The Poetry Marathon

Prompt 5 (my past)

All that I know is this morning

It has since come and is almost gone

All I know is my past

how I’m supposed to be this same certain thing

How growing isn’t supposed to change your sweetness

How life isn’t a medium of transformation

How the bad things you’ve done, you wish you hadn’t

How you never seemed to learn how to make peace

within yourself and even as an adult

you are still very much certain that you are still searching

for that arrival…

for that certainty

for that destination of being your true self

and not quite knowing what that is exactly

4 Wasn’t I?

I’ve buried a dozen emotions,
for the twisted thing ego.
I release them upon the women and children I invade,
using the hours I spend tending broken souls.
I too, was a child once.

I’ve knitted a dozen newborn blankets,
For my children who I’ll leave out in the cold
If they do not see the same God-face I do.
I’ll never leave my God-fear husband.
I too, was a child once.

I’ve killed a dozen people, born and not,
for the sake of that nightmare dollar.
I don the mask of love, and speak death, but soft.
I learned my lines, but nothing more.
I too, was a child once.

I’ve been sold to a dozen men tonight,
for the profit of the child rapist Romeo.
Juliet escapes the only way she knows how.
I will know a different way.
I too, was a child once.

The Blue Chair

Almost all of the furniture in my house is from IKEA.
Of all the furniture in my house, my sister likes one chair.
When we were little, we both sat in the Chair.
Side by side, our legs pressed together on the seat between the arms.
Now I try to sit beside her and she pushes me off.
We don’t both fit in the Chair anymore.

The Chair is blue like dark denim.
(Note that the Chair is not made of denim.)
It has tears from where the cats used to scratch.
Special tape was put over the torn edges.
A blanket was draped over-top to dissuade kitty claws.
But we don’t have cats anymore.

Sometimes my mother is in the mood for change.
Either her hair will change color, or all the furniture will move.
We stand back and move the things where she tells us to.
My sister doesn’t want anything to ever change.
She came home from a visit to our grandparents and
the Blue Chair was not in the same spot anymore.

My sister’s stuff piles up around the Chair.
It doesn’t matter where the Chair has been moved.
Old dishes once filled with Cheez-Its and crackers
And library books upon borrowed books upon her own books
Build impenetrable walls that read, “MY CHAIR. DO NOT SIT HERE.”
The Blue Chair is my sister’s chair, and it always will be.

My Terrace

A two floor house in the south

Memories from my youth

Mom’s laundry

Her sanctuary

Lovely gardening

Always charming

When cold days

Secret conversations took place

(Hour Five – Maritza M. Mejia)

My Grandmother’s House

I wiggled impatiently as I drove my grandmother to my house, to her house.
We were both in awe. It was on the market.
This would be our chance to get it back after my mother lost it.
My grandparents built that house, my grandmother drew the plans, designed it with care.
The backyard had been a treat for families and children.
A pool and pool house.
A play house.
A sandbox.
A swing set cemented into the back corner.
I would swing high and flutter into the branches of fruit trees.
A black top with a tennis net, and a tetherball pole, and a basketball net.
And in the house we had bedrooms. One for all four us, well, I supposed my dad built the fourth one in the basement. Grandma had only three daughters. As my sisters grew up and moved out, I moved around the house, inheriting, one at a time, each of the bedrooms. The vacated rooms became play rooms and computer rooms.

The trees were cut.
The pool and deck toppled,
The blacktop chopped into rubble.
The realtor offered us flea spray for the bottoms of our pant legs.
Everything was broken and dirty and ruined.

4 years. We had only been gone for 4 years.

I drove my grandmother to her house, where she had lived with her oldest daughter for 22, as long as I’d been alive. My grandmother had given the house to my mother-soon to be single mother of three- to help her. To raise me.
Grandma busied herself right away, peeling tomatoes grown from her own backyard. She told me how much she loved mother brought into the home.
Why would I want to go back there,
why would I want memories of them?
It’s memories of my sisters, and brother too
It’s just a house.
We can build another house.

Firefly Pearls…

She is cloaked in shadow.

Her hair all aglow.

Wild strands form a halo around her darkenend face.

She moves extemporaneously to the beat of a rhythm we can’t see.

She holds firefly pearls in a strand of rope as far as the eye can go.

Wishes, dreams,and hopes that no one knows.

So powerful it tingles her toes and unsettles the floor beams below.

She rides on waves of pleasure that no human can hear.

Her temperature rises with each outburst.

A flare of light radiates into the air as she counts the firefly pearls that the she whirls and twirls.

She holds the key to the unseen, the unspoken, and the unknown.

Test her knowledge and take your chances all the same.

A pearl of wisdom comes without blame.

She grants you one wish without fear.

Take her up on her offer if you dare.

 

All rights reserved copyright(c)2017 Natasha Vanover

Hemophiliac (Hour 5)

Many a meditation spent in contemplation upon your palm.
Returning year after year, grown a little older, a little wiser, a little stronger.
Bringing back to you new triumphs, experiments with danger,
And permanent sorrows of the heart.

All the while my formative mind yearning for answers,
brimming with a curiosity about the future,
still believing in naïve ideas of destiny,
and trying to foresee any untold plans you had for me.

And the breeze from the lake would whisper through the cedar trees,
The cold familiar aroma of earth would collect upon my tongue,
And I would add its strength to my heart, to forever carry into the unknown.

It wasn’t until I grew much older that I realized no one was watching.
In all these years it had only been me listening, only me speaking.
Only me driving my fears and worries deep into the stone upon which I rested,
Bleeding my want for purpose into pools at my feet
And leaving it to soak into the soil beneath me.

Alki Beach Treats

Alki Beach Treats

 

Catch the breeze, salty air, long ago I was there, daily.

Walks with friends, sit awhile, cop a smile, peace lives next door.

Ignore the crowds, beach ball and games, they have no shame.

Pebbles and seaweed, shells and driftwood, the treasures so good, so true.

Fish and chips, cookies and coffee, cement board walk to enjoy, pleasures galore.

Senses are heightened, his hand in hers, true love still stirs.

Even after fifty years, he is hers.

 

– Mary-Jeanne Smith

Alki Beach is in West Seattle in Washington State. I visited it all through my childhood. I especially have fond memories of spending time there with my grandparents.

Poem 4 – Grandmother’s Wallpaper

Grandmother’s wallpaper has seen many things,
Marriages, babies, family gatherings,
Tears of a mother, tears of a child,
A reassuring hand and chastise so mild.

Small sticky fingers clutching apron strings,
Grandmother’s wallpaper has seen many things,
Jelly and cream, egg custard and tea,
Sello-taped packages under an antique Christmas Tree.

Child to Adult the grandchildren evolve,
But a fondness for Grandma will never dissolve,
Grandmother’s wallpaper has seen many things,
A penchant to love is all that she brings.

Twenty years on under hospital light,
The walls are flat and bland, barely a blemish in sight,
Back at the flat we pack up her things,
Grandmother’s wallpaper has seen many things.

Hour 5- remembering the magic

a cherita

our family home on sale

a towel to protect me
from a few decades of dust

I climb into the attic
to try and salvage
a memory or two