The Poetry Marathon

Dregs in my cup 

Dance strange patterns

Is there a wiccan future

Lurking in there 

I wonder 

I can only see

Tales of joy long gone

And yet I hear the

Grinder and

The aroma of roasted beans

Reach me

I can see the future through

Dregs in my cups

Hour One

New endings

Weeds, uprooted, 

Wilt in the wheelbarrow

And I clatter it down 

the garden path

To the green waste bin

I know its fate.

Every day new weeds 

With a stubborn will 

To survive

Every day I yank them

Out with viciousness

And send them on 

Their journey

Is that their new purpose in life?

To become compost

Like most of us,

And sustain new fruits?

Every day I weed a bit

Every day I create 

Create new little endings

To feed new fruit

Last sentence from: “Very good, Jeeves!” P.G. Wodehouse.

A free flow Saturday in strange times
Brown stains left by coffee cups
On the white window sill
Dialogs with oneself
Dialogs with the world
Dialogs with the people
Ruling one’s head
I ponder thoughts and philosophies
And words and carefully avoided rhymes
My head screams “Stop!”
My clock screams “Done!”
My glass screams “Refill!”
So its closing time, bar the shutters
Shut the door. Cheerio.
“Cheerio, sir, if I may use the expression.”

On my garden’s calls

She’s a siren, that Garden
Calling forever to preen
All her troops in unison.

Clematis, roses, fuscias, peppers
Beans and penstemons nod in unison
Herbs and cucumber sing a chorus

Nurture us
Talk to us
Sing to us

We’re your children too

Beliefs

My Monstera Adansonii leaves
Have large gaping holes
Where light breaks through on the other side.
Leaves with windows she said.
If you peer through them you can see
The soul of the world outside.
Sometimes you can see the world
Beyond.
That’s why the leaves have slits, she said.
Then she lit camphor to drive spirits away

An exhausted afternoon sun strikes lethargy
In a stifling thick air of the summer cottage
A tired fan groans as it makes yet another
Circle midair in the dense heat.
Fumes rise from the bottle of need
Putrid, rancid, and plain old strange
My head dances a tribal ritual,
A porridge of unrest, tears and obituaries
An escape atop wings to a cool paradise
I raise my glass and down the bitter drink.

Loves sugar, also loves salt

A special dichotomy exists
In a wild flutter of heartbeat
An unsettled unrest
A frenzy to pump
A drive for life
Yet a calm underlying thought
Says all is well because life is.
The calm of the river over a turbulent
Feed of the speedy waves underneath.

The essence of life is Janus.

Season of the Grape

You swagger and return a blank smile
To my conversation
All my words have washed off you
I read your face.
I see the signs.
I raise my own glass to my lips.

Burgundy of the drink turns brown
Blood curdled in my goblet
Sweetness turns back
And flees into a rancid bitter
Taste on my tongue
I fling out the liquid and watch
The arc of wine rise through the air
Before settling into a pool on the floor

You’ve slumped. Call of the drink is stronger
Than the call of all the loves
You have gathered.
No person remains, no feeling recalled
Only the distant insistence
Of the glass and the liquid

A beckoning never answered completely
Glass upon glass emptied on the call
Yet never fulfilled.
Wine whips once more
And you lift yet another glass

I watch as it brings you closer
To the Grape…and me,
I’m flung farther each gulp you take
Farther from my glass
Farther from you.

Haiku

Whiffs of floral scent
fills the twilight garden path
A bird sings her song.

Muscles ripple through gleaming skin

Beads form and sweat trickles

Down a furrowed brow.

Each move shows the ache

In the overstretched sinew

From the strain of the oar

And the burden of your toils

What keeps you going, sailor?

What heartache pumps your blood?

What makes you keep rowing

To where the stars, the water and the land meet?