The Poetry Marathon

Life, love and liberty
Compose the holy trinity

Sweet consciousness in all its forms
Delicious passion, care and warmth
Freedom to do and be and more

Priceless gifts of pure wonder
Use them well and do not squander

Arandale Shimmersley Gilbert the Fifth
Was heir to the throne of La Monde
But ruling the world was not what he wished
So Arandale chose to abscond

He fled from the palace at quarter to two
His ambition in life was clear
The only thing he’d ever wanted to do
Be a bloodthirsty buccaneer

He hitched all the way to the port of Du Zift
Where he hijacked a high-powered yacht
But there was something that young Gilbert the Fifth
Had unfortunately forgot

He had failed to remember that he could not swim
And so when the yacht capsized
Arandale Shimmersley Gilbert the Fifth
Went under and never arised

A single feather is all it takes
To tip the scales
And bring royals to their knees
The straw that broke the camel’s back
The drop that made the cup run over
The pea that rendered the princess immeasurable pain

A butterfly living in Brazil
May flap its wings
And start a tornado in Texas
A snowflake that causes an avalanche
A spark that ignites a forest fire
An idea that brings about an entire revolution

One lone individual
With fire in their heart
Can change the course of history
The peasant girl leading the French to victory
The explorer who believes the world is round
The person who might be you who could do anything

i want fruition
potential’s a dirty word
gimme gimme now

Venus has seen us, she’s winking away
She’s watching and smiling, she’s going to stay
Until the night’s climaxed and slipped into day
And left all the bedsheets in stained disarray

Venus has seen us, she’s nodding along
She’s bright as the sun and she burns just as strong
Her heart’s full of joy and her voice full of song
Something’s right in a world where so much is all wrong

blue blue spaghetti tendrils, squidlike, bluebottle, apolemia (apparently)
wide eyes, the thing can see, stingray vision, popeye traversing the ocean
a voyager, a hunter, a predator, a pirate, captain tentacle
alien of the ocean, stranger of the seas, siphon of the deep
it’s real and it’s out there

Jack and I, we hit the road
We took a trip by van
We trundled up the highway
Seeking seawater and sand

It took three days to get there
Spending nights in one-horse towns
Singing shanties by the fire
Filling silence up with sound

Destination beach was reached
Mid-afternoon day four
A heaving mass of travellers
Cheek to jowl along the shore

No room for sitting calmly
Dipping toes or playing songs
Jack and I felt overwhelmed
All caught up in the throng

So once day five was underway
We turned the van around
And we drove back the way we’d come
Back to those tiny towns

Quiet little sleepy spots
Nothing to really do
But sit and sing and feel the sun
A holiday through and through

Those who use the fax
Are medieval in outlook
Heard of email, chump?

In the cradle of Morpheus he draws breath like a piglet
Snorts dainty as frost and innocent as bud
Within his cocoon he transforms in endless cycle
Now a lycanthrope with throat-noise akin to beast

Zeal-juice trickles down the cheek of the shapeshifter
From his place of peace and longing for a sip
He rumbles the night away in oblivious rapture
And I caress his soul with my everlasting heart-hand

I once took a flight to Romania
Intending to see Transylvania
But the plane didn’t land
In the country as planned
And I wound up back home in Tasmania