvet evening the tired forest sheds rubber skin,
large, wooly mammals begin to prowl,
on the scent of promised vegetables,
senses in tune with seething earth,
forever in search for compass needle tomatoes.

Breathing heavy ecstasy,
settles the soft haze of twilight escaping,
the fireflies born in fear of chasing jars,
and children in oversized raincoats
placing fishbowl televisions on display
for insectivore menus hidden in the steam.

Aardvarks rub elbows with politician carousels,
twirling gobs of armpit currency,
their peculating intentions staining sharpened teeth,
and the children laugh at the aardvark’s gullibility,
the frogs choke and croak,
and the mystery ebbs back into the edificial surroundings.

Morning comes like a blank page
with subtle illusions to comfort the mind.
There is calm within the city,
serenity, in the eyes of a child.

To greet the sky at my feet,
where the night before twas a refuge
to where my dreams did flee,
and now is at my door
where the floor ceases to be.

My senses opened wide to the purity of sound,
I exude an awareness of a world turned upside down.

In the immensity beyond my doorstep
I proceed forth to know the difference of every entity,
Where all the slumbering fantasies can entice my curiosity,
with chances for new discovery.

To walk aloft the breeze
where the castles in the air seep while the city sleeps,
To pluck dreams down from long branches,
like fruit from a great tree.
Tasting each flavor that is there is to be seen,
without hesitation or divergence from what can truly set my soul free.