The Poetry Marathon

Genie

It’s the genie in the bottle

I didn’t ask for.

If I want her

hips

lips

and tits

I have to work more.

To reach that far

and be

that porn star.

Eyes and ears everywhere,

I can’t escape you.

Watching street corners,

doors,

and more –

you see through my xbox, too.

Ok, Genie,

here’s the rub,

you can bring together

and

rend asunder

and the chip in my Spark

could fire a heart.

It keeps some alive

and

slowly kills others –

lithium leeching

in water

near Bombay

but here in the West

everything’s ok

because

we’ve got the cash

and the political will

to

put chips in drones,

which

helps stock to sell

for those

who never see

the shadow

of the Genie full grown.

I don’t know who did it,

but I’d like to fuck them up,

for

wishing for infinite wishes

we can’t bottle back up

cuz

while we have our fantasies

in everyshape

and size,

someone’s finger

is

poised on the trigger

and we’ll never see their eyes

when they

squeeze it.

(c) R. L. Elke 2016

She stared so hard at the phone number hoping

as if, by sheer will,

the numbers would

connect themselves

and he would

answer and know her voice.

Her fingers would not dial,

and her  

heart would not slow down so

he would never know

that in her dream last night he kissed the top of her head

and filled her with lightening that she felt when she awoke.

(c) R. L. Elke 2016

Before Darkness

Before darkness

in those last,

quiet moments

when the sky is pinkest,

there is

a breath

when

winking stars

promise us

we are of them, too:

phosphorus

and

zinc

and

gold –

start dust

and star guts

so that

before the darkness

closes in

we

fill it with

starlight

and

remember where we’ve come from.

(c) R. L. Elke 2016

Two days before 14 years

I run through our weeks

and

remember your face,

your lips,

your hands,

but

I still hide when you get too close.

I try to stay still,

and

plant my feet,

my heart,

my will,

but

I still seem to leave

rather than stay present.

Why

do I

need to go away

to find you?

Those jaunts to

places you

wanted to go –

and I go alone?

I have spent so much time there

and I

now understand that

I hate loneliness more than

I fear letting you in.

So know that,

when I push you –

it’s me I’m trying

to get to

and

all I’ve ever wanted

was

you.

(c) R. L. Elke 2016

Paradox

Beginning at the end…

a snake

eating its tail…

moments circle

brightly

through my mind –

twirling, red-hot tipped sticks

just pulled from the centre of the fire –

clicking through a roulette wheel of

memories

and

the

pin

stops

at

that empty chair

in my former classroom…

the one where

he sat on that Thursday

for Social Studies

but

vacated that Monday

for English

and every class after that

ad infinitum.

His funeral,

the following Friday

was beautiful –

as beautiful as a Friday funeral can be

for a 16 year old

bright-souled, impish boy.

That end nearly brought

my end –

but for the living.

I realise that…

I remember that,

in the shadow of a new end:

the smiling and waving goodbye

(while my heart breaks and wails)

to my eldest child,

my first son,

as he travels

half way across the country

from me

to seek his fortunes…

I remember that

endings

are beginnings,

too.

(c) R. L. Elke 2016

Trying on other poetry forms and finding the fit less than comfortable than my usual free-wheelin’ lyric style.  Just dictating the voices has always been so easy.  I saw, on the fb page, that the sestina was a prompt style last year and I gave it a try.  It was really hard to write with the set rules and predetermined words.

I thought I would share it anyway…in the spirit of “sucking it up” and getting ready to share whatever happens – for next week.

*sigh*

Here it is:

Memory 

It is the weight of bridges

cast in steel and concrete –

sinking deeper in places it should connect –

at the very least, allow us to pass over

those grimy, shadowed locales, surfacing

only when completely unnecessary.

The memories, unwanted and unnecessary,

tearing us apart rather than forming bridges;

constantly forcing shadows to keep surfacing –

shadows burnt into concrete.

Sift through the ash over

the place where flesh and bone connect –

or should connect –

but do no longer.  Grief is unnecessary

now – told to get over

it – to build bridges

from the world of the dead.  Concrete

wings keep our better angels from surfacing,

when surfacing

from the heaviness, and the desire to connect

to the living, is the concrete

pillar holding us up in unnecessary

discomfort.  Waiting for these bridges

to direct us over

the past; over

the ghosts continually surfacing

in twilight hours, bridges

day with night, where reality and dreams connect.

We want our brains to soothe, making it unnecessary

for a heart to be heavy; weighed by the concrete –

memory of concrete

moment – moments we are supposed to be over.

But, somehow, we pry open unnecessary

corners of the brain – forcing down what was surfacing

in order to survive…endeavoring to connect

to the world of flesh and blood which bridges

the suffocating concrete doubt, preventing us from surfacing

in places over the emptiness.  Connect,

in spite of unnecessary doubt, to the hope in bridges.

R. L. Elke

Aug. 5/16

Ramona here.  First time marathoner, long time poetry writer. I am a high school support teacher from British Columbia.

Hoping to survive the all-nighter and see what my unconscious unleashes in poetry at 2 or 3 am.