Prompt 17, Hour 14
For this hour I want you to use the quote bellow by Robin Wall-Kimmerer from her book Braiding Sweetgrass as the jumping off point.
“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
Prompt contributed by Ramona Elke
Intercession
This sweet entreaty
Humble earnest request
Created in confined spaces
Meant to contain and yet
Breakthroughs are imminent
When challenges test
The strength of beliefs indeed
are empowered best
When destruction is menacing
and discord is rife
Rampant inexplicable chaotic moments
Give life
To an interruption
By excellence
This mastery reveals
Disproportionately administered favor in contrast to the previous ordeals
Suddenly and soon
Earth shaking
Vanquishing out of the blue
Unexpected transformstive blessings overflow
In accordance to the connection
Through
Intercession
Weirdward
Speculating the possibility of those things deemed unreal and far beyond the reach of reality.
How can it be so simple?
Contemplating the moment, I no longer fear death and reach into the realm of synchronicity.
How can it only be one life, one rhythm, and one call?
I need the answers to them all.
Bricks stacked one against the other to build a wall, aligning perfectly only for each one to fall.
Wondering why the opposition in my waking life contradicts the deemed natural laws of prosperity, forgiveness, and love.
Reminiscing about my past relationship with the one from above.
Manifesting forgiveness for another person’s wrong.
Taking in the elements of my past, present, and future to place on the offering plate.
Giving my ancestors a place to settle their debts and download the details of my fate.
Offering my last breath as I weirdward nightly to digress.
Lucky # 13 Walk into a Bar
When
Diabetes,
Retinopathy,
and Cancer
walk into an
Epstein Barr…
It’s no joke!
Insuperable
What do you want for dinner?
World Peace
Rubix Cubes
Reaching that place where lost socks go
The space between time and eternity.
You and me.
jj2019 2019 Poetry Marathon
Road
200 miles passed, and 200 to go.
Just enough gas to hit the next nowhere town
And drink, drink up to your fill.
It’s a bright day, and when you stop
The wind is a brisk friend whipping excitedly around your legs,
Waking you up, wondering if you remember it.
Sure. You remember long days of walking,
Merciless weather drumming the knowledge
That all you are is meat, and all you will ever be;
Or your bones do, your genes,
Passed down Lamarckian from ages past.
You let your friend go,
Knowing it could once again be foe.
Each waystation passes like clouds in the night,
Mile after mile after endless mile.
Your car eats them up with the crankiest purr,
Hungering, hungering ever for more.
Hour 13: Sciamachy
Sciamachy
Dream them up
Shadows upon the surface of the mind
Make them all, invite them in
Preoccupied with omens, prophets
Remnants of old memories, demons
Make them to drink them, invite them to fight them
Companions
Follow them, they follow you
Watch them, they watch you
Because a shadow is also a reflection
And a shadow is also an absence
You fill it to fight it, but you cannot win
Hour 13 PROPRIETY
The shackled place
From where they came
Had nothing to offer
Their daughter but shame
You can’t teach a son
What is good and right
When bullets sing
Him to sleep at night
When drugs and money
Dazzle his eyes
And what is correct
Is violence and lies
It isn’t correct
In a father’s heart
To choose who eats
And who must part
It isn’t right
It isn’t respectable
To raise your girl
In such a receptacle
So that’s why they
Are here tonight
Because this place
Is a little more right
How difficult
Can it be
To show a little
Propriety?
Prompt 13: coffee talk memories
coffee talk memories
moonbeams in the cold, black coffee
quakes in the chipped cup just out of reach of my fingertips
on that damn shelf you built for me:
glass shards in concrete,
wrapped in honey-stained fir…
re-purposed dock planks
where we first fucked, embraced by fog;
my heart breaking so loudly as to deafen me
in the hush of your back turning,
to leave me naked,
saying:
“See ya later. I’m headin’ to the Canteen
to wash you out of my mouth.”
(c) r. l. elke
Hour thirteen: Portrait of my gender as a subway
I am still a traveler in an unfamiliar land,
Everyone knows where they’re going,
how to hold on without falling, which
set of doors will open next. Everyone
arrives at a place that is warm
and welcoming, but all I know
is the sound of wheels on tracks.
It’s safer to remain in transit
than to get off at the wrong stop
or to build a home in a new place,
praying that some light in the window
will one day belong to me.