The Poetry Marathon

2022 Poem Seven

CW: pregnancy, miscarriage

Me Without You

 

Nine years later

we joke about how hard it was to pee on that stick.

How nervous it all made me

as 60 seconds turned into an eternity.

A popsicle sized piece of plastic told me our lives were changing.

 

We were 20 and not even close to thinking we were ready for this

yet we decided to take that chance.

Bet on ourselves, our love.

 

That decade I spent growing with you

made me a different person than I ever thought possible.

Watching something that is part of us
talk, grow, learn, take on some of your mannerisms,

was beyond my wildest dreams with you.

 

Except, that was all a dream.

 

My body rejected that dream.

Pain rippled through my body as our dream was ripped away.

My body screamed at us that we were not ready.

A decade out and I still miss you.

Mostly, I miss what we could have been.

Doggy Haiku

1

Wagging tail with love
It’s never ever lazy
waiting to catch a foe

Reunion

Reunion

Old friends gathered together
with smiles and styles
chatting over dinner table
savouring dishes of choice
tempered with fun and frolic
joy overfills the heart
times square revisited
beautiful lives recreated
and lost moments recaptured

Hour 12

@varenyas

13 For Mela

13     For Mela

 

Treehouses created by handsome men

Who rode horseback shirtless through

The rain forest of Belize

 

A long morning climb up a rocky mount

To jump down an endless waterfall

After three shots of whiskey

 

We ate armadillo exchanged for cash

On Bob Marley’s birthday as we

Celebrated with a toke and stew

 

Our adventure held memories for

Decades after we returned and grew

Older and aware of our mortality

 

My buddy passed this week before

I could say Goodbye and hold dear

A wild adventure for girls only

Ungathered

I am an empath
With fleeting anxieties
Alone gathering

Hour 5 – visual prompt title – Tranquility

Tranquility

A blue sky
white clouds
as seen through
the open window

Of an old house,
it’s vine draped walls
speaking of another age
instills a peacefulness,

A true thankfulness to be alive,
the likes of which I rarely
get to explore.
It is delicious.

Do you think we’ll
Be able to keep it?

Everyone Wants to Love

Everyone Wants to Love

Everyone wants to love
very much.
Everyone wants a hug,
reeling from a touch.
You hear what I’m saying?
One thing leads to another,
next time you pass me by
entertain me brother if you chose to bother.

We all want to rule the world,
and one thing leads to another.
Next you will tell me
that there’s a war being waged
so close to our shore.

To brother to brother,
oh, from mother to mother,

love one another now.
Oh, please hear me and how.
Vote with your heart and your head.
End it somehow, before we’re all dead.

Hour thirteen, 9pm
Everyone Wants to Love
(form Acrostic/ Drabble)
Charlie the Mayfly.

v.j.calone

This Dog Lumpy – a nonet (hour 13)

This dog Lumpy, is so damned grumpy

he cannot walk or see, or pee

eyes both milky and bumpy

shirt, it’s holed but starry

yet so warm is he

calm and happy

to simply

just be

still.

 

– Sandra Johnson, June 25, 2022

 

Photo credit – Catherine Dickson

 

 

 

HOUR THIRTEEN ~ Every Time I’ve Left

EVERY TIME I’VE LEFT

 

every time I’ve left

I was right to do so

 

maybe not right in my words

my thoughts or my deeds

 

maybe torn up, shredded

on expectations and disappointment

 

maybe savage and ferocious

lashing out in my pain

 

but I know something now that I didn’t know then

I needed every wrong turn, every misguided step

to find the places where my joy was real

 

and when I was finally there, in a place where I was happy

I knew I was always going to make the next right move

even when everything else around me was wrong

 

because that’s all I’d ever done

just like every time I’ve ever left

so that someday, I could arrive

Hour 12

A deep voice of a dead star rumbles:

to change is evil!

She sucks out the energy of other voices.

 

Are there voices who will forever

Stay in the safety of the fringes of the gathering?