The Poetry Marathon

In the dark, lonely hours after midnight,
I feel so alone. I’m not alone.
In the dark, lonely hours after midnight,
I am here yet nobody’s home.

My words are my voice with which I speak
yet no one can truly, clearly hear me.
My words are my voice with which I speak
yet why don’t they release and free me.

Words that are true, loud, gentle and cruel,
I write and I write and I write.
Words that are true, loud, gentle and cruel,
all hours into the cold forsaken night.

Perhaps if I stifled them, stapled them shut,
maybe if I whisper, or never let them out.
Perhaps if I stifled them, stapled them shut,
consequences from my words wouldn’t sprout.

Unsure if these words are a blessing or curse,
perhaps I could ignore them, cast them away.
Unsure if these words are a blessing or curse,
I wish I didn’t have anything else to say.

I love you I hate you please don’t let me write.
My words drive me mad, they spar in my head.
I love you I hate you please don’t let me write.
If my words are alive, does that mean I’m less dead?

Where do I go to my love, my one
To find your dancing soul, when day is done

I dance to your music, I hear your song
‘Tis a merry jig, I surrender, dancing along

Like a swallow on high on a mid-summer’s night
I dance, I dance, and my mind takes flight

You won’t be caught, ’tis against your will
But the song and the dance you are playing still

The music is wicked, the rhythm is cruel
The words of the song say I’m the fool

Faster and faster I blindly twirl
Your cadence enticing, my dizzy heart awhirl

I know you’re not real, I know you’re not true
Still I choose to dance this merry jig with you

And as the fiddle’s forlorn last note is played
I know I should be, but I’m not sorry I stayed.

If love was a colour
What hue would it be
How would we colorise
What the eye cannot see

Would it be red, as commerce has us believe
I think not, for red offers no reprieve
Would be it green, an uncomplicated hue
No, not green, for green is untrue

I am sure, some days, it would be shades of black
Love is a bitch, a callous cold hack
Some days it would be deceptively white as snow
The wearer of love, wrapped in a blinding glow

Perhaps it’s not one colour, but a church window, stained
Mayhap it’s the colour of dusk’s sky after it’s rained
Mayhap a surreal Dali deep blue
Ah, I know… the colour of love is… you

Spidery tears
Run down my face
Silvery threads
Bind my dreams together
Arachnid eyes watch my wavering pulse
Venomous kisses
Ensnaring words
Watching, waiting
You stalk me, entrap me
Slowly I am wrapped up
In the death of your love
You liquify my insides
And desiccate my heart

“You’ll meet someone whose light is like no other” – JM Storm

Am wondering whether you’ll
ever get to know me, whether we’ll ever meet
Will you figure out that I’m someone
Maybe even the only one, whose
calling it is to shine a light
on the deepest darkness that is
harboured in your hidden nadirs like
an unborn dream from which you awake, screaming no,
don’t go, hammered by the realisation, there is no other…

Sipping wine
Watching time
Ticking… panicking
Toe the line
Feeling fine

Stanza two
What to do
Words are stuck
What the fuck
Drink more wine
Running out of time
Ticking clock
I need a Glock
Shoot the gun
I’m having fun

Writing under duress
I’m making a mess
Not my usual style
But happy not doing dark for a while
Local band strikes up a song
And in my head I sing along
In a noisy festive pub
Ordering delicious seafood grub
I keep an eye on time
And write this timed poem of mine…

Looking from the inside out,
casts a spell of dark self-doubt…
I wear a cloak, a mage’s hat,
Say abracadabra and all of that.

But still the demons reappear.
I feel them lurking, drawing near…
I wave my wand, drink some potion.
Inside out is a revealing notion.

I hide my face, I wear my mask;
keeping inside in is a formidable task…
Don’t let them see, don’t let them know.
So much of me, I dare not show

So much that’s fragile and reticent,
I’m complicated and omnipotent…
There’s much, much more I can’t expose.
Let them wonder; they can all suppose.

Looking from the outside in,
blemished heart bleeds tainted sin…
Can you love me, think you truly can
Even being so damned inside out that I am?

Clutching my fantastical book
I push past the hanging grasping coats
Into the back of the wardrobe
I am eight

It is an old, well-travelled wardrobe
In the corner of a nondescript room
In a seaside holiday cottage
I am eight

I inhale the musty redolent smells
Of half-forgotten half-human coats
Which envelope all that I am
I am eight

I close my eyes and open my mind
I open the book and close my ears
I climb into the pages
I am eight

I am here, I feel the snow
In my happy place, where I belong
In Narnia
I am eight

Where to from here
I’m lost I fear
No road to follow
No horizon on the morrow

I’m lost I fear
Am nowhere near
Where I’m supposed to be
Am detoured, not free

No road to follow
My shoes are hollow
Neither here nor there
Nor anywhere, I fear

No horizon on the morrow
Following a map of sorrow
I’m lost you see
Find your way back to me

The primordial mountain looms over
the discarded and desolate cabin
Where once warm log fires
sultry laughter and
good wine dwelt

Though the sockets of the hut appear empty
they have seen much
The walls remember everything
and the roof contains these long ago
memories within

The memories, though glorious
and poignant, authentic and languid
are however not enough to oppose
the austere, abrasive, disapproving
landscape of societal reality and constraints

The cabin should have relented some time ago
caved in, disintegrating under the spurn and neglect
but it remains, stands fast – stubborn and proud
refusing to let go of that last vestige of
Hope