The Poetry Marathon

Night time in the city is smoke and sirens
Carried on a cool breeze.
Groups of twenty-somethings marching raucously between locales,
Weaving between cars, drivers leaning on horns,
Racing to beat hordes of pedestrians to intersections.
Music, fast-paced and infectious,
Drifting tantalizingly from doors opened by burly bouncers
Square-shouldered and solemn.
Turn the corner; you’ll see a group of teenagers smoking a joint,
Walk down the street and see couples lying in parks,
Lone strangers blowing furls of tobacco smoke in their direction.
The air is heavy, a heady scent of sweat and gasoline, cigarettes and weed,
A cacophony of consumption that extends ‘til the first hour of sunlight.

Gather ‘round the fire and we’ll share an experience.
Two flames:
One at your mouth,
The other at your feet.
Dense smoke,
Super silver haze,
Holds, carries our laughter into space.
Drift with me;
Dance in the light of the stars.
Close your eyes and let your consciousness explore
Alternate states of being.
Puff, puff, pass,
And now we’re dancing in the light of the stars,
And now the moon is a spotlight,
Illuminating your smile,
And the space between your fingers and the filter.
We’re out for a rip,
We’re out for a trip,
And we are no longer afraid of the night.

The coy sky
Hides its brilliance until the final hour.
Only then,
Does it reveal its violets,
Its flush pinks,
Behind a slice of orange sun,
Washing the horizon in fleeting, sacred splendour before
The call of the loon,
The chill evening wind,
And the choir of crickets
Unite in grand chorus
To announce the arrival of darkness.

The river knows all.
Swift or sluggish,
Swelled or shrunken.
It is versed in the wisdom of the earth –
In the song of the wind as it rustles the foliage,
In the scraping of overlapped branches,
In the crunch of trodden twigs,
In the dance of flowers and the pungency of ripe and rotting fruit.
It has babbled in the speckled light of evening sun through the trees.
It has seen the storm and swelled to meet it.
It has borne the snow, offered its surface to the winter wind, become a smooth sheet of ice,
Waiting for the embrace of spring sunshine
Before cracking, ear-splitting and thunderous,
To reclaim its form,
Regain its flow.
Its depths flavored with the salt of tears, with the rot of plant matter, with the cloying earthiness of mud, with fossil fragment and algal slime.
Tread lightly on its banks;
Pay respect to
Wisdom eternal.

Little feet in the sand,
Tread lightly, barely printing,
Move swiftly, softly.
Juxtapose: the enormity of presence,
The swell of your belly as you laugh at the gulls,
At the slick-feathered geese trailing their offspring,
At the moon-lensed sunglasses that turn to face you
And bask in your delight.
Here, the world is yours;
An open canvas of salt and spray,
Of silt and reeds,
Of mirth abounding,
And I wish fervently that it may be so forever.

We go to see the lavender.
We wade through the tickle of summer grass and pillowy fern,
As the river burbles beside us.
You raise your face to the sky and the breeze ruffles your hair,
The sunlight dancing in your eyes.
We hop the old, broken fence bordering the field,
And we laugh as the mud-stiffened cuff of my jeans catches a post.
We walk, we wade through the magnificent purple sea;
We flare our nostrils to savour its perfume.
It stretches, vast and surreal,
Ending only at the forest ridge, grey in the distance,
And there is bliss in the laugh you release to the wind as you tell me
You’ll never forget this.

Love inchoate:
Longing and lust and loneliness
Hoping to be allowed the time to
Coalesce
Into something beautiful.
And all that hope
Balancing on the tip of your tongue
As you weigh your options.
As you prepare your response.

Intersectional feminism is the only feminism, I say,
As the gentleman across from me pouts and scoffs,
Says he is all for women’s rights but
Black Lives Matter has gone too far,
And Jordan Peterson may just have a point.
He betrays his own ignorance;
Intersectional feminism is the only feminism.

Intersectional feminism is the only feminism, I say,
As family members, loved ones, insist that
Women ought to have meaningful jobs and independent lives and individual rights but
Wearing religious coverings is just wrong.
It isn’t, but they are.
Intersectional feminism is the only feminism.

And if you do not embrace this,
I cannot embrace you.
And if you do not embrace this,
You cannot join me on my journey.
Whomever you may believe yourself to be
To me.
For intersectional feminism is the only feminism,
And I am a feminist.

As I write my poem,
As I probe my consciousness for its buried longings,
As I meditate on words and phrases,
As I prepare to compose,
And set my fingers to the keys,
The power goes out.
Such is life.
—
We relocate to the library;
Enter to a scented breeze of pine wood and paper.
Adorned with maple leaves and festive décor.
My shoes scuff the carpet as I reminisce on the days of my youth,
Rummaging through shelves holding gems with worn covers and stained, wrinkled pages.
It is here, among the wood smell and the carpet burn and the promise of infinite universes,
That I first fell in love with writing.
I inhale the nostalgic smells
And resume.

Your suffering for naught
As it is taken up and brandished
As a unique identity,
As a distinguished honour.
Glamorized anguish,
Narcissism posturing as tragedy.
Debilitating sadness is only beautiful
To those for whom it is foreign.