The Poetry Marathon

Trafficking

Hour Eight

The devil nestles underneath
car door handles
flooding lungs
and invading the bloodstream of society.
The drivers fein placation
with promises of Pleasure Island.
Nostrils extend
in deeply croaking breaths
heavy-handed and grappling
protests are caught in the throat
as a scurry of cement voices
rumble threats of thunder.
Pounding fists,
a gravel in the auction block.
The drivers offer no extended warranty
on each life absconded
a commodity of wonton lust
and exacerbated agony.
Lightning erupts in heads
with yet another fell swoop
bound by blackmail-
life, a refrain in melody
now a scourge of screams
ripping the insides of lungs out.
Poison fills the gaps
eroding self-worth
as another penny made
is yet another body that drops.
Veins a caustic bed of
venom worms squirming up forearms-
a belt to stave off flow
and retaliation in it’s conditioning.
They’re juxtaposed against an array of forms
classes and creeds stacked up on beds
pressing and expressing
the life from the fruit
of the victims.
Haunted eyes house crippling spirits
broken by the thrusts
of doggerel drivers-
pulling themselves forward.
Riches gather in the dragon’s lair
as it is chased into yet
another compound
with no means to identify
the treasure in each soul-
life, a fraction of what it used to be.
Dreams a congealed slur of
voices warning
coagulating through arteries
to stave the flow of life and emotion-
flogged for the biteback.
Innocence, a calamity
with silent prayers echoing
down hallways
manifesting rescue.
The drivers lick the
money from their fingers
like pork grease
and stalk about…
…watching…
…always watching
ever present,
until the siren’s call
beaconing justice
and honest resolve.
The drivers blanch
at the Sound of Freedom,
and hide behind their screens
praying their own prayers
that anonymity will save them.

Grateful

Hour 9

Grateful

 

Lovely end of July, Colorado summer day,

overflowing flowering baskets hang overhead.

Little blond girl in pink snow boots

dances out the door.

Tables of people break out in

spontaneous, uproarious laughter.

Large, happy families eat, drink, enjoy patio time together.

As I smile, my so-grateful mind leaves my body behind.

Vague uneasiness as I approach the age at which my mother died.

Bones and muscles wonder

what might come next to take us all out.

I catch my shallow breath,

shoulders near my ears.

 

Sue Storts

09/02/2023

 

9 Take Me

Wishing for a visit

Hoping they will come

I need to see a UFO

Before my life is done

 

I tell my friends about this

They listen without words

Then go on to talk about

Aches and pains and GERD

 

I bought a pricey telescope

And placed it in my room

Near an easy plate glass window

I can sit and peer and zoom

 

The experts say to meditate

I try to slow my mind

To let them know I’m peaceful

No hostility they will find

 

So far it’s pretty quiet

Patience is a must

I’m hoping they will hear me

As someone they can trust

 

I decided if they take me

I shall go without a fight

To voyage far beyond this realm

Disappear into the night

Hour 8 – Unzipped

Unzipped

 

I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent

wishing to shed this body.

Just unzip my chest and let my ghost sink to the floor. 

No suit of skin, no tender veins, no ripening flesh,

just a spirit in the shape of a question mark, 

melting, but not going anywhere,

as if something can melt back into itself. 

 

Even rain does not have this luxury.

With each time it freezes and returns to liquid

it is bound to different molecules,

follows a different track across the planet

And perhaps, with some thought, 

this is what I wanted after all. 

For my organs to tumble from my body

to live different lives. 

For them to come back and whisper to my phantom

all the things they’ve done. 

Early Fall Trip to the Wild

When I go into the wild

I am not a hunter of elk

or a wearer of a camo jacket

Besides throwing my boots in the trunk,

I pack my all purpose ruck sack with

a thermos of beet juice

sticks of cinnamon gum

savory sticks of veggie jerky

a peanut banana sandwich with hot sauce

a flashlight with an extra lightbulb

binoculars.

In case, the blackberries are plentiful

I will carry a small bucket

Hoping to return to our carport

in one piece I leave the porch light on

and pray the wildness of life

sticks to me this time.

 

 

 

 

Comfort Zone

What is your comfort zone?

Where do you feel most comfortable?

What do you feel most comfortable doing?

Are you more comfortable with people like you?

Or, can you adapt to those who may be different from you?

 

What is your comfort zone?

Are you fearful of what others may think

Do you care if others achieve what you achieve?

Can you be satisfied with less so that others may have?

Or, do you just want more and more?

 

There is no right or wrong in a comfort zone.

It’s all about you and how you feel.

It’s all about being honest to your own convictions.

and not pretending to be what you are not.

Saying one thing and doing another.

only creates a web of confusion

that sounds like a dog whistle

that nobody hears, but the dogs.

Troubled

I have no idea what to say

I am too tired to know what to do

What I have to say

is not needed

What I want to say

is not important

So I am stuck in the middle

Trying to get by

 

The Sunday Movies

HOUR 6

SUNDAY MOVIES

Nothing prepared me for college.

I was a city girl

who’d never left home.

College was in a rural setting,

eight hundred miles,

and three states away.

The highpoint of our lives

were the weekly English movies,

where we could meet

young officers from the army base.

In their presence,

our walks had an extra sway,

and hair was tossed around often.

 

On such a Sunday,

My two best friends and I

were swaying and tossing,

in our best clinging sarees,

when a cow approached

at a run

straight at us.

Without a second thought,

one best friend and I ran and

reached a ditch.

With vulgarly hiked-up sarees,

like synchronized gazelles,

we sailed across to safety.

When we looked around,

our other best friend,

was still running in front of the cow,

screaming ‘save me’

like a B-grade heroine.

We couldn’t control our amusement,

while a gleeful officer pulled her away.

The cow kept running.

It wasn’t chasing us after all.

It was just in a hurry.

Later, I had just one best friend.

And the Sunday movies were

indefinitely postponed.

Hour #9 The Moon Speaks

Recently, I’ve been helping the moon learn to speak. She has always been silent, much like I was growing up. Perhaps she was afraid she’d embarrass herself with her words. Or with how she sounded. I told her that most likely, people would be soothed by the sound of her voice. And then yesterday, she surprised me by saying, “I’m full.” “Well, yes you are,” I said, taking in the sound, which was a beautiful tinkling whisper that traveled like a stone skipping on water. “Why are you working so hard to get me to speak? Other moons don’t speak, take Jupiter—none of her eighty-three moons speak. A silent bunch they are.” Then she snickered, “Can you imagine,” she said in that tinkling whisper, “such a cacophony in space.” I said, “Or a chorus, if they have perfect pitch.” She smiled her big moon smile. Then we laughed together.

The Old Hunter, Hour Nine, List of Ten Words

The Old Hunter

The hunter peeled the cinnamon-skinned hide
away from its flesh before parsing the parts
among his containers, the beet red blood
pooling and freezing into the frigid earth.

Yellow jacket wasps crackled angrily
like electric shocks around the containers of meat,
and an oily bucket of entrails shimmied
as a tremor from palsied hands shook his elbow.

Back in the bayou he called home at last,
the hunter unloaded his kill.
He’d traveled far for the elk,
all the way north to Alaska’s tundra.

The naked, dangling lightbulb
overhanging his open carport
lit the winding path to his tiny shack,
a return to the early fall warmth of home.