The Poetry Marathon

(2nd attempt at Half Marathon)

It was Elton who said you were back,
Not quite with the same polished,
Eight letters that might confuse some
Into thinking you had class.

Bill S. came much closer,
But Bill was always classy
In that we think we understand
What he was talking about.

At first, we spoke pejoratively
But behind your every slanted glance
Hid perhaps an attempt at courage
That another had robbed you of.

Cheers to you then, you shrewd,
Manipulative excuse for a role model.
We saw your filtered Insta story
And we think we’d rather admire from here.

A cold in olden times
Rests easy with Vicks VapoRub,
Mirinda and SkyFlakes.

In this, the present,
A cold demands a drop of blood,
Cold steel on your skin, a drug.

And she sleeps, it’s winter.

Wicked muse, fair-weather friend,
I can’t talk to you tonight;
The sounds of raindrops descend
Like soft breeze on a dim light.

An everyday has mussed my face,
Shall I get up to brush my teeth?
You tempt me with an odd verse
And not much after or beneath.

I am counting on your being here,
I so badly want to rhyme.
But here we haven’t a full Shakespeare,
Not even a Sondheim.

If I turn on the light, do you promise to stay,
Wicked muse, oh, to play?
Our history unveils a nay,
And I dare not for fear of scaring you away.

I pluck a wilderness
To match the warm darkness.
I snuggle into a ball,
Feeling the cold begin to touch my head.
I squint,
There’s maybe a light,
Maybe a light.
Make me a light.

I entered my home and found myself in a fish market
Where I dipped my hand in a tub
And emerged with a fish, wriggling out of my grasp.

A tiny bottle flew to my other hand
And I squeezed,
The scent of sampaguita wafting to my nostrils.

A door opened and I could swear that I saw my priest
Lying on the bed, his innards on display,
His faint Our Father floating towards my ears

As I climbed down the stairs to the bottom of the ocean
Where the bed was made of soft rocks.
I picked one, read about my future,
And somewhere, a ringing was telling someone
That there wasn’t enough time
To feast on the waterfalls.

Your green is sullied by the point of view of birds,
Redeemed in a different angle
That sees you blue.

They hug you and you carry them.
But every so often,
You blacken that which you nurture,
Spit on the face of an adventurer,
Thinking,
Death is a tiresome rotation,
And shipwrecks are a waste of wood.

The words that don’t come together
Smell like the freshly-baked buns
That you can’t eat
Because the scale glares back at you;
The bread sits in the oven
Like the Instagram coquette in the red skimpy boots,
Her shiny skin on the golden sand,
Captioning a tiny moment,
No me acuerdo.
She artfully rolls,
Giving you a glimpse of her light bosom
That must smell
Like the freshly-baked buns in your oven.
No me acuerdo,
But you remember.

He bewitches from the screen,
A word per drop of caffeine;
He reads to her her fortune
From an old newspaper in June.

The blueness appears to spread
For now, it’s on his forehead,
Then at once, his nose it shines
And from the sky fall columbines.

The girl, still she loves here,
Whispers romances to his ear,
Now beginning to turn blue as well,
But never hearing the decibel.

I am the beads of sweat
Trickling from my scalp
To the puddle forming
Under my feet.
(I am not my feet.)
My hand-me-down sneakers
Accuse my legs
Of that I am guilty of;
(I am not my guilt.)
That the sun
Towards which I run
Is the same place that I am leaving.
(I am not the axe that I hold in my hand.)