The Poetry Marathon

My first day in this new world,

Begins with the seraph at the gate.

“I bid you welcome,” he beams.

Have a look around.

Do whatever you like.”

To my thousand questions,

He has but one answer.

“Free will.

The choice is always yours.

For how else would you be here?”

1. To him, the glass is perpetually half-empty.
2. An Atlas of eternal pessimism,
3. Constantly searching for affirmation,
4. Sensitive to every criticism,
5. And wrongly perceived slights.
6. A hypochondriac of monumental proportions,
7. Seemingly suffering from every phobia,
8. And paranoid to the extreme.
9. For him, there is no silver lining.
10. Only a life of hermetic existence.

The wrath of the heavens opens,

Rains down upon our entire world,

In that storm of all storms.

Only one survives,

The last vessel,

An ark of hope.

A millennia’s journey ends,

And we approach optimistically,

That third planet from the sun.

Before dawn breaks in Singapore,

The hunched, wizened figure,

Worn singlet already drenched in sweat,

Prepares his aromatic infusion.

A heady scent permeates the entire kitchen.

The brew of freshly grinded robusta,

Roasted with generous dollops of butter or margarine,

Drenched in hot water and poured

Through that well used, thin brown cloth sock

Into that bent, rusting pot with elongated spout,

Again and again,

Until the master brewer is satisfied.

The secret ‘kopi’ recipe,

Locked in the recesses of his mind,

is guarded zealously, and passed down

Only to one apprentice at a time (no more).

This perk-me-up never fails.

It is my wondrous drug of choice,

The rush that runs through my veins,

My elixir of life.

“Hey girl, where you going?”

Sun’s hardly gone down,

And the wolves are out and about already.

“Stranger, Danger!,” I remember.

Head down, looking on the ground,

Make no eye contact, quick steps away.

But they circle me, taunting rapidly.

There’s just no going forward,

No retreat back.

Unwanted hands move in to trespass.

I grimace, recoil, shun their attention.

“No, stop it,” I glower.

They continue, and I stop flinching.

Pull out my kukri,

Cut, thrust, and slash.

All is still, and I walk on.

I text Grandma:

“Sorry, will be late, am on my way.”

Dear Stranger Across A Crowded Room,

I feel like I’ve known you all my life.

Through the mass of bodies,

Our eyes did meet.

And in that glance, I just knew,

What our future would be.

I’ll glide across,

And introduce myself.

Awkward as usual,

Yet, you’ll laugh at my jokes.

Like every cliché in the world,

We’ll share a lifetime’s history,

Compressed in a few brief hours.

Then comes that moment,

Fraught with uncertainty,

When we linger,

Not willing to part,

Not wanting to end.

But I’ll be bold as I’ve been all evening.

And I’ll say, “Please stay, let’s never part.”

Then hand in hand, we’ll stroll.

Off into a new dawn.

I reach you at last, and smile.

Laughing gaily,

You point and say,

“Your fly’s undone.”

Oh, well.

Best regards.

The weary traveler hesitates,

Standing at a precipice of decision.

Lost and separated from his companions,

He has come far.

But the quickening thunder in the distance,

Hastens a resolution.

Sniffing warily, eyes alert to danger,

His four legs plod on through the archway.

His lifeless body

I look on, without pity.

For I feel nothing.

I remember one midnight mass years ago.

A quaint old church some miles away.

Lantern in hand, our boots crunched in the wet grass.

Our laughter ringing clear in the empty country field.

And thereafter, as beech firewood burnt in the fireplace,

We toasted each other, and promised friendship forever.

Memories still waft through time’s mist.

I smile in my recollection.

An elegy, you say?

Nay.

I will speak my own words,

In my own way.

Not out of pride,

But of necessity.

Hypnos calls me,

Somnos will not let me go.

Phobetor, Phantasos,

And Morpheus invite.

I succumb,

To Mr Sandman.