The Poetry Marathon

Here at the end of the hours

bereft that all is done and dusted

(well, no, I desperately need to dust)

over, finished, kaput, completed.

(climbing out of Roget’s)

A time of wonder, now part of the patina on

this memory palaces room’s walls.

New co-conspirators,

traveling companions on this absurd

journey of pursuit of poetry.

Crazy and yes, you can be assured I shall

do it all again one day.

Finally now, to go,

spend time reading what others shared,

being moved, and humbled, I am certain.

What a ride!

Thank you, each of you

for the memories.

North and east the windows face.

Wallpapered in white with yellow, blue and red – tiny flower pattern-not “me”-

the walls originally done for a 9 year old girl –

I hope one day to paint all the walls flat white so I may write on them with Sharpie markers as I wish…

One half wall is all cork board-

done by me, for me (that glue high headache lasted two days)

Multicolored push pins by the tins full so I can post ideas, fragments, rages or whimsies

when so ever I choose,

from ceiling to floor.

Two desks, one, an off-cast kitchen table that holds:

keyboard, printer, tower, monitor, pencil holder, pens, honey jar full of rubber bands

miscellaneous treasures tucked about.

The second desk an heirloom roll top – from a unmarried uncle –

refinished from walnut to the original oak. Sycamore inserts my pride.

The rest of the room is junk shop eclectic.

A rickety drafting table for paper and stereo, set up and all around a mixed bag of

shelves and shelves and shelves for books and envelopes and hopes and mysterious collections.

The race now nearly done.

This entry the first, Oh heck! I fell asleep! I missed the 0500

So, #22 you are stuck here, a frantic cry to weariness,

be brief in knowing that still, you became.

Bright moon, you will set soon,

dawn will bathe the eastern sky in pinks

oranges and yellows.

This is your week of growing to full,

so the lunacy pull will be stirring up and down the crazy spectrum.

I see you smiling in the sky and I know I have

a soul mate in the universe.

Here in this pre-dawn morning

these words I offer upon the altar.

This fane built of sweat and tears

as the hours pass in souls searching –

searching for the perfect words in the perfect order.

This path in the wilderness narrows,

as weary heart grows heavy with sleep.

(a rogue, thief or pirate ~ earliest documented use 1624)

I have sailed these hourly seas in search of myself.

I am happily engaged in wee hour swashbuckling,

ready to board a vessel and strip it clean of its story.

A poetry picaroon,

I shall swagger across your line of sight flying the Jolly Roger

and swilling rum.

Yo ho ho, me hearties!

when only crickets and owls

are singing a summer serenade,

do you question why you are here,

pen in hand struggling for the correct cadence,

searching a thesaurus for just one more way to describe

these hours of Stygian darkness?

The 0100 train whistles to the west,

warning at each cross roads there is no stopping this engine.

Perhaps this is why we are here in the dead of night –

to describe the desperate loneliness in that whistle’s sound.

As the hours push ever on toward our completion

of this word journey,

brain slows, yawns widen,

weary heart wonders why?

Dry eyes leave one to ponder why humans

do not possess a nictitating membrane to moisten the eyeball

of struggling poets as we wander the halls of night,

stumbling toward morning and a full 24 pages of magic.

Even the cats

have abandoned me,

taken up their stations on the bed,

spreading out even further in my absence.

Perhaps I shall evict them,

surrender to sleep,

allow the words to pile up in a stack

to be knocked down and reassembled in an hour…

Stepped into the yard,

hello Moon! Waxing 77% of you there on my

south lawn.

Your triangle of friends to your west and south

sparkle their form of sky. Saturn, Mars and Antares,

how do you do?