The Poetry Marathon

Borrowed Line: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus

Is life worth living?
One serious question that demands attention
before any others can follow.
The boulder, the weight you bear,
penance in the mundane.
A punishing pursuit that grants order
in an absurd reality.

The procession of hours, days, seasons, meaningless
Every moment, suffering that bears no proof of purpose.
Suicide, a thought bordering within reason,
though defiance is a fresh wound still losing blood.

The mind and the body unite in their labor,
perhaps there is a resolution to this problem,
to embrace the conditional strife of existence,
with the philosophical fullness of being,
create meaning where meaning is missing.
Dethrone punitive gods by truly knowing reality,
with all of its misery, manifest contentment,
In the discord of broken pieces, fragmented, unconnected,
there is a harmony that leads to happiness.

A celestial city, collonades of salt reaching into the clouds
Silent caverns of the deep dark, where only a heartbeat is heard in the ears
Through the doorway at the bottom of the waterfall’s pool,
And across the heavy mists of the North Sea.

Beyond the ingested ruins of the jungle palace,
Atop the lone mountain temple staring to the East,
In the volcanic minefield, a slithering nest of dragons
Beneath the grey ash spore snows of Venus.

A place within a place, a realm, an agreement of the mind
To contain what dwells within, that it might be allowed to come out
The presence of others, at that second level of knowing,
That mythic ocean behind our conceptual psychology.

Within you, Within me.

The fears I run from in the day,
appear as gifts I chase in the night.
Losses are gains disguised in misfortune,
a holy change in perspective,
only revealed by the moon’s light.

I shouldn’t keep my eyes so dependent on the sun
for what is obvious, what demands my attention,
doesn’t speak for the essence beneath my skin.
Mid-day’s brightest light
only shimmers on what is most prominent,
what I want to be seen,
simultaneously deepening the contrast
of what is not so easy to guess.
In the dark my shadow is limitless.

Small hands dart quickly towards a vanishing yellow orb.
Reaching for the flash of an undefined spot
in the playful dark of the settling, country night,
where the firefly was perceived alight
but has already floated past, catching spark again,
a few feet ahead of the child’s searching eyes.

His little face stretches,
a strangely excited mask, in the new direction,
a small bottle close by to keep captive insects under watch.

As remnants of the day’s heat recede into cooler shadows,
a dance of light sparkles across the open pasture,
as if a carousel has dispersed itself, broken form
and flung its carnival majesty
to swim across the evening sky,
drifting down the velvet hillsides
spilling into the moonless forest
where its strobing, discotheque ambiance
flickers throughout the darkening treeline.

I alone, in love, seeing love, began.
You and I, with passion in our eyes, smiling.
You and I and our love.
My thoughts turn back through time
Smaller hearts orbiting larger hearts,
An attraction that grows between a man and a woman
Patterns of love falling in place.
Kisses, kisses, kisses, 6,000 kisses
A party, a celebration, a baby.
Childhood games that gave root to our identity, music lessons in life,
How to play the excitement, how to wear a ring.
Your laughter is a chapter I know by number,
You love ice cream, I love ice cream.
We fly through French midnights,
Radiant trees and colorful flowers of springs
Castles and cakes, marigolds surround our garden.
We fly through Italian cities, without cellphones, or cameras
We see the flowers and the clouds
Flowers, clouds, and kisses.
I’m cool, you’re cool
All the baby ducks want peace,
We look for peace
All of our lives
Ok with who we are.

A notion in your stomach,
a truth spoken by the lonely trees, undressed in winter.

The weight of physical being,
laden with existence,
burdened by flesh and bone,
organic hindrance.

The subduing forces that bind us,
that pull things towards the middle.
Silent acts that close the carnation’s petals
and draw you to the center of yourself.

The fetal contortions of dying things,
curling creases of burning paper,
a threatened serpent folding over itself.

The iron in your blood is lured
by an ancient magnetism,
an inner gravity,
a plum set to the navel of the universe.

The water of your being falling, lower, lower,
through the bottom of every well,
crawling deeper than death,
mighty rivers of the Underworld lead
to the primordial clay and mud of the earth,
to the roots of being, pulsating in the season of the soul.

The silent, dark, untouched stillness of the country house.
Children sleeping safely in wooden framed bunk beds,
their bedroom door closed softly against the sound of percolating coffee.

