The Poetry Marathon

POEM 15

If only I had known, but who can discern the future, who can know the right answer?

I was poised on the brink of my dream. I dipped deep into its well and was afraid to take a drink, even a sip.

I perceived my thirst to be false, misleading me into a spiritual void. I robbed myself, I betrayed my own trust.

If only I could go back and shirk this wretched caution telling me lies, making up tales.

You can’t go back; you can’t decide to take the chance, to join the crowd.

I was ungrateful for that wondrous chance.

For what is gratitude but a cool crystal stream to dip yourself, to immerse yourself in

it’s baptismal waters of thankfulness. I fear I have aged out of the opportunity.

Once no slips past your lips it lingers in the air taunting your stupid choice laughing like a clown.

You can’t go back again, you can’t savor that sweet choice again. There will be other doors, other trains to take from here.

Or will there be? Time only knows–time only tells.

POEM 14

They only give glimmer of light. The thousand blue canisters housing a thousand lives.

Sacred hopes and dreams sealed and labeled filling a thousand slots of stored space.

Don’t search for their catalogs the information is kept in digital files in that singular electronic eye that is ever on them.

Don’t wonder who they are, don’t envy them their lofty nests.

Like a honeycomb of lenses waiting to shine out to the world.

Don’t approach the glimmer wall. The eye will capture your intent.

You standing before it like a captive sentenced to a firing squad.

POEM 13

A sky so ominous with nimbostratus puffs, heavy with dark beauty. Like a scene from another world.

Stratocumulus Clouds like angry geese flapping their wings and thundering with the setting sun.

Then a  rainbow arching over the mountain scape, a multicolored dome catching up gilded light, promising a reprieve.

The rains have ended leaving a meadow green and lush with wild flowers painted pastel and pristine beneath the orange tinged chaos dissipating overhead.

.

NONET-POEM 12

A candle burns bright with flame full of

life and death drawn from one breath so

slight but powerful with fight.

It waves and flickers with

sight. So sure to see

it end then draw

it quickly

again

life.

POEM 11

It stains my heart with colors mimicking life on my little paint boards, not canvas just small hard paper boards. I’ve had these paints for years, drying into softer hues in their bent metal cups.

My brown speckled bird eggs look like they could hatch any minute, but they are only papier-mâché. Made not by me, no. I got them at the art store in a bin filled

With what-nots.

I must have made my way out here for years, sitting in my rickety bamboo chair at this faded oak table, with the peeling white paint. This back porch has been a

Sanctuary for years. It has been rescreened and rescreened and rescreened.. Now I sit with my blocks of paint and the little silk Ivy and fake moss and pipe cleaners,

About to fill a clay pot with some semblance of nature. As my earbuds stream Les Misérables (the British cast) into my brain. I can smell the chalky water colors as my

Interest wanes. I managed to splash a nondescript yellow flower fuzzy with orange specks onto each board. I got lost in time and produced them in a trance.

Somehow I formed these drops of sunshine onto the boards with my eyes in a myopic glaze. I’ll frame them, to hang above kitchen stove.

POEM 10

Christmas, The Mass of Christ. So sacred, so Holy, so full of His light.

The Bethlehem star stood still in the night and Angels both arch and choir members took heavenly flight.

We celebrate and scuffle to cling to beliefs, to hold onto traditions, to merry and bright.

Oh carols song by human tongues and Angels playing harps that night.

Where shepherds found that holy ground. The Holy Family’s plight.

The men were wise who followed the light that hung like an ornament in their sight.

Old Herod was sly but couldn’t be right to find that sleeping baby that King of delight.

The soldiers sent forth would lose at every turn, hoping to take His dear life.

If only they knew that his journey was true, that He came for them too

Today at Christmas time it seems the fighting times out. The gifts that we bring and the carols we sing really leaves us no doubt..

For the Lights that line the streets and shine from every house say better than any words, this is the most joyous time of the year repeated by each Christmas bell that

Is heard.

