The Poetry Marathon

It is the last hour and I still don’t know how to write a Haiku.

How many syllables go into this again?

Is it a sentence or a prose?

Who the hell knows?

It was a goal loosely formed

For me to learn

How to write a successful haiku

But I have failed miserably.

Guess  gonna try again next year.

Sayonora. I made it through another Half Poetry Marathon

Without actually learning or dare I say writing

A freaking Haiku!

Tomorrow I promise to try a new.

I’m performing poetry at the Playground.

They say anything goes.

I wonder if they know…

Special K is here to dominate this thing!

A few weeks ago I had my first not my fault fender bender.

A few months ago I had my first not my fault major accident.

It is almost like someone or something is trying to take me out.

But I am not here by accident.

I am predestined and ordained to be in this place.

Doesn’t matter what you throw at me to take me out

Or cause an accident of fatal proportion.

I’m gonna sit at the table and eat my portion.

Cause it was prepared for me and not accidentally

In front of all my enemies.

I am purposed for this day; this stage; this place.

Sit back. Watch me walk like I am royalty.

And I promise it ain’t on accident.

I am not worried.

I am not stressed.

I live in a place of peace and expectation.

It does not matter what comes my way

This is how I live my life.

Day in and day out.

I’ve been through a mess of stuff.

But my countenance does not change

Because my life is not dictated by or premeditated by circumstance.

I am the way that I am

Because

God

Is

In

Control.

I am not for sale.

Not a toy for you to throw about

Or stand on display whenever you deem it necessary.

I am not for sale.

The color of my skin is not a holiday you take when you want to experience life on the other side.

I am not a trip you take when you want to culture appropriate.

I am not for sale.

The trauma I have endured as a direct result of my melanin is not your story to be told.

I am not a book placed precariously upon a library shelf for you to browse about and peruse at your convenience.

I am not for sale.

I am not the angry black woman you’ve been warned about.

I am not the teacher, paid to answer your every question about what is appropriate and what is not.

I am not for sale.

And my voice is not yours to control.

Just in case you don’t already know… the North won and slavery abolished.

I am not for sale.

Do you really think I am the type of person who goes around spewing hate?

I don’t partake in eating from the table constructed from the destruction of others.

I am love and I am passion.

I am fire and I am wind.

An earthquake of epic proportion.

Don’t you dare ever put my name in the same sentence structure of hate groups like the kkk.

Just cause you saw the K at the end of my name and neglected to embrace all that is Special

About me in thus famous place.

I have horses.

I have dogs.

I have turtles.

I have fish.

I have guinea pigs.

I have children.

And I have a husband too.

Hay for the horses at 5:30

Walk the dog at six.

The turtles are kind and quiet.

They don’t beg to be fed,

So most weeks I sneak them an extra ration.

Change the water. Clean the tank and don’t forget their delicious morsels.

Fish are divas and dir if they aren’t treated with specific care.

The guineas ate quite literally pigs and begin impressive dialog the minute they see you coming-

They don’t want love or attention. They want food. And they want it now.

The children won’t wake with the crows, but the minute they rise they won’t hesitate to let you know-

They want want what everyone else has already been given.

And the husband, well he just wants coffee in his hand.

I never wanted a farm.

And yet here I am with a menagerie of animals

I’m not sure I ever really wanted.

What am I to do?

Can I move?

I don’t have a title.

I don’t have a poem.

There isn’t one hiding in the backgrounds.

I think we are both still simmering from an earlier interruption.

Have you ever been in the throws of passion,

just about to reach that volcanic explosion;

ready to jump off into the climatic cliff

when all of a sudden a toddler or God forbid older child makes their way in?

That is what it feel like to have an interrupted poem.

I am still mourning its loss.

If no one but me me felt it,

does that mean it didn’t really exist?

I have a list of titles for poems whose writing I looked forward to with great expectation-

but I am deflated,

all because of a poem interrupted in birth.

I hope it will come back.

But will it be the same if it comes back to me and I give it another name?

Let’s get this out of the way, before we begin

so there will be absolutely, positively no doubt.

I no more want to be associated with having Daddy issues

than the source of this poem wants to be known as Daddy Franco, King of the Zoomesphere

and by no means does this poem belittle him by saying “and yet we are here.

He is Daddy Franco

a title that has been earned, justly so.

He is the master globe trotter,

taking the world by poem, one haiku at a time.

I wish I could write a haiku.

But I have not mastered the telling of a story in such short order

And though it undoubtedly would honor-

I am not not sure a haiku would fit…

The General’s ranking.

It contains way to little syllables to reference the inspiration

that strikes forth whenever he opens his mouth.

It does not expand far enough to truly note the lands

in which he is known.

He is friend and not foe.

Though, if poetry were war-

with his words, the General would lead.

And behind him, I would gladly go.

But poetry is not destined to harm or cut off the heads of one’s enemy;

and so I use my pen, which is mightier than the sword

to capture the attention of all who are human

and present this award-

for truly it is more blessed to give flowers to the living

while they are still able to know and understand that they are important and loved

than it is to write one’s eulogy-

Bryan, Generalissimo Franco you are a light in the poetryverse

and it is a privilege to Knight you the Haiku Emperor.

Arise this day and know forever more that you are deserving of each and every accolade.

Even the ones that seem to say Special K’s got daddy issues.

Mid poem.

It never fails.

I think I might have liked this one.

Know we could have been good friends-

If not the absolute best of them…

But, that was never to be.

What is to be is a computer crash, a power outage, a debilitating disability-

The list goes on and on.

The result the same.

A poem interrupted.

Today, I was mid poem and it was an avocado advert

Presented by Google. Without request from me.

It just appeared and I remember nothing-

Except a line about deadlines, a double entender, if there ever was one.

This was gonna be a good one.

I can feel it in my bones.

But, alas it has gone the way of others before it, now long living in the past…

A poem interrupted.

And I am left thinking or more aptly, my brain screaming

At an avocado on my screen-

What the hell.