The Poetry Marathon

Tinted off-white
Filled with holes
Well-loved fabric
with faded balloons
Every edge torn,
Resembling a rag.
Aged cotton comfort.

The prompt was describing an object you’d save in a fire. My baby blanket.

The spider blocks the way
out of the shower,
holding the curtains corner with
Seven of eight,
with the last we waves me out,
“you may pass,
none of us mean harm here.”

She lives in anticipation of his breath.
His subtle smirks,
she lives at the end of his words.
The woe in her and the world in him.

When he opens his mouth to call for her, she begs to crawl inside and live on his tongue.

She can live with the bodies in the basement and
the blood on his hands.
She can live with the harmony in the hurts.

As long as she is his precious,
the blood stone he plucked out of the ugly forest,
as long as she is the exception to things.

Sometimes the rust settles at the bottom of the water and everything turns brown.
and she turns into a number.
Just
Another
Number.

There is a boy as tall as a tree,
who carried his decades on branches
His shoulders were the neighbor’s fences, lost baseballs and skinned knees.
His arms held the tireswings.
The blue in his eyes, easily a place to skip stones.
A laugh in the air around him,
The warmth of mother’s dinner,
A Christmas morning smile.

Boys like this are usually fairy tales,
because it is easier to write about good people
than to raise them.

All boys grow, to become statues or men,
but he carved a spot in the bark on the tree
and that is where the little boy will always be.
Running down hallways and drumming in tabletops.
The child exists, so does he.

Everyone has a cure
for everyone else’s suffering
and nobody cares
who they’re
minimalizing
Have you tried
this diet, or that one?
Have you tried to go for a run?
Have you tried anti-depressants?
No, not the one you’re on.
You spend too much time inside. Do you ever see the sun?
Take a nature walk.
Call someone to talk.
Meditate.
Do you eat too late?
Eat early, eat less.
Are you managing your stress?
Have you tried yoga?
You should adopt a cat!
Are you seeing a therapist?
Maybe you should quit.
Try some drugs. Oh, you do?
Maybe those drugs just aren’t for you.

Try a vitamin.
Move out of your house,
Get a new job,
It couldn’t get worse.

Stop worrying so much.
Or you’ll end up dead,
The cure to mental illness,
is in this Facebook thread.

What do you write for
When there is nothing to say
Six drafts thrown away

Hand in paw
and paw in hand,
This tells a story
That man’s best friend
is this poet’s true love
and the sound of claws
on the hardwood floors
welcomes me home,
everyday

They will first ask you to shrink
and then to shiver
and then to speak.

And once you’ve shrunken,
they will ask you to
grow.

Once you have grown,
they will stare at your changes
and ask why
no one ever stays the same.

Between the red ferns, my belly roars

one person’s growl,

is another person’s piano music,

as soft as young laughter.

Between my red ferns,

not but an inch of skin is clear

from the stretching.

They put several of me into jars,

I grew larger and more reluctant,

and the scars came

from the stretching.

2014 prompt to use certain words in a poem.

such average silhouettes
living in the light of their honeymoon
doused with kisses and expectations,
a clever guise for kerosene.
they paint phase by phase a map of forever,
not realizing that the amber shade of their moon will fade.
Every full and every crescent will set again
and before darkness –
the lover’s eyes will see something less sweet,
a mustard sun,
but they won’t dare to confuse that for reality,
hand in hand, a tight rope walk of grand illusion,
to see sweetness where there will be none.

before darkness, they will never accept the sun.

(based on a prompt from another year – “write a poem titled ‘before darkness’.”)