The Poetry Marathon

Time Slips Away – Hour 3, Prompt 3

I have so much I’m s’posed to do within
a day, within an hour, within a week, a minute
too. I just need to do so much each day,
like get through work and clean things up
a bit, as any adult does. Yet for me, this seems
impossible, a day’s tasks can take three weeks for me.

If I could tell you what time felt like, grains of sand just slipping,
maybe then you’d understand. Maybe you wouldn’t blame me.

In ten minutes it’s been an hour, in 20 it’s
been two, a single thing that matters so much,
and what can I do? I could just let it happen, oh,
it would be so much easier. Let dust to dust
instead of old age and fury run this room,
this studio apartment. If only I could pause a moment
hold it in this time, folded in on itself, unaging and
get things done as expected of me.

If I could tell you what time felt like, grains of sand just slipping,
maybe then you’d understand. Maybe you wouldn’t blame me.

My life’s a blip, I know that well, and what
blips can do I cannot tell you. There’s no
solution, no easy fix, and not only am I stuck like this,
but everyone else moves on so easy as if
blips could cause some major change. Their blips
seem fuller than mine, less transient. Less empty.

If I could tell you what time felt like, grains of sand just slipping,
maybe then you’d understand. Maybe you wouldn’t blame me.

Hour 3: My Home is a Sanctuary

I rarely leave my home, these days,

holding to familiar rooms

and tending to my garden.

I enjoy companionship

of family as they go about

their comings and goings.

My home is a sanctuary,

sheltering me from change.

 

I rarely leave my home, these days.

I have designed for most of what I need:

food, comfort, the ability to work,

pets that provide distraction,

but yet, I wonder if I

am drawing lines within myself

setting boundaries between

what I am and what I might become.

My home is a sanctuary,

sheltering me from change.

 

I rarely leave my home these days,

but if I did, where would I go?

I take walks by the creek,

venture into a store, before

returning home to wash my hands,

then tending to my garden.

My home is a sanctuary,

sheltering me from change.

A Pandemic Bop

Other people
are finding
too much time
on their idle hands.
I can’t relate, I seem to be
running on a hamster wheel.

(Where are the hamsters, anyway?)
My husband does the cooking now.
I stay up late. I haven’t read a book
for months. Instead, emails, the torrents
of bad news, one unthinkable reality
after another. I end each day wanting
hours more. Is my old life elsewhere,
running on a hamster wheel?

1000-piece jigsaw puzzles fill
my friends’ excess hours. Long
distance grandkids call. What about
grandparents? The virologists field
the questions. How much longer
running on a hamster wheel?

The Age of Reason

Its difficult to stay positive
When the world seems to be full of people
Who can’t listen, who won’t listen
To anyone they disagree with
Condemning the other side as evil or traitors
Rather than finding common ground

We are living in the age of reason
And we all seem to have a reason to hate right now

I understand why, its easier
To just believe that the other side are wrong
And not just factually but morally
Remove them from the debate because they don’t deserve
The consideration we show to the people who agree with us
And its not like they wouldn’t do the same thing to me
Nuance is the enemy
And compromise defeat

We are all living in the age of reason
And we all seem to have a reason to hate right now

But this is not sustainable people
We need to find common ground
Look across the barricade and see
Another human being
Confused, distressed, fatally flawed
No different from the rest of us

Dear Society

I cannot be a voice for the voiceless,

If everyone who wants to be heard wants to be louder than the next person,

But no one wants to listen.

We speak of doom but we are a society of sheep,

Herded by our own demise.

 

 

Where colour becomes coloursim.

Race becomes racism.

Where men call the streets home and women call it business.

Teenagers call it an insult.

And Americans call it a graveyard.

 

A place where the darker my skin is,

The deeper my roots are.

A place where being black has been the only thing that has stood the test of time.

And still the world grades us with an F in swear words against us.

A place where the black man has,

Developed a shell for each black insult they threw at him.

So his melanin became his armour and no one could hurt him.

And just when he learnt how not to care,

Learnt how to silence the world and be comfortable in his suit of armor.

They traded insults for bullets.

And masked murder as justice.

