The Poetry Marathon

Tropical Megacity
Virginia Carraway Stark

Twin Spires pierce the sky
Of the tropical land
Where fountains spring
And the air is filled
With food from dozens of lands
It is a city of green
Birds fill THIS central park
A jungle that is left virgin
In a metropolis wonderland
A zone left for flying
Amidst the sky scrapers
Of a tropical metropolis
Multi-colored birds pierce
The sky with their screams
Their wings beat the air
One and all can agree on one thing:
There’s too much good food
Anyone could get fat!
In this modern mega city
That’s more garden and wonderland
Amidst the wonderland of tall buildings
One would swear are from a future land
Or another planet perhaps
Where people and nature live together
Memories of how close the jungles still is
To what was a primitive sprawl
A different sort of paradise
Not so long ago

The Moon has a Scent
Virginia Carraway Stark

Night blossoming
Moon flower
Palest ivory
Lemon ice
Scented jasmine
The smell of water
The heat of the night
Secret oasis
Bring me here again
In your arms
Hold me tight
My heart is pounding
Can you feel it?
Or is your pulse
Beating in time with mine?
Roses sleep, there heads nodding
In a late, full moon breeze
Mingling their velvet scent
With the brown of sandalwood
The ivory of jasmine
And the way our hearts beat as one
The water cooling our thirst
(but not our thirst)
Sand baking into our bare feet
“I can smell the moonlight” I say,
And you laugh, because no one can, of course
But in that moment everything has a scent to me
Even the moon flavors the air faintly
Of apricots and figs, vanilla sorbet
Girls are so silly
The night is getting hotter
I can see my breath
Tonight’s the night for love
In the secret oasis
Where everything has a scent

Too Brief
Virginia Carraway Stark

In the winter the days go by too quick
And you miss the sun
In the summer the night’s are too brief
And you miss the dark
The moon becomes a pale faced stranger
Who whispers in the light
The stars are distant wanderers
Foreigners
You used to love
In the dark if winter
It is the sun who becomes pale and wan
He never comes too close
he only peers over mountain ranges
As though afraid of the dark himself
Or perhaps the cold blackens his light
The stars become magnificent,
Magnified by the closeness to the polar wind
And their waltz with those
Conspirators
Who crackle like old hags
And make no better background
To the imminent meteor showers
Pulling back their pink, green, white and blue
Curtains of midnight colours
To reveal the cosmic show
That freezes in your lungs
And reddens your cheeks
As yet another too brief season
Plays out its drama in the sky

Northern Solstice
Virginia Carraway Stark

Crisply glistening under the starlight
Although it was solstice
Skin was white as apple flesh
Naked after shedding her night colored cloak
She shivered under the northern lights
The longest day meant something here
Already the sun was edging its way
Up the rim of the craggy mountains
The glacier fed lake was still as the night
The stars reflected along with their
Siblings, the tinkling spirits of the northern skies
In the water that even now was only above freezing
She strode into the water, as visible as though it were day
Picked out in white silhouette in the light
Of the celestial spheres
Reflected in the cauldron of the mountains
The sharp pebbles pricked her feet
She didn’t notice, they were already numb
She dove under the water
And greeted the spirits of the dark
The lived under the roots of the mountains
Coming up rarely to disturb the high lakes
With their troubles
And watched the brief night
That was solstice in the north
A lonely and short time
Cold, silent and foreboding
As the threat the snow covered peaks
The only other audience
Brought with their specter
The only sound, the lady’s feet
kicking the water
in what remained of the night.

Crazy Little They
Virginia Carraway Stark

I wrote a little poem
about a girl beyond the pale
they all thought it was about them
it was like the song
being ‘so vain’
they all thought this poem
was about them
but it was the crazy in it
that they all identified with
and laid offence and claim to
I worried about that poem
and the fact that if I put
a designation of a gender
and insane behaviors
to a character
that so many people
would reach out
and lash out in offense
claiming that I had written
a crazy little poem
about crazy little them
truthfully;
one of them
was likely to be correct
which one, I will never tell
because
if they were all so sure
that they were all that crazy
I think it’s safe to say
that it really was
a little poem
that was about
each and every one of them
who believed it described
crazy little they
that’s all I’ll ever say

Lame Ducks
Virginia Carraway Stark

It isn’t asking very much
context is everything
and yet…
it sounds like a lot of fun to me
learning is fun and so playing
but I guess
it’s a bit of goatish thing
to be a kid
and have things as you please
loving to read
and not having things
be necessarily be
the science of ‘self discovery’
oh well,
I suppose
that’s the way
the world goes
when everyone wins a trophy
in every little thing
you’ve got to work to achieve
and not get a slam dunk
for being a lame duck
just a little bit of effort
if you please!

GaoKao
Virginia Carraway Stark

If there was a battle cry
And all the years were packed
Into an afternoon
Of luck and hard work
The future determined
By what that day might bring
I don’t know that
I’d be more or less capable
Than any of my peers
I can see why the stars
And omens in the sky
Would matter more than anything
If things were done in such a way
With nary a second chance
In a land where no one stands
Above the others
In any but a negatory way
How sorry it would be
To have your entire life
decided in a moment
An afternoon determining
The future path
Who you may marry
The approval of your ancestors
Where your kids would go to school
The sort of job you could acquire
All from marks with your pencil
That is the battle cry
In a land far away
So it has been for thousands of years
Likely so it will always be
Ghosts are made by failure
Despair throwing people into the arms of death
Leaving the living to deal with demons
All for the pass or fail on a test!

Those Choices
Virginia Carraway Stark

Beautiful
Ascended
A thousand times I died
Promising to return
I saw no reason not
To keep away from the other side
Because
It seemed like giving up
And I didn’t want to leave the stage

-plus there was this promise I had made-

I wasn’t afraid of leaving
But saw no need to go
So I linger on
Despite
The
Beautiful
Ascended
World that there is beyond
The Universe is kind to us
It lets us fundamentally decided
We might regret
Our choices later
It might seem a disservice was committed
It does a world of wonder
To handle some starlight
and remember how
Beautiful
Ascended
Those choices are always there
If we ever want to make them
Dying is always there
Living is always there too
The better gift of the two
The harder gift to take
We must be brave and we must
Never forget
The scintillating joy we felt
When we chose the light within
and to return that self same light
to the world we walk

White Chocolate Lover
Virginia Carraway Stark

Gently he melts against my tongue
Orchid taste gently darkening his ivory to cream
Vanilla the only thing marring the perfection
Differentiating
The purity of his taste
Into something of sensational beauty
tempting me to nibble yet again
and take him into my mouth
but only a small portion
more would be sacrilege
a little is all I need
When he makes the chemicals in my brain fire wildly
Each square of white chocolate
Taking three, even four bites
I enjoy each one in entirety
To do less, would be unkind to me and him
My white chocolate lover

The Bigs are Coming to Town
Virginia Carraway Stark

Bigs come
When they come to town
They move the streets
They turn the dumpsters upside down
They put in DUMBS
They do as they please
because
They’re Bigs
And they do as they please
Rewrite scripts
Make monsters where they will
If you tell anyone you saw them
No one will believe you
Because they are the Bigs
And it’s best just to Deny
Every Little you see knows it’s best
If they see a Big
To just turn and walk the other way
If a Big asks you a question
You best tell them the truth
Then forget they asked you
Or they’ll do worse than tell on you
Here’s a secret the Bigs
Want everyone to know
And that’s that
Even when they aren’t in town
And you don’t see them
They will always see you
If you see a man or woman
With a knowing gleam
In their eye
They could look like their homeless
Or they could look like they work
For the FBI
They could look like your mom or dad
They could be anyone at all
They could look like your best friend
All grown up
They could even look like you or I
They’re the Bigs
They put in tunnels everywhere
And cameras too
You don’t have to be paranoid
Because they will know whatever they want to know
And dismiss the things that doesn’t matter to them
Or eradicate anything that gets in their way
The Bigs come to town
They’re watching at the cinema
They’re watching at the street lights too
They watch you in the elevator
They see you in every camera’s gleaming eye
The Bigs are always in town
They come by gleaming car
They come by shining jet
They come by things that hover
And we are very sure
I will swear
Do not exist yet!