The Poetry Marathon

Grow

Grow

Dearest,
Your have one charge in this life, GROW

Grow like fire
Sometimes tame and sustained
Other times voraciously clearing the land
Always emanating light and seeking fuel

Grow like water
Sometimes permeating and nourishing
Other times flooding and terrain reshaping
Always gathering to yourself molecule by molecule

Grow like air
Sometimes playful and inquiring
Other times twisting and carrying away
Always transforming and ineffable

Grow like earth
Sometimes steady and compressing
Others shaking and remaking
Always a story layered on stories

Erasure of the Constitution of the US of America

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish

Justice, insure domestic

Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general

Welfare, and secure the Blessings of

Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Pocket

I am a writer, and my currency is words.

Some authors carry wallets, dictionaries, thesauruses

readily at hand.

I keep my words like loose change,

jumbled in my pocket.

My vocabulary pocket, I am loathe to say,

does not do its job.

A phrase gets caught on something else,

stray syllables lost in deep corners.

My mental fingers are not nimble

enough to wedge them free.

Speaking is a nightmare,

grabbing verbs instead of nouns,

fumbling with my payment

to purchase social           .

Oh no.

It seems my pocket     a hole.

That         thing always      me down!

I’m so sorry       like this.

me      some patches

Before                  out.

almost

!

oops.

prompt #15, hour 12 ~ erasure

See the way I have of growing?
November.
I find myself pausing
before funerals.
Prevent me stepping into the sea.
This is a philosophical flourish
nothing surprising.
All men cherish the ocean.

Hour 12: Where is Anne Boleyn’s Head?

Where is Anne Boleyn’s Head?

Traitors

Displayed on spikes

A warning to others

Heads on spikes

Anne’s head

Ladies covered over it as soon as it had fallen

Carried away lifted removed and wrapped

In a chest here ready

Laid to rest beneath the chancel

There they remained

A skeleton small

Beneath the chapel floor

Ashes

Torn apart
By words on a page,
On a picture,
By you.
Destruction of the person,
You once loved
To make you the victim.

I’m ash,
Surrounded by the flames,
Of the lies, you have told.
Bleeding from word bullets,
From people, I have never met.

Our love,
Relegated to,
The wish I never
Pile.
Was it, truth?
Was I a lie?

Destroyed!
Broken but
I will find a way to
Rise again.
A Phoenix,
Of Love.

Hurry

Hurry, Hurry!

I’m late for a very i.portant date

Like the White Rabbit,

I am often scurrying to and fro

Usually with multiple children in tow.

And it never fails,

No matter where I’ve hurried off to-

It is more of the same

Life has become a waiting game.

And that’s why I am trying to learn

To stope and smell the roses-

And why I don’t mind being just a tad bit late.

You Are the One (Poem #12)

Its dark

And I’m scared

I don’t know how to explain this feeling

One person on my right

Another on my left

They begin to pull in opposite directions

As if I was a doll that two kids were fighting over

I feel the desires of my life swelling in my heart

I also feel my fears and desperation

They are surrounding me

They are trying to consume me.

Why do I have to go through this?

Can’t there be a sparkle of hope

I want to trust and know

Yet I doubt and cower

God

I need you

I am crying for you to comfort me

Hold me in your arms

Reach down and save me from myself

I am not giving up or giving in

I am simply giving it to God

He is the only one who can take this

He is the only one who can fill this emptiness

He can surround me in His love

He can take care of me

I am not alone

God

You are the only one

The light in my darkest moment

You are the one

We forged on…

Erasure poem using p. 143 of art sex music by Cosey Fanni Tutti (Faber & Faber, 2017):

 

We forged on—
artists, poets and musicians

He was wild
dangerous and uncompromising

I was stuck at a local factory
for quite a while

I’d been practising
and felt pretty good about my organ

It was coming along
for an arduous journey

I loved fun

Any hitches were
never a problem

He’d just smile
and use

 

---

(22 June 2019, Hour 12)

 

 

 

Erasure- The Hills

 

The nature of hills

Burned up chrome

Aspiring to the high plains

Sun glare drowned in the surface

And black flows after rains.

In the small valleys

Evaporating levels of dry lakes are

Steep, heavy, dark and bitter with the deposits

A thin crust lies over the area

The wastes to the sand shows the sculpture

More storms scar them

And the desert edges are famed at last.

A hill expects to depend upon

For they are slow

Here the hot death rolling where always

A heavy dust

Whirling into the earth or called for violence

Lost in love, yet visited inevitably

If not so little of it.

 

From: The Land With Little Rain by Mary Austin