Gentle cusps
Slight gentle cusps of fragrance and color
Taken up from their generation
Cut bleeding torn in half
The visible seized and invisible left ignored.
Little prayers
Little prayers written away on my little screen
So much hope and yearning
Not sure they will be heard
Maybe light coincidence improve
A matter of faith
No intercession,
nor reply.
Themselves a word offering,
raised up to what appears divine.
She prayed for others,
Not for me,
I am still new at this.
If I adore her,
it lets me feel.
The temple floods.
She is tired of being devoted,
and overwhelmed by her devotees.
I came too late
Atheist to herself
Agnostic to me.
I priest offer something
on behalf of the world,
contrite and crying,
forgive us all that is past,
none know what we do.
A slight passion on me
for former sinners.
Little Via Dolorosa
She sets me on,
she walks it often.
Grace I cannot deserve.
As above, so below,
make that loving contact
before it all falls down,
and we return back as before.
Flora
A pettled being wrapped in a prefab condo building,
Struggling to push up through the crust
Sunlight feeling so far above
Richness of lightless abode of soil
Rotten decaying regenerating sustenance.
The pool exhibited by the laundry room accompany this venue for my alchemy,
Without historic churches or market places, tradition is only left inside.
The land wiped clear cut off from the humans here before
Thrown together like a cargo cult,
Is this sprawling parking lot my rose garden?
Here I found my flower, calling me to devotion as my Goddess
Here where they killed all pagans
and built strip-malls over ritual spirit lands.
We can still grow here
together.
The rotation of places help reveal the only things I can take with me.
If she can bud in such grey senseless plastic
what blooms await elsewhere.
That night
Must enter her other mindset before she arrives
Weirdly standing back supporting loving
Cant I do all the same
But still wow, alone home writing during
Thinking imagining where she is
Two different paths in my mind
One knows she did this many times
One wildly enticed and struggling
Last night dreaming about it – the seedy allure
She still makes me feel special
She works hard to make it ok
My calming mother about to fucked and spat on
I would do the same
I did the same
If I had slept I would be anxious
Feeling mechanical
I want to accept her love, weird a niggle holds me back
Fleeing to her immediately
She pulls back from kissing me
Her loving mouth still in its numb mode.
she doesn’t want to inflict the corruption
I think she must feel unlovable
Enacting to be so totally used
Exposed to what blights her peace and darkens from her earliest days
She expects it to happen again, better on her terms than against
Not drugged and not sold, but voluntary this time.
Every rational cog dedicated to justifying
an object in someone else’s game
The empty saying of nice things is a tiny cost for such lust.
Finding someone already ‘broken in’ by trauma
a gift of an outlet for those wanting to abuse.
Earliest intimacy determining
Before she could think this went inside.
Play a return to childhood,
but what a childhood!
I met her there, on the floor, in the saliva and unknown semen.
In heart I held her hair back and touched her tears.
She couldn’t hug him in the end – she couldn’t pretend this time.
She knew I was there.
I am no better, almost certainly worse.
I give her all of me knowing I will always fall short.
He fucked me too
Its not new
Comfortably numb beside my love
Two half children attempting a whole.
Student
She makes me feel like her student
Kissing at the feet of my naked guru
Giving me a purity of thought beyond my concepts
integrating the parts of me
Asking me what I need
Giving me what I ask
Caring about her footprints
Humbling me
Opening up my child
Making it feel ok
I don’t have to hide
She lets me be vulnerable
There is no shame in being broken
Six degrees later and only now I feel like I am learning
How can I preserve such a treasure
She is given to the world
She is my seminar
I don’t learn any anecdotes
She reaches in and shows me myself
Patience beyond any mother
Compassion utterly beyond my own
How can I be worthy of such love
How can I become like that
All my pretensions fail
I flounder in having anything to offer
Another poet she made in her school
Her devotees are endless
How arrogant am I to seek to be chief Chela
I don’t know how to be – then I never knew how to be
But only with her do I see it
An unmoved limb pathetically flaps in me
Helpless
Struggling
Makes me desperate for her gaze
As I know she can see me
I don’t get seen – I hide with security so complex
How can I live now
The scales fall from my eyes
I am so transformed and yet still me
Maybe this is what calmness feels like
I know there are others – yet she makes me feel the one
What a terrible demanding child I am
I just forgot I never got this
I forgot that behind it all
The way to calm the constant whirl
Which is so constant I thought it normal
Is just to be accepted
I am so afraid of this unknown.
Nameless
Nameless as I don’t dare name
Staring into darkness on black
Abject use play toy horror not worth a name object to use fuck pass around next
Not worth a bother
All the effort I can muster for you
So little
Annoying me
Go cry to death elsewhere
I’m busy
Did all I can
Did all for me – what are you anyway
Just a thing for me
Not worth a name
Can’t now name herself
Could be anything
Scared of what really is
Endless dark
No way out
Suppress
Tread dark evil water
Desperately
Don’t ripple
It will drown me
One drop too much
Barely holding up
Sinking
Choking
Choke me
Daddy
Hurt.
Hurt me
All I can
Numb it away
Fucking made me feel
Nothing.
2020
I look forward to this event every year. Like a kid at Christmas. 😍
Marathon Goals and Poetic Dreams
No one believed I could write a novel in 72 hours. When I signed up for the International 3-Day Novel Contest in 2009, no one in my circle of author friends had heard of it and no one thought the concept was “possible.” It turned out to be the most exhilarating 72 hours of my life. I pounded the keyboard from midnight Friday of Labor Day Weekend until mid-evening Monday, taking a couple of quick power naps along the way. I used about three hours to lightly edit and add some scenes until 11 p.m. and hit “print” before the midnight deadline. I’d done it. I’d created and completed a novel of over 51,000 words in three days. I was exhausted. I was delirious with joy. I was mentally obliterated. I fell onto my pillow with a smile that I still remember wouldn’t leave my face as I sank into sleep, sleep, sleep.
I repeat the process every year, chasing that high like the proverbial “dragon” that addicts seek to re-reach. And each time I type “the end,” it’s as if I’ve conquered some incredible journey…which…of course…has to be edited like hell.
Now I’m gonna try this with poetry and I’m stoked to dive in! The darling and delightful sun conure you see in the picture posted here is Petri, my muse. He passed away September 2018, leaving a hole in my life that I fall into from time to time. I have a feeling there’ll be more than a few poems about his awesomeness this weekend. I look forward to sharing his greatness with the world.
Thank you for reading and getting to know a little bit about my wacky writing adventures. I hope this poetry weekend is a success for each one of you, whatever “success” means for you in the goals you’re setting!
All my best to you,
SandyLender
Hello Again!
I’m so excited! This stretched me so much as a writer and my ability to push through when I feel like I can’t write anymore. Let’s do this!
Getting ready
I don’t know if people post a lot of things on here that are not related to poetry, but I’m trying to journal the whole experience. Today I started a new notebook for the marathon and planned a tentative list of what my poetry goal will be for each hour. I’ve collected poetry scraps from my other notebooks that were just waiting for the right time (or really any time as a single parent home during COVID) and Saturday is the time.
I’m curious about how other people prepare or if they just jump right in. Do you use the time to revise drafts? Do you look out the window and just go? Do you stay in one place the whole time or do you move about and write in all places inside and out?