The Poetry Marathon

Candy Terrorists, Hour Five

Candy Terrorists

The sheriff’s car pulled up on the side of the road, lights flashing and siren wailing, beneath the railroad overpass. Spiced gumdrop candies lined the road, evenly spaced from each other in a ten foot by ten foot square. Two small hooded figures could be seen ducking down in the gravel next to the tracks, silhouetted against the burnished and shimmering summer sky above the road. The sheriff stepped out of his vehicle with dispatch radio in hand, prepared to apprehend the perpetrators responsible for such heinous domestic mayhem. “All right, boys, come on down,” he squawked through his loudspeaker to them, and they reluctantly scrambled down the embankment, knowing resistance was futile, the law would catch up with them one day. He escorted them into the back of his patrol car and delivered them home to their mortified parents. Yes, the candy terrorists, reported by a passing motorist to the sheriff’s office as “two boys throwing rocks at cars” were apprehended and the public safety was upheld, only discovering afterward that the two were me and my best friend, Val, bored on a summer’s day and making color patterns from above with a bag of candy from the local IGA. The worst chastisement I received that day? My indignance at being mistaken for a boy.

H5.P5

In the depths of darkness

You vanished, l lost your smile

It had serstained me

When l was lonely

I remember your hair, our dreams

Hand written notes under my door

Ink stained hands curled together

Giggling

Vanished

Never to return

Never forgiven

Never found

Bones in a shallow grave

A familiar face in a crowded room

Our War

It’s our worth to defect

the tangle that spangle

 

A word now and forever

it sound so miserable

hearing of such note

good bye ever

 

we care to be apart

 

From now till eternity

forever and forever

never we make a path

pathetic but permissive

let me flow while you fly

 

we care to be part

 

Two parallels never meet

pick your lane stay apart

this is our terminal point

draw battle and let fight

 

we care to be part

 

Every yoke need to break

either to hatch or to crack

your absence is admiration

your presence is abomination

 

we care to be part

 

No room for little friendship

no time for minute courtship

no more light form the tunnel

no more cost to see a betrayal

 

From The Sidelines

HOUR 5

(this is my own prompt based on my years working in nursing homes and then having

my surgery and dealing with having to be waited on and all that comes with a slow recovery.  My

family and care giving teams were, and still are, great  Just a reflection on things I

have seen some of which I experienced)

 

FROM THE SIDELINES

Empathy for others came easy for me

Watching how families cope with their loved ones

Now forced to reside in places  that will never be home.

Not just the elderly, but those who need special care

Frustrated to have to ask for help, needing help

For the simplest of activities of daily living.

A call light illuminates, the alert sounds.

I need to get dressed, I need something to eat, I have to pee!

You forgot to give me my meds, I dropped my remote. Can I get

Fresh water? I need to pee!

I miss my family, have they called, I’m bored, I need to get into

My chair, I need to pee and

I WANT TO GO HOME!

I need to see my doctor, I want to get out of here

Why does it smell in here, damn it I have to pee.

Why did it take you so long to get to me.

I already peed.

I’m sad, my family hasn’t been to see me, where is the doctor

I’m having trouble trying to pee.

I can’t open my milk or hold my fork, can you help me?

Can you help me? Why did this happen to me, why me, why me?

From the sidelines, it seems easy,  just do what they tell you.

Everything will be fine.  But it’s not that simple, this life on pause.

Waiting for healing, for better days, independence….home!

What is my fate, will I even get better is this my new normal?

Can I please just go home?

I need to pee!

 

 

 

 

Upon Moving to a New Home

To you who lived before me in this smallish dwelling place,

I hope you filled it up with love, with happiness and grace.

 

I hope your days were happy days, and all your ways were loving ways.

I hope that good health paced these halls and friendship hung on all the walls.

 

I hope it was a happy home; I hope that you could write a tome of all the happy memories you shared. And all the folks who really, truly cared.

 

I hope it’s not that other kind of room, permeated with a threat of doom from folks whose rage and pain are greater than they can control, who strike and then later grieve for their lives and hate themselves more than whatever they hated someone else for.

 

For the energy and spirit that we breathe into a place remains until it’s cleansed and clutters up the space.

 

So I hope the place you’re leaving and the place you’re moving to have the precious kind of spirit to protect and nurture you.

 

Gena Williams

Hour/Prompt 3

I don’t know what happened but

I am down a red brick well

My school had a fountain the center, a quad called Red Square

because of the red bricks or because of the Red scare

(we were libs at the time and they were libbers back then) Not like now when we’ve turnedo ourselves inside out and upside down in order to claim rightness, lightness, and delightness in setting self apart.

[unfinished]

Conundrums (Prompt 5)

The grandparents I never met
parents of the father I loved
secretive though he was
about them, him and them

Grandma and grandpa died
before I came along
never even met my mother
rarely were spoken of

Mentioned only essentially
names, dates – never
more than conversational
versions of headstones

Enigmas, all.

My father – close as
we were – who never said
mother who never asked
grandparents who . . ?

What would I have called
them, or them me?
Would I have picked up
their native Yiddish?

Knowing nothing I can
only guess; research the
clues I can hardly find
always longing for more

We are enigmas, all.

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2023
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Iced Water

Have a seat

What would you like?

Iced water? Iced tea? Ice cream?

Do you have hot chocolate

It is warmth I seek

Mysterious (acrostic) – Hour 5, Hour 5

Mode of operation there

Yet to be found here

Soft cotton and crimson stain

Telltale color of wrongdoing, pain

Exposed digits peek from inside

Right hand clutching something, green

Is it paper? What can it mean?

On the table

Unaware, unseen

Sits a key.

 

– Sandra Johnson, 9/2/2023

Misplaced or Stolen

my cousin, Ingrid, is so careless with her important jewelry

if her diamond earrings irritate her ears while she’s out

she’ll take them off and simply throw them in her handbag.

one time she called to say

she lost her diamond bracelet

it wasn’t in her handbag, she looked

this time she found it wrapped in a tissue in her bathrobe

miraculously, she had always found her missing jewelry

she was lucky…until the day her luck ran out.

she had a habit of taking off her ring while doing the dishes

but this was a diamond ring she inherited from her mother

it couldn’t be replaced, it meant so much more to her.

on this particular day, she was having her house painted

it was filled with painters in every room all over the house

after the painting job was finished and the men went home

at some point she remembered she left her ring on the windowsill

well, it was gone!

was it misplaced or stolen?

she knew where she last saw it…now it wasn’t there

this time the police were called in

and the men who had painted

were all asked to take lie detector tests

all, except for the one man who flew home to South Ameriica

right after the job was done.

all the other men checked out.

to this day the mystery of the missing diamond ring has never been solved

was it merely misplaced or stolen?