The Poetry Marathon

8/5/17 10:19pm
Black

I’ve been bargaining for loss
Switched it left to right
The slight of hand
Swapped a name in place
of what could’ve been a grave.
Still you’ve stayed just inside the edges.
The finger-less gloves
within one state
either direction.

You’re still the extension of me
blood leaking from the same vein
Inky and familiar
My sticky home.
I’ll never have to say goodbye.
You’re designer draped
shaped to fit my skin.
It’s chewed into a name
That I’ll carry til the end of my days.

You have a proper family
roads traveled in opposite directions
But the earth is round and you’re always driving
right back to yourself.
My chest meets at the crest
sunlight peaking through the spaces
You’re holding my hand through it all.
Homecoming and knowing
That we’ve never left.

8/5/17 9:15pm
Marla

I’m selling some clothes.
I am Jack’s utter lack of surprise.
Dodging cars since I could walk,
I’m the daughter of the subways,
broken glass of the sunrise.
Stumbling fumbling between intersections.
I keep seeing you in red,
The lights outside my apartment.
Somebody called the cops.
I don’t know who we are this time.
When I wake up
Smoke shudders
Shoulders in thrift-torn second-hand-worn
fur.
She’s bony and slick, the stray cat.
But still he wants her.

8/5/17 8:26pm
Goddess

Sweet Gaia
Rustling through effervescent decades
She is the spiraling serpent that plucked the apple from the tree
She is the root of the tree.
She is Persephone
Licking pomegranate seeds, her fruit of the dead.
She is unafraid of the dead, unafraid of the underworld.
She is what made Orpheus look back.
It was she
That drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek.
And then reborn as
Venus spawning from the sea.
She is in the waves of every mouth
a god has ever kissed.
She is in the frail wrist of the fading,
Wading in the tides of dried flowers
and humble offerings.

What of psyche?
What of the personification of soul?
Wraps you up in satin sheets
and eats you whole.
Pours into every vein
Vain like Narcissus,
held in every echo.
Just like Echo, speaking only mirrors of her love.
Gaia, my love.
Pull you into the river to quiver along the valleys,
Gripping talons into the earth.
She is rebirth.
Infinite.

8/5/17 7:18pm
Little

I find you splintered in the evenings
Your jars of swirling soul stacked on the shelves
Disheveled and collected like coins or china dolls.
In the steam of redeeming creatures,
You’re the feature,
Most accentuated by mirrored glass,
And priceless heirlooms.
Your children line up single file on the page
take the stage as they curtsy and bend at the hip.
Cross my heart and kiss my elbow,
if I fall,
you’re coming with.
You’re the mystery of what crawled underneath the floor boards.
You’re the sum of the words,
that made the pen stronger.

8/5/17 6:17pm
Law of Attraction

You jumped from your roof because you’d decided
that the law of attraction cancelled out the law of gravity.
Some kind of mental breakdown triggered by a spiritual awakening
when you couldn’t handle the responsibility.

My dear dizzy head, my collapsed-lung complacent patient,
fighting with yourself.
You hit the ground hard and said you’d hurt your foot,
I imagined a world in which you flew.
You’d have drifted down slowly and maybe found some validation
some reassurance that you’re here for a purpose.
My purposeful proposition that maybe there’s a method
to our manias and madness,
how they coincide so intricately.

I bruised my foot that same day, felt human in the same way,
but you’ll never understand or believe
that there is more to things than logic or science.
Your defiance of something greater than us is a paradox,
you, named after a man in the bible.
Diving into books and documentaries trying to pull apart the
secrets of the universe, to make sense of it,
to make it something palpable, fathomable, controllable,
so that you didn’t feel so overwhelmed,
and disconnected.

It’s apparent that I evoke some insanity within you,
that turns itself over and over until it’s sanded down
stripped
polished
all detail erased and forgotten.
The law of attraction isn’t what shoved you toward me,
the universe reached a hand down and soothed the
blistering wound in your chest
gave you a moment to rest and consider
that there’s something bigger
meant for you.

You’ll keep running from things you can’t control
pointing fingers at anyone that threatens your detachment.
My foot still hurts from that day
and I take it as a lesson.
Loving someone scares you more than dying;
More than the law of gravity becoming obsolete.
I hope you think of this when your bones ache.

8/5/17 5:16pm
Empty Tomb

Tell me of ancient love and the connections we encounter,
the way you fall full-circle, stumbling into my life and out the other side.
A scratched record that tried
to squeeze into a digital world.

I’m seeing you adorned with gold and thorns,
darling pharaoh, sacrificial lamb.
The marks down your back ask me to come dancing again.
You’re my favorite song.

We’re racing and tracing our veins,
back to the remains of what we were told
we were meant for.
This is your destiny, can’t you taste it?

Didn’t you say that nothing ever comes without a price?

8/5/17 4:13pm
Songs

Certain songs may bring joy to their listener
The ones that remind me of you
Never do.

8/5/17 3:27pm
Fool’s Gold

She comes in drenched in rain,
teal hair, my hair, bleeding rivers down the front of her white shirt.
Her sister’s shirt.
Bleeds green-blue hurt down the transparent wet cotton.
The boys pretend not to look.
She’s giggling aquamarine, a messy scene of drips,
tripping on lsd.
Her scattered fractals of vermilion tongue makes blood run
Venetian
Pumping wine from a candy apple heart.
She doesn’t fall apart
so often anymore.

Fell in love with the way forest green irises
their limbal ring
looked up at her between tawny legs.
Wrapped up in amethyst visions of a brighter future,
one to suit her
more than the places that left scars.
She’s wondering where you are,
asks about your porcelain mouth and what it’s doing;
Where it’s been.

She is amber shoulders in the warmth,
climbing waterfalls and leaping from onyx rocks
scraping the soles of her feet.
Her locks are blonde and tangled now,
still dripping,
highlights in the sun
strands of Pyrite.
She’s always been a fool,
with a heart of gold.

8/5/17 2:42pm
Wolf House

The summer before I moved to California I was running.
Found myself working on a ranch for a writer well known
for his book about Indians, titled from a name by the Sioux.
Dry, sandy, Arizona ranch nestled against red desert mountain
watching monsoon storms pour in across the tops of peaks.
Wild horses wandering through the terrain
tossing their heads and blinking glossy black eyes.

Each night I spoke softly to the spider above my bed
gave him a name meaning “wanderer”.
We had a silent agreement that when nightfall came I would find him
dancing in his wispy web.
Protecting my slumber
Corner dancer, shadow friend.
And he kept his promise.

Someone told me to be careful,
he was poisonous,
one bite would send me shrieking to the hospital
the closest one, two hours away;
But I had learned how to talk to dangerous things
how to form relationships with venom.
He taught me that what we fear can sometimes surprise us.

8/5/2017 1:58pm
Coyote Love

I always did it for the moments I could spend with you
Do you remember how hard and long you came?
There were crevices and canyons in my heart that I begged for you to leap into
Clenching your eyes and fists and looking just like my
Teenage years that were spent trying to take a life
Not necessarily my life, any life will do, really
You’ve got the dripping jaws of coyote, snapping fast
Slender and starved screaming in the hills with meat between your teeth and
A silent predatory gait, the same way that I
Have always fled and bled wherever I liked
You were the kill, when I most needed it.

-Excerpt from Candy’s Poem (Candy, 2006)