POEM 09

Sorrow like a giving up, took and washed me out. I was tired of uncertainty, I was sick of doubt..

I went about humming trying not to despair. Fate so bitter as it is will find you anywhere.

When did this take hold, in the midst of the night? Did it reach for my very soul and strangle hope’s bird of flight?

Whose child am I whose sorrows are born again in me? Where next will my weary feet fall? What secret corner holds my destiny?

In a stormy sea I stay adrift my sails are weather worn and smiling out to me, the shore where my misery was born.

Then just as sudden as all this weight was cast, a lightness on the wind of time whispered. “this too shall past.”

Then all the silver slant of rain, began to softly fall, it lost the chill of weariness of having no hope at all.

Sometimes a miracle will show its sweet, fierce head and take the woe that snatched at you and leave its joy instead.

POEM 08

Scout and Jem spent that summer smothered in the heat and sweltering indifference of consuming hate and racial division.

One man, their father stood in the gap and represented innocence, never needing to lie.

He garnered a certain respect from many, but a lie, a vicious untruth told to combat shame and lustful desire killed the innocence he sought to protect.

The children were attacked and broken nearly strangled by that three strand cord of hate, ignorance and fear by the father of the Lie.

For he knew the truth and it boiled inside of him. Jem took the brunt of the assault as Scout scrambled home to fetch brave Atticus.

That fateful day that may have been bathed in the blood of the children, saw the Lie’s father fall to a fatal blow dealt by a familiar stranger who came to their rescue.

Boo saw the duty and the deed needed and innocent himself, leapt from the shadows to perform it.

As matter-of-factly as he did placing toys for Jem and Scout in the hollowed out hole of an old Mulberry tree in the yard, Boo standing behind the door, had been the

One to gift the children their lives with their innocence still intact.

A summer that started with rabid madness ended in peace and comeuppance.

POEM 07

We all are hoping with eyes closed and whispered prayers, to get back to Normal.

This strange, misshapen existence doesn’t fit. It pinches like new shoes and kills us.

It takes away our breath and nobody knows from where it sprang.

We refuse to get complaisant with wearing face coverings in everyday life.

It’s not Normal to wear rubber gloves to the grocery store. Plowing

through bottles of hand sanitizer and bleach is just not Normal.

The funny thing about Normal is…this has always been Normal for me.

Germs and crowds terrify me, the unseen ones more than the visible ones of course.

I always had a face mask at the ready and I’ve carried hand sanitizer like celebrities used to

carry bottles of water, for as long as I can remember there being ‘hand sanitizer.’

Minus the vaccine and people’s lives being snatched away, this is my Normal.

If someone coughed behind me, or in front of me, in a dark theater, it was tantamount to a shout of “Fire”.

I’d want to pop up and sprint for the exit, but that wouldn’t be normal and people would be uncomfortable.

So I am flexible and pull myself into the confines of Normalcy, for my fellow man.

I’d crouch in my place and breath as shallowly as I could without collapsing in the aisle.

That hated pandemic uncovered a comfort zone for me and we all had a new Normal. But the old Normal is out there, we think,

And we are willing to die trying to get it back.

We all need things to get back to Normal, the Normal that is minus losing loved ones and giving up hugs. Okay we like the typical, usual expected as the dictionary defines.

POEM 06

I have strolled this path many a morning. My daily constitutional I choose to call it.

The suns above the horizon already drying the dew. The red squirrels already having a fit.

Sometimes my pace is hurried. My mind won’t grasp a thought.

The birds calling above mere noise, as peace on this tarry I’ve sought.

Sometimes I amble along slowly, matching the rhythm of the breeze.

My soul is labored sometimes on these treks. Sometimes I’m so at ease.

This footpath meanders through a scant woods with clearings here and there.

The shadows grow and shrink with time as light drops without a care.

I journey back home mostly on the straight way. I peer down a crooked leg of the woods and wonder where it goes.

Ah maybe someday I’ll travel there into its cool, damp darkness, rushing along as my fear grows.