 

We all want to be the same,

Be the same characters in a never ending series.

Be approved by the same society that demands change,

But can never start it.

 

We will continue to fight a system that was never set up to protect us.

Continue screaming till our voices run drier than African wells in drought

Till someone hears us.

Till society makes a change.

Till the voice of every man is heard.

 

So don’t take this as another one of those inspirational poems or speeches

I cannot be a voice for the voiceless,

If everyone wants to be heard to be louder than the next person,

But no one wants to listen.

Afro’s Frame

My tight coiled hair fills the frame

Of an otherwise short existence

They tell me “heat. Add heat”

To straighten and elongate

What’s more they say it’s not enough

And so I add extra chemicals that burn

 

Good hair Bad hair White hair Black heir

 

The rain and humidity aggravates

My efforts to fit in to this tight box

My hair begins to shrivel

Outsiders laugh and gawk

Asking to touch what is not theirs

They think me eccentric

 

Good hair Bad hair White hair Black heir

 

All the posters all around straighten out

Can’t get me down

I take my tight coiled hair to shake

I watch it puff and expand and

Rightfully take command.

It’s natural. Treat it so. 100% mine

 

Good hair Bad hair White hair Black heir

Different (Hour 3)

The keys clattered loudly as her fingers flew,

The noise a soothing release of what felt she knew.

Their visions were different for the group,

She knew that when they met.

She kept on going just in case,

Things changed inside her head.

 

Stuck deep in the mire of longing,

Wanting to be seen and known, but scared.

Wanting it to be different, wanting people that would care.

The anxiety kept rising, week after week,

Different, not together, not able to express her doubts,

The group wasn’t what she hoped,  she had to find her way out.

 

Running wasn’t the answer, she did it every time.

She’d have to change her tactic, to try to more than just survive.

The meeting scheduled to talk, one on one with the group lead,

The very next day rescheduled, it was hard enough to believe.

Different, not together, though perhaps that was okay,

The meeting no longer needed, she was stronger yet that day.

 

 

Hour 3

“Jellybeans don’t have gluten…”
She offered, as if that negated the fact
That she ate half a bag before
I woke from a sound sleep.

I stood at the side table
Watching her munch on
Unsafe foods for her
Gentle belly
Knowing she would soon experience
Pain
Cramping
And a hundred needles
Pulsing through her
Gut
Ill since birth
Since
Pre-birth
Since I couldn’t feel her kicking
My own insides

It’s almost worth seeing her in pain
If it means I am seeing her.

How awful it feels
To admit that…

The Allure of Testing

NB: Very mild spoilers for Portal 2.

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What is the allure of testing?
Never resting, striving after
New disasters for the test
To best a challenge thrown
By unknown opponents
Enter the ring

Testing, proving,
Trying, moving,
Thinking, knowing,
Learning, growing.

GLaDOS knows her drive, her itch,
That which she says no longer rules her
Nothing fools her but herself, perhaps,
With traps of escalation.
The player, though, as well
As Chell, why seek the danger?
What is stranger than the human need
To feed on tribulation?

Testing, proving,
Trying, moving,
Thinking, knowing,
Learning, growing.

Tests are problems with solutions
Sweet dilutions of real stress
Lived duress with no way out
No doubt that’s why we fly
To try our metal in a place
With rules and bounds.

Testing, proving,
Trying, moving,
Thinking, knowing,
Learning, growing.

Each Time You Spit

Such outward sorrow as clads your smile

Betrays the secret you hold.

Far too long from haunting

it now acts with substance and you,

racked with self-imposed stains

have left it too late to lighten

 

And each time you spit, you will see it.

 

The weight upon the back of your neck

leaves you hunched over words.

A thickening pad between your shoulders

deforms your expectations for living.

It is in death you seek forgiveness

but you fail as it has rendered you

Helpless. Intention vomits over

all your thoughts and actions

 

And each time you spit, you will see it.

 

Such inward regret as darkens your heart

remains testament to your abject

cowardice every day you

refuse to clear your throat.

If you believe it is really too late

For laundry, for water, it is

 

And each time you spit, you will see it.