The Poetry Marathon

Prompt 19_ Lasgidi

Lasgidi

This place I call my home

A concrete jungle where confusion reigns.

A potpourri of beauty and ugliness

Where poverty rubs shoulder with wealth.

Lagisdi

Where  you could enter or exit a bus by the window

And where you jump off becomes your stop.

Where the fear of a conductor is the beginning of wisdom.

Lasgidi.

Land of wisdom

Where gutters are bins

Railways are toilets and roads are markets.

Lasgidi

The land of traffic jams

Where the supermarket is a waste of time

You could do your shopping in traffic jams

Lasgidi

A city of rousing successes and palpable failures

Where heroes are born and great men ruined

 

 

 

 

Echo

its a sight to see

posts with relationship status

I’s married now

 

I’m desired.

I’m taken.

Nowaday, the men are the prize

 

and the women pay

Hour 20: Craving

I like chaos
When everything, everyone
Is just one big yarn of confusion
Tangled yarn… it won’t come off
Without cutting a few strands

I like chaos
It’s full of inspiration
Always something happening
Always something going on
It’s like a mosaic of never-ending videos

I like chaos
As long as it doesn’t
Involve me and I remain
Nothing but a spectator
A side character named hypocrisy

I crave chaos
While searching for a peaceful existence
Monotonous days, same old stories in the comfort of home
I like chaos
But I like peace better.

The Watchtower

Take me to the edge of the world.
Strip me to my barest bones.
Remind me that I’m not alone.
Ship me off to the cosmos.
Mysterious shape of an empty room
Silhouettes against a dark moon
Let me bask in a field of dandelions
Braid them into chains in my hair
Bottle up the summer fireflies
Put your lips to mine if you dare
Walk me up to the watchtower
Lose yourself in this torrent rain shower
Encase me in my funeral pyre
Send my soul off to the stars

Poem 18

joy is
when someone kisses
your soul
using a sequence of
exquisite words.

Hour 20 – Beginners Book of Poetry Prompts – Chapter One

Hour Twenty – Write a poem using any one of the following titles:

The Watchtower, Second Breakfast, Books for Beginners, The Woman with the Top Hat, Echo Husband

 

 Beginners Book of Poetry Prompts – Chapter One

 

• Get yourself a nice hot drink. (Tea works best for me but wine is fine).
• Head to the shelf where you keep old photo albums.
• It’s okay to get distracted by the last piece of cake enroute.
• Place said cake by the tea, by the chair. You will return.
• Ignore the dust on the albums, pick the one at the bottom of the pile.
• Now you can clean it with your sleeve.
• Do not open. Yet.
• Return to chair, cake, tea (or coffee/beer/wine).
• Look at album on your knee for three minutes.
• Do not open. Yet.
• Remember albums, print shops, films, cartridges.
• Do not open. Yet.
• Remember fathers writing dates and captions on black paper with white ink.
• Wipe errant tear (optional).
• Have a bite of cake, a sip of drink.
• Exhale. Sigh with comfort.
• Now open album.
• Rewind fifty years.
• Much later. Write verse.

 

Hour 20

Hour twenty

Achieved at last

Things go better in the twenties

The teens last forever

In the twenties you can see the end

Those voices aren’t singing about the lady in the top hat.

They are excited about finishing

The second breakfast is now the third dinner

We aren’t beginners any longer

If we ever were.

There will be no self-help books now

No beds lying beneath palms

Our own beds are whispering

Excited for our return.

Hour twenty

A Milestone

A countdown to completion.

We can see it, smell it.

It tastes like old clothes and hope

Hour twenty, my old friend

We really are going to do this thing.

 

 

 

 

Poem 20. Echo Husband

We lost you last year.  You went to bed out there in South Dakota, and never woke up. Fifty five years old and gone.

I mean, I know you weren’t mine anyway,  hadn’t been for a couple of decades, but your first is always a little yours regardless. I know you agree. We talked about this many times.

I still drive the pali, not as much as I used to, but I still do, and I think about all the talks we had about you coming here to retire, spending your time at Molokini. I hear you laughing through the car, then resigning yourself, and reminding me you had three more years to work. And I always said no. You just want to work for three more years. And you said yeah… then you were gone.

Now, all that’s left is the echo of our conversations about how badly you wanted to be here, and me looking out over the ocean to Molokini, hoping you are there.

Ikeja (Hour 19)

Close knit, level head;
elements that work, peace;
unlike the islands.

19. City

Tall buildings,
tarred roads,
memorable monuments,
amusement parks,
homes and dreams,
engulfed in ivy.
Busy streets
are still busy,
with rats and penguins.
The city looks green,
not in a way they dreamed,
abandoned and dying,
mesmerizing,
tiny little flowers
peeking from balconies
playing peekaboo
with bees and birds.
The city is still alive,
It will always be.