The Poetry Marathon

And of all the people I could have met, of all the people I could have loved,

I met you, this wonderful, beautiful soul that is you, and it is so great,

but there are times my heart breaks with the yawning distance, and though

I reach out, half-asleep, wanting your weight, your touch next to mine,

its’ sudden and sharp realizing loss that stuns me to sudden grief,

grief that wasn’t there, and you aren’t here yet. Come home to me,

Come home to me and love me deeply, silently, slowly.

I can spot a good vein across the room. Pulsing, thick, blue lines in a curved elbow,

a graceful hand fluttering with thin veins spiderwebbing over dainty wrists,

slender arms my finger ghosts over, seeking, searching, feeling the firmness,

the dense flow that ebbs just beneath, the knotty scarring of many donations.

I fight the urge to cross strangers, to skim my fingers over cords of tendons,

the soft, fluttery hum of arteries, the pliant nerves ghostly presence

and the shallow basin of a vein, clarified with a pressure cuff. Not seen but felt,

my finger presses, and with a deft hand I strike, drawing blood. They pay me, you see,

professional vampire in a modern world, bloody gift sent to dreamless lab technicians,

nourishment to feed the hungry community their gift-giving life.

Imagine one day, you open the closet door.

Rows and rows of shoes align,

your shirts, your jackets, your suits, your ties,

and yet you fall into time, into space, and I’m there again,

amidst the dresses, skirts,

the mirror world between us and distance forgotten

as we step back into closets, into time

into familiar and soft things,

and when I reach out through the glass,

it’s you there, amidst the familiar and strange,

where we can walk out of the closet again,

open and gloriously, wonderously and lovingly free.

Dark, jewel-like drops of honey clung to my lips,

like crystalline amber, they glistened and sparkled

with the throaty hum of bees, incessant droning

drowning out all other thoughts from my head.

I plunge a hand straight in; bee charmer,

lover and friend of insects, what do I do,

how do I, in all my silent giant sleepyness

hold them in my thrall? A casual flick of the wrist,

and you held the comb aloft, casual gentility of mcuh loved work

and let its’ smells envelop me. Is this what it feels like,

surrounded by sisters, aunts, and daughters,

humming and dancing as honey swells and comb builds,

surrounding with love and swarming her with adoration,

a Honeybee I am, a little honey queen, and in his arms,

I spin and hum and dance and make the sweetness home.

What is love?

When I look at his face,

and there’s that devilish smirk.

And I know that he’s testing me,

and I would still marry that damn man,

but that’s love.

Before I kick the bucket, give me a moment to explain.

Go on, child, git yerself a seat and listen.

Down on the bayou, you know the way,

on an elbow of land and a bend,

past Creole music and that ol’ carport,

sits a stump, with a rusty bucket ‘longside.

That’s where I met the Devil.

Tall skinny man, wit’ a black beard thicker’n oil,

an’ a voice smoother’n silk, soft as butter,

which when I remember sends a tremor all the way down,

an’ that smell, like suga and cinnamon sweet and spice.

Beet red and summer heat all rolled in one.

An though my eyes are old, my ears are not,

an’ I can hear the golden fiddle still.

They say I beat the Devil at his own game,

but we both known better.

Pride cometh befo’ the fall, and he had fallen

before I tricked him in.

Soft touch of sunshine

Rains on my face,

glow of gentle red behind closed eyes,

drowsing against glass.

Because I am his, and he is mine,

two souls are we, to stand together

hand in hand, in perfect step,

none more suited for the other.

There are no others for me here,

because I am his, and he is mine,

we watch the years slip past,

blended family into one.

I wait for him as hours trickle by,

and the silence yawns on, dark and deep.

Because I am his, and he is mine,

I wait, I listen, and I hope for my love.

There will come a day of simple bliss,

of us together, time shared, bodies entwined

and our lives as one, simply just:

Because I am his, and he is mine.

Once upon a smooth night sailing,

the edge was found of the world.

Where moon had the sun suspended

and light fell deep and fathomless dark.

Spinning on a disk with no ending,

all planetoids much the same.

Like plates, twirling, whirling,

the oceans sloshed and continents jiggled,

on their sleepy molten beds

and hanging, suspended off the edge

was what every cat had ever knocked.

A hairtie, a wrench, some string,

a figurine, a d20(an 18, good luck perhaps?)

and my magazines. Such a strange and silly thing,

a flat world without curves.

So that is why the cats enjoy

knocking things off the edge.

I’ve waited here forever.

Cold, dark, dank,

I’ve waited here a year, or maybe a week,

a voice hushed by the riverbank.

Long gone, long silent.

They never saw his face,

how the light shaved him into less

and the night gave him body, depth

and monstrousness

that took me away and left me here,

breaking apart, rotting away to nothing,

caught in the currents and the low pull

of long and restless slumber.