The Poetry Marathon

Connected (Prompt 5)

I wish I was a tree, roots intertwining whispered messages. Send me healing when I am weak, speak to me in language of earth reaching down to wet depths. Can you understand me, feel me, hear me, I am not linguistic. I am ancient and I am stable.

I wish I was a tree, to sway and bend, lend my arms as homes to all the winged ones. I want to be a home. Call out through stretches of hidden electricity, murmur simplicity against me and do not let me fall. Hold me up when I am sick and we will stand tall together.

2020 Poetry Marathon, Hour 7

Hour 7 prompt: Write a poem titled Season of the (fill in the blank). Write a poem that matches or interacts with the title.

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Three years ago

Dear Amy three years ago,

Lost in an abyss with an undertow
Drinking didn’t work
Smoking mj didn’t work
The drugs didn’t work
What was there left to do?

So proud of you making that call
Finding God in California
But then a breakdown
A work intrusion
Tunneled vision
Didn’t know you could go back
To old playgrounds and play friends

Bipolar depression out of control
Anxious to continue life
Literally felt as if you could jump through your skin
Discharged
Sober
Sober for a few weeks
Then broken, off again

Feeling nothing through the summer,
Didn’t care if you lived or died
Approaching summer’s end
A call to a last resort place

A month at Starlite
A forever sobriety date,
It works if you work it
One day at a time.

Obtained clarity
But still had far to climb
Weekly sessions to breakdown
And excavate the past
Identified original wound

Worked with repair
Sometimes with God’s help when remembering to surrender
Lessons of
Trust
Faith
Courage
Integrity

Now three years later
Lessons of
Joy and Grace

It works if you work it
And you’re entirely worth it.

Just a Haiku

Shake the earth, spring winds

Break away the dead and dying

Sing to life the new.

ABOUT A NOTHING SOMETHING

I have nothing from the old place.
I took a handful of clothes,
half a suitcase of books, some beads,
but the music had long died, the piano
figuratively smashed into pulp
after every visiting child had banged its
fist remorselessly on the keys, the ivory
turned irretrievably into cement.

I have nothing from the old place.
I have even forgotten how the insects
fly there, strangled by the screen doors,
how the candles woke up the dead
during power outages, how the trees
tore their own hair when the monsoon
screamed and wailed, how the moon
revealed rat trails in the open drains.

I will not take you to the old place,
where I left the old syllabary and verses,
where my poems in the forgotten tongue
were incinerated in an evening of rage,
the papers silenced because they cried
too noisily and forgot to be discreet.
I have forgotten the colour of the paint
on the high walls of the verandah.

There is nothing left of me there.

Season of the Woman

Cast away your support beams
Of fallen and failed ideologies
Save your strength for the new fight
One without guns or blood
Rather build up our young
And teach them to think
Without hate and greed and fog
Bring them to the front
With confidence and knowledge
Love them and empower them
To turn the world
Into a friend to itself

Monsoon

This is the time, monsoon.
Then
Loves the cool air, dislikes the mud
Loves the hot tea, dislikes the damp clothes.
Likes to stay under the sheets
Likes to see drops running over glass roof Loves to see rain from shelter, dislikes to get in the rain.

Dislikes to stay inside the class, dislikes to get sick.

Now
Dislikes changed to likes and nostalgia when i could no longer feel anything in mind.

Dear lost old days, know you wont come back
But I wish to be a little kid again.

Poem #6: Bouncingly Beautiful Beach Days

Waves crashing
Seagulls yakking
To each other or to us? Hmmmmm
Surfers thriving nearby
Families and lovers and solitary walks
All communing together
In such a fun and zen way

Hour 7:Prompt 7 Season of the Pandemic

Season of the Pandemic

We wash our hands and alcohol up

Never leave our house without backup

We walk our dogs, masks on our face

Look suspiciously at the whole human race.

No more travel, we work from home

No longer are we allowed to roam.

A grocery store, up and down the aisles

Follow the arrows, if you don’t no one smiles.

Six feet apart or two metres, you choose.

There is very few freedoms left for us to lose.

Hold your chin up, let a big breath out

The season of the pandemic will make you shout!

Sugar coated

What on earth made him do it?

Fall for her… of all people.

All us women knew she dripped venom.

But she bewitched him something fierce I reckon.

He went after her likes bees swarming a honey tree

Mamaw said you can sugar coat a lot of things and make them presentable.

Well I guess that must be so,  because what I see when I am looking,

He is not seeing.

He is seeing it sugar coated.