The Poetry Marathon

The symbol of your soul,

The dirty streets of your rustic dream,

Of that winter home in the forest.

Or perhaps the muddy earth,

From after the rain,

The defeated walk,

And the stains on your feet,

The brown, copper world,

Of your life,

The remnants of us,

The friendship,

The pull to your soul, always a pull,

Sitting here, I could write about you forever,

Stitched to my heart,

And together yet pulled apart,

Like ripped seams,

And we wonder why people are not good,

Or great, to one another, like Bukowski said,

The endless walk through the fire,

We do not do anything well,

I still see you treading down the hill,

In the dirty streets,

And in the mud,

Your soul stained brown just like your last name.

Not only does the day drag on,

But baby, you lead me astray,

And I can’t behave in your presence,

I want to unravel and break all the shit in your home.

I want to destroy the peace that you cling to,

The emptiness of your mind, give me the time to rummage through every box,

And mismanage your heart the way you did mine.

Bitterness creeps through these halls,

And I am all of the best parts you could have been,

If you loved me and not her,

Or you loved who you really were,

But sometimes we hide in the closet until the darkness,

Comes to find us.

And the light, oh god, the light,

Will fucking ruin us with the truth,

Here in this city, if you do not get away from it.

I know that this is life,

The crazy ballad to our chaotic turns,

About the room, the glass figures telling us what we should do,

As you travel behind your walls,

That cover your mind and your heart,

Your lips moving but always silent,

Picking and choosing the lies,

The deceptive gold behind your tongue,

This day is for you, la vida, the life you lead,

This day is for you, all these poems are about you, baby,

The man who at 21, has ruined every good part of me,

And these are for you,

all of them, between now and later,

The satisfaction of your heart against my bones,

Seeping out like a runny memory we refuse to patch up,

I am here, the ghost, and the phantom pain,

Until you come find me,

La vida.

The echo from a touch,

The rippling of your godly frame against mine,

That stirs even the the mountains awake,

And being only twenty-one, we think this is love.

I still feel you in the air conditioned room of that summer house,

And I still feel you in that dark booth with the lights against us,

And I still feel you with the awkward prayers for the departure,

To the changing roads we both went on.

I still feel you even when you don’t want to feel me.

I think, this feeling, being twenty-one is only temporary,

But goddamn,  goddamn does it feel like yesterday,

And today, has crept up and forced me down,

Pinned me to you as my only lover, my only friend,

That caused me to give up the romantics of telling someone,

How badly you needed them.

I needed your pale frame,

Here, with my sleepy eyes and drowsy excuses,

To tame this ravaged soul,

I am the poor lover in your rich world,

And I want none of it,

Just you,

Here, these thoughts subdue me,

My sleepy eyes wanting your static frame,

And brown eyes and brown hair.

To smother me again.

We’d build a home in a ravaged land,

The static high in the sky,

It’s tasting like the steel of your heart,

The soft mechanic pull of your breath,

We are building up the disaster here.

I wanted you to disappear,

But I see there is hunger there in your eyes,

Wanting so much, but never going after it,

It’s never enough for your soul.

I know, I know these things will inevitably change again,

And we last, oh god, we last in the last remnants of the day,

But the day has only begun,

These thoughts fill so stupid,

Fuck, I hate the sound your name makes in my throat,

And on my lips.

We would build in these ravaged lands,

Because the mess is the image of us,

And there is a hunger here, for you,

Always you,

A hunger for change, and you.

How vicious thinking of you is,

How disruptive it is to the calm in my life.

Because I know your mind dwells somewhere else,

You are forgetting me, beautiful one.

And you, the man, that destroys the ease,

With every passing day,

The storm breaks upon my skin,

And I shatter again,

All the glass at your feet,

So retreat, retreat.

These words have become so vicious,

And luring to the dark,

You tear me apart, and wash me away,

How I love you so, so much still,

Without you even knowing, caring,

How vicious that is.

My grandma in her prime,

Dusting the bones of her body,

With my grandpa’s spirit and ingesting all my bitterness.

She knows the world in a way I do not.

She struggle with the patience of the calm before a storm,

But she is the resilient mountain,

The water of the waves hitting the rocks,

She is potent in her givings.

She swallows all my bitterness,

And caresses my heart with perseverance, I would not have otherwise.

I love her in the raging storms,

Her brittle figure, paints the image of strength in my eyes.

The stormy day has come barreling towards us,

I sit and whisper misgivings to your ear,

We should remember this when the air is clear,

And I think on your vodka drenched lips,

And the heat burning between us,

And I wonder where we could have been in this shitty city,

If it weren’t for your chaotic life.

I thought love was in the heat of the day,

The story mismatched my love, I gave to you,

My love, love, you’re losing me in the deep end,

Where did you go? Where did we meet?

The boy, the one with the stained eyes,

Drew the shutters and held me tight,

The stained air of change,

He ravaged me, how villainous, he was,

To my heart.

The ending of the night. Bids the healing of wounds to be much more furious in the day.
the sun is not bidding us pleasure.
But heat.
fire.
a departure.