Cool, summer mornings before dawn.
Wet earth and cut grass,
a warm ceramic mug in hand bringing
rich, hot syrup to lips, to mouth, swallow.
Calibrating caffeination
like a sunrise of the mind.

Clench of shoelaces pulled tight, securing the foot,
maximizing strength and performance
in the snug and pillowed embrace of running shoes.
The gentle toss of gravel underneath pacing strides,
rising heartbeat, and the warm circuitry of pumping blood.
Heavy breath, deep and alone, drawing sound amidst awakening nature.

Cows turn their heads, chewing cud, and slightly startled,
The redtail hawk gives lift, rising from the fence post
to glide upon growing solar winds.
Trickles of water, gliding over stones, falling short distances,
splashing and cascading as the runner crosses the creek,
the morning cold still hid in the lowest recesses of the earth
kisses his skin as he passes over the bridge.

Brownsnakes slither aside,
speckled Great Plains toads hop out of the way,
large grass spiders scamper from the path.
The sun’s first sliver breaks over the oak trees on the horizon
like a swelling lip of fire painting the purple morning
with a beauty that burns the eyes if you stare at it for too long.

What play of light is this?
That catches my mind and twirls it through the swaying treetops.
Some distant sense of adventure calling through the wind,
tossing my restless spirit to and fro,
orbiting this central point of recognition,
of realization,
of eternity breathless in a single moment
when my lungs are truly felt,
when the blood in my fingers throbs with my pulse.
I am the micro, the macro.
Each level, not one atop of the other,
but one within the other,
patterns repeated on a small and large scale,
doorways ever opening toward more doorways
windows leading inward,
leading outward
blink
branches of dancing trees—
blink
the veins inside my eyelids—
blink
the sky is the pale fathom of my own eye staring back at me.

Hey Man,

I didn’t want to contact you like this.
Letters to the dead are really just letters
to the living from the living,
trying to reconcile with what we regret.
If what I want to say is so important, why did I wait until now?
Why had I lost all contact with you for the past decade?
You see? I told you. Regrets.

I guess I wrote you off sometime in my past,
drew a line and placed you on the other side;
time just continued to pass. Sentiments would arise,
but I never took action to reconnect,
just buried you prematurely
and tried not to think about it too much.

I heard you stopped by my parent’s house a couple of times
while you were visiting the old neighborhood.
I wish I could have been there, or got a chance to hear your voice once more.
I guess we never know when we are experiencing the last of something, or someone.
We just assume we have a choice in how our lives proceed.
It’s easier to believe that we have some form of control over what happens to us,
so we put the important things we aren’t ready to face off to the side,
to be attended to later… on someday…later.

I’ve thought about our friendship so much since I got the news of your passing.
We had many good times. I was happy and I believe you were happy too.
There were some hard times as well, real times,
blows to the heart, loss of breath times, bleeding times.

I heard about how it happened.
You were just doing the same shit we always did,
but the body can’t take living like that forever.
I think it was an accident.
I don’t believe you meant to do it. I feel bad.
It haunts me how you can consciously make decisions
that invite your own death without realizing that you’re doing it.

There is so much more I want to say to you.
There is so much more I want to say to you that won’t fit into words,
that I can’t constrain into speech or confine to a single letter.
So I’ll just keep talking to you from time to time,
wherever I’m at, whatever I’m doing, however I may be remembering you.

I hope the afterlife isn’t cold. I don’t like to think of you cold.
Wherever you are, I hope you can still be warmed by love.

Your Friend.

Two continents insist on their division,
repelling, pulling father from the other.
Torrents of a deepening sea swelling between them,
waves crashing without mercy upon each shore.
The foundations that serve to uphold their connection
are built from the minerals of both worlds,
yet all bridges eventually collapse.

Two hearts turn away from the center
imbittered, scarred, left to warm their own fires.
The distance in her voice sequestered in her thoughts,
The draw of his eyes dreaming in some other night,
a living gravity severed, two compasses pulling apart
leading to separate shores of the same melancholic ocean
to wander through the ruins of the heart,
to scavenge amongst the rubble of the earth,
where all bridges eventually collapse.

In the blood, there sings a voice,
before the branching arc of a vein,
a drum that resonates with ancient thunder.
Histories, hearts, roads divaricate like bolts of lightning
in storms at sea, illuminating the truth of the night
with blinding, holy light, instances of clarity too swift
to register in the mind, yet burning throughout the senses—
all bridges eventually collapse.