The Poetry Marathon

Apocalyptic Endings – hour 1

Apocalyptic endings
Mass extinction all the way
People think they’re rarities
But they happen every day
Within the souls of people
Passing on the street
You wouldn’t know to look at them
It could be anyone you meet
The kid who sells you coffee
Whose smile can’t touch his eyes
The old man in the pouring rain
Holding a cardboard sign
The chick who’s always cracking jokes
With a laugh that’s never real
The counselor helping everyone
Who’s forgotten how to feel
The point is, you can never know
What’s on another’s mind
What apocalypse they’re dealing with
So remember to be kind.
~Mandy Kocsis©2021~

Hour One, An Ending

Post Cursive

My hand flows with ease across the page,
connected rhythmic hills and valleys,
a mountain chain on a page linking hand and mind
from this present day
at my kitchen table
in the middle of my life
to a childhood classroom,
chalk dust in my nostrils
and thick, lined tablets and a stubby pencil
in a blonde pony-tailed little girl’s splayed fingers,
new tools awkwardly grasped while
furtively licking the acrid, freshly sharpened tip,
then scrawling for the first time the shapes
that would later come to define me.

Long years would pass,
years splintered, flayed, and broken
by circumstance and randomly cruel tragedy
beyond the child, girl, woman’s control,
but
smoothed, straightened, and sutured
by lines on a page,
flowing from mind to hand.

I watch the fuzzy, near transparently blonde
head of my grandson
bent over his work
at my kitchen table,
small splayed fingers grasping
his black digital tablet,
images, ideas, and thoughts of others
inserted between his mind and hand,
and I mourn a loss
he does not yet feel.

 

 

Labour

The gloom and doom,

With ink splattered on their face

And elbows covered in grease

Firelight sparkling behind their eyes

A myriad of emotions and colours

Peel the blackness tied on their eyes

Peel the death and hunger

Peel their shredded clothes

Bruised and cut and bleeding and burnt

The rust of their blood

And steel of their veins

Pulsating, boiling, spilling

Hot red blood

And running to their blood shot eyes

And bloody parched lips

Lips scarlet with alcohol

Knuckles purple with want

And crying tears of hunger

 Streaked with blood.

1. Some Things Ending

“Talk about something ending.” He started.

“That’s broad” I thought.
Phone plan
My lease
I don’t know… everything ends…

Buying diapers
formula, babyfood
sippy cups
those little puffy crackers
with bananas on the tube…

back to school clothes
new backpack, lunchbox, fresh pencils
yellow boxed crayons with the built in sharpener on the back

Santa stuff!     Santa stuff…

acne creams
soapsgelsscrubsmasks video games
more food than you ever thought
one human could consume
noteworthy tennis shoes

That first car.

college tuition
off campus housing
packages from home of even still more food

his part: the tux;
the last most food he will ever ask you for.

“Maybe these are more inevitables
than endings,”
I ponder to my empty except me room, “though they do end.”

She liked pink blankets after he went over, and eating only nonmeals

non utencil meals

finger foods

but not wings. Wings were their thing.
Everything was their thing
until everything ended… inevitably.

Sixty one years of endings together
five more for her alone.
Five more of diapers
formulas
sippy cups
little puffy crackers
with fish on the carton

sophisticated coloring books

malomars

Malomarsmalomarsmalomars…

White Lilies

That spot right next to him
with the view they chose together.

A Life Past

This morning a life is past.
Looking back on joy, on passion,
On loss, on ache,
We see reflections of times
In the ever moving waters.
The ripples changing scenes
Shifting currents of dreams.
Some rocks are polished,
Others ground to sand.
Lapping waves quenching dry land.
Cupped hands reach out,
Grasping a drink for one.
It’s quickly gone
For this life is now done.

Pa, this is not the end

Now in the company of you with aesthetic odour

And smart angles in white robes

Hammock and syringe glued to you

Chalk travelling in your in

 

Never had the slate to collect memories of you

Never thought of you as a mortal

Never seen you this irrelevant

Never seen you this incoherent

Never seen you this incompetent

 

River drenched my robe

Sun went on strike

Pa, would have ironed my robe

 

The garage had prints of you

Your leaves had imprints of you

Perched on a bamboo you read to an embryo version of me

Pa, the wardrobe oozed your aroma

Your onion wafted through the air and sting

 

Learning ceased because you have seized

Life quit for you are quick

To disembark the train

Somehow,

I know this egg will walk

This caterpillar will fly

How

I do not know

 

Pa, I know this is not the end

 

The Ritual – an umbilical cord

My parents born in one country,

moved to another,

for freedom.

