The Poetry Marathon

My internet went down before I could post my last poem. I sent in the poem to the email for the marathon as soon as I saw it hadn’t been posted. Fortunately it was only the one poem because my area had a lot of power outages, even though many were brief. I had written to the marathon email the next day and I added it on the blog today (hopefully I’ll be counted as finished by the algorithm. I think I’ve taken part in every marathon except the very first one. I did last year’s but I didn’t find the link in time to register so I did offline. I was thinking of uploading the poems anyway because I found that I missed the community.
Doing the marathon on your own is a different experience too. There aren’t easy to access props and it takes a lot of willpower not to cheat just a little XD But I did it!
Whether or not I post last years poems here, I have enough poems to do another book of poetry and this will be my third book of poems that are just my poems! Marathons have been amazing, I have branched into writing more and more marathons including novels and a year of poems, all sorts of things. I’m grateful to the organizers for bringing this idea about and organizing it year after year; it’s a lot of work.
We are having a lot of power outages still and restaurants and grocery stores are closed because so much food has spoiled and equipment has been damaged by the power surges. I hope everyone is okay, It’s scary here!
I’ve been writing a yearly ‘Journal of a Plague Year’, this year was entitled, ‘Journal of a Year in Chaos’… and it has been more than living up to its name.
It’s supposed to get up to 49 degrees around here which is close to 120, I think. Fruit is cooking on the trees and it’s terrifying. I know it’s hotter in other places. but we’ve never seen weather like this here.
I’m still writing a poem a day since the marathon. How is everyone else doing since the marathon? What’s everyone up to?

Marathon
VCS

Waking Up
Is hard to do
With images dancing in my mind
Mingling into dreams
I should have a coffee
Or go for a walk
But right after this
I’m all done this run!
It’s called a marathon,
But it’s something else as well,
It’s reaching deep inside
And pulling out our minds ideas
Of heavens, hells and incidentals
Like a department store
Of hopes, dreams and fears
Writing a poetry marathon
Exposes more than just ‘feels’
I’m wide awake now
I want to do it again
But if it’s all just the same
I may sleep for the day
Every time I run
I want to do it again
It bursts all the blocks free
The words are never
Ones that I’ve planned
Now that we’re done
Pat myself on the back
Most of all
Write again after a nap!

The Internet hasn’t been great for the past few days. I was told it was okay to add this. It took me until now to get back online on my computer! All poems were finished on time and from what I can see all the others fortunately did upload (very fortunately because I only kept a duplicate of a few of these. This one has been in my clipboard ever since the marathon! Please note I was commenting right up until a few minutes before it was time to write last poem)

Night Walking Part 2 (Flipside)
In a rush I leave the house
I don’t remember leaving
Or why I was in a rush,
I remember feeling too close, too trapped
Needing to- the word is on the tip of my tongue
I want to flee this place
Although I have no reason why
I tell this to you as though I’m thinking thoughts
Rational
But it isn’t like that
I’m already on the flipside
It’s the land of magic in the dark
You’ve heard of the shadow people?
The Streetlight people?
They live close to us, a hair’s breath of a dimension away
Sometimes it starts with a magician,
Or a man who tries to touch my hair
Sometimes it just is
Equally placed between the highway and the river two forces
Pull
me
Towards them with equal forces
Freezing me in place
I know if I live
My head will hurt tomorrow
I am a passenger,
Watching, falling asleep
Occasionally jolting awake
Trying to pull myself out of the flipside of night
Opposites are not what they teach in school

The opposite of good isn’t bad
The opposite of white isn’t black
The opposite of night isn’t day
If that was true, we would live on a table
That you could flip with a finger
Maybe that’s where people get confused thinking
The world is flat.

The world smells like the chemicals from the fertilizer factory
Like hot rubber from Kal tire
Like manure from the nearby farms
I’m relieved when my body turns away from the highway and towards
The river
I walk towards the river, it is endlessly far way
Each streetlight flickers as I approach it and some pop and go black
My eyes burn in my head
My neck is on fire
When I fall, I feel nothing, though
My body is not mine here

The river has no birds in it
it is lower than before
So low I can see the muddy bottom
My hands are ice even in the heat
I later wonder if my heart was pounding to
Get blood to my limbs at all
Or was I just a meat puppet when I was flipside

Two whirlpools slowly formed in the mud by the bridge.
I looked up at the bridge
Streetlight people had gathered and stared
They were not captivated by the sight of me
More gamely watching to see if I may become of interest
In the center of the bridge stood a short man in cheap plaid

He looked like a man you would see anywhere in the midwest
In any ‘locals’ coffee and diner.
He wore a baseball cap and old man pants and I knew without
getting close that he was the sort who was always sucking on
His badly fitting dentures.

It is disappointing to see how pathetic
The Great and Mighty Oz is
Still, he was powerful, I had only to look at the eyes
Of the whirlpool demon
Inviting me to join him
To know the man was a strong magician

I forced my tired legs to bend on the same park bench
I had sat on when it had been the good end of the flipside
There was no doubt in my heart that they were calling me to die
I was he sacrifice for the arcane rituals that fueled
The flipside
I had been called before
I was being called again.

