The Poetry Marathon

And the Gardener Likes to Drink Tea

And the Gardener Likes to Drink Tea

Eves come no longer to pick up
Sweetness of flowers and fruits
Fondness of streams and dreams
Scent of forest is long gone
Maddening patches of soil in turmoil
Homes and domes are razed

And the gardener likes to drink tea

Rabit and tortoise stopped racing
Jokes enlive Elephant and ant
Peacocks have no plumes to gift
As ladders replace snakes in pits
Head bows to new concrete god
Smoked out lungs crying insane
Run for currency surpasses all
Selfish minds corroding the earth

And the gardener likes to drink tea

Wood will revive the dense
Water will wash the roots
Wind will gather the souls
Let’s own a forest like we own a car
Flowers will bloom again
Eves will return home

And the gardener likes to drink tea

 

Hour 3

@varenyas

A recipe for self-love

1. Music 
2. Laughter
3. Dog or cat
4. Favorite shoes
5. Loved ones

 

• Prior to assembling your ingredients, locate your bathroom scale and full length mirror. Take your sledgehammer and go to town. Do not rest until they are no longer recognizable. They are not accurate measures of your self-worth. 
• Music. Next, turn on your favorite song. Dance! Dance naked if you must. Feel the joy that is inside of you. Celebrate your body as it moves in time with the music. This body has been there for you in spite of the neglect it has suffered. Thank it for never abandoning you, for helping you to move through life.
• Add laughter. Watch a movie, talk to your funniest friends. Get that belly laugh going. Laugh until you cry.
• Put on your favorite shoes. The shoes that put a pep in your step. The shoes that still fit regardless of the freshman 15 or the Covid-19. You know the ones.
• Spend time with your cat or your dog. They think you are the best human ever and so should you! Feel how it feels to receive that unconditional love. It feels good, right?
• Surround yourself with your loved ones. They see you the way that you should see yourself. You are a beautiful mother, wife, daughter, friend. 

On some days, you may add the ingredients in a different order or not even all of them. You may change the amounts and that’s ok. After the initial preparation, focus on what makes you feel good. Consider this the test kitchen. Over time, you’ll find the best combination for you.

Body

Not enough
Too much

A journey of delight my hands traverse
Plains and valleys
Curves and edges

A shame spiral
Button strained
Breathe in denial
Till I spill out

Im sorry

I should never have tried to make you fit
Its just that they told me
That you were unfit
Any bigger and they would have never even noticed you

They just didnt know
That you have never needed to fit
That your nature may be water
But you have never conformed to a container

If you must be contained then let it be in clothe made for you
Custom to your dimensions

My body
I have told you that you are

Not enough
Too much

I was wrong

I am sorry

You have been many things
and will be many more

Poem 5

The day I drank the bottle
He was customer
23

Not a record
Not a mention
Often 40 or more for me.

He slapped me once.
I felt a slight sting
Though he struck like a spooked horse
Stamping round the ground.

Swollen flesh
Hot to touch
Means a dollar to me.

20 more bruises I shall be able to pay my room fee.

On this day I thought a thought.
A mistake
Any day.

I thought of not the current lumps and sore bits and today – but on to tomorrow’s pain.

When I did

God rest my soul

I drank the bottle whole.

Junk

In the table, there is a junk drawer,
An island of misfit minutiae.
Are the batteries new or depleted?
Scissors and tape tossed here after a gift wrapping session.
A cork trivet bearing a beer logo from a bar on a faraway night.
Old ink pens, loose buttons, and half a blue taper candle, used to color a Chianti bottle.

Now there is the junk folder, a hoarder of information,
Collecting messages wanted and unsolicited.
So many best of the summer sales for seersucker and linen.
I can erase my crepey skin and lose those last tough ten pounds.
I can upgrade my gutters or sign up to find the love of my life–if any of that is needed.
But wait! Here is the message I have been searching for, the one I complained that I never received.

