The Poetry Marathon

*For the people of Lahaina and Kula*

There’s an edge to these winds

These gusts of wrath

A sharp, deadly edge

Born in storm cells, creating hurricanes

Transmuting spark to flame to raging firestorm

These winds carry pain

Carry the ashes, the remnants of destroyed homes

Destroyed dreams

Destroyed lives

Destroyed culture

The wind blows, impassive, uncaring…

Like the parasitic vultures that feast upon the vulnerable

Like those who see tragedy as opportunity

Like disaster capitalism

These winds bring change

In form of grief stricken ohana

In form of a devastated community

In form of unstoppable flame

Winds of loss

Winds of greatest cost

Winds of pain

Weave silvery strings of moonlit inspiration

Into nocturnal tapestries

Drape them over raw thoughts, memories, ideas…

Smoothing the jagged edges of consciousness

Into Poetic form

Or at least attempting…

Pulling illumination from the darkness behind stars

Words of wistful wisdom woven into the fabric of spacetime

Shrouding the true nature of all that is, was, and will ever be

The Truth blindingly beautiful in all its obscurity

Yet still unseen beneath these tapestries we weave

After a two year hiatus due to environmental factors beyond my control, I’m attempting this challenge yet again.

The timing is a bit odd, not just the 3 a.m. start time (I’m im Hawaii), but the full moon and the situation here in Maui after a series of horrific fires took hundreds of homes, businesses, and lives just a few weeks ago still fresh and raw in the collective psyche.

We all process tragedy differently, and personally writing has been a valuable tool to deal with emotions that threaten to overwhelm. Needless to say, I’m not exactly in a happy, joyful state of mind and that’s bound to come through in my writing.

Just some thoughts as I try to catch a few hours sleep before start time…

The end of all things
Begins with yet another
Another not like any other
But still the same

Still devoid of everything
Everything in it’s nothingness
Nothing isn’t a something
But yet still remains

This offered gift strangely unfulfilling
Unfulfilled in it’s completion
Yet full of the emptiness it contains

Like music
Sometimes the space between the beat
Contains the rhythm

A cup only functions
When it is empty

A box filled
Is just a cube

Without guidance
Without structure
A movement becomes a mob
A garden tangled overgrowth

To order is not to impose
But to maintain and direct

To govern is not to control
But to facilitate progress

Never forget

Expect

Quilliging skilk brillig overflow
Mazilcutaneous zilch braggadocio
Kill julcreptitular mildenexed septacle
Finkerton yerf bickled undertow

The point is:
Destrinex yulps voltenareous hozmeric waqualitarian
Brumbling octolegarian ceseretticulate
Zusulich necrocontrarian

The message remains the same:
Fertecotron derceviled ultashed drain
Rezewicked ghad yuleterior derriere bevemere toysenet whame

Jabberwock shame…

If only the words flowed effortlessly
Flowed liquid inspiration from mind to hand to pen to page
Flowed like molten rage at state of society blindly following latest manufactured anti-mask outrage
Flowed like blood from rubber bullet eye shots
Like blood from innocents shot by corrupt cops

Wish I could stop, focus on the beauty of existence
Instead of oppression and pandemic statistics
Wish the words flowed as happy and inspired
Instead of portraying situations dire

But so it goes

Just wish there was another way to flow

When the last structures burn away

The fires of war no longer flicker

Only gently smouldering coals

Cast reddish glow on blackened city streets

Ashes pile in drifts against the rubble of our archaic ways

To fertilize the dreams that lie beneath

Single cell of this parasitic organism

A cancer to this healthy planet

Dissonance personified

Infection in a healthy system

Imbalanced and off-beat

Skewing rhythms with our arrogance

No matter how hard we try

Wish we could act to make a difference

But momentum seems to be so strong we can’t avoid destruction

Malfunctioning as a species in the web of life we’re living in

Hope we leave the biosphere with more than nothing

Is it misanthropic to decry our role in greater context?

Seems the road we’re headed down just can’t allow a peaceful outcome

Were we always fated to destroy all that the elements have created?

Or is it something we’ve become,

A course that can be corrected ?

Sometimes I feel numb to the evils we’ve allowed to perpetrate

The fools that we’ve elected,

The ignorance that’s gestated

Hatred cultivated over so many generations

Seems impossible to overcome at times

But still I cling to something

Some kind of hope

That if  collectively we recognize

The error of our ways

Our fate can shift into the thing we make it…

She appeared after a solstice full moon

Bedraggled and malnourished,

Fur patchy

Skittish like she’d been abused

Her eyes met mine and I swooned, and soon it was just us two

Little pupper and an anarchist hiding out in Kipahulu

Shared meals of venison and beer

Her fear started to subside,

Light in her eyes when we went out to explore

But I had to leave and after our brief reprieve

I realized I couldn’t keep her any more

I wish I could have kept her as my own

But a Kula ranch with other happy doggos served her better

But every time the Solstice comes around

I miss the hell out of Luna

I won’t forget her