24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
My home is filled with totes and boxes
packed for tomorrow’s move.
Some of life’s moves are joyful and adventurous.
This one is not.
Forced out by a rent increase
from a place that I have loved,
I feel displaced.
Tomorrow I will unpack,
start resettling,
learning new routines.
And life will go on.
Hillside dark, water calm
A single lantern floating
Veil shredded, flowers dead
A sudden, rotten, bloating
Bride alive, Corpse husband
A shovel with sticky coating
Crunching earth, shifting waves
A victim left ungloating.
Crime unseen, story untold
The lantern no longer floating.
Endings
It’s the beginning, but it might as well be the end–
the days are long and hot—the mind sliding toward the edge.
When I think of my ending I think of the sky, the way
it turn to dusk and the color fades. That may sound
depressing, but it isn’t meant to be. Last night while lying
in the moonlight, faces flashed before my eyes—no one
I knew, but if felt otherworldly. Perhaps I was seeing through
the veil to the other side. It’s a small thing, really…losing
the body to age or sickness, as the soul is vast, all encompassing
of time and space. When I think of aliens, that’s what
I imagine, moving from here to there in a flash. My soul
travels on a thought, and we all know how thoughts work—
racing about randomly, all willy-nilly. Last night, the dreamlike
faces I saw weren’t all friendly. I’ve heard that when you transition,
you should go past the unfriendly visions, ignore insects and
vermin, but not because you’re afraid. Just go on past–they
are mere distractions. Ignore them like any ending, because
you are almost at the beginning, where you want to be.
Less than 12 hours before I begin my very first poetry half marathon. Looking forward to it! I suspect this will be more challenging than the “Pulitzer Remix” and the “Oulipost” since these two were daily challenges and there were 24 hours to ruminate over each poem. I will begin my half marathon at 4am Kenyan time so I hope the peace and quiet and stillness will make my first hours very fruitful. Wishing all my fellow marathoners the very best!
Struggling (prompt 1) ~
My beloved struggles hourly, his life
parsed laboured breath by laboured breath.
I listen/don’t listen, struggling myself
wondering how long how long how long
Like a heartbeat I hear it, the refrain:
how long how long how long
3 a.m., and I listen, struggling
to separate the generator’s shush of air
in out in out in out
from his own knife edge breath
that oh so very slowly severs
all these years of threads
For my Hour 1 poem, I used both text and visual prompts.
There you are
in your final moment
before you learned that you can’t trust shadows
forever living
until the screen goes dark
26 June 2021
Alchemy in the sun and blue
the grass and dew
my neighbor’s windchime
silent for once while another’s
lawn is turning into another coast
as the sprinkler dutifully
oscillates in morning meditation
The sun rises and the dark clouds break apart in my mind.
My thoughts still.
I have escaped depression again.
I stand up straighter and give a shy smile.
Later anxiety takes over instead.
I look at my book of skills and choose one.
My breathing may be shaky,
but I’m not heavy.
Tears aren’t constantly waiting to fall.
I am almost free.
I thought for a while
I wouldn’t be here today,
with so much in my empty mind
needing more sleep than talk,
but then a little bird broke
its beak on my window,
jarring me awake, believing
the hawthorn will bloom again
next year, and thus, in memory
of all the springs I’ve known,
all the poppies broken out
of their porcelain shells
I think I’ll try again,
between the dishes and shirts,
persistent specks of dust,
and all who hate me,
to push my words out,
the way cherries swell in red,
and perhaps write some short
birdsongs for myself.
My wife said
“See anything you can’t live without?”
I said “You”
A man pushing his cart
glanced back and said “That’s a good answer”