The Poetry Marathon

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Half Marathon Hour 12 (2021)

Haiku
A piece of stained glass,
Colors bursting through the panes,
You are my sunshine.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 11 (2021)

BRIGHTEST HOUR, DARKEST DAY

In the brightest hour
of my darkest day,
I find the fire lit up white,
crackling with heat –

I dare you to tell me
to walk on that fire,
to step beyond the boundaries,
to relinquish myself
to the other side;

I dare you to sing a tune,
to keep the beat,
pounding ancient drums
against a spring sunset –

I dare you to cross the threshold,
take a look at what keeps
my heart held captive
in a restless dance of spirit;

I dare you to try and extinguish
the intense light,
of the brightest hour
of my darkest day.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 10 (2021)

THE DAY THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

I.
I first noticed a long shadow cast on me
from the West,
pensive sunlight
restrained by dusk,
a murkiness akin to
the water lapping the pond’s edge.

It was an evening like many others –
a sink half full of a day’s dishes,
a small pile of laundry
in the hamper;

The next day,
the shadow moved in –
daunting – enveloping –
with curtains drawn tightly,
the previous evening poured
precisely to fill a new day –
and yet,
in that void,
I grew unable to discern time,
the darkness manifest itself
into all my time.

II.
I stood a the threshold of the shower,
for what felt like hours,
unable to step inside.

III.
Medications lined up like obedient soldiers,
went untouched.
I inhaled blackness like cigarette smoke.
I saw darkness as my only choice in hues;
my pupils grew large
and the day came when I could not see,
I WAS the darkness.

IV.
I lost myself in the azure mountains
swallowed by an ebony skyline.
I lived in that ancient hill
I built inside my apartment.
The light that might save me,
masked by curtains floor to ceiling.
I stood afraid to part the cloth
that could possibly resuscitate
the sun high above my shoulders
on a fall day.

V.
The day passed through me like I was
translucent – from the light that hit the pane,
restrained by draperies.

VI.
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Everything then was just twilight –
muted dawns,
and as time has turned pages,
not much has changed.

VII.
The medications are still in a row,
except – now I take them every day.
The air remains thick, but I can breathe –
through a darkness I have come know
better than family.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 9 (2021)

THE WOMAN THINKS

The interests of the woman,
alone more than twenty years,
musters poor judgement
on the stage of the world.

She questions the fog
rolling yonder over far away hills,
so thick,
the moisture dowses her skin –
all on an autumn morning.

She makes her feeble decisions
about life with a pause,
she lights a hemp roll, inhales,
and coughs deeply,
in the morning dew.

No one told her there would be
days when the void
outside her being,
would largely match the void
inside her soul.

Her day has just begun
and daylight is full In it’s fogginess –
the woman coughs again,
snubs the butt and enters
into a day of chores.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 8 (2021)

MY MIND

During your absence,
I absorbed the lavender goodness of Hollyhocks,
plucking a stem with her toppled skirt of beauty,
I turned her upside down and made her dance across the picnic table
with the four ‘o clocks in her shadow…

During your absence, the confused essence of me
pushed away the light and I rested in my rocker
Counting darkness in undefined increments…

During your absence,
I searched for something that just wasn’t there,
stopped by the edge of a broken window pane, my world splintered by weathered wood and dust from years of looking for something that doesn’t exist.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 7 (2021)

GO WHERE THE WORDS TAKE YOU

if you see them dangling –
grab them,
pull them to safety;

if you see them laying on the floor,
fragile, broken,
gently pick up the pieces;

if they slice your flesh,
let the wounds bleed,
to cleanse and purify;

if you find them
scattered in the palms of your hands,
let them play;

if they tip toe in your sleep,
for in your dreams,
let them be and just go where the words take you.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Half Marathon Hour 6 (2021)

The Bitter Beauty of Winter

The pond is frozen over,
with snow covering it’s surface.
The beauty of winter comes
with a price.
The fish are moving slowly
beneath the sheet of ice –
the squirrels are hiding someplace –
feeding on their summer stash,
and then there are the birds –
hungry, trying to find something to eat
as they peck through the cold crystals.
The pristine blanket –
shrinking my pupils in it’s brightness;
this is the epitome of winter in all her glory.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 5 (2021)

PICTURE OF THE WORLD

It hangs on a single nail,
openly displayed –
from star to earth,
a large tapestry of all things celestial;

the top in hues of blue,
and speckled with stars twinkling,
in the bend of night;

The middle,
a horizon of sky to meadow,
heavy with wildflowers,
on a windy day;

Merging skillfully to the bottom,
a twist of tunnels,
burrowing to China;

The world,
a mélange of elements,
ordered and perfected,
an image complete in its beauty.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Marathon Hour 4 (2021)

A HUNGRY LIFE

My heart beats
in rhythm of an intense hunger,
on the banks the willows
share their ruffles hovering over
a moving lake.

Only for admirers does the
glistening pond lap against
a grassy edge on a cold noon.
I know this place well –
life in the water mills around
the murky water
and an occasional Heron glides
easily over the platter of fish
below the glassy cloche.

Never, in my heart, is life just enough-
The breaths I take above
the water falls full circle
with the trees and the water.
Life is hungry.

Michellia Wilson
Poetry Half Marathon – Hour 3 of 12

A MEMORY TURNED

My spirit moves in a away,
A light wind carries
me to another time –
that time you grabbed me
by the waist and with your impish smile,
we made memories
important only to us;

Time can be brutal –
so many things happened
to turn the memories putrid,
and now that you are gone,
I let my spirit move in a away,
to yet another time –
when you relinquished us,
and my spirit moved into darkness,
swirling with the darkness
of my nature,
and the light wind died
with you,
carrying me to another place,
another time.