The Poetry Marathon

Mathura Bypass

The brick laden road of the 12th Enclave
Guides me to the pop-up stall.
I haven’t been here in 5 years,
Yet I know the way
Like a conquistador through a jungle

I turn the corner
And approach the sitting man.
I hand him my sweaty money,
And in return, I am greeted with
4 breads and two pots of rich stew.

I could close my eyes on the journey back
And hop over each missing brick and crack
Without troubling my heart.
The dung from the cows is a pungent smell.
It embraces my nose as I head back to my grandma.

I push open the metal gates to the compound,
Take off my shoes at the door,
And walk towards her with my feet on the cold tile floor.
I hand her the warm parcel of breakfast and the change.
For my arduous voyage, I am reimbursed in antique kisses.

2212 episode 3 Final Hour 3

2212 Episode 3 Final

Sergeant Jackson and Corporal Jones escape
They have a plan; to kill Lewie Pippin
They take the train from Frankfurt to Bremen
Bremen, home of Lewie Pippin

Lewie Pippin the man who started the war
Sergeant Jackson shoots Lewie in the eye
Throws him in the river
But he is not dead

In an army retirement home some years later
Sergeant Jackson shares a room with Corporal Jones
Lewie Pippin has found them
Slit and shot
Revenge complete

The Land Knows You (prompt 17, Hour 14)

The land knows you, even when you are lost.
She is you.
She never forgets.
Your juices are her juices.
Your flesh is her flesh.
In cold city offices,
In filthy concrete streets,
Dressed in your warmest and heaviest
coats and boots,
She knows you. She greets you
with cool wind in hot places,
with warm sun in cold realms.
She displays her changing beauties
whether you are there to see them or not,
in case you return.
She is one with your pain and your joy.
She teaches your children
small beauties before they know how to learn.
She remembers your people
from before they succumbed to civilization.
She has tasted your blood.
On foreign seas, in strange lands,
her breath travels to greet and remind you
she is there. Her dust will find you across oceans.
Her rain is born in your homeland
and carried to where you are to remind you.
You cannot get so far away that the land
forgets you. You are never so lost
that she will not find you.
The land knows you, even when you
have not put a seed in the earth in decades.
The land knows you, even when you are lost.
You are never lost.

 

8pm poem that i couldn’t post bc i was at work

Dripping, verdant land
The air is made fresh again
Life becomes pleasant.

Hour 14 HE WORE BOW TIES

He built the best damn furniture in the world
And he smelled like sawdust. He wore bow ties
At night and let his limbless hair unfurl.
A thousand miles away she saw him in the skies.

Hour 14: Lost

On days when the world is too much

And I feel lost in neon and concrete

I walk into the woods and breath in

I let the ground reawaken my soul

I let the stream bubble joy into my chest

I walk and walk until I can feel myself

Until I can face chrome and glass again

The Long Road

Missing you as I would do,

Letting old acoustic guitar stir awake

Long, slow sweet memories of country driving,

Your voice in my ear, low and husky with sleep

As a quiet counterpoint memory playing accompaniment

While country miles whistle by.

Slipstream wind coasting through an open window,

Coming home to a place I’ve never driven,

But in a primal way it hasn’t been forgotten,

The smell of morning dew on lightly damp earth,

Fresh green and nodding starburst morning glories

On rusted fences, and though I’m driving home,

It’s to you that I want to drive back to, and

There are miles and miles between us,

You’re home to me, the long road back home.

 

in response to the prompt of hour 14

 

 

Grandma Sharon Talks to Her Teenaged Self

You couldn’t have known that law school
was out of the question,
when you were Girl of the Month your senior year
and answered the question about your future plans.

No one told you, because your parents didn’t know,
how hard it is to pay for college
when you don’t know how
to navigate the system.

Your job at the Mexican restaurant,
just you and the owner on weekends,
paid the rent. The landlord’s garden
yielded turnips. You didn’t like turnips.

So, what’s a girl to do?
Get a full-time job, taking classes here and there.
It took another twenty-five years
to get your graduate degree,

find the job that you were meant to have,
teaching kids to read and write.
You couldn’t have known then,
that it was your calling,

something you might have missed
if you’d been more affluent,
if you’d had more information.
Luck.

I don’t believe in fate now.
You didn’t believe in it then.

Prompt 16/Metonymy

An editor with whom I worked
always talked about the rags
he wrote for
with a sort of defiant pride.

They may have just barely survived,
but he was around to nurture them
and sip from amber memories
every time
he coached us fledglings
to kill our babies.

I watched
as my own stories
gushed my mentor’s resources
and embarrassed my conscience
in the week’s mail.

Now that we have fake news,
the yellow journalism of the Gilded Age
wears its mustiness
as a peculiar base note
for a world that views war as a movie
and calls “hanging out” sex.

The testimony of other men’s daughters
papers the walls of politicians,
and academics flog their credentials
to distance themselves
in flight plans.

The Yellow Kid poses
in front of a hotel
he’s just named
for himself.

Overtures

When I am lost, and far from all
The home I call my home will call
I remember my first view
Of the home I always knew
Walls and maps don’t mark this space
It’s the people, not the place
When I am lost, and far from all
The home I call my home will call.

Form: Based on an Octelle, but the imagery and personification part still needs work.

Prompt: Use this quote as a jumping-off place – “The land knows you, even when you are lost.”