The Poetry Marathon

In an old computer that I used I found your poetry,
The image of a room,
I don’t remember rhyme or form but four bare walls sit with me still.
No light or sound in that room you built,
But silent echoes still rebound.
I chase your mind from birth to now and try and see the underneath.
I turn my own thoughts next to yours, to see reflection into me.
In all the stories I was told,
All the lies lie next to me.
Before memory came love,
Love in controlled doses,
Even to the others share,
But I never cared.

Let’s call a sunrise morning,
Let’s call a sunset night,
Let’s call our calling calling,
Let’s call our death a life.

To call this work,
To tease my doubt,
To channel thought,
To call on art,
To leave safe port,
To return home,
To forge my body to my mind.

To twist my fingers into shape,
To open handed question fate,
To cut myself and cut the day,
To find a passage though the haze.

To break, and break, and break away.

To myself, and to you, and to all the others out there too.

The bed I made, already grave, I try to grasp at hope to save, to see myself sink further still, the surface mocks, exhausted will, and quest of something true, with ease, slips out into uncertainty.

But I remember myself.

I look inward.

My insides churn with the realisation that I will not make it through.

I thought that I could dive so deep but did not see the weight with me.

Here, in these bags, the sand I gathered from the ocean floor.

When all this land was desert still the sun beat its heart onto these rocks and taught the rocks to breathe.
Open porous rocks teeming with tiny hope of life snaking its way through passages borne from the inside out.

Great waves now wash those nodes of time.

The memory of sunlight in tidal changes and eastern currents.

And coldness is an ocean floor.

I shake myself again.

But isn’t water life?
Desert and scorched and burnt and drought and death but water, water is life.

And I could drown myself in life.

Overwhelmed lungs could suck in liquid air and water the branches of my bones.

I resolve and shun the surface; the greater journey is deeper still.

Howdy,
I only found out about the marathon last week when researching a similar idea. Now here I am, preparing to dedicate myself to this project for 24 hours in less than a week!
I’m pretty excited to be a part of this community and would love to get to know some poets from around the world.

With each new page comes weight of words,
Hold knowledge through a back-lit screen.
And supervised through new clock turns,
We’ll cast new light on space between.