The Poetry Marathon

What do you say at the end of the day,
When the day’s work is done, but there’s no room for fun?

Birdsong is dying down, while the sun sets on this small town.
The day workers are heading home, telling their families of progress over the phone.

You walk in the door and loosen your tye, and for a moment you ask youself why.
But the excited chatter of your kids remind you, that they are the reason for all that you do.

This globe, turning slowly in blackness,
host to life upon life,
but moving ever onward,
its cycle unaffected by any event upon its suface.
Its destiny seems to have been decided for it already.
Carry life upon it, as it pirouettes through a vaccuum,
admiring the view of its innumerable neighbors as it twirls.
It has probably witnessed the birth and death of countless stars.
I wonder if it misses them,
its brothers and sisters in space.

Thoughts are flitting carelessly through my mind.
Memories brought on by a chuckled word or a passed-along tale.
If I let it, the stream will continue flowing for hours,
thoughts and feelings from years ago pouring forth from every corner of my mind.
Isn’t it funny,
the directions that our minds take?
They will hop the tracks that were layed out for our trains of thought,
and blaze out into uncharted territory,
creating connections in their wake.
There are so many different paths to tread,
that our minds can travel. So many, that it truly is unlimited.
The only things holding our minds back from exploring new, uncharted worlds,
are our own hesitations and insecurities.

The twilight sun has come and gone,
without the rise of the new moon.
The birds sing frantically,
but the light is far from reaching them.
Their panicked twitters and caws echo between buildings,
but not to any human ears.
That species that is the ruler of this earth,
sleeps soundly in their beds,
unaware, and confortable in their belief of a rising sun each morn.
Other creatures begin to pick up on the nervousness of the avians,
and add their cries to the growing cacaphony.
But the humans yet sleep.
No new light begins to shine,
nothing rises above the nearby hills to chase and stretch the shadows.
The fauna starts to panic,
bringing the noise to a higher and louder pitch,
as they fear for the worst.
The sun would not rise,
as it did day after day,
and the darkness would trap them forever.
They huddle away, fear clouding instinct,
as they await whatever is to come.
But right as hope is leaving the last creature,
the shadows begin stretching themselves,
slowly away from the hills,
and the light begins to seep back into the world.
The creatures’ cries turn from hopelessness to gratefullness,
as their fears are hiden away with the darkness.
And as the humans finally begin to awake from their beds,
all they can think about,
is getting the stupid animals to shut up.

Oh, joyous sustenance! My tastebuds’ delight!
Your scrumptious flavors and textures continue to astound and amaze!
The thought of you waiting for me gets me through my shift,
A shining light at the end of a tunnel of growling stomachs.
You give me strength to endure the gauntlet of grumpy drive-thru customers,
And reward me for my pains with deliciousness!
Thank you for being so variable in your delights!

These little poems
Are fun. Especially for
This marathon thing.

Sleep deprivation.
Sounds worse than it is. Just
Makes my brain fuzzy.

I wish that it were easier to let go.
Ignoring the traumas of the past,
Letting the weights drop free of your shoulders,
And wafting up into the clear night sky.

I wish it was as easy as,
writing the event down on a piece of paper and burning it,
Or sending its descrption in a lantern,
and setting it free.

I wish that leaving the past behind was that easy.
Forgetting the events that still flash in front of your eyes and send you shivering, or sobbing.
Or pushing out the people in your life who have hurt you,
and just letting them fade off into the distance,
never to trouble your thoughts again.

I wonder how much you think you know me.
I mean, according to many, my emotions are an open book,
and I have no talent for telling tall-tales,
even if my life depended on it.
I definitely wouldn’t be able to play poker.
But those are all very obvious, very visual.
Deep down, how well do you know me?

Can you follow the rambling, off-course plummet of my train of thought?
Don’t get distracted by the tracks,
I barely use them anymore.

If we got into a heated argument,
would you know what part of it could drive me to tears?
Or why?
That kind of backstory,
only a select few are privy to such things.

If you feel you know me,
I’d be interested to see what you think you know about me.
And trust me,
I don’t appreciate poking and prying,
whether it be with clummsy bare hands,
or the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel.

I want to know what it feels like to be a Maker.
To be able to see and hold the Earth’s raw materials in hand,
And be able to create anything imaginable from them.
I can only imagine what it must be like,
To not only have the knowledge of every tool for the job,
But to also be the perfect tool yourself.
To be able to make come to pass whatever comes to your mind.
Molding earth and stone to your will,
And changing the unbridled wind and raging river to do yiud biding.
That power would be the greatest ecstasy,
And the most amazing purpose,
That I could ever dream of.