The Poetry Marathon

Moon rise, moon river
Lady sings, good shiver

The jeep set free
The stars a canopy
You spare a hand
I feel content

Easy pulse at breastbone
Slow pace, new home.

Walk the tired grey streets
Mind a map of grid lines
Notice cracks in the concrete
Years of birth on sidewalk tiles

“Hey, that one’s like me!
born in nineteen-ninety,
trod on by fancy feet,
slated for replacement by the city.”

New Years Day for sidewalk tiles
On freshly paved streets
Won’t see a crack for miles
And you won’t see me.

All my words were weak
All my days would blend
You turned in simple welcome,
to kickstart a faltering hand.

You make the time
to find the line
on the horizon and trace a path to it
Wending your way over wooden planks,
through landscapes of grey and mist,
you linger in seclusion,
and forget the constant reach,
the perennial contusion:
a multitude of windows to clean.

Lullay, lullay lovely,
Let the soft light turn deep red, lullay
and behind lids closed for sleep,
loose the tendrils of the day

Let the soft light turn deep red
And go deeper still
Loose the tendrils of the day
feel it fall away

Go deeper still
Down to where the anchor weighed
And feel yourself fall away
No longer tethered, you need not stay

Do you remember, or did you forget
Left those years free, did not look back
When the mornings were slugs, our bodies grotesque,
expanding more than they could ever contract
Each high, each low a moment long
Each joy flimsy, a shallow breath
Resonating with every raucous song
Entranced by the singers, thinking death
Dyeing our hair black or wishing we had
Dying to get out, while living with dread
Dyeing our clothes an acid tone
Dying to the decade we first called home

Some places took on a heavy, headachy sensation in that year-long drought. Now, in the deluge, though I am soaked through, there it is. The feeling of being in a place you should never be. I shouldn’t have come back. I shouldn’t have. Wait. Who said any time could conquer the one to come? I did. And what right did I have to imprison the coming hours, years, iterations? If there is but one set of places that exist in one continuous tread of hours…

I must wrest this place,
First tended, then tainted, back
And let myself live

word, check
sentence, shake
without a thought
a weight in place

eyes, down
palms face up
it is a choice
to touch or trust

sits, waits
empty hands
were I to look
he’d know, look back

It was the spring of the final year
When the tiredness in her limbs was unprecedented
She could see all the warnings, and though she could hear
Instructions were left unimplemented
It was the spring of the final year
When the best of the city was on display
And she was spent but moving over-confidently
The peacock in full swagger and sway
It was the spring of the final year
when all was a clandestine simmer
the way unavoidable as fate
The peacock took her love, took her over

flick the switch, dim the day

close the lids, tilt the earth

leave the city, long to stay

get back the color, eyes closed, before birth

 

find a hole to dig, a building to build

get caught in an implosion

pour concrete til the bath is filled

hold breath, eyes closed, on the floor of the ocean

 

pick up black out blinds, storm shutters

eye masks of a kind, ignore the others

gathered around the light

who stand, eyes closed, backs to the night