The Poetry Marathon

2020, poem 8, straying away from the emoji prompt

The Butterfly Effect

Tomorrow, for the first time in four months, I am allowed to see
my parents inside, in their natural habitat of the care home.
They have been well cocooned, the doors firmly closed
to keep out the invisible threat at bay. I picture them swaddled
in sleeping bags suspended from the ceiling light,
human caterpillars become covid butterflies.

I have been told to wear a surgical mask and wash my hands in the porch
for the length of time it takes me to sing happy birthday. If I see them
together, I can stay for 20 minutes but if I visit them
in their separate rooms I can have 15 minutes with each.
Funny how the breeze of a bat’s wing can create a terrible tempest.

Hour 9: The Host Has Muted You

Online teaching created strange experiences

Our fears covered in masks, surgical and virtual facades

Insecurities buried in bottles of hand sanitizer

Zoom meetings, Brady Bunch style,

Lit up our names like little fireflies

Fireflies

I pretend that fireflies

Come around to remind me

That there’s more than one light

That the mask I wear everyday

Isn’t the sign of

Something nefarious

Instead I add some words

To the strange adage

The truth shall set you free

I add: Maybe if they don’t kill you

Right away

And as I hurriedly walk past

My eyes lowered

My breath quick

I think not of the treeline

With strange fruit

Hanging like apples

I prefer to think

That fireflies are coming

In the heat

To make me think

We’re safe

Heat of Summer Suns

With the heat given out by a firefly in a bottle, 

shards are broken, bomb and knife, 

the splinter of senses, 

The litany of evil deeds, 

that pour forth from the TV sets 

into houses where reaction is less compassion now, 

more of lethargy. 

These mayfly moments 

of sharpened hearts 

that can only exist for a second, 

dead after, remembered all the same, 

as strange, they weigh so much more alone, 

than the name of all his collected dead. 

A mask of hate, so much easier to wear than of kindness. 

Heroes are made in memorandum. 

Devils stacked high. 

The world steps on. 

There’s nothing else to be done. 

to rest

lethargic by noon
i spend the rest of the hours
trying to mask
the remains of my yesterday

eyes and words slow as porridge
body and mind heated like a winter’s cottage
light flurries strangely, fireflies
floating amidst my vision

i lay in bed and stare at the bare ceiling
i think, i try
i try…

Prompt Nine (9): These Words [Hour 9]

I was in my cottage…

And this strange little bird

… popped in.

He told me, “Ain’t this heat like sin?!”

I looked at the treeline;

shaking the lethargy of

my quarantine.

There my porridge sat,

and ZOOM, the bird spat!

I saw he wore a mask!

And threw a bottle,

at the thing …

No lie,

it was that damned

Firefly!

Trapped (Hour 9)

Trapped

A strange lethargy
traps me like
a firefly in a bottle.

Heat lightning flickers near the treeline,
glimmering at the edge of an oppressive day.

I adjust my mask of contentment
before stepping back into the cottage that masquerades as home.

Hour 9: Reverie

A strange lethargy overcomes me

As I sit outside in the heat

I lift up my bottle of water

Staring at the treeline past my feet.

I zoom into the cottage

To eat a bowl of porridge so bland

I mask the lack of flavor with berries

That I picked on my own land.

I watch the sun begin to fall

Below the horizon of trees

A firefly alights on the porch

Bracing itself against the breeze.

Contained(Prompt 9)

A glass bottle was all it took,

to bottle up all the feeling we had for eachother,

like fireflies attracted to long grass,

our feelings the bottle,

emotions never subtle,

they crammed themselves violently yet peaceful in nature,

our feelings nested in each other,

we then sealed it up and stored it in our strange little cottages walls,

it was love that could last ages,

the bottle a time capsule,

surviving summer’s heat to winters cold,

she was the one for me and Christ confirmed

-Ropa

Weird Times and thoughts

I put a firefly in a bottle.

The heat along the treeline was cooled.

A mask in my pocket ready to use.

It is a weird time in 2020.