The Poetry Marathon

The Strike of the Hammer

I heard it-

that sound,

it had been around

all my life

but now it was louder.

A flat solid thump

thu-mp, thum-p.

The horizon was changing,

the mountain range

was gone.

I gathered up my guts

I knew this was going to suck

but I had to know.

Someone wish me luck.

I walked the miles it took

and reached the edge that overlooked

nothing.

The sound was louder,

the thumping like the beat of my heart.

I sat down, then got to my knees.

I crawled back to the edge.

I had to see.

Flat.

They were hammering the earth

flat

just to prove a point.

Well, we’ll see about that.

And I jumped to my feet

and over the edge.

No one is changing my center of gravity.

 

 

Love Birds

Love Birds

 

Love like flamingos:

stand tall when beaten by wind,

blistered by warm sun

Hour 6: LIFE

Some boys are still here, some have gone,
they are living life as those dreams they used to have.
Some boys have gone, they’ve danced to wind of life

they’ve gone in directions far from what
they used to have as dream.

Life is a double edged knife, don’t blame boys for they
don’t have a say in what name they bear,

don’t blame boys who break their back in trying
to climb to the top,

life is just not so fair like our wishes

© Àdèlé

Red handed

Matted hair covers my palms
It’s not mine
Not kinky like mine
Not dark like mine

I hadn’t realized how hard I was pulling
When I took a blade to his throat

I brush the hair from my hands
As if that would wash away the remnants of him
He’s made an indelible mark on my soul
I hate him for it
I hate me for it

Crimson soup pools around his crown
Like those images of white Jesus
Neither of them are what they say they were
What they tried to turn me into

Panic claws at my chest
I take a step back, hoping my shoes aren’t drowned in blood
They are
I liked these shoes
They’re cheap boots
I thought would last as long as necessary
Now they’re covered in blood

Goddammit!

Goddamn all of this!

He can’t hurt me anymore.
He can’t hurt anyone anymore.

Music blares from the party we just came from
The sultry rhythm calls to me
Beckoning me like I’m stuck in its trance
I take off my shoes and think of a way to dispose of them later
For now, the party is dark and loud
Offering me the cover I need.
The metallic scent of him
The burgeoning wafts of death and decay
Permeate my nostrils

This was for the best.

VI- Jester

The fool dances in the square

Drunken, merry spectacle

for the rigid, reserved

Assumed unskilled,

wasteful, nothing

to gain, little to prove

But in his secret world,

he holds memories, stories

wished forgotten, knots

he yearns to loosen with

each unsteady step

The fool waits, watches,

remembers, even in

the barking crowd, he knows

how to clear his path

Hour 6

the medieval faithful believed Spain’s Cape Finisterre was the end of the world

and to sail beyond that horizon was to fall off the very face of the earth

I stand on the rocky shore and feed the strands of my mother’s hair to the Atlantic

I release her to the other side

my feet planted in this world

without her

 

Prompt 6 – Text : The End of the World

My knees tremble
My toes curl around the jagged rock
We are at the end of the world

Looking over the edge makes my chest tight
Utter darkness looks back at me
But then –
The sun appears
It starts at the bottom – a speck

As time goes by it rises
Illuminating what is beneath me
Birds fly
amongst atmospheric dust

Trees reach low – they grow upside down
Gravity does not rule here
A dog floats upwards and barks at me
He’s my neighbours’
We’d been searching for him

It seems at the end of the world
Lives a different time
The far future
It’s exciting
But I step back wary
Even a bright future has a little bit of shadow

Grim Shadow – hour 6

My silent watcher, cheering and fade,

He follows everywhere, never leaving!

Every turn of self, guiding my blade,

My silent watcher, cheering and fade,

With hack and slash, revelry made.

Approving in silence, sinister weaving,

My silent watcher, cheering and fade,

He follows everywhere, never leaving!

Oven Dreams hour 5

Oven Dreams

brown wrinkled and crusty,
row upon row, neatly placed in order.
little potatoes to the back,
the larger ones in the front two rows

the oven is dark, no illumination.
time has cooled the burning.
I reach my hand to the far right corner
unafraid, I pull her out.

biting in and breaking the old tough skin,
mmmm, delicious, I say
my long-deceased father at my side
says, stop, don’t do that!

each dream character, says Jung, is the dreamer
my tattela,* my protector, would never return
but I, brave woman, can make my own path

*father

I Take Them With Me

Hour Five

Memories tucked into
my breast pocket
left and close to my heart.
They flutter like eyelids
just waking from slumber-
fractured images
play upon the screen of thought
a tribute to remembrance
to lives previously lived
during my years on the back roads.
The gravel of experience
kicking up rocks
and dusty clouds as I move forward.
The ancestors of self
passed away by the alchemical chemicals
of compounded experience
of former versions in former chapters.
I reach out and touch a few
running my fingers across their edges
flipping through the pages of life
like ribbons
while others catch up on the hem of
emotions and slice into my skin;
the salt of tears an anesthesia
to the wistful recollections of
the hourglass
whose sand had run it’s last cascade.
Some are moonlit passages
bathed in shadows and blurred vision
that had circumvented the stony path.
I lift the camera lens of my eyes
and snap another memory
like fingers-a metronome of observation
in my rhythm of living.
I tuck it in with the rest
sealing and threading the edges in,
minding where I had come from
and just how far I’ve gone-
just another moment of self captured
and folded into the realms of memory.