The Poetry Marathon

The Inverted Word

 

Interpretation and understanding reside

When the Word itself—is inverted

As Truth is said to—confide

The meaning must be converted

 

Fixed in the opposite order

For light to shine in darkness

Interpreted by its own author

But by the mirrored image’s strangeness

 

Strangeness lingered with each word

Inverted reflections revealed

For arcane knowledge answered

The very mysteries concealed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hour 5, Hands

Hands

 

They open the casket

and I ask if I can hold your hand

a callused time capsule 

of every choice you’ve ever made,

particles clinging from the skin you last caressed, 

hairs on the back moving under the fans –

the only part of you that is. 

I can’t,

hold your hand that is,

so I am left to ponder your life line.

iI I would have known this date 

if I knew to read the crevice of your palm. 

 

The Chalice of the Goddess of War

(for hour 5—time capsule prompt—put in the world of Onweald)

 

 

The Chalice of the Goddess of War

 

More than four hundred years have passed

Since the wizard Hrazon accepted his quest

When prophets announced the lots were cast

And he placed her weapon in gold-inlaid chest

 

With geasa’n power he sealed its lid

To bury the treasure amid ice and cold

In the Sincfage Mountains where first it hid

Harboring a chalice with spells untold

 

Though thaws, thieves, waifs, and war

Threatened the wise wizard’s plan

Nothing could separate the power

Due a goddess and protector of man

Poem #4 — Haiku

Metamorphosis

A gradual transition

From youth to adult

“Twenty-Four”

“Twenty-Four”

All you need is twenty-four,

All you need to do is keep positive,

All you need is to graduate,

All you need is get a respectful job,

All you need is to find love and start a family,

All you need is to succeed,

All you need is to compare yourself to everyone else.

 

But I’m not like everyone else.

Hour Five, 2021: Two Combined / Complementing Each Other

Three bottles from 1921 had been waiting patiently. 
One bottle had held home brews of tawny dandelion wine, 
elderberry syrup in deepest plum hues, & nothing but sweet tea.
This bottle passed from home to home in gifts and medicines.
Smaller but with a grand flare for style, the next bottle
had held perfumes of distant peonies, lavendar, jasper, iris, & gardenia. 
Romance and mystery created the dreams of many who'd savored these. 
Stout and practical, the final bottle had homemade brews of
their farms' many grains ground fine in the long workdays, 
sipped and swigged well into long nights of stories and songs. 
One hundred years ago
the small community that stood on this spot 
marking the heart of my home before a big city took over
placed three unassuming brown bottles
empty of libations but filled with experiences of those before me. 

My two girls

No. 5 – My two girls

By Nandhini G. Natarajan

 

I expected my girls to be loving sisters,

when I am gone.

Now, one will have to be a mother,

to the other one.

One is a mother of three beautiful children.

One will only be an aunt,

but that’s okay.

One took her education to the limit.

The other still pushes her boundaries

as much as she can.

My dreams for one are fulfilled.

My dreams for another took a different turn –

but is still full.

God answered my prayers,

gave two beautiful babies,

with two different normals.

And I am comfortable in both.

My body sometimes bursts

with the love

I have for them.

5 Reflection

All my lovers were worth it

Even when I cried and tried

To understand why they left

Or stopped being kind

 

I had them each at their best

And most wonderful as they

Were full of pride and beauty

I was their proven prize

 

In our closeness I became wise

To their true soul while

Their bitterness grew

For being revealed

 

I would be discarded as an

Old mirror reflecting

An imperfect vision

They let me leave with relief

 

Staring in to the mirror now

I am able to see fragments

Of that girl they had won

Able to smile with memories

Soul Capsule

i buried you here

why are you rising again

i do not want you

 

this haunting won’t end

you pretend to be my friend

reopening wounds

 

you come all too soon

i never recognize signs

so i fight against

 

keep calling me out

resurgence and rebirth please

may i someday sense

Poem #3 — Haiku

Wandering alone

The solitude calms my mind

Revelations come