The Poetry Marathon

“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”

It feels your soul

It knows your gifts

It knows your sins

It washes you in rain

Solidifies you with cold

It melts your heart when the day is hot

The land knows you because you are from it

You walked on it, played in it

It senses your presence and sighs

When you are away, it calls to you

When you are lost, touch it

Hold it, be a part of it

Smell the flowers’ scents

Feel the breeze teaching your skin

Return to the land when you are alone

The land belongs to your soul

You soul belongs to the land

Words are dwindling

They speak in nonsense now

Persnickety

Palindrome

Acquiesce

I am feeling haughty

Likened to Heliotrope

My message is unclear

Just throw some words

Onto the page

Any word will do

Santa Fe

Snarled

Snafu

Poetry is about words

Who cares if they make sense

Snickerdoodle as a sentence

Using Paris as a Homonym

Human resources at the Badger academy

I refuse to buckle into sense

I refuse to compromise my insanity

Take a Grizzly to lunch

And watch him Laugh

Take a poet to a dictionary

And watch him squeal

Dear Divorcing Cindy,

You are heartbroken right now

Lost, alone, aching

Contemplating your whole future

Wallowing in every mistake

every missed piece of evidence

Every lie he told has become your darkness

It isn’t. that’s him not you

I know this hurts

Your core is shaken

All you believed before

Doesn’t apply now.

Your humanity is lost

But you will survive this

Better, you will be stronger

You will be able to love and be loved

So many lovely things in store for you

He won’t be back, I know you want him to be

But you will see that’s best

You will find greater love

Love that doesn’t lie or steal

Love you don’t have to fight for

Love that washes over you when you look in his eyes

There will be better times

Better places

This time will end up meaning so much

Because your growth is enormous

You will find strength from despair

Happiness from your weaknesses

You will see the world

In a whole new light

Don’t give up

Don’t give in to the despair

Hold your head high

And walk away proud

There is a moonbeam

in my coffee cup

I sip it gently

A hush,

a fog

washes over me

I am no longer concrete

I am no longer damned

I have jumped from my shelf

I am more like a tall, strong fir

Reaching to the sky.

No canteens of water will do

No juice, no flaming alcohol drinks

No carbonated sugar in a tall bottle

Just coffee

Swirling misty coffee

Bracing me for whatever winds

Blow me away from my safe dock

Into the stormy sea

I was a lonely child

Few friends at all

Except Jane Eyre,

Jo March and her sisters

We went on adventures

Had great romances

Searched for financial security

Kept our morality and integrity

We crossed the moors

We took off to New York

We were writers together

We were on the leading edge of women’s rights

We were governesses

They were with me

A misfit with literary misfits

leading me, helping me

Navigate an unkind world

Through the written word

Travel thru the mirror

Where my face used to be

No wrinkles

Where my neck was smooth and silky

Travel to before the gray tinge

And the small hump

forcing me to lean forward

Travel thru the mirror

Where innocence lived

Where Love was simple

and the Future alive

Travel back here and see the reality

A woman aged and tired

Saged and wired

Regrets, broken hearts

Responsibilities

Travel thru the mirror

One day an aged crone

Will look back at me

See innocence and love

And wonder why

I believed in regrets

Why I worried over broken hearts

and responsibilities

The mirror reflects

What our eyes see

a moment’s glimpse

Into the self we imagine

ourselves to be.

Poetry courses through my veins and arteries

I feel the words climb up my spine

and the sentences climb back down

I am all aware now

though half asleep

Dreaming in my own writer’s way

Me, my fingers and this keyboard

Spin in our own world

The rest of the world just outside this bubble

I am not poet now as much as I am poetry

I am words, metaphor

Loss and beauty

Breathing in soliloquy

In solitude

In infinite verse

Locked out

of where I should be

This coffin where I have placed myself

Stifles me

I need to break free

Push my limits

Breathe fully and deeply

Instead I cough

On stale air

The walls push against me

And I am getting smaller

Smaller and still smaller

I know I made this place

This haven of darkness

This Hell of despair

The locks are an illusion

But the imprisonment is real

Shackled by fear

Beaten by disappointment

The sentence is long

And here is no parole

Walk into the sunlight

Feel it caress your neck

Allow it to seep into who you are

Brightening the darkness out

Stop trying to control the world

It doesn’t belong to you

Stop cleansing the deceit

Stop trying to fix the broken

Bask in the sunlight

Feel the light of All That Is

come to you, bathe you

Deliver you from the evil

Lurking in every corner these days

Love is the answer

To all the questions

Even these days

When the shadows run the world

Bask in the sunlight

Feel it caress your neck

Feel the joy

Only warmth can bring