The Poetry Marathon

My shooting bamboo- A Gigan

Prompt 8 (Write a Gigan)

My shooting bamboo

With pale green leaves

 

It was once greener than grass

And smelled sweet like dewy grass

My long stemmed bamboo

 

I see now such brown leaves

Coffee coloured, whisked with tea

A rich leafy arm may unfurl

Reaching my window pane to curl

 

But lately I see it drooping

My shooting bamboo

 

I see now such brown leaves

The fine veins, starker and paler

Coffee stained in watercolor

 

The brown and green intertwine

A spring of youth in aging wine

No. 20: Keyboardist

Keyboards are the
Basis of my
Life's working existence

Not the musical
Ones with ivory
And ebony keys

But the typewriter
Qwerty I learned
At age 12

And have mastered
Over decades of
Plucking out documents

On Smith Coronas
IBM electric Selectrics
Xerox word processors

And now I'm
Down to keyboards
Attached to computers

I really love
To tap away
At the keys

To watch words
I've thought up
Appear on screen

It's a process
I never tire
Of even today

Tap tap tap

The Watchtower Haiku (2022 Poem 20)

soul slowly healing
spotlight shining endlessly
heart behind high walls

tuesday afternoon
how did my life come to this
walls crumble to dust

hope springs eternal
the watchtower is no more
my heartbeat expands

(Prompt: Write a poem using one of the following titles: The Watchtower, Second Breakfast, Books for Beginners, The Woman with the Top Hat, Echo Husband)

My Moustache May Be Mistaken (Hour 15, A Nonet Poem)

 

My Moustache Must Be Mistaken

 

It was not me, I swear! I did not

eat up all your cookies, full of

ooey gooey goodness, smooth

sweetness melting in my

mouth. My moustache of

milk chocolate

just gave my

secret

up.

 

****A nonet poem consists of nine lines, where line one consists of nine syllables, line two has eight syllables, and syllabic count descends by one each time, until the final line is only one syllable long, giving off the visual appearance that the poem is slowly disappearing.****

Hour 20

We wandered through the fields,
stumbled upon the most cottage-core scene
ever. A mattress in a field of flowers,
but imagine the dampness
in the morning.
Even worse, imagine all the ticks
that would comatose my system.
My parents took me for a blood test
immediately after my first tick bite,
I remember taking the little pills
every day for three months.
Now I practise gratitude every single day
and go to the doctor every time
after I see ticks crowning around my body.

DogSpeak#20 In Dog Years

DogSpeak #20 In Dog Years

Humans like to calculate
our ages in dog years,
seven of ours to one of theirs.

We dogs like to think
our life span on earth is shorter
because we have less to learn.

These figures are guesstimates
averaged out for the life cycle
of dog and man.

A good life for a dog is 12 years,
which translates to 84
in human years, yes a good life.

Yet the average age of a human
is 80 and brings a sense of worry –
what if we outlive our human?

A better thought for a dog is
what if we outsmart our human?
Well that’s easy.

Bark at cars, bikes, kids, cats,
bunnies, errant leaves, and your human
will look and look and see nothing.

Scratch frantic at something under
the den chair, whine; your human will
leave his dinner unguarded. Too easy.

Give a human 7 years to figure out
how to make friends with everyone
he meets. He’ll need more time.

Tell him that he got it backwards,
that in dogs years, he’s actually
over 400.

Turn in circles 9 times when you go
to bed; when he asks why not 3 times,
tell him you’re an overachiever.

Kiss him, tell him dog saliva
has magical powers to mend
anything broken, like a heart.

He feeds you at 7:30 every night;
let him know how proud you are
of him; he’s finally trained.

~ J R Turek

I Survived the 2022 Poetry Marathon

The following images are part of the Poetry Marathon Tradition. They are for you to do with what you want, but they are often used as a way to celebrate your success.

The official list of everyone who completed the half marathon and the full marathon will be released in the next few days. Remember if you are not on the list it probably has more to do with our algorithm than with you, and please reach out so we can correct it.

 

 

 

 

 

No Place Like Home, Hour Twenty

No Place Like Home

The concierge was made aware in advance
that this was to be a second honeymoon,
no expense spared for the middle aged lovebirds
reigniting their romance with tired, damp matches.

A nest was made near the water,
whose lapping made the wife need to pee,
and they were to lay on a goose down mattress
and pillows that made him sneeze.

Gamely, they gave it a go, tried to rest
in their old lover’s knot, that position that knows
what to do with the extra arm,
only to awaken hours later, entangled and aching.

Ant colonies had bitten in unseemly places,
the champagne made her flatulent,
shellfish in the hors d’oeuvres swelled him like a sausage,
and a sudden squall soaked them.

So miserable they had to laugh,
they found a reason to commiserate,
a new story to tell the kids (with more than a bit of distance),
and a burning desire to be nowhere but home.

Prompts for Hour Twenty One

Text Prompt

Write a poem that’s no more than 50 words, but one of those words must be either umbrella, or almond.

Image Prompt

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Because We Never Looked (Hour 16)

How often we want to be other people

wear their shoes,

not feel the pinch

dream their dreams

and not their nightmares

taste their victory

and not feel their defeat.

 

It’s only human

but if only we could look

within and not without

deep inside and not outside

trusting God and not mammon

we would marvel and ask,

“why didn’t we notice this earlier?”