The Poetry Marathon

The refuse of our insatiable need

We make so much ado about our stuff 

I need that. 

she said 

I want that. 

he said 

I’ll have that.  they said…

Bags and bins in piles of piles and dumpsters and pods and piles and piles and more piles of shit

but in the end it’s all leftovers

 it’s 

all 

junk 

it’s all just stuff

Didn’t realize how much stuff I was collecting when it was all in one place. 

Now, scattered about in different piles in different places I ask 

how much do I really need beyond the clothes on my back and the friends in my life?

As if I could visit the stuff from the formless realm as easily as I could connect with my friends and family. 

More stuff does not mean more life

2019 #3-Heard around here

Babies cry

In the apartments around mine

But I’ve never seen them

Only their voices define their existence.

I should mind more

Because they are loud

And they start so early

Bundles of high-pitched mastery

Infants on vocalization crack

Who keep baker’s hours.

I wish I understood them

I wish I could be them

So I could cry and cry and cry

Until someone lifted me up

And held me close

And told me everything would be ok.

The Potter

With her hands,

Clay transforms from mud to majesty;

Bowls, planters, and pitchers

Emerge from the chrysalis

Of gray slabs.

With her touch,

Colorless viscosity rages into vibrant hues

Cobalt blue and napthol crimson;

She casts her spell

As earth, fire, water, and air

Bubble over in her cauldron of creativity

Her art,

Her craft,

Her magic.

Senior Week Trip

I haven’t been to the beach in a very long time.
My mother says the waves make her
nauseous- sorry, nauseated
(My mother’s an English major).

Last week, I went to the beach.
I hated the sand.
I hated the sun (sunscreen
every 15 minutes for this
untoasted marshmallow skin).
I hated the wind tangling my hair.
I hated the salt water spilling
without my permission
past my lips, and teeth, and tongue.

I liked watching the waves.
While my friends napped on towels
or laughed in the roiling sea,
I felt my eyes forever pinned on the waves.
The water pulls and tugs at itself,
folds and bends and crinkles.
It builds itself into towers that,
like Babylon, must fall.
They tumble in so many droplets
still a single wall of water.
It crashes against the surface,
a blow shattering both victim and fist.
It rolls across the ocean surface,
splitting, reforming, colliding.
The wave turns to so many smaller
bubbling crests that race one another
across the shallow shore.
They trip and surge and stumble,
smoothing into a a sheet over the sand,
a calm caress of water against my toes
before the next skyscraper, already plummeting,
sucks it back for the dramatic impact,
the collision of earth and sea
and sky
because everywhere is sky.

I know why the Greeks thought horses sprang from the surf.
What else could breed such stampeding graceful power?

The tide came for our towels, and we left.
Our bags full of sand,
my feet scratched from constant abrasion,
feeling sticky and grainy all over.
I would have rather gone camping.
But I liked watching the waves.

Hour 3

Scent of cold and rotting flowers

Songbirds rattle

Traffic seethes

The brute exhaustion that sleep feeds

but never sates completely

battles

the stealthy dawn

the light creeps around the edges

of this dark curtain.

Hour 3 – Hummingbird Haiku

Hummingbird, confused,

Examines the lilac bush

Its flowers long gone

“You’re not like other girls”

I am at a house party

It is in a suburb I’ve not been before; it is open

And I’m pretty sure everyone who lives there is rich

I smoke a cigarette that I have lit with a lighter

bummed from a punk girl with a mohawk

Some guy comes up to me

He wears Dickies pants and a Trasher sweatshirt

“You’re the first girl I’ve seen smoking Vogues,” he says

like it is some sort of accomplishment

“Do you know Quentin Tarantino?”

I bet he plays the ukulele and writes songs about how sad he is

And that when his mother finds his weed, he will tell her it’s medicinal

He’s so depressed, you see

The world does not understand his unique vision

“You would like Kill Bill, it is totally feminist.”

If I do not respond, will he get the hint that I’m not going to have sex with him?

I don’t want to end up as a voicemail on his new mixtape

or have him vaguepost about me on his finsta

“What about Jean Luc Godard?”

I have seen Le Chinoise and I hated it

Also, you’re pronouncing his name wrong

He offers me a joint and when I decline

He tells me I’m so cool for going against the norm

I’m not doing it to be cool, weed just gives me anxiety

You pretentious fucker

“Sometimes I feel like the world just doesn’t appreciate real art anymore”

Like the “tastefully nude” pictures he took of his ex-girlfriend

(Hint: just because it contains a nipple doesn’t mean it’s art)

He takes a long drag and then he sighs

“Authenticity is just so hard to find these days”

I brace myself for what is yet to come

The sirens start ringing in my head

And I feel an instant headache coming up

He opens his mouth,

and there it comes:

“You’re just not like other girls, you know?”

Everpresent Yet New

Patiently we wait and watch you Jan, 
as you step over your papers and books, 
piled neatly until they fall over. 

We are by the windows where you promised 
hours of meditation, windows opened after 
new summer rain has made way for sunshine.

Candles with floral scents, 
soft purses with crayons and pens,
greeting cards for faraway friends: 

We wait and watch you move through
each day. Up so early yet wanting more
sleep, you ignore your inviting pillow. 

We watch you worry and tumble into task
after task. The phone rings even now, and 
you take on the new responsibility. 

(Hour 03) 12.30-01.30am. PROMPT, walk & talk

post mid night walk

the thermometer’s
reluctantly stuck
at 2.9° wishing it
were inside (as do i)

breath polar bears
toes wet lungs
yellow halfmoon stars
dead tree silhouettes

empty heart aches
like a mime alone
without wind with
out their — trapped

in an invisible box trick.
there will be frost by dawn

 

 

Echo’s in my Mind (9am poem)

Echo’s in my mind are dark and deep,

As I wake from a fuzzy sleep.

Still swimming with in my dreams.

Still seeing them in echo’s of streams.

These echo’s go round in my mind,

Making it a echo through time…

C. Burgess (c)