The Poetry Marathon

The evening descends amid sudden steam,

that threatens to trample the dingy sheds.

The clock tower bells four o’clock,

and the acquiesce of the frogs.

Over the white-picketed fence,

raincoat hands’ gathering commence.

A slow twirl of hand

anti clockwise

and Kronos does a moonwalk.

Earth 5111955

of revision and recreation

mistakes do not exist here.

And as mistakes do not exist

neither do courage, nor philosophy,

nor the simple desire that whispers in one’s ear,

“Be the best you can be.”

Losing its pretence of absolute control,

light it seemed was fumbling for a solace

in the unending pit of coming night.

Shadows trudged into the living room,

sliding through the Persian carpet unobtrusively

to claw their way up onto the black wallpaper and dissolve

like a river ceases to exist in the sea.

As the journey from day to night

must pass through the interlinked border of twilight,

there also has to be an estuary in a story with a river and a sea,

to bring it a sense of completion.

The traveller urges his horse on

with wolves at his back.

Suddenly over the howls comes

the merriment of music.

The wolves retreat to find a safer hunt,

the traveller begs for a shelter.

He gets it, and more,

food and wine and the promise of safe passage in the morning.

But with one stipulation.

So the traveller sings away the rest of the night.

In the morning, he is found in the ditch.

Blue eyes, red lips and that yellow sundress

she stares back across the table

like a goddess of dawn

The mistress of the web

tiptoes on her delicate, lethal art,

like a maestro on violin,

ready to do her part.

The young moth likes the quiet glint,

as his curiosity takes over.

He is tangled, afraid, the fangs sink

and soon devoured by her.

The inspiring line:

“I am a man: little do I last

and the night is enormous.”

-Brotherhood, Octavio Paz

Of all the things you left at my home, I

find the ring to be the most obnoxious, I am

not a

vindictive man,

nor am I driven to insanity for a little

justification. You did what you had to do.

As did I,

but now, as at last

the finality is drawn on a paper and

signed gleefully by the

feasting hunters of the night,

the ring sleeps and just is,

its silence is enormous.

His inside-out gloves

lay frustrated in the bin

blood and failure stained.

His inside-out shirt

his one and only whole shirt

an abject kerchief.

You have to be realistic about love,

the times you reach for the sun

are the times you burn your hand.

Don’t stray after a sizzling mirage,

it will consume you;

to find meaning in a meaningless world

one must look within.

There is passion in moulded clay

and a history of nurture and growth,

the prerogative is yours to know and learn

to attain the ever-elusive happiness.

the grandfather clock

ticks away the rotting time

rest have not survived