A hand reached in and pulled me out of the flipside
Call it what you want: a miracle, les deux de machina, a cheat end,
the hand of God
It is simply the truth
The hand of God sometimes comes down because it doesn’t want to let your
story end that way and the world has been written too dangerously
For people to believe that this is reality
not a fictional metaphor to describe street crime
Or mental illness
There is a flipside
Or call it a Slipslide away
A sidestep out of this world
Into a realm ever so slightly out of sync
Because for people who live on the edge of reality
it’s a delicate walk to keep from slipping from one reality into that other

There are many worlds, many dimensions
Streetlight people, cheap denture sucking magicians, shadow people,
Rivers with whirlpool eyes
Or it was a bad dream I had
If you need to say anything, say that
To help you stay sane and sleep better at night.

Gazing up up
at the grains above me
I know it’s crop
just like they bring to
The elevator
Delicious grains
My favorite ones
When the truck’s come
We’d put our hands out
When they opened the sluice gate
To the back of the truck
And slant it backwards
To dispose of their golden wheat
barley was good too
(but rye was YUCK)
It was as yummy as candy
I’d hold my skirt out and fill my apron up
Run away from my brother and steal my own weight
In the farmer’s crop
My dad would laugh
The farmer had already been paid
My dad ran the elevator
It was only the cartel who lost
A child’s apron of grain
If I was wearing a bonnet,
I’d fill that first
Like a greedy mouse
I’d scamper off with my hoard
Chewing and chomping
Seeds fresh from the stems
Soft and still green
It was a little taste of heaven

Watching the stalks
Of gold wheat overhead
They’re ready for harvest
I doubt anyone still has as much fun
Now with the grain coming in
As I once did

Night walking when the night is mine
When the night is kind
Always in the back of my mind
Some tiny part of me knows
The night could slip away from me
But not this night
This night is not Flipside

This night is honeysuckle on
the warm breeze
The air cool
But thick
Like drinking flower scented tea
The remnants of spring blossoms
Still ghosting the air
It’s their fruits now that I drink in

Far way a shuffling figure kicks a rock in the night
They don’t see me
Or if they do they pay me no heed
They aren’t a monster from the flipside
I have no need to be afraid on this night

No shops are open
The river calls to me
The highway a beacon of terror
a ribbon of fearful lights
painful, screaming
Howling
Flesh tearing monsters roaming it

But the rivers sings
Heavy and thick
Pouring molasses down its banks
Hemmed in here
I know that

This is not a good place to be
The river is more likely to be flipside
But it’s beauty, day or night pulls my feet
The scent of ripening cherries fills my nose
Along with hawthorns, apples slowly filling out their small forms
Dill brushes my leg and crushes along with a
cacophony of lavender and oregano beside my front gate
Where tumbling lemon and cinnamon thyme and rosemary too
Chime in with just a hint of something that has a hint of
Cinnamon and chocolate in one of the herbs

After the hot day, their essential oils are full to bursting
I pinch of a few leave and let the scents linger between my fingers
I had forgotten I planted pineapple and chocolate oregano… divine!

Down the crooked sidewalk I go
Enjoying that there is no need to not rush
After all, why hurry when the bloodsuckers
Have gone to bed and the heat of the sun has finally
Waned leaving a perfect summer night?

Only just over a block away, I burst on the river far too soon!
Even this time of night, perhaps it’s the moonlight,
I can make out the shapes of some geese and ducks
Catching late night fish
Enjoying the date and the cool evening as much as I

It’s almost silent except for the sounds of the occasional big truck
rumbling up the highway behind me
Close to the river, the light pollution starts to give way
I can see the dim outlines of stars
I know now as I know any time I get too far away from
The hurley burley,
That I am not meant to live in the city
Or even a small town
I’m meant for the wilds
I didn’t domesticate well.
Even though I put on a good show of the trappings of urban life
A country girl belongs with the trees
With the stars and the animals, in the wild and tame

Here, there is no wild.
Not, real wild.
The grass is neatly cut
The trees shepherded to their required spaces
The grass is weed free and kept cut short
But never by cows, sheep, goats or horses!
Not even a duck or a chicken is allowed in these sacred
Human park spaces

A man with a lawn mower, a weedwhacker
With chemical deterants
Comes quietly to tuck away any thistle or nettle
That may upset another very different sort

I sigh. It’s hard here to even find a stray branch or stone.
The flowers are tucked under plastic and mulched
Theres never any weeds in these beds
They would never grow herbs or things with ‘upsetting’ smells
Only grasses and inoffensive bulbs poke their way through
Their allotted space in the mulch

It’s here that the flipside has it’s appeal
I close my eyes- but not too long
For fear I forget myself and let the flipside
C r e e p
and become real
Instead, I rest on a perfect bench
Until the streetlights start to flicker
And clouds of insects start to gather
The flipside is close
I must return home

Every day Normal is made
There is never any normal
Except the new normal
Anything else is nostalgia
Caught up in our fears
Of change and dreams of a past
Perhaps a past that never was
A past that only exists
Behind rose tinted glass
Growing prettier each day
The future becomes more frightening

When the first planes
Flew through the sky
They said it was a fad
It would never last
People sought to buy the air
Above their homes to keep the jets
From flying overhead
It’s not normal! It’s an invasion!
Our Freedoms and our Privacy!
They screamed that rebellions would rise
But they didn’t
Now airplanes may annoy us, but they’re normal
They’re convenient
Our world wouldn’t function ‘normally’
Without them.
It’s been the same again and again
With the invention of the train
People went mad
Then the automobile
It was the same!
They were outrageous
No one would ever prefer them
To the comfort and style of
A horse and buggy
I don’t like the changes in the world
I like to hug people
I don’t like the masks
They drive me crazy
(Truth be told, I am always
Running back, I forget mine!)
I’m uneasy with many things that are happening
But… I’m a mammal
We are fundamentally adaptable.
It’s what we do
Adapt, adopt and improve
Or die and get left in the muck and mire behind
There is no ‘normal’ in human
We are the abnormal growth on earth
Our choice is if we are a good or bad mutation
We make bad choices
We fail the mammal creed to
Adapt, adopt and IMPROVE
Failure to find a better path
Is failure of our species
It’s not a video game
There’s no second chances
We’re all in this together, all of us abnormal
We need to stop pointing fingers
Start inspiring each other to do better again
By doing better ourselves

I can’t breath
For the gauze stuck
in my lungs
Inhaling streamers
Exhaling tissues
It comes out of me
and hangs about my head and face
Even if you can’t see me
It’s a real miasma
The coursers of ribbons
Stuck around my face
Get stuck in its glue
It will get stuck to you
You’ll be saying it too
I can’t breath
For the gauze stuck
in my lungs
What a pretty sight I’ll make
When you cut into my lungs
Captive to you
You’re nobody’s friend
Invisible invader
Slipping asleep
I hear a far away voice
Over the wheels of the bed I’m on say
Between coughing
‘Oh Doctor, Please Save Her’
I’ve lost the will to fight,
I can’t cough anymore
Too many ribbons have been packed down my throat
What I thought was my last night
It’s the will of medicine to save me
I’d be on my knees if I was able to be

In winter I dream of frost
On window panes
Of sweaters and socks
Mittens and knit hats
I even; when it gets over 40 degrees
Fantasize about snow
Covering the streets
In the winter I dream of swimming in the lakes
Of the snow leaving the road clear
So my feet can touch the ground
Of shedding my jacket
The sun warming my Shoulders
And stroking my hair as I
Fall asleep
In a somnolent hammock
How can we never be happy right now
With everything just the way it is?
Cherry blossoms then
Plum and apple blossoms
Spring plantings
Feeling the soil
Warm under fingers
That appreciate it for
What
It is
NOW
Not what It will become
Or what it has been
But what it is right now
See the birds in the trees
Different ones in winter
Then in spring, summer or fall.
The glorious streaks of colour of the
Humming birds in summer
The visiting swans in spring
The goslings somewhere inbetween
In fall the birds going to and fro
What a show!
In winter the hearty, steadfast birds,
Always the chickadees, ravens, crows,
The cedar waxwings in their fine plumage
Year after year, I try to learn all their names and songs
Each season has it’s purpose
Things to harvest
Clothing most splendiferous
Could I live without a single one of them?
No, not ultimately

Time has been flying
How can this be?
I don’t think the clock
Is playing fair
It’s definitely tricking me!

I stop for a minute
Just to do something quick
The alarm starts to buzz
It’s time to go again!

Whose got the stop watch?
This game’s been rigged!
Time himself
Is playing tricks on me!

He came to us with Juno
But not in January
She was his sister
Traveling with Flynn
A sure and noble guide,
He brought the two safely
Through mountains to bring Fuzz
By our sides
They arrived brother and sister,
Two white balls
Not unlike tribbles
He and I knew each other on sight
Fuzz and I
He’d come back again
He didn’t look back
Or cry
Or look for his Fuzz family
I am so happy
I have my Fuzz
I can’t stop hugging him
Now he’s not so small
I won’t squish
Out his guts
When I squeeze him hard
He hugs me back
With wookie arms
And nibbles on my ears
Talking his strange language
Unlike any animal except Fuzz
He’s still a white ball of fluff
He’s still my Fuzz
He got a ride back to me
His belly’s got more freckles
Then I thought possible
He has a lip
Just like he ought
His teeth are sharp
His claws are not
He looks like he’s trouble
Mostly he’s not
He likes to sleep
Just like a Gund
My little Fuzz
He’s getting big
He learned things like ‘kisses’
and ‘I need help up!’
He knows his name
But he also comes to Fuzz
He loves to play
He runs like a streak
but afterwards
He’s back asleep
He eats like a tribble
He grows fast enough to watch
He’s my sweet smelling Fuzz
Sleeping under the juniper trees
That’s his favorite place to sleep
When he isn’t in my closet
Four paws in the air
Not a care in the world
He’s safe and he’s happy
He’s a white ball of fuzz
Beloved by everyone
Working hard at his lessons
To be the best fuzz he can be