The Poetry Marathon

2023 Full Marathon: Hour 5

Hour 5: Sip on Summer – thank you Starbucks – this was your slogan for summer of 2017 or 2018 and it is living in my brain rent free every summer since then. Also Pumpkin spice came out way too early this year – or if you’re gonna release it don’t call it fall call it a transition or end of summer or something else. Clearly I’ve got big opinions and they needed to be known for this poem to land. or my brain wants you to have the context – you may not need it.

 

Everyone is ready for autumn –

they think a cup of coffee

can turn the seasons and

set the stage for colorful leaves –

 

I am certain there are still

a few weeks of sipping on summer

and I don’t mind the heat

the way everyone else seems to.

 

But I’m embracing my iced tea

time on the patio, and

long walks remembering you in

that place with wild mint

and too many memories to keep.

 

Can’t we just appreciate what

we have for a while longer?

-M. Rene’

Hour Five: Verity

Where did you go, my long-lost friend?

Growing up, I learned from my mother

Who sang your virtues, triumphs, and worth.

She called you holy or whole or simple.

Ever elusive, you, an abstract idea,

Invested in me, the guilty vestibule,

once piqued a guardian embarrassment,

a Red-faced heat before honed stares.

 

A Google search bore nothing, mere

Letters dancing 1s and 0s, but not you,

My once hero-now-gone-missing-sister,

A wife to wicked hissing serpent sins.

Last seen among the silent ones, a

Mute testimony and vibrational grasping,

you, your innards sparkling clear waters to wind,

I miss you, motionless, paralyzed by lies.

RANDOM TWEETS NOW CALLED Xs Hour 5

@She

what were you thinking you were texting HER when your car

plowed into us pushing my SUV off that side of that mountain road rolling rolling

rolling down with my rolling son strapped rolling in the back rolling in his car seat

rolling all the way rolling down the hill rolling down to the very bottom where

you died and we were just driving along safely along on our lovely way to a lovely day

camp for a lovely lovely day and we were so lucky lucky to be extracted

from our lovely car with only a few broken lovely bones broken lovingly

 

@He

a woman’s alone at her home on a quiet country road in the early morning where a stranger begins

pounding pounding pounding on her door random she believes him
when he tells her he’s harmless simply run

out of gas needs to use her phone she

obliges only a homeless drifter hiding

nearby with a .22-caliber rifle you see he only wanted

to be a rock star and he knew she played the violin so he shot her

the first shot hit her in the chest and

then the leg twice and she turned bloody but she was still bloody
alive and you see he needed to bloody kill her

Born to die

The long, winding road never felt all that welcoming;

it just keeps laughing at you daring you to deviate from

its preordained path.

it’s the half-mile marker when all you want to do is

get to the finish line,

the ostentatious distraction when you need to finish studying.

 

Carry on & keep coming up with excuses.

That’s what they say. I know we’re here to become

something; it just doesn’t feel like it.

 

But at the end of the day,

we’ll get high, find our own universe,

& shape it to our will.

& when the time comes for us to

walk through the pouring rain,

we’ll select our last words & prepare

for catharsis.

Chains

Chains

 

Cling to me as two

become one, gentle

words lost on our wind.

Tying up Lose Ends

You had your uses
Talented but stupid

Digging too close

Unearthing the truth

You promise to keep your mouth shut

I nod in agreement

But you opened the window

so l pushed you out

 

 

Hour Five

Mystery poem

 

Ghosted

 

Messages made of ellipsis bluffs:

talk to you later, I’ll let you know soon…

Tomorrows that never came.

Conversations like dandelion fluff.

All the time, there was something vacant

in your eyes, a tightness in every smile.

Excuses like a row of missing teeth.

I ignored the blankness, let it grow;

you were hiding something

the nothingness I now know.

When the spectre came to call –

I wasn’t shocked at all.

 

 

Hour #5: “Small Crimes”

There is a feeling he longs to feel again
And so he bleeds every new experience
for every drop of emotion it can arouse in him
Takes the glass to the table, time and time again.
Holds friends like hostages until they
begin to bore his starving appetite.

And the lovers who dared to share his bed,
he took from them more than they were willing to give
All for the sake of the hole he fights inside.
That damned emptiness where once
simple pleasantries lived.

And the vices drew close to him like
cancerous tumors thrive on disease,
The lusts, and the powders,
every god and every savior
drowning in the void that never ends.

What crime has he committed?
Against others, for sure.
Against himself, his witness,
confessing truths never revealed.

Longing for impossible imaginings,
Forever heartsick, romancing an eternal grief.
What a sad promenade, descending spiral,
A short-lived trail of light
all along the abysmal edge.

Hour 5 – New Beginnings

A stillness fills the air as I enter the room

a room full of memories no more,

thinking of those times make my heart skip a beat

realizing they will eventually soar.

 

To a place up above to become a distant memory

so that new ones can take its place,

that’s the circle of life that can’t be stopped

it happens with so much haste.

 

Our time has come to an end, we must move on

it’s the way things have to be,

new things have a right to make themselves know

new memories will come, you will see.

Apples

An old friend

a gardener

a poet

a photographer

a buddhist

who once shared

a ramshackle house with bees

has documented

hundreds of different

kinds of apples in the

New Zealand countryside

from abandoned trees

growing along highways

in farrow fields

away from human care.

The world will go on without us