The Poetry Marathon

I wander

vacant halls

where life and laughter lived;

Hopes and Dreams

packed their bags.

I slept on;

I thought I heard

the hinge turn,

light steps

in the dappled dawn.

Wordlessly,

they latched,

and locked,

and left

through garden,

to curb,

to catch the yellow-sorrow cab.

Kick memories,

rattling,

down tiled halls;

Mark

the echo,

empty, cold;

No embers to be stirred.

Citadel

Of words

Of thoughts

Wherein

To hide

To blend

Be lost

Shakespeare and Poe share the same family tree

Genetically prone to dramatical spree

Such as murders and the quoting of ravens and such,

Perhaps just a little too much.

Stevenson’s prattle of pirates and shore

While Wordsworth rambles of flowers galore

And Frost with his goings, his stopping, his walls,

Dickinson’s bees, drunken hauls.

Rhythm and rhyme, insidiously vile,

Seeps into our soul, with the gentlest guile

And sticks in the cracks between tear and smile.

Forever. Or just for a while.

There once was a poet from Perth,

Who weighed each word for its worth.

Her thesaurus was tattered;

For to her, all that mattered,

Was pentameter stretched ‘round the earth!

How much is too much?

How long can keep going?

Will I see the dawn?

The Lost Weekend

It was a bender. A binge.

To make anyone cringe,

Who’d been on one and swore, “Nevermore”.

By mistake, she had started,

And forgot why she fought it,

Entranced by its mystique once more.

By the time she awakened,

The toll had been taken,

As she laid prostrate and feeble and wan.

She knew now, ‘twas a fable,

To assume she was stable…

From the lure of a Poetry ‘Thon!

Twelve elves, you know the story is true.

Twelve elves, and this is what they do—

One only watches for spelling botches,

Two takes tense and makes it make sense.

Three is malaprops, where the right word is dropped—

And another slips in, but should be stopped,

Like pantry and panty, not the same, you can see,

But even worse, when one is looking for tea!

4, 5 and 6, punctuation to fix,

And run-ons and splices—

Which aren’t the nicest.

Seven ate nine, the scene of the crime,

With cannibal fervor, and belches sublime.

And the rest of the crew, now scanning the page,

Mad at the others, are striking in rage,

And tap-dance on my keyboard in fitful rampage

Olnvdzi….?i0295-9@%@&&emWia949kalenaldand#—

Quit that, you three, and get back to the grind

of fixing my poems, for meter and rhyme…

Now, these twelve elves had a big task to do;

To edit the poems as we write quite a few,

But one by one, they’ve all fallen asleep.

Seems they stopped counting words

And now count the sheep.

Ewe are done a very good job, and breaks you should take:

Edit tomorrow, when the elves are awake.

There used to be Parsley,

Fennel,

Dill.

But the Swallowtail ‘pillars

Have eaten

Their fill.

Truly, I don’t mind.

The herbs will grow back.

In time for a yellow-winged

Butterfly to snack!

Reigning monarch of your world—

But, I beg your pardon—

If you’re the only one enjoying it,

It’s not much of a garden.

There they are, bright and billowing,

Assembling just beyond the pond

Gathered in their summer finery,

To buzz about the garden sod.

From vernal budding, singing frogs,

Through spring’s unfurled leafy swale,

And marching through the summer meadow

Resplendent Monarch, Swallowtail.

First blush to blister, then to bluster,

October skies unfold with wind

Soon the snow will lay its blanket

And begin the year again.

So buzz they do, ‘round phlox and rose,

Their constant chatter keep;

While they can, they frolic frenzied;

Then to their hives, for winter’s sleep.

With next year’s garden dreams to keep.