The Poetry Marathon

Time Encapsulated

“If I could save time in a bottle,” sang Jim Croce, “the first thing that I’d like to do, is to save, every day, til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you.”

What is a time capsule, but time somehow encapsulated, in what – ?

A photograph.
A ticket stub.
A newspaper clipping.
A windup penguin.
A lock of hair.
A campaign bumper sticker.
A bullet casing.
A necklace.
A bottle of beer.

You laugh, but the Egyptians did it. Though as I recall, the beer wasn’t that good. Would what we leave behind be any better a thousand years from now? Two thousand?

What does it matter what’s buried and entombed?

It is a reflection of lives lived, and a time of existence.

We cannot capture time in a bottle. We cannot save up past eternity.

Eternity, Joseph Campbell said, is here and now.

Be present. Don’t collect time, spend it.

[Prompt 5: You find a time capsule buried in the backyard of your new home (or anywhere else, depends on you). What’s in it? How old is it or its probable story is up to the poet.]

Hour Five

Digging Up Ghosts

When I found the time capsule, I was surprised, to say the least. I opened it up, knowing that you were the only one who could have left it there. This house sure holds a lot of your secrets, even from beyond the grave. As I pour over old photographs, I cannot help but feel your presence beside me. It’s been seven years now, since you left. It still feels like it was only yesterday. Your memory haunts everything I do. Everything I dream of becoming is because of you. I turned one of the photographs over to see a picture of you at my age. How I wish I could be half the woman you were. You taught me to fly at a time when I didn’t realize the importance of such a lesson. Now, I sit here digging up ghosts of the past. I know that there is a God above and that you are with Him. Yet, I cannot help but feel envious of what I am missing. I know I will see you again, but again cannot come fast enough. I cling to your photograph as I whisper, “thank you” to anyone who is listening.

Hour 5: Memories

Digging through some old boxes

I discovered a wonderful thing

Something from long ago,

So many memories it would bring.

I found a time capsule for myself

Put together when I was a teen

So many years have passed

I wonder what I could have foreseen.

With great anticipation

I open up the box

My eyes light up with curiosity

As the secrets I unlock.

An 80’s treasure trove

Of things that brought me such delight

They had not been uncovered for years

But now they’ll see the light.

A neon jelly bracelet

A collection of cassette tapes

I found A-ha and Duran Duran

My glorious escapes!

A great big can of hairspray

Which took my hair to great heights

Oh splendid day! I gleefully cry

As I take in more delights.

There is Simon and a Rubik’s cube

With which I spent time each day

Some Lite Brite pegs and stickers

They brought many hours of play.

I even found some sheet music

From my days in marching band

Louis Louis and Don’t Cry

We played in the football stands.

So many memories were included

In this time capsule in a box

I even found some leg warmers

And some folded up neon socks.

Cancel Culture

Don’t cancel me when I awake from the long sleep.

I am not Rip Van Winkle – lost in an abyss – erasing

everything that was around twenty or forty years ago.

Who are you to revise the past and teach half truths

to innocent bystanders who were taught to believe

anything that is said twenty or forty times.

Don’t cancel certain heritages and cultures because they are racist.

The very point that is trying to be made is in itself racist.

We were doing fine holding hands and working side by side.

But now the atmosphere has been contaminated

with hate and accusations that are unwarranted and unfair.

Equity is something built up by years of hard work,

the Puritan ethic, to establish the American Dream;

it is not redistribution of wealth – that is Communism.

Don’t cancel the very foundation of Christianity;

if it is not acceptable, do your own thing.  That is what

is great about America.

Canceling will bring about strange karmic repercussions.

Poem #1 — Haiku

Dew drops collecting

Upon blades of grass glisten

Under the sunlight

Prophets of Baal

 

Prophets speak words— divine

Rulers of both good and evil

One, congealed, one: sign

Prophets of Baal— do reveal

Highest knowledge—to bind

Evil words inverted— concealed

To the one of the most high—

Solemn words alike— revealed

 

Oh! Wisdom how you speak!

For prophecy is what they seek!

 

Binding ones own soule

After one is all that’s made—

Alone and one alone

Like these words that I’ve prayed

Hour Three – A Place of Pain

A Place of Pain

 

From where does your poetry flow?

Is it from the crematoria that sucked up

Countless corpses of your type

Gulped by yesterday’s pandemic?

 

Or from the Mediterranean

Drinking the blood of youngsters

Fleeing failure’s web?

 

Or the mass graves

Swallowing millions

Felled by terror-mongers

In peacetime?

 

These lines that run so deep

Where do they come from?

 

These bloodied lines

Dripping from your pen

Tainting your pages

Must be from a place of pain

For I read the sorrow in your words.

The Bottle

It drifted endlessly
listlessly
Until a shore
it found

Within its dark and
tainted glass
A yellowed note
safe and sound

Upon an island I am lost
these past many years
I found this bottle
with a missive

I am here I am here
Upon this island
with sands of luster
Where I reside year after year

Should you find this would you please
send someone here for me
Before I am too aged to see
Where it is I am to be freed

With shaking hands
the joints arthritic
I crouched down and retrieved the note
I’d written when I was barely twenty-three

Hour 4: Hope

When the path is blocked
When life is uncertain
I feel lost

I wonder how,
How to survive while i am suffering
How to heal the scar
How to raise up again

But, amid of the darkness
There’s always light

The reason that makes me alive
The unseen thing
The intangible thing

Hope,
Only then we will be able to understand the stars and miracles.

Credit to: Paulo Coelho, The Valkyries

 

God Laughed

My colleagues are all left wing liberals. I am a right wing conservative.

I managed the financial affairs of gays and lesbians. I am straight.

My best friend is Jewish. I am a Christian.

My neighbor’s car is electric. My car runs on gasoline.

My wife hates Indian food. I love Indian food.

Is God perverted or just has a twisted sense of humor?