The Poetry Marathon

in great rushing waters, thick

with mud and dying things

which is the light of irony

that after the plague settles

the world will bloom

and the breath held

through the winter

will flow

until the frost hardens the ground once more

A peacock is beautiful

because it’s unaware as

to why it’s dressed in

sapphires and emeralds

A lion is handsome

because it doesn’t need

gels and syrups and lotions

to make a point with his mane

You are marvelous

because you help others

to rise to their potentials

and for you, that is enough

If I have to explain to you

why

I’m speaking one tongue

instead of the other

just because you’re

uncomfrotable,

it’s likely that any other

conversation we have

may

be absolutely

uninteresting to me

They bunch up to create

a scapegoat for nothing

some bigger story built by

nameless faces and forgotten

shells of people who gave everything

everything for their people

In the end we sit

dust upon the ashes

and any truth we’d once held

we crushed like a baby bird

a young corpse

between our fingers

If I correct anything for

my autobiography written

by the Gods

(and soon to be

forgotten regardless)

Let it be this:

That despite all my faults

executive disfunction and

demotivation

I really did try

Drowns the possibilities

of those adventures, so

exciting after decades

of resentful boredom,

cowering in the comfort of

our rooms, scared to shed

even a hair from our scalp

Until my feet bleed I’ll stand

waiting for you

Hang by the toes with halved

fingernails caked with dirt

I’ll take death’s door before you

and leave nothing but

your smiling face looking

back at me from the shore

We take music for granted

Letting notes and rhythms dig deep

Inflating our lungs and raising our shoulders

With music we soar and plummet and float and burn

We feel it in the darkest corners of our vision

It flows through every vein, artery, capillary

My point is this:

We take music for granted

The stars, like fireworks,

brilliant to watch but

undoubtedly

painful to the touch

What did those ancient creatures think

standing millions of years ago in

our footprints, breathing air that was

the same and so, so different

Nature’s design bends and

breaks and breaches, branching

to millions of pin points in the timelines

We have questions with no answers

and we have answers to which

we’d never know to

have questioned in the first place

Life is like this,

insurmountable and incalculacable