Now I must declutter the junk of my life, real and virtual.
No, I will not confirm my password and account number
To save the children, or the whales, or the Nigerian prince.
I did not really win that lottery, the IRS is not seeking payment, and my car warranty is just fine, thank you very much.
I will not keep the cork from the bottle I shared with someone who turned out to be no one.
I do not need the instructions to an appliance I no longer own or the ticket stub from a movie I don’t remember.

But I will keep that cork trivet, whose memory still makes me smile.
And maybe the two large rubber bands and pile of paper clips to McGyver my rescue somehow, just in case.

2020, poem 4, prompt 4 – write a letter

Dear Jean

The pheasant has not been seen since you left us
but the first time she returns to my garden
I will think of our last conversation,
how you had laughed at me joking about choking it.
How dizzy I felt encouraging you to take deep breathes
in through your nose and out 1,2,3,4,5, through your mouth.
If there’s one good thing to come from your passing
it’s the return of your granddaughter who has felt
the gulf of being overseas when there is a family crisis.

We are ticking our way, slowly, through the firsts.
First Easter,
first Mother’s Day,
your first born
has had his first birthday
without you
and his dad told him he would get his present in heaven.

4th Grade

She lay on her back

Her jacket was too big

 

Fresh dying leaves on top

Rotten dying leaves on bottom

 

The coming frost bit the end of her nose

Her hair tickled her neck

The zipper grazed her ear lobe

 

The branches croaked over head

Under the sway of spared trees

 

No one liked her

And she would never know why.

 

#Prompt5

Hour 5 Prompt 5

Hubble Deep Field

void
BANG
light
all here
all light
now touches you
yet past
a certain point
we can no longer see

The Revolt Poet – Spot the Difference.

1. Powerful & Continuing Nationalism:
   I think it is safe to say, without expansion, that’s still present in both of them.
2. Disdain for Recognition of Human Rights:
   Is that not why advocates for peace and left wingers are deliberately mischaracterised, as terrorist sympathisers?
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause:
   Racial otherisation, mass incarceration common, and anti-Communism of course
4. Supremacy of the Military:
   Poppyganda, false heroism & Armed Forces Days, to silence dissention, if their flag you refuse to wave
5. Rampant Sexism:
   Creating a “female” leader who was the most repressive of all, lying to Parliament and the public to facilitate territorial war.
6. Controlled Mass Media:
   Like where the whole scene, is controlled by 6 to 8 men? None of whom pay tax as non-doms, supported by Government friends
7. Obsession with National Security:
   See number 3. Prevent. Trident. Armoured Police.
8. Religion and Government are intertwined:
   These days, that has been lessened, fine, but I’d suggest that’s just a feature of these modern times,
   For evidence of this research Crusades or Holocaust in India, and you will find
   Or Iraq and Afghanistan – another war, another lie.
9. Corporate Power is Protected:
   Another obvious one – see military industrial complex.
10. Labour power is suppressed:
    A straight line can be drawn from the Chartists, and the suffragettes, to the fact teaching unions were castigated for daring to suggest
    That it should be safe for their return to work, and it wasn’t yet.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts:
    Like charging Lowkey with inciting terrorism, from within his bars?
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment:
    Cynthia Jarret. Kelso Cochrane. End of argument.
13. Rampant Cronyism & Corruption:
    Like when the Royal Family keep there assets in a tax haven?
14. Fraudulent Elections:
    Like in 2016, where the dark web and spending breaches won with a slogan?

They are the 14 faculties of Fascism, according to Dr Britt
So I’d ask Brits,
With common sense,
And on that evidence

Fascism & Collonialism
What’s the difference?

Smiles

Smiles
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine
and shadows will fall behind you.” Walt Whitman

I smile because frowning causes wrinkles.
I smile because things can really be worse.
I smile because I deserve happiness.
I smile because the world is full of dark places
I choose not to go into.
I smile because it’s contagious and infectious,
there’s no cure.
I smile because I might be the only good part
in someone’s day.
I smile because it’s easy, free, positive
and can bring peace
…some day

Margarette Wahl