The Poetry Marathon

Hivemind

Do you make honey
With your slander?
Or is it a nest
Buried beneath soil?
Underground caverns
Twisting paper
Birthing stingers of lies
Paper thin
The nest you dwell within
Do you find yourself
Walking the corridors alone
Dry and crumbling
While you gather others to congregate?
Is it the sweet nectar you seek
As what the honeybees
Who busily toil
And here, you want to keep it in a jar
Until it crystalizes
Then put it under the heat
In order for it to pour for you
And your paper words
Absorb into the walls
You find yourself stuck
With stingers blindly
Finding your flesh
Like thorns from a rose
They tear
Yet never flower.
Yet my garden of clover
Feeds the production of
What moves slowly
As I pour the work into myself
and God’s word into yours.
You cannot escape
The entrance sealed
In a garden veil of love
A glue that purifies
An antiseptic that cures
All the wounds embittered
And heals with gentleness
And slowly it drips in
Healing the soul.
I nourish the bees with truth
You could free yourself
But your tongue is a dull sword
And succumbs to the fluid amber
Keeping your own self trapped
Within your paper deceits.

Bedtime – Hour 20 Prompt

I want to give you / a blissful restful slumber / wherever we go

20: Dappled

I wander

vacant halls

where life and laughter lived;

 

Hopes and Dreams

packed their bags.

I slept on;

 

I thought I heard

the hinge turn,

light steps

in the dappled dawn.

 

Wordlessly,

they latched,

and locked,

 

and left

 

through garden,

to curb,

to catch the yellow-sorrow cab.

 

Kick memories,

rattling,

down tiled halls;

 

Mark

the echo,

empty, cold;

 

No embers to be stirred.

No. 19: Ready or Not, Here I Am

I think about the person
I have become and wonder why
I am at all like I am
What or whom directed, effected
My very being to walk in the
Direction that I have taken
Over the years of my life
My path has intersected many
Who have influenced me in
One way or another before I
Moved on to another way station
Carting my baggage from place to place
Treasuring some snippet I gleaned
From the previous stops wondering
What secrets of life lie ahead
Ready to be embraced by myself

I am ready

Prompt 20, The Watchtower

They used to knock on doors in pairs, young believers
selling The Watchtower.
I forget which – oh, no, it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And they always wore ties.

We lived in an apartment in Belton and a man
in the unit next door had some
semblance of religiousness, or, at least
that’s what he made clear to my mother when
she had to ask him for a jump one morning
when her car didn’t start.

I think I was waiting for the Kinks song
to start so I could hit play because I had
a cassette recorder, but there was a knock.
My sister got to the door before me,
but there was the religious man.

As we both stood there, he admitted
his sin, that he’d made up reasons
to be outside to look at us
before we caught the bus to school.

Then he asked for our forgiveness,
and I guess we nodded our assent to such.
Not much later, we moved and never saw the religious man –
that one, anyway – ever again.

Prompt 20 (Image)

Awaken

Lay beneath the cool palm trees
Serenaded by the birds and bees
Drift in and out
Of sleep
Counting sheep
One by one

Feel the breeze
Gentle and mild
See things anew
With the eyes of child
That views the world
In a rose-coloured light
Where make-believe comes alive each night

Retell the stories of adventurous tails
Of swash-buckling pirates
And giant whales
Of fairies and magic
And all things fun
Find the inner child
That slumbers deep … within everyone

 

 

 

Hour 20.5 – The braincells are no longer functioning hour

Sleep doesn’t come to me
I go to it
With a thoroughly battered
Exhausted body
And I fall
So it has to catch me
And put me to bed

Second Breakfast

Second Breakfast

I reached the Cafe after a sleepless night
A major deal was pending, my nerves were strung tight
The client was flying in from the other coast
So I ordered a coffee and one slice of toast.

I then got a message that his plane was delayed,
I ordered an omlette, my nerves were getting frayed.
I had to rearrange the morning’s schedule
I really needed to put this deal through.

I wiped my lips and decided to wait some more,
A bell rang over the Café’s swing door.
It was my client, he’d taken an early flight
I welcomed him with a nervous delight.

“Nice place,” he remarked, “Let’s talk after we order,”
I knew I’d have to try even harder
To smile as I forced down my second breakfast
But soon I became so fully immersed

In my spiel, that finally I shook hands on the deal
And that gave me such a delightful feel
That I returned to the office, where I gloated
Over my coup, until my tummy grew bloated
And I went home with a huge tummyache!

19 Firefly

19     Firefly

 

Each night once dark arrives

A sole firefly twinkles

Near the upper left broad window

As if it wants to come in

Believing it to be the same firefly

I welcome with a familiar greeting

Wondering why the vast outdoors

Does not beckon this bug

Season of the Drought – Hour Twenty

The sunflower dirt has turned to dust
The blue skies and wispy clouds are all we’ve known for months
Just a foot of rain in half a year
And next to none in an eternity
Occasional five minute sprinkles tease then
Serve to bake our region more
Dangerous temperatures pose an additional threat
It is becoming scary
I hope we don’t catch up with a hurricane at our door
I wish I had a crystal ball to look into the future
But there is no way to see
Rain has been promised in the past
To no avail
I guess only God knows when
It will finally bring us a gully washer