The Poetry Marathon

Skyscraper shadows overcrowding one another
like weeds strangling flowers,
like undergrowth fighting to face the sun.

Mechanized arms plunge the soil,
scrape away at metallic skeletons of fallen buildings.
The city grows upon itself, the artificial forest,
where new structures grow
from the demolition of previous towers.

The people scurry beneath,
plastering covered underpass with their artists,
hieroglyphics of the modern culture,
cave paintings through canals along the forest floor.

Folds of sheets nestled around tired legs,
the soft press of mattress against the back
Neck at rest upon two pillows
Cold darkness, enough to necessitate blankets,
enough to sleep through the daylight.

Solitary you arrive and
quickly expand to the perimeters.
Marking the beginning and end of a day,
the beginning and end of life.

In the darkness, a familiar comfort,
a bright flower radiating through the unseen.

The lighthouse, spiraling beacon,
repelling siren warning of the shore.

A headlamp, worn to bed,
to read the book kept on the nightstand.

The lantern on the corner
bright enough to keep the ball game going in the street

Under the bus stop, avoiding the rain,
the cherry of a cigarette piercing the pale gray smoke.

A drop of sun caught in the earring below her left cheek,

The afternoon beam bent through the front window
throwing prisms on the living room carpet.

A campfire in the winter,
brightening all that is blanketed by the snow.

The untouchable sliver of sunlight
dancing on the water’s surface.

Beneath the cooling stone, the red fire glow of molten lava

Shining beyond its shape.
the inner glow of gold brought to the surface.

Just one place, one tiny life in the stream of a moving world.
A single voice, fallen into hundreds of chattering echoes,
Each sound continuing beyond the residual silence.
Lifetimes create wake, love moves through human relations like
A rogue wave way out at sea comes rolling towards the shore.
Each droplet of water a moving part,
Each memory a wave in the ocean,
Each heart a body of water held still as glass or violently storming.

The finest details are complex machines
Designed to carry their significance
Follow their crease, hold their note
Until the body can move as one.

Empty apartment,
Winter’s cold creeping through the old windows.
Shadows stain the white walls
like phantom caricatures of demonic company.
Ashtrays filled, scattered dishware,
drinks unfinished with wet, half-consumed cigarettes floating in them.

He threw his coat on and left through the front door.
The hallway of the apartment was chilled, quiet.
When he stepped outside,
the sidewalk was buried beneath a couple of inches of snow.
Crevices of footprints from earlier in the day could still be seen,
yet were disappearing beneath the new accumulation softly falling from the sky.
Is this what he raced home to find?
Is this what he left the celebration of his family for?

The silent streets seemed hollow, ruinous,
as if a plague had suffocated the city.
Traffic lights on the boulevard
still blinking through their color rotations
yet not a single car is on the road tonight.
Its Christmas Eve, most people have somewhere to be
and are settled in for the night.

When the bars close at 1:00 am,
the tramps will disperse, the sinners, the blasphemous,
The black sheep and their junkie lovers.
She couldn’t wait for me?
There’s still a couple of hours left before the last call.
Where is she?

Fragile, polycarbonate plastic,
spiraling rings of data embedded within your layers.
Our favorite stories transferred onto shiny discs,
accessible, with quicker adjustment settings.
Your place in time rapidly dissolving
You fill large bins in the middle of superstore aisles,
Buckets of forgotten cinema burying one another,
Until somebody wants to try and push through the top titles
to see if anything good lies beneath the surface.
Remember this? What a deal.
To take you home and play on the old model console
he has hooked up to the tv he keeps in the basement,
his once glorious collection now stacked in the corner,
where he watches B-rated action movies while he works out.

It’s a moment in a crowded room
when your eyes fall upon a single person, laughing,
chatting, moving faster than the rest of the party,
yet her movements are smooth, fluid,
slowly registering in your mind.

It’s a poem spoken in conversation,
that ends in silence,
but continues separately
as each person thinks of what to say next.

It’s a smile, an agreement to meet up with friends,
but secretly going to see one person.

It’s a feeling that something great
is on the verge of coming to life,
a confidence that you’re making the right choice.

It’s the majority of your time recalling your last conversations,
replaying better things you could have said,
second-guessing the intentions behind her responses.

It’s a walk to the lake,
barely wearing summer clothes,
noticing the intricacies of exposed skin,
swimming in the setting sun’s light.

It’s a kiss on the hillside,
a desire to give magic to this moment, together,
that it might transcend all we have ever felt alone.

It’s a promise, a shared home, a second pillow on her bed,
the hidden rituals of her privacy, simply witnessing her living.

It’s a ring around a dream,
to see within to the child that grew
into the person as you know her,
it’s the child you were, wanting to be known by her.

It’s the ceremony, the dance,
the night we we were supposed to feel different,
the intertwining of families, hopes, futures.

It’s the beginning of real things,
homes and yards,
rooms envisioned with intention,
a purity sanctified in wishes,
still new, still waiting to be known.

It’s a heavy winter storm shutting down the town,
snowed in at the house, together,
husband and wife with the intent to conceive.

Its children, it’s changes, it’s growing together
through all the unexpected parts of what we thought we would do.

It’s the pain, the hurt that cause us to recoil, pull away,
yet keeps us believing, keeps us willning to try again.

It’s the shared time,
the meaning assigned to the chapters of our lives,
it’s how I celebrate you.

People watching, ticket check,
boarding pass print, panic, time efficiency
Shuffle past multitudes of lives, interplaying,
happening to occupy the same space for mere instances,
rushing to catch various flights,
mechanisms soaring across the globe in days, hours.

People who would never have likely met, see each other, for a moment, a glance.
The power of flight, of world travel, too busy for minds to connect.

Marked with rows and files,
segmented stomachs of the flying worm,
Seats next to the aisle, seats next to the window
Food, entertainment, alcohol,
satisfied to surrender motion,
absorb the air, ride the flight.

People up to their asses in people
Up to your elbows in people,
Breathing people, breathing other people breathing.
Flying in my seat across the sky,
We sever clouds
And soar over mountaintops.

I am of the earth.
My skin sheds dust like the stones shed dirt.
I am from the trees,
the leaves cradled me when I was little.
I am cyclical, seasonal, perennial.
The sun invites the best of me.

I stay distant, untouched, without belonging.
Connected to the slow nights of the forest floor,
where moonlight spills down through the understory.
I breathe the deep essence of the wild,
into my being, through the alveoli, into my blood.
I seed the earth with my body,
let the plants turn my corpse into a hidden garden.

Scratch my head, sigh,
touch my lips, shift weight to the other hip.
Fingers rest upon the keyboard
waiting for a thought to direct them.
Eyes staring at the glossy black keys,
the desk lamp light refracted, outshining the fading,
white depiction of each letter.
My mind wanders,
vision blurs at the edges,
What is worth writing down?

Sigh, breath in and out,
details of an idea, perused, again,
folded over, scanned, magnified,
strung up on corkboard
interconnected with a web of lines,
hinting, searching,
How to say what hasn’t been said
about what hasn’t been seen?

The colors, the shapes, the symbols
that play behind compartments of what I know.
The parallels I rely on, the juxtapositions I distort,
all trying to speak something,
hinting that there are answers in the universe.

I use to think I would find answers,
but the longer I live the less I believe there are any.

Scratch my head, sigh, touch my lips, shift weight to the other hip.