The Poetry Marathon

My Dear Dora – Hour 1 Prompt

She raised her son and nephew
On a housekeeper’s pay
She made sure their hearts
Knew love every day

Her smile was so genuine
Her morals so strong
Her faith was divine
Each trait was life-long

She taught me that hard work
Paid off in the end
She showed me the value
Of being a good friend

I have tried every day
To be as strong as she
The utmost example
Of who I should be

My Great-Grandma Dora
My mentor, my light
With her memory to lead me
I know I’m alright

She gave me these gifts
I can only repay
By doing my best
To honor her way

Each day that I wake
I vow I will try
To make her the proudest
Angel in the sky

Angel on Earth (Hour 1, Prompt 1)

She did not have to do it.

She chose to anyway.

I was not family.

She didn’t have to stay.

She walked  beside me, through my most devastating days.

 

My mother’s battle with cancer was ending,

her days on earth were few.

There was so much work to do,

I was overwhelmed by pain and grief.

She walked besides me, providing sweet relief.

 

She helped me plan the funeral,

She helped me resolving the estate.

She gave me a place to sleep,

When the night watch was too great.

She walked beside me, a gift of love so sweet.

 

She knew my mother through their church,

Through my mother she knew me.

She walked beside me, an angel if I ever did see.

 

Poem 1

Turn away from the door

See me here as I lay

Had a life full of pain

Struck the match

Burnt the days.

Once in my youth

Life seemed sweet

Sunbeams long

Then days drag by

Man after man

Now sun is gone.

I drank it down
Laid head to ground
No more thinking
Blackened sound
As I drift off
Flies buzz round.

Invitations

The Dinner Party… a poem in 24 parts

20 line poetry… repeat words odd-numbered lines

 

Invitations

 

Only asking eight

What will I do

I have more friends than that

I guess for some, the next party will do

 

parchment paper

a fountain pen

International Gourmet Feast

I so happily pen

 

a chosen wine to bring

correlating with a particular course

and someone with bring champagne

that is a matter of course

 

a nine-plated meal

with a beverage to match

hoping my table’s enough

to avoid an elbowing match

 

Hooray! Everyone has RSVP’d

so now for stage 2

the shopping list

and table plans too

 

DeaBeePea  6-27-20

 

 

 

Wacky Waco

 

There once was a Texas town named Waco.

With an inferiority complex muy bueno.

But HGTV started airing Fix’er Upper,

And the town found many a fan and lover,

So Seattle snow birds will discover.

 

As a native Wacoan, who returned 20 years ago from the Intermountain West, I thought I would celebrate my hometown.

Poetic Prompt: Location 8:16 a.m. CDST

Her World

Bare feet
with dwindling heat,
entered this world
with hope of her own world.

The world,gloomy,grimmy
disheartened her,
every stride frightened her
despite she imagined her own world.

Rose queen
killed by her thorns,
left nothing to torn.
She rose again
with hope of her own world.

1: What Do We Need To Learn To Go Forward

We want to get back
always turning, looking
over a shoulder, a prayer
twist towards the ceiling
and sky. We topple to the
side, one or the other,
until we learn to look
down, center, pull in and
pull up, and then find
balance to look ahead
into the brightness.

Here is Song

Here is Song

In the thickness of grief, like clouds,
I found a song whose rhythm is like an icing to a cloud.
There are more, sharing your space with you.
But first, empty your body of pain, open it
into a room of playful things.
Become like a kid entering its toy park,
like a masquerade dancing in the village square,
like the earth welcoming the remains of mortality.

It has been here, a song.
But blindness pangs the eyes:
grief won’t allow you to sight beautiful things –
it knows you won’t die more than you’ve been killed.
A taste of this song would heal you into a divinity.

On occasions, my body slips into darkness.
I feel there should be songs to encrypt fear
into the body of what hunts me, a demon
whose home is the carcass of night,
calling our names – me, you
and even others unknown to us,
those whose vulnerability bar is always bloody.

There is song everywhere, in every thing,
even the sadness solitude gives you
hides millions of joyful songs in its feathers.
Here is how to make the song into a soother:
Listen – listen to things around you:
poems, birds, nature, chirping,
the clattering of spoon and dish,
and echo these words as chorus:
hope, healing, resurrection and blessings.

Roxane

She read to our class about rape and race,

More freckles than tears on her beautiful face.

She smiled and said reach out anytime,

A few months later, I did, when I felt my prime.

The kindness was gone, the smile dead.

Her rejection drilled through my heart and I bled.

I bought a pack of pills,

And drove to empty, paved hills.

 

I swallowed the words, the pills and pain,

Then the firefighters came.

Under fluorescent lights and tubes, I came through,

And to Joshua Tree, like a tumbleweed, I blew.

I never wrote her again, but her name pops up,

Her fame rises with each American cultural hiccup.

And I see those freckles in a different light,

She has already lost sight.

Dark

Close your eyes and fall.

Fall into that abyss that lies silently behind your line of sight,

Fall into a place where your thoughts are violent,

But your mind is still.

Close your eyes and fall into the darkness.

 

Let the emptiness caress your soul,

Remove the warmth of life and become colder than the headstone,

As your thoughts run dry and your fears fill up with life.

Recreate the feeling of death, remove the pain and just be cold.

Let your demons crawl out of your fears and fall,

Let them fall down your cheeks, have them caress your face,

In ways that people never could.

 

Now, pray,

Not for your forgiveness or your salvation.

But pray for the eternal damnation you have survived since birth.

Silently and secretly curse Heaven and Earth

As you fail to take your mind out of purgatory and blow out the flames

 

Now focus on the darkness,

Let it envelope you, inscribe letters on your body,

As you emerge from the darkness.

Now open your eyes and submerge those thoughts

Regret your life and wish death upon yourself

Utter a silent amen to cement your undying beliefs

Return the skeletons in their closets and let the darkness free.

~Baker