The Poetry Marathon

NINE

This year, in fourth grade, I changed schools

Though we still lived at the same location.

Long-closed in our town, with a reputation for ghouls,

Many decades old, the building underwent renovation.

 

Our new teacher looked just like TV’s Wonder Woman,

All the boys were moon-eyed and drooled,

Though for nine year-old males, that wasn’t uncommon,

To see them act like fools.

 

I was picked for a new advanced class.

Only my best friend and I were chosen, what fate!

One day we were given an all-day pass

To visit the governor of our state.

 

I have a photo somewhere as I’m standing by him.

What things I would say now, but back then I was much too prim.

Hour 9: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

The shape of restlessness

Sparkling in the night

Bated breath

Your love potion

Is pure poison

Your face, your ache

is familiar

 

Her well-loved eyes

A thin red circle

Where your heart used to be

In its stead, 

A pale gold odor

What a grotesque thing

Dear Jay,

What were you thinking?

The Feather Thief

A peculiar heist,

Not diamonds, or money,

But a feather tryst.

 

Ornithological sabotage,

Born from a feather obsession.

Crime scene in Tring

from the Natural History Museum.

 

Feathers from specimens

Centuries old;

Species from long ago

 

Extinct.

 

Stuffed into a bag,

No reverence

For the history

Or the species.

 

Ornate, rare feathers,

Treasures

For fishing

Has become an art.

Fly-tiers’ lips

Are sealed

About the crime.

“You don’t want to piss us off.”

prompt 11/12, hour 9 ~ against forgetting

Against Forgetting ~

It might have been the car’s fault, she told me
this when she lost her way home.
Or possibly I gave her the wrong directions.
To the house we shared??
Perhaps the names of plants she once knew
like those of her four daughters
whom she would lose as well
shook loose with overuse.
Never mind, I reassured her, it’s all okay.
But it wasn’t.

It might have been bad luck, of course:
the kind that seems so much worse befalling
those we love. I knocked on all the woods
I saw, and looked for four-leaf clovers.
It didn’t help.
Nothing did, certainly not time.

Days soon became nameless, as faces lost
context. The names she thought she knew
so well faded into then. And even though
I was against all forgetting, my name
too slipped through the cracks within her.
Until all that remained were the cracks
almost smooth from finger tracing.
A writing that might yet make sense.
Except it never did.

And now, like a softly ticking bomb,
I am still. Against forgetting.

Fruit of the Gods

Flying over flooded streets

I see the water rise.

My car is over there!

I think.

No.

Where did it go?

Let me drive from back here.

Backwards.

Who are you that leads me?

2019 #9 The Remains of the Day (title of novel by Kazuo Ishiguro)

I see it, and long for its extension

The drawing of darkness over light

It gives me cover over my present failures

Inaction and forward motion intersect

And fight over my soul.

In those waning moments of daylight’s decline

I just watch, an outsider to my own struggles

Marking and recording

So that when the sun sets I can simply call it a day

And claim to start fresh in the morning.

But in those minutes when the sky blushes deep red

With pride or perhaps with some shame

I take my desire

For love, for connection

And put it slowly to sleep

It fidgets-it aches with energies unused

But I prevail, before the brightness finally falls.

Poem 10: “Remove the Dis from My Ability”

don’t dis my ability to love

Get Well Soon

No one sends you cards
wishing you a swift recovery.
No one praises you as a survivor,
as someone who “beat” it,
this demon you wrestle with every day.

Because no victory is decisive,
no all clear, no all better, no cure.
The enemy persists, insurgent,
invisible, intractable, inside you.

And I’m out here, watching you fight
this war I can be no part of,
carrying a burden I can’t shoulder.
Feeling you struggle against limits,
imposed by no one for no reason,
that you have to live with and within.

I won’t tell you to get better;
That prayer has been denied.
There are a thousand useless things
We’ve said, and done, and tried.
But know this much, my love:
I watch your fight with pride.

Every day is a chance to quit,
to lose, or fade.  To die.
Every time, you choose the other way,
Stare demons screaming in the eye.
I can’t know how much it costs you,
To give each day a valiant try.
But know I’m filled with wonder,
As you let your battle-banner fly.

Hour 9: Post 9: Dreamscapes and Time Travel

Dreamscape or time travel

Which calls my name in the dead of the night

Oh how I  feel my dreams may be more thrilling than traveling back

Into the time in which I was myself

Not this bitter, cold hearted, evil bitch

They all seem to distance themselves from

Maybe if they could just see through my eyes

The pain and betrayal in which I have witnessed

They would understand how traveling back

Would do more harm than good

Live and let die

He was a martyr, an advocate, a hero, a beacon of light, a legacy like no other. Liverpool was his

inception and, from there, things could only go uphill. Despite a less-than-amiable upbringing, he cruised

to success as the invasion began. From a quarryman to

a beatle to his own man, he was the father to two countries and we spent so much time with him. At the park together, we always gave peace a chance, imagined what xanadu would be like and paid homage to the working class heroes as we celebrated the end of war, looking at cloud 9 in the rearview mirror.

December 8th was the shot heard round the pond. Words failed to describe the mass hysteria and utter despair that flowed through the streets day in and day out. The deafening silence was exacerbated only by the lack of recourse reverberating throughout the world. Sometimes, I still go back and read chapter 27 whenever it suits me.

The perpetrator still draws breath, having spent nearly three decades in a state of supermax. Though we can never absolve him, we can still find it in ourselves to offer our forgiveness. It’s exactly the way he would have wanted it.