The Poetry Marathon

In the garage

Hour 18 image prompt -Bird call

Recently a bird call

Alerted all the cats

That crows were flying swiftly

To hit down on our town

Calling out their flight signs

Clearing out a paths

And now they lurk all over

Calling out the time

Caw caw caw caw

Creating quite a din

#Prompt 16 – 2023

Disguised

Colour me blue
To match the sky
Shade me gold
With paint that’s old
Stencil the words
Faded to look like birds
To hide me from real life

 

[Inspired by the image]

hour 15: deep breath

It’s time
She walks in the room and I’m hanging out
Books line the wall but I’m just sitting here
I’m looking almost right at her, and she looks at me too..
but there seems to be something in between.
Stressed, pale and white like me
but there’s something different…
She’s not still. I want to help her.
She turns her eyes and I count for her,
1, 2, 3, 4, one, two, three, four
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6
She counts with me, but sometimes she doesn’t.
Sometimes she looks in the mirror while she does it and I think
It comforts her
And while I might not always know, 

I know she’s trying and breathing when she can.
She’s beautiful.
I hold it all for her when she can’t and I count till she’s back
1, 2, 3, 4, one, two, three, four,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

It’s time
It’s sitting there like a fly on the wall, the sheet
Waving back and forth– like a friend from far away
A certain nervousness in my stomach, one I really think has been fabricated through words from unaligned energies and pictures in places I didn’t mean to look at
I do listen, funny enough, but not when it’s staring me down like it is now,
Though I do try, and so, it’s there
Waiting for me to enter this blue room and hold it so – reading the words
and repeating them in my mind.
Counting, 1,2,3,4, hold, one, two three, four,
exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Hour 18 – Afters

Afters

 

My life is made from afters, 

from endings. 

It is made from dust, 

clinging tightly to the floorboard behind the stove. 

It is made from towels of spilt seed left under the bed

and of ghosts lingering in their houses. 

When I say afters, 

I suppose I truly mean befores I didn’t know would be 

befores. 

 

It is made from before the pain set in, 

from before death arrived, 

from before he happened, 

or he happened

or he happened or he–  

It is made from resilience’s decaying mouth,

its teeth rotting from its skull

as it is asked to smile.

It could have been worse after all. 

 

My life is one of a survivor

who never learned 

to cherish the befores,

who never asked what could change

only did so when it was demanded.

No longer. 

I shall build a life that is made

of life. 

eighteen: Stranger Than

Stranger Than

Like a displaced deer
down the middle
Of as residential street
Of industrialized city
At late morning
In a pandemic-
…Unusual.

That is to say
It was less mind-bending
Than the politicos
Telling their constituents
That science was merely
A suggestion

The Retired Misanthrope

Hour Sixteen

Sequestered away in fear
like a deer in the headlights,
wide-eyed at the atrocities
of human nature.
I once wore a misanthropic hat
lined with burs of Burdock
that clung to the scalp
ripping out my hair in chunks.
My experience with humankind
taught me in years past
that love equates pain
and is tantamount to hate.
Images of the evil and suffering
that filtered out hope
replacing it with depictions of abject terror
of the propensity of human error
and the clouded expressions
and dire tones speaking
in monotone at every media outlet
regurgitating the vomitous acts
of those negligent and self-serving,
thoughtless and Godless
stomping through this world
with entitlement creasing their stature
branding themselves with a beastly mark.

I had closed my doors,
donned my hat,
and sat in muted silence
waiting for life to pass-
the self-proclaimed hermit
cantankerous and disillusioned
to faith or hope or the dream of being loved
and having someone to love purely in return.
I devoted myself to silence, learning,
a detective in search of an absent
realization that I would soon learn.
What I had learned at first
was how so quickly the heinous
rebellion of humans
had overridden the softness of humanity-
the fragility and fleeting existence
forgotten of how precious it is
by hardened hearts.
It was within the stillness
I realized that, I too, had hardened
and by blockading myself from
the outside world,
I posed no threat to the avarice
that exists outside my doors.
How broken and cutthroat
we all have become-
ignoring a problem
instead of facing it head-on.

It was the I decided
to open the floodgates of compassion
the windows of empathy,
and the doors to the opportunities
to create a small corner-
a hearth to warm the hearts and hands
of those passerbys-
to offer shelter in an absorbent shoulder
catching tears in my palm as though my own
as I allow myself to feel their pain with them
and wipe away what I can with kind words
and heartfelt gestures.
No longer adding to the problem-
I hung up the misanthropic hat
and warmed myself by the fires
of humanity’s potential.

Hour Eighteen: My Old Haunt

We all worked there–the entire family.

It would always happen when we were in the back,

with the cameras poised to capture store traffic.

Chopping strawberries or pineapple into bite size toppings,

I’d look up and see a figure enter the glass entrance door,

pull off my food safety plastic gloves,

wiping my hands on my apron as I entered the front–

to find no one.

 

All of us had the experience.

Not even counting the time I searched everywhere for the mochis,

nowhere to be found; I gave up and busied myself with stocking paper cups,

when SLAM, a package of mochis slapped the cement, seemingly from the roof.

 

A psychic said a meth addict died behind the store, a young man.

So, when I stood in my own home, facing the kitchen entryway,

the others with their backs to the door,

I asked, “Who’s that?”

When they turned, the long-haired, young man in the long trench coat was gone.

Poem for Hour Eighteen (18/24)

Savannah sparrow,

you amidst your sea of color,

Tell me,

Did you know,

That shock of yellow

Upon your brow,

Would look so perfect,

Against the Purple,

of the flowers?

Because I wouldn’t

be at all surprised,

To find,

That you lined up the shot,

On Purpose!

Prompt 17 Kaleidoscopes of life

Many experiences share similar reflections

forged in honest secrets hidden

within beauty of naivety

self harm tilted towards colored patterns of self discovery

mirrored conflicts affirm long waits

can be beautiful, vivid and wild