The Poetry Marathon

Coasting With Consciousness

 

I frolic in the garden of gods and goddesses

with fairies and figments of my id.

I frolic on roads with lotus flowers and chalices of rum,

on pastoral roads with warm breezes, lack of scrutiny and amoral love.

I stand naked in moonlight mist with arms outstretched

defying smirking faces and complacent stares knowing full well

it is my own judgment that matters.

I have danced to a lyrical romanticism as my superego analyzed every step.

That sweet pantheism rebels the Victorian ethic

as it pushes the ideal into the lost dream where Arthur

wandered and Prufrock lingered with Selwyn’s yellow eyes,

wasting away in early decay.

Birds are fed by the earth, free of karma.

With clenched fists, I open fingers and fall asleep

back in the forest, after the gods have turned to stone,

and history has explained itself as fallen angels or ambitious egoists.

I reckon the desire to kiss the abyss

without falling into black waters, drunk on a temptation

or an ease that might be heaven or a nu age

or nothing new at all.  And in the reckoning

comes the answer, the snap-snap of sacred eyes.

War #3

This flower is red
Like my memory of you
So fragile and fierce
Mended by clotted blood
Easily crushed by bullets
In the pages of the newspaper.

The bravest thing I will ever do
Is to stay home and love you.

A Love Song

The mindless serenity of unsatisfying indulgence
and the haughty want that pretends to be the origin of all art.
Call it a love song, the birds chirping
screaming in the morning wings beating claws scraping
a brief burst of violence called a moment of passion.
And life does what life does and dissipates heat
with intelligence prone to fits of death dumb and blindness
from the searing flash of a rainbow of feathers.
In pure isolation I listen to music and muse
that muses gave their stamp of approval
to this madness, this hunger,
this petulant whining.
And the birds prattle on and the years prattle too
and I sit perfectly still and do my job to promote entropy
and try to prevent memories from intruding on angst.
This will fail too.
I won’t invokes names but I will recall images
and images, thank god, can’t be put into words.
But one can’t help but wonder if this is loneliness or worse.
And one must hope
that their love song
is something more
than a failure to reproduce.

Protected: 5: The Boat of Hope

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A Blessed Day

A Blessed Day

 

Having my cold morning feet warmed by soft pillows.

Waking up to the aroma of hot coffee with cream.

Arranging the white living-room curtains to shade my eyes from the rising sun.

Reading several daily newspapers on my i-pad.

Peering into the neighborhood lagoon on a calm summer’s day.

Dreaming about far-away places I want to visit.

Catching a dozen large blue-claw crabs.

Writing a poem that is meaningful to others.

Making a seafood lunch for my wife.

Having chicken dinner made for me.

Watching Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room.

Falling asleep in front of the TV.

Waking up.

Falling asleep again next to my wife in bed.

Prompt 6 Hour 6

Deep sigh release as
cranes grace the waters edge 
sparkling a ripple across glass
a crimson blanket has given the sky a moment
for me to stretch my limbs into submission 
while fire dances before my eyes 
my feet find the rhythm 
my heart finds the warmth 
and my hope 
is wrapped in the waltz of sunrise

Night

Night has always been so boring
unless you touched my body,
where your cuddle is soothing
makes my heart hooting.
The night brings screams of love
you kiss me most,
the way hate is lost.
Flight is your and mine
I want all nights
just last night kind.

Dawn Patrol, Hour 6

Pink and orange light percolating through wisps of pale white

Salt spray and sand caress the skin

Crash of surf harmonizing with seagull squawk

Clunk of coconut dropping on jagged rock volcanic

Smell of surfboard wax mingling with drying seaweed stench

Eyes squinting against sunrise reflection off glassy head-high sets

This is as good as it gets

Best Day

Best Day 

 

The crux of it all, head in hands, slouched over 

in a ball. 

Breath came in blasts. 

The shape of a slam wild card winner. 

Before the stage was spot lighted, 

the audience decked out in front, 

my arms and hands full of sign language, sweeping and turning out 

they had no idea of the difficult day to day. 

Still ill on chalky tablets, 

that tasted like bitter dough, 

thicken in the throat. 

Best Days 

happen in between the gears of other times 

makes them more honey drool sweet 

like a lubricate that keeps the whole thing clicking over, 

Bad Days are dry, rasping,  

the crux, head in hands, slouched over 

balled up like a fist 

but not bitter, about the surrounding age 

it would be nearly a year, thumbing through the months, 

before I was well again 

but the experience of performing in that large marquee in an autumn 

is somewhere my heart returned to 

whenever days got sharp needle point sore. 

Instead the taste 

A sweet centre, a confection, smooth, and delectable 

sometimes the things that defy importance 

are the ones we hold onto the most  

Genius At Work

Genius At Work

My desk is littered with lists
do this by then, that before when,
remember this, don’t forget that
and when I need to find the thing
that is chomping at my to-do clock,
that thing I know I need to do now,
the thing I can’t remember what
maybe even why, I can’t find it.

Scraps of paper stack up in wild piles
a Jenga game gone wrong from the start;
when I sweep them up to neaten them,
towers topple, pages take wing, fly
to freedom under/behind the bookcase
or line the floor like errant throw rugs
with verse fragments written on them,
poetic lines to find a place for, grocery
lists from last month.

I get distracted by too-small scripted words
that mimic extinct birds flying overhead,
scrawled words with exclamation marks,
clouds and stars signaling their hierarchy
on the wow-write-this-now-scale,
or hieroglyphics of pyramid proportions
that keep me inspired for hours, writing
about what I think I was jotting down
but most times just writing and writing.

I’m a list maker, no reforming me.
I never toss them, they span decades
of do this and I didn’t, go there before
and I missed it, don’t forget and I did.
My friend tells me to use a calendar
to jot down important dates and info but
I have yet to find a calendar with boxes
big enough to hold the reams of written-
on stacks that keep my desk useful.

~ J R Turek
June 27, 2020
Hour 6