I grew up between two cultures.

In time I moved to

yet another, third country,

following my husband, starting a family.

 

I should have felt misplaced, astray,

adrift.

But a cord tethered,

pulled me back.

It was a ritual, a sacred one.

A Mass.

The same words, sights and smells

even in different languages,

told me I was the same.

Oh how exquisite, the feeling of belonging!

 

I took for granted, the Sunday mass,

Until one day,

we could not touch another,

even in gestures of peace.

The holy water font was emptied.

We might get infected,

by the deadly virus,

from hell.

 

The church emptied, how shocked I was!

And the communion put away.

Was it possible after

two thousand years?

That first Sunday, I did feel adrift,

bereft.

A lone priest came,

disinfected his hands.

Gave communion

to the few hanging around.

I have never received it,

With such gratitude,

with tears in my eyes and a prayer on my lips.

 

The last I received for many, many months.

 

Graduate level class

I was thirty, freshman making up time
my first semester in college and
I took a film class
what seemed like easy credits

Rarely had I worked so hard
in a classroom

Week one we watched
‘The Graduate’
penultimate coming-of-age tale few of
my classmates had even
heard of

We focused on the ending of the film
on again, off again
lovers Ben and Elaine
brazenly escape from her wedding
hopping a city bus
laughingly falling into the rear seat
while out the back window
enraged family gives chase
Ben and Elaine, oblivious
smile warily

Film ends, professor simply asks us
fifty dorky freshmen
“Happy ending? Yes or no.”
Only three hands
shoot up on the ‘no’ option one of them
shaky at best

Professor Yahnke had us watch
the ending again – three, four times
each time facilitating
late teen incomprehension to
why this was not a happy ending
discussing the
framing of the scene
body language
facial expressions –
Ben, Elaine, her parents
professor’s message
this was no ending in any real sense
but simply the start of
some new chapter

Class ended with dumfounded
eighteen-year-olds
mumbling weak defenses of
myopic beliefs
Ben was the hero, he rescued Elaine or
Elaine realized her mistake or
my personal, perennially skewed favorite
‘true love won in the end.’

It took me another sixteen years to
complete my college degree
it has been over thirty
since I sat through that film class
and two weeks of passionate arguing about
happy endings, sad endings
endings are only new beginnings

To this day
I see anything in life that ends as
simply a phase
life as perpetual Etch-a-Sketch
draw it out, shake and erase
draw something new

And whenever I hear anything by
Simon and Garfunkel
I offer a stern, out loud rebuke to my
car’s radio
to hell with Mrs. Robinson
Here’s to you, Professor Yahnke

– Mark L. Lucker

© 2021

http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Simplicity – Hour 1

Picture a field of blooming lavender
Your hair shifting in the slight cool breeze
Take in the smell of warm green summer
At last my heart is at ease

To linger upon a face of beauty
To listen to the silence around me
To long deeply for some company

When all the layers of social expectation are stripped off me
What’s left is a person with simple needs
Like every other

You deserve to be

Hey, guys! Welcome to my page! This is my 4th (!!!!) marathon — 2 fulls and a half, this will be my third. As I sat and thought about what I was going to write about, I felt a little uneasy, a tad bit lost. I had muses for my first two marathons, and a pseudo-muse for my third. This year, though, I realized that, even though last year I denoted myself as my own muse, I had gotten lost in the noise. Doing so last year felt so unnatural and awkward. This, I’m determined to strengthen that resolution — I will be my own muse. I have to be.

So here’s to a marathon filled with awe and wonder, self-discovery and self-reflection. A marathon by and for me; poetry for the sake of poetry. Here’s to a marathon of finding who I am and who I want to be. Here’s to a marathon of understanding that I deserve to be my own muse. Here’s to a marathon of me.

 

As always, many blessings to you.

Have a day filled with love, light, warmth, poetry, and — most importantly — YOU.