24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
I promise nothing
That you won’t kneel
And that you won’t beg
That there will not be pain
But at the end of the day
There’s you and me, side by side.
We can watch the world burn,
Or we can be strong together.
Share the pain, shoulder it all.
No place will ever be sacred,
No haven except in our arms.
No surrender, no end.
But fight together as we do.
no promises, no demands.
Love is a battlefield.
we are the champions
we poets of the night
words filled with magic
written in form
rhythmically metered
lyrically dancing
from fingertips and brain
spewed across the page
we are the champions
yes champions my friend
Another marathon, has come to an end
words forever engraved
the laughter , the bonds
and memories made
Amanda Potter©: 2019 Poetry Marathon
A strategy for daily living by Ari Kiev MD:
“Several years ago a young businessman visited my office with a very unusual request.”
He offered me no money.
He was all alone.
He had a strange look of indifference in his eyes and that’s what scared me the most.
He had idle hands that fidgeted as he smoothed over his pinstripe suit while he stood there at my office door.
He pulled out a robin’s egg blue handkerchief to dab the perspiration than was forming on his forehead.
Who was this man who came into my office?
Who and what was he looking for?
I had no idea no clue.
He didn’t even make a fuss.
He needed someone he could trust.
Not a woman, not a man, a kindred spirit without an agenda.
He needed me more than I needed myself and that was the first clue of my unrest.
Why had he chosen me at such a time?
I, who had all he needed.
What was I to do?
Give him more time to hear his plea.
Or better yet, to ask myself simply,
How could he need me more than I needed myself?
I shut the door and quickly ran to look in the mirror to see if I was still me.
All rights reserved copyright (c) 2019 Natasha Vanover
Exhausted from the weight of all the words
the poet settles in, enjoys the birds
as they begin to sing in the rising sun
and he feels the joy of finishing what he’d begun.
He didn’t swing a bat or kick a ball.
He didn’t slap a puck or scrap and brawl.
He simply played with words and so he knows
that he performed the work of his great heroes.
And so, like them when they passed some great test
he burrows in his blankets. He’s earned his rest.
All like him, each poet left still standing fiercely shows
that like the old ones, there are new poet heroes.
love has taken wing
fluttered first
frissons of desire
flickers of delight
fire licks and flits
roars and in the flames
births another kind of love
born in pain
then glory held to breast
a mother’s love
father’s adoration
family bound until death
though bonds may break
souls suffer from the loss
die to keep it
kill to lose it
the need, the want
unbidden but fundamental
cannot be denied
Still
I want you as the morning stills, birds not
yet singing their songs, clouds still unformed, hiding
beneath the red horizon, waiting.
I want you as the noon shines down, blaring
like a trumpet’s call, paws and feet pounding
against the soft and hardened ground.
I want you as the sky turns to gray turns
to black, and stars begin to swirl, as the dust settles
for the night, ready to rise again day after day.
Every day, it seems
The news, and many memes
Feature stories of what men are
Doing wrong.
Famous men of means,
The few, act as if they’re queens
Or kings as the case
May be.
Their penis is their sword
And, without a word
They penetrate the
Woman of their dreams
It seems.
Never a woman of means.
Another one bites the dust!
Each day we simply must
Put away these awful men of meanness!
These mean men of means.
It seems they’ve lost their minds
Left empathy behind
Love, they’ll never find.
Mean men of means.
“We are the World” by Mandy Austin Cook
“Lets realize that a change can only come
when we stand together as one.”
it was her solo
and I wanted it.
the first time i remember feeling jealousy
was when she was handed that tune in choir
we were both 10 years old at the time.
but it was a good lesson
because it was someone BELOVED
and it gave me PERSPECTIVE.
I decided to be happy for her
and it was a choice
I chose to love.
Sometimes love is an emotion
But often love is a DECISION.
Remember to Choose Love.
The instrument let out it’s awful sound.
No matter the time given to practice,
there were but two options:
rhythm OR notes that didn’t screech.
Each screech left Bennet’s ears on edge.
The intercom crackled.
“Please have your pupil come to the office
Prepared to leave for the day.”
Another screech and then
The poor, screeched-out accordion was boxed.
And that was the last it saw daylight.
There was screeching and boxes,
But not about music.
Daddy had died.
I climbed out of bed and fumbled through the hallway to the bathroom,
rubbing my sleepy eyes with my tiny fists, even though Momma had told me not to.
I lifted the lid and lowered my Strawberry Shortcake Underoos to my ankles,
grabbing hold of the sink to help hoist my not-quite-three-year-old booty up on the potty.
As the golden stream started to ebb and flow, curiosity got the best of me,
as it so often does with children. I opened my eyes and looked in the bathtub to my right,
and screamed like the little girl that I was!
There was a dead man in my bathtub!!
Fully dressed in a plaid western shirt and faded jeans, he lay semi-sprawled about the tub,
his arms and legs dangling freely over the porcelain edges, head tilted back against the faucet,
eyes closed tight, mouth half open though no sound came out.
Momma rushed in and shook him back to life. Turns out, Clifton wasn’t dead,
only drunk.
Identical twin boys plagued Mrs. McCurdy, my kindergarten teacher.
Danny and Donny Barlow.
The school saw fit to separate them, leaving Danny in the morning class,
while Donny attended afternoons with us. Soon, he was my boyfriend.
We stole a kiss under the table when we thought no one could see us.
Summer passed, and another fall. Rain flooded the streets of our hometown,
leaving drainage ditches to look like swimming pools. Danny dove in…
and never came out.
Holding Momma’s hand as we stood at his gravesite, I wondered why I wasn’t crying
like everyone else around me. I overheard my mother talking to Ms. Barlow and learned the twins’
little brother Billy had been hit by a Mack truck and broken his little leg. Spotting a familiar face,
I turned loose of Momma’s grip and wandered across the grass where Mrs. McCurdy stood.
I noticed her eyes were dry like mine. She smiled down at me and hugged my neck.
“It’s okay not to cry,” she said softly, squeezing my hand as she answered my unasked question.
Momma always told us stories of what a wonderful woman Edna Earl, our great-Grandma Burden was.
But the woman we knew growing up was different. Stricken by dementia and confused and often angry,
we only saw the cranky grouchy side of her. She didn’t like it when we were loud, or had friends over.
Little girls weren’t supposed to play with little boys. We were supposed to be seen but not heard whenever our great-grandmother was awake. Saturday nights at 7pm were meant for Gunsmoke.
I remember Momma crying on the phone with Granny. I was ten, my baby sister was eight. Dad told Momma to do what she had to do. He dropped her off at the hospital while we waited in the car.
Then he drove us across town to Putt-Putt. We dumped roll after roll of quarters into Rampage as the three of us sat there playing Godzilla, King Kong, and a third mega monster I can’t recall, bouncing from city to cartoon city, smashing skyscrapers and helicopters and anything else in our paths.
Edna Earl was called home that night, but all I remember are screen shots of animated wreckage Dad and Rachel and I had left behind.
(This poem was inspired by prompt for hour 23, to create a poem about your childhood in one to five numbered parts.)