The Poetry Marathon

Alone at last in the dead of night,

he reaches for her under their threadbare existence

with one clammy hand.

She dutifully obliges.

Alone at last in the dead of night,

the girl is sound asleep;

the tiara is still askew on her head

after the day’s rabid celebration.

Alone at the last at the dead of night,

the boy takes the unrelenting road

out of the town.

And towards new adventures.

Alone at last at the dead of night,

the dog sheds its skin

and howls at the moon.

Clutter of humanity cackle past

their cocoon of cheap beer and sunscreen.

Afternoon inertia.

The scorching red of a languid sun.

They take a stroll among the flying shades

animated by an intruding breeze,

and the cigarettes that meet

their violent end.

The waves beat a shuddering retreat.

And the crunching shells under the feet

The boxes I put myself in are getting smaller.

As a child of seven summers,

when my bare feet knew the grasses well,

I was Odysseus at Troy,

carving a way through the enemy rhododendrons.

I spoke at the midnight hour on August fifteen,

I was fifteen then,

my voice rose high and clear,

my dreams torched the sky.

I loved this girl from the next neighbourhood,

pretty in peony pink hijab,

the youth did not know when to back down,

the youth did not know how not to love.

Now that the girl is gone,

the dreams have withered away;

and the child gave way a long ago

to the husk of a man that I have become.

He is an earthy fool of morning—

makes the uphill trek of five leagues

and gathers anemones.

He is a fiery child of dusk—

arrives in the quietness beyond fatigue

and knocks at the door.

She is a flighty girl of night—

wears an anemone in her hair

and opens the door.

It is a deranged river of dawn

breaks the shackles that tamed it once

and rears its hood to strike.