The Poetry Marathon

Hour 6

Sliding Sonnet for a Side-Bitch

 

The air is cold, the night is deep

and I on bended haunches creep

like feral dog, to where you sleep

more like than not, untroubled

 

I express a desperate whine

outside your door, the thousandth time

open up, oh please be mine

my simpering love redoubled

 

This pathetic vigil faithfully kept

all the nights while you slept

in company you despised except

when I came close enough to meet them

 

You pet me, praise me, throw me a bone

then leave me shivering out here alone

outside your oh-so-happy home

promising one day, one day I shall unseat them.

 

A master’s hand is a brutal thing

when encased inside a metal ring

Hour 9

And swiftly on to the next cheap checkpoint to keep me afloat until I kick into gear…

Happy birthday, you

and now blow out the candles

Your wish goes unheard

 

Uprooted

Gentle hands lift me up,
Whisper sweet things
You think I can't hear.

Plunge me down
Into the soft black,
Half bury me.

Sweet things once again
Now you give me a drink
And pat around me.

I don't know much
About windowsill life
But I'm sure I'll grow to like it here.

Prompt 11, Hour 9 The Light Between Oceans

When the sun rises,

the light house rests.

The mermaid meets him in the waves,

accepting his seashell with a kiss.

They lay together on the dock, intertwined

and drunk on life.

When its time to go,

She holds herself up with her arms

on the dock,

and slips back down into the ocean.

He watches as she swims away; rising and falling within the waves,

her teal tail glittering in the sun.

his heart is reaching out for her like a hand.

He searches for seashells for a few hours

and sleeps until the sun has set.

He returns to the lighthouse,

sending a signal for anyone lost,

while waiting for his own light

to return to him.

Finding Me (Haiku)

Waiting for love I
Found a man that taught me more
About who I am.

A Map of the World

I don’t need a map of the world. 

I just need a map 
to carry love
from my heart to yours 

and back again.

I'm not planning to stay or moving in. 

But I’d like to visit 
from time to time. 
And fantasize that you are mine.

Family

Do not see the cracks
Only see the love
Do not see the problems

Must keep going
Must stay together
Must not fall down

Can he stay?
Should he go?

See the cracks
Cannot feel the love
See the problems

Cannot keep going
Cannot stay together
Must fall down

Will he stay?
Will he go?

Keep moving forward
Patching the cracks
Changing the group
Making our own family.

Dracula

i would have loved to grown up a better person. this is not

a personal offense. merely an observation of the fact that

 

girlhood never seemed to suit me well. i was always too

loud too out there too much too needy too much want

 

i have been hard to handle and harder still to keep. i

do not believe this was my fault. girlhood struck me

 

right beneath the jaw. taught me to wear pretty dresses

and think pretty thoughts. i spent my formative years

 

consuming numerous vampire novels – i cannot help

myself; i have always been a lover of the flesh

 

and a sucker for all things rancid. girlhood says

this is symbolic: girlhood says it is no wonder

 

a girl as self-absorbed as i am would love

tales of violence and horror, of taking

 

all you believe to be yours. we become that which we consume;

and i, by god, consumed a lot of it.

 

pretty girls do not spend their teenage years

squirming in the basement, but i did it anyway.

 

girlhood tries to keep me skinny and well-mannered:

i tell girlhood to go suck it

 

one day, a sexy vampire lady will take me to her

castle, and i will get what is mine.

 

 

Unsolicited Submissions

unwanted thoughts flood in

plaguing heart and mind

whispering “crazy”

 

not sure they’re mine

psychically emphatic

or insecurely blind

 

is there any truth to them

questioning, mind comes unhinged

 

mercifully jumping

through the rabbit holes

twisting and turning

till the truth is unknown

Amanda Potter©: 2019 Poetry Marathon

Still Me (Hour 9)

When your masks of pretend and deceit fall away,
I’ll still be me.
When your words slip, but cannot persuade,
I’ll be the brutality that cuts the cord,
in quiet whispers and kindness on the wind,
ending in inevitable silence.
You might see my visage crack, turning into ethereal ash,
yet I’ll still be me.

For I do not exist for you. Or the world.
I exist for me.

And when that silence descends like a fiery torrent of disbelief,
a burning blanket of loss and regret,
I will still be me.
And you…
You will wish with a guttural moan, that I was still there.