The Poetry Marathon

At forty-five, I found my voice;

It was like music to my ears.

My feet moved to the melody.

I danced for the first time in years.

I felt the tension fade away

As lyrics invaded my soul.

A brilliant diamond, I burned bright,

Ne’er again just a lump of coal.

(A stop sign poem is another of my mishmashed inventions, first introduced in the 2020 Poetry Marathon. The stop sign poem is composed of eight lines, each consisting of eight syllables. To take it a step further, I developed the “Multi-way Stop Sign,” where the number of total stanzas determines the numbered way of the stop sign. For instance, four stop sign stanzas would be known as a “Four Way Stop Sign” poem.)

ANXIETY

restless, frantic

pacing, bouncing, racing

mania, paranoia, darkness, despair

sleeping, isolating, weeping

hopeless, immobilizing

DEPRESSION

(A diamante is composed of seven lines, where lines 1 and 7 are opposite in meaning and are typically one-word nouns, but may also be concepts or phrases. Lines 2 and 6 should contain two adjectives, which clearly describe Lines 1 and 7, respectively. Line 3 will be made up of three -ing verbs which refer to Line 1, and Line 5 is composed in the same setup with regards to Line 7. Line 4 is the focal point of the poem, uniting Lines 1 and 7 by juxtaposing two nouns addressing Line 1 followed by two nouns addressing Line 7.)

Backstabbed

Bleeding

History

Repeating

Secrets

Spoken

Confidence

Broken

Undeserved

Condemnation

Unforgiven

Devastation

Sisterhood

Severed

Enemies

Forever

(A foursquare poem is a format I created during the 2020 Poetry Marathon which consists of four stanzas of four lines, each line being composed of a single word.)

Darkness

overpowers

us, swallowing all light.

One question remains: did we pay

the bill?

(A cinquain is a five line poem with a syllabic count of 2/4/6/8/2.)

Sweltering summers in Texas

aren’t meant for big

booty-ful girls

like you and me.

Gals like us, we’re just way too much,

even for Texas,

where we always

do things bigger.

I smiled, patting her ample butt.

Together, we

waddled off, me

and Honeybun..

(A minute poem is composed of 60 syllables split between three stanzas. The four lines of each stanza should have a syllable count of 8/4/4/4. Traditional minute poems are written in iambic pentameter using the rhyme scheme of aabb, ccdd, eeff. This was way too difficult for me to compose in just 60 minutes, so I improvised by eliminating both the rhyme and meter requirements, resulting in my “nontraditional” knockoff version above. Honeybun is the amazingly adorable big beautiful wiener (dog) seen above, who entered my life eight years ago, along with my boyfriend Lonnie,)

If love is all we

need, why does

he feel so alone?

(A lune is an Americanized version of traditional Japanese haiku, composed of three lines, with a syllabic count of 5/3/5.)

My fear of

failure weighs me down.

Standing still,

I collapse,

crumbling under pressure, but

success scares me more.

(A shadorma is a six line poem with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5.)

To

hear, I thought, would change

life for the better,

but I learned silence is still golden.

(A four line poem is composed of four lines, with a syllable count of 1/5/5/9. I have been hard of hearing most of my life and missed out on much, and at age 45, finally broke down and got hearing aids. While I do enjoy life more fully now that I am not missing every other word that is spoken or noise that resounds, there are times when I find myself longing for the peace and utter quiet that once surrounded me on a regular basis.)

Carried to The Edge

Brought back home, a tasty trip

Thank you, Pizza Hut!

(A haiku is a Japanese poem consisting of three lines, with a syllable count of 5/7/5. This poem inspired by my lunch menu — the awesome crispy thin crust super full of toppings THE EDGE pizza from Pizza Hut!)

Flags unraised,

envelopes

unopened,

letters left

unwritten.

Perched upon

highest pole,

mailbox now

sits empty.

(A tricube is composed of three stanzas of three lines each, and each line is made up of just three syllables. I used the writing prompt from Hour One — to write a poem about the end of anything — and used the end of the post office/snail mail era as my subject matter.)