The Poetry Marathon

Skyscrapers

They said we never would, so we finally did

by that time, we were all already dead

just waiting for the light to show up and take us

it didn’t, so the rage finally boiled over

I showed you how to make a good fire

the gas canister pulled you down with it

until you emptied it in the lobby

there were so many, around us, laughing

and when the sparks lit up a smile, I knew I loved you

The suited men, for all their millions, couldn’t fly

they rained from the tops of the skyscrapers like well dressed rubble

I held your ears in my hands because it bothered you, the way they hit

and with my mouth I kissed your dirty forehead

The skyline was beautiful on fire

the shadows danced on the smoke clouds above

as if the great beast was dying before us, finally after all this time

I held your hand and we cheered a new world, one rising from the rubble

Where we would be something.

Amalgam

Stank of fur burnt and tree rot maxed out slammed into nostrils until nausea

caused the burped vomit to pop out against wills and through the bracing of fingers

mixing with the aforementioned and growing into quite a putrid thing with

sentience cobbled together from the chemical waste of everything being deconstructed

down to the element.

It got damn hot, so hot that everything melted into one big slow pile

pouring itself down everything and taking with it like magma

becoming bigger with each inhalation it mustered through movement

you didn’t scream because if it got in it melted you from the inside

it was alive, crawling and making its own religion, then science

The abacus of filth ran amok decimating and corrupting everything

with what it managed to learn in the heat speeding up its evolution

it used to build a ship of scrap and go to the stars in sludge

it orbited the sun and absorbed the heat until near destruction

in a week it declared itself ‘supreme being’.

***This piece was cobbled together from a series of random words and phrases that were pulled from a mystery bag.***

The words/phrases were:

• Autumn All Stars
• Magic Organizing Tricks Mess be Gone Poo
• Because Science Matters! Exit
• Kick Some
• Signature Baking calls for a Signature Ingredient

OCCULT-Os

pairs well with goat milk

Cauldron: 665.9 on 10 Minutes                                                                                              Yield: 1 Bowl of Occult-Os

Signature baking calls for a signature ingredient:

1 CUP SPIRIT ASH

 Collect spirit ash. To do this, use your ritual knife to conjure a low level ghost. Shear off bits of rattling chain or flowing garments (if it is a modern male ghost, we recommend taking off some of the unnecessary facial hair). Be sure NOT to get any ectoplasmic goo on you (it stains worse than bleach and burns the wicked, we know what you do when you think no one is looking)

Kick some of your spirit ash into a bowl (yes kick) and mix with a tablespoon of garlic. Make sure you wash your hands well before re-entering your magickal working kitchen. This is not for ritual purity, rather this is because germs are very real and we use science with our magick because science matters (unless you’re an anti-vax dullard).

Next you will need:

1 PINT SQUATCH TEARS

Squatch tears, or ‘Squears’ as they’re sometimes called, can be acquired after a good ribbing of a bigfoot. Also, be careful not to roast the bigfeets too hard, as they do get their feelings hurt and that’s not very nice (also, they WILL tear off your limbs like the dainty, dainty flower petals they are) it is advised, even after a good natured ribbing, to sprint back to your house/cave shouting back (don’t worry about being all complex here, Merlin) hexes to keep them at bay.

Leave Squears on a simmer (low-medium here, Ramsay).Add in two pinches of tumeric and even more garlic for flavor (but not too much there, Barefoot Contessa, or you’ll make the dish taste like Olive Garden leftovers pulled from a sink disposal unit).

Third, you’re gonna want to add:

5 AUTUMN ALL STARS HAIRS

Far be they from mystical beings, Autumn All Stars are your local 4H knockoff group. To avoid kidnapping, we recommend a LIGHT amount of chloroform (we mean it Dahmer) and a QUICK tweezing with magickal tweezers. DO NOT try their special Autumn Star Pie. It is HIGHLY addictive and you WILL resort to escalating crimes to feed your addiction and you WILL go to jail (you will be like a great pie junky, but instead of losing teeth or picking your skin to bits, you will get so fat and we WILL post mean things about you on social media.)

And now, it’s time for the final ingredient (don’t wet yourself):

1 DEMON POO

To collect, attend several exorcisms during October (what, do you think you’re the magickal Marco Pierre White, starting this in the Summer?) and wait for one of the exorcised to pop one out in defiance of God and the Church (puking is so 1980s). Collect said poo in our patented ‘Demon Mess be Gone’ Tupperware brand containers (if you put it in saran wrap, you deserve whatever happens to you) and take it back to your magickal ritual space. Combine poo, Simmered Squears and hairs with ash while reciting the magickal ritual (you shouldn’t even have to look at the book once. Do your homework next time, occult Ferris Bueller.) Add garlic. Salt for taste. Blood from finger. Pour mixture into tall, skull glass and spoon down while laughing maniacally. (don’t go all skeletor though, nerd.)

Use one of our patented magic organizing tricks to clean up. (If you leave the kitchen a mess, we will crawl from these pages and curse you and your lineage down to your cat.)

You are so bothered

by the lines on your body

you read them like libel

or graffiti on a temple

When I see the stretch

I see growth

A past

memories good and bad

Most of all I see change

Something inside

growing beyond its home

Creating new temples for itself

I wish you wouldn’t erase the growth

even the pain has formed interesting lines

embrace them, as I have

Watching you grow into something wonderful

1. I look like none of you and it makes me feel like I have failed God #lol

2. Still haunted by that time I thought my mom got raptured and sometimes when I don’t hear from her I panic a little bit. #tbt

3. God is punishing me for masturbating as a teen by denying me a job in my degree field. #wouldyoulikefrieswiththat

4. Is this conviction or anxiety? #Sundayfunday

5. Scared to pray for things because the answer could be ‘no’. #how2talk2boss

6. My friends still think I believe in fairy tales and remark on it often. #bestfriendsforever

7. Thomas Kincaid’s paintings are terrible. #sorrynotsorry

8. VBS theme this year: Adventure in a time where the economy didn’t suck. #startemyoung

9. Why do they make pews out of trees still. #memoryfoamwouldbenice

10. I have to try and remember the people Jesus hung around. I have to try and remember grace. I also have to remember to show it myself. #perspective

You keep saying that you will have your license soon

but your legs say otherwise

your feet swell into pooling things

the special socks barely help

you say this because

you’re sad

and

You feel like

a burden to us.

But it is more that we

your progeny, have done poorly at your tomb

Our tensions have turned us from sculptors and guards

into the ungrateful, the can’t be bothered.

I don’t mind driving you around

Even though at 9AM I may grit my teeth

and hope the AC is loud enough

you can’t hear my sniffling

But

You won’t ever need your license

When the time comes

I will carry you to meet God.

Then the black holes that we were (admit it)

collided and pulled each other apart

but you know how it goes with forces of nature

or stubborn personalities

they never really win

so I was shot out

in a gamma burst of an argument

lightyears and lightyears

and eventually I got to such a place

where there was nothing

a darkness

so abyssal

and colossal

utterly encompassing

and there was nothing for me to feed on

so I shrank

compacted to infinitude

You know they say the universe started this way

so small and weak

and then it exploded one day

Look what it made.

Roots wrapped around, crawling up walls and through cracks in buildings, workers shocked, taking photos. Tiny sprigs shoot out of thicker green, spreading out infinite like fractals unseen. Nature reclaiming without a shred of hostility. But to say the least, she knows her place: on top of all of us.

Body like plywood pushed through a press

mind as empty as the cavity of the sky

(and there aren’t even stars)

bent knee to all things

because the Bible says so

I wish you’d stand up

and

fill your mind with heresy

and

be less of a philistine

footstool

more of a boot

on their throat

For 10 days it was suspended above the Earth

it cried everyday and night

saddened over the world or confused and scared

who could say

most said ‘both’ with a shrug

they formed religions to it, tossing their Bibles

until the hyper giant tears flooded the cities

and then also the countryside

(which irritated the ones who thought they were the true chosen

you know because the city folk are all heathen sinners, and like

why the thing was even crying in the first place)

and they got over it real fast

and they started throwing things at it

because it also kept them up all day and night

in total, they threw 230,987,124,780,123.5 objects at it

including the Bibles they tossed

they rushed the landfills and found them

and then just tossed them straight up

some people got hit on the head by falling Bibles

and straight up died

those Thomas Nelson ones are heavy

the thing continued to cry

until the world nearly flooded

and then it disappeared

and this also caused a number of bad things to happen

satellites taken offline in such number that

the internet basically died

people threw even more objects, in anger, at the spot where the thing had been

around 345,678,980,342,400.2 objects

and then the tears came again, from the nothing that was there, drowning what was left.