The Poetry Marathon

My future in the rear view mirror

My past in the windshield

I’m stuck in reverse!

Loss of time
is killing the fine
line between sanity
and restlessness
between you and me
a gap to bridged
With every passing time
the gap widens
with bridge
extending its strength.
Should I skip to run
to the pace of time
waiting for it
in a distant line.

Copyright © Snigdha

I have found myself to be invisible.
These muscles, weakened as they are,
already drenched with the sensation of flowing water,
have left me hesitant. Bereft.
So I renounce the world.
Abjure the tiny, gracious interactions
that would tether me closer to the everyday.
It is an easy thing to slip into a flowing river.
I will not call out.

Eyes are blurry,l ights are dim

Ears stick up but hear nothing

You cannot get up the stairs

I have to carry you everywhere

Sometimes you struggle to get outside

Your sad look says, forgive me, I apologise.

You are still happy to ride in the car

Just go, I’m with you, you’re with me

My old pal ,saying farewell to Biggie.

The original line inspiring this poem is from Anne Sexton’s ‘The Truth the Dead Know”  — “To be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.”

I am too

old to be

pastor blessed,

teeth at my throat,

bone for an eye,

sinew at knucklebone.

Jumping frogs

Over a blue raincoat

In the evening

Making children joy

(Hour Fourteen- Maritza M. Mejia)

The winds blew the tall grasses and the Cattails and Milkweed tossed their next generation gently.

They gathered in cottony youth gangs at the roots of their ancestors and thought of where they might settle down and establish roots.

Plans that weathered storms and relied on sunny days and the whims of a breeze to achieve.

With strength in numbers they rolled in unison, like a ground cloud across the pavement.

They searched for cracks, inserted themselves like soldiers in a fox hole.

This was a war, a war against this scar of buckled concrete that buried so many of their forefathers.

They fought bravely to take the space back.

While they knew they had only a season,

they believed in the potential of their own seeds that would grown with them a year and then be released to join the forces.

Despite mans valiant efforts at “improvements” through paving spaces to walk, places to drive and destinations to park,

the record shows that nature is more patient than man

and therefore always wins.

the return of the sun

my beach blanket smells of lake plants and sun.

I never knew I had a beach blanket

in these years of body shame

and black and white images

from a life I did not want photographed.

now I live in colour

and the whole world smells like sunshine dried clothing

and tastes like orange freezies

and sangria.

or the seductive taste of sweet strawberries

or watermelon;

the juices of both,

or either,

running down my chin in dribbles,

reminding me of you

and your sweetness.

Now I live in colour

and all I want is to feel the sun on my skin

and smell the heat of the day near water,

fill my head with reggae,

and read a library of books

from the warm sands of some local beach.

I want to live Baudelaire by sunset,

whispering his words,

French and all,

to the swooping bats

or

to a beautiful, receptive lover

who will then take me in his arms

and mouth

and love me to collapse under the Milky Way –

our naked, blessed bodies

glistening by starlight to show us what we are truly made of.

Now that I feel alive and loved,

I need to taste the sun so often it burns my tongue

so that my words are fire when I speak them

or your mouth ignites when I kiss you

or you burst into flames when I take you in my mouth.

I have walked too oft in the shadows these past years,

Now it is time to walk in the sun.

R. L. Elke

©Aug 5/17 prompt 23

Let me give myself resting upon thee

In the trustworthy night with you!

Let the veil of tired eyes

Revive in afresh bliss of awakening!

Let the night kindle with the

Burning fire if intense desire!

Let not the special hours pass by

Plea to ignite the lamp of love with thy warmth!

Freedom is all what I want from thee

I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee!

What if I said I knew you were the one because I wrote about you before I knew you existed? I dreamed up your presence to sell books. I felt your sweet kiss captured between Pages written in my mind. A mental flip recalls your picture to the Forefront of my memory. Thrown together… the universe told me you existed long before I met you.