The Poetry Marathon

My own Lampropeltis getula
Hungry little scaly sass-snek
Lover of mice and rangoon
Why rattle, Vesper love,
When nothing’s to fear?
Hide in my hands,
My feisty
Evening
Star.

“Don’t use the funnies for your painting. I want to clip them out later.”

“Can you imagine that girl didn’t know she was pregnant?”

“Do you think I could be pregnant and not know it?”

“Do you think you could be pregnant and not know it?”

I thought the answer was no.
But here i am, brush loaded with paint.
So hungry.
So bloated.
So pained.

All these years you’ve been gone,
Your clipped funnies fading in their album,
And still my belly grows
With the dreams planted.

Are these the labor pains
To awaken me from my engorged ignorance?
In my heedless pursuits,
Wiping my brushes first on business,
Then on obituaries,
Have I built a child
Or a bubble of gas?

It’s just a step sideways,
A prick of a needle,
A double blink of your eyes
Our three shopping of a heart.

From Here to There is no distance at all really.
We just get distracted from all the filter.
But remove the filter,
And there it’s no Depth.

My dear, dead phone:

Never have I meant ducks,

Nor birches,

Not shed.

But I always praise to decide if I should keep

“I live you.”

It is the more accurate, but too raw.

Moving through the sea

On a teakettle of foam.

We danced and sang, embracing our plight.

I love you

I love me

I love us

Even as we whittle away the time left

With the marks of our heels

And the strikes of our hands.

I love you

I love me

I love us

If the end is a wine dark sea

And a stagnant depth,

Then let me move with you once more

Until the foam dissolves.

Mediate, they say.

Let me go.

See only the moment

And the mantra in your mind.

So I put on headphones,

I close all the doors.

I sit in the bath,

And let all else go.

But sitting there in space,

It’s not solitary,

For in the stillness

That damned box sits

Filed with all that

Waits Until Later.

I sit with my back against it,

The corners pressed in sharp lines across me,

To comfort and castigate me.

Shall I pull the tatted shawl off the box and open the rusted hinges?

Perhaps I’ll add another knitted layer to it instead,

Muffling its rust AMD wails a little bit more.

Why should I look inside it anyway?

I remember every harsh and hurtful thing I Squeezed and shoved through the keyhole.

Screaming in agony as I felt out treat from my flesh and wiggle through.

Let the capsule remain as it is,

So all my griefs can ache together.

“We brought them all back.”

All the memories and falsities

They returned with the meeting of our lips

Souring the sweetness of your eyes

And bittering the promise with truth.

The warm lips turned to fish

And the supple turned to smarmy.

Your kiss returned with all its passion

Everything you are

And so I turned away.

(Image text)

To write straight across the page is considered

Normal.

But have you considered the appeal of starting your text ticked cozy in the corner of a cream colored page, growing with every breath, willing to wander as you wish,  with only the confines of air to slow your trek?

To write across the page is considered

Normal,

But I have never been straight

Since the day I learned thre lines were made up and that Gravity

Was a theory,  oft proven but forever unconfirmed.

Normal is a theory

To be

Challenged.

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

For glib jocks quiz nymphs to vex a dwarf.

Waltz, bad nymph! For quick jigs vex,

And we should strive to grump both the quick fox and lazy dog.

Ammit, Devourer of Souls!

Do you rest here, belly upturned to the sun because you have eaten your fill?

Or do you simply wait for the most ample of feasts?

You who sit and watch the scales not so patiently also watch me with eternity and questions in your eyes.

Am I the god, the scale, or the heart, Pygmy Hippo?

Won’t you tell me before your mid-morning nap?

If this is my reckoning, the afterlife is kind

For my heart has been heavy, but you lighten it.

I am lessened, one gentle lick at a time.