The Poetry Marathon

A Letter to My Younger Self (Hour 6)

Dear Young Hafeezah,

It was the year of 1990; you were always a quiet child with an active imagination.

I watched you walked down the halls of Dubose Middle School trying to make yourself invisible.

Each day you wanted to become someone else instead of who you were.

Your head was covered in long pigtails with different color hair clamps on the end.

You were tall and thin in statue almost equivalent to the shape of a boy.

You wondered how the same girls your age could have curves and breasts.

You secretly wanted to be like them laughing on the courtyard with their equally curvy friends.

You started the school year late because of Hugo and on top of that you were a transfer.

It was a relentless form of torture playing the game of disappearing and reappearing each day.

I often wondered how you survived, and how many times you cried not to return to school the

next day. The reality is you were simply magical waiting patiently for someone to say, “Hafeezah can you

come out and play.”

Non Letter to myself 6/25/22

Non-letter  to myself

To write a letter to myself from any of the folks coming to mind in this moment. Hmmmm….

Feels too revelatory to print in public.

Memories  cascading through my head

are arguing with each other.

Some are happy…some sad..some excited…some angry,,

some choking back tears,

some taking a nap.

Long ago boyfriends, childhood besties,

favorite teachers, heartbreakers.

family members..loyal connections, betrayers.

They all seem to be waving through a translucent haze.

And  they look exactly as they did when last seen.

Of course that’s impossible.

 

I’d love to have a real conversation with them.That’s why this prompt is so intriguing.

I can hear long locked doors straining to open in the darkness.

For now I will keep the letter in my heart and visit another time.

My letter to me from me is….You’re getting better at this living thing.

Keep showing up…

 

 

Ode to the Messiness of Making

Ode to the Messiness of Making

 

The small, the short, the delayed, the imperfect, and the pitiful are not honored nearly enough.

Watching a butterfly quietly escape its chrysalis is as magical as any show in Vegas.

Late blooms make us pause in awe just like the first buds of Spring.

Wobbly first steps will make us cheer as heartily as Olympic victories.

The lines we scratch in our journals can stir the spirit as deeply as the lines of legendary bards.

 

Long roads sometimes lead to dead ends. 

How else would the boundaries of the map be made?

True revelation sometimes cloaks itself in paltry epiphanies.

Small movements unlock heavy doors.

We open them and find truer versions of who we are in this world.

 

Today, we sing the praises of the small things.

The first drafts.

The erasure marks.

The balled up pieces of paper.

The scuffed knees.

The fender benders.

The early morning practices.

The dry chicken and burned bread.

Today, we honor the signs of trying.

Hour 6 : Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

The biggest comfort I find in this life is knowing

I will keep meeting dogs all the way to the end.

On the street, at friends’, in my own home…

But on my dog’s 17th birthday I blow the candles for her and

still wish for a hundred more years because I love her the way

you love something that will only happen once in the story

of humanity.

Petrarchan Parade (Hour 7)

Your transformation astonishes before my eyes,

For fealty’s hand given and now dotingly accepted,

I cannot conceive that I may truly ever regret it.

For how could I know that you are plotting my demise?

With slight of and, conniving glances, a rivalry soon reprised.

Such are things, cast as fog against sun, easily forgotten,

I have a gift for thee, my love once misbegotten.

A carnival of captured souls, ready for their demise!

For they once resided amongst the hollows of our domain,

Dishevelled and imploring our consideration and charity,

I parade them now, in front of you, waiting as lambs to be slain.

Raise up your armoured and loaded leg, dispatch with impunity’s bane,

Dispense your ammunition, present your decimation, destroy society.

Become My Phoenix, imbued with the shared wickedness profane!

Running after things not lost (hour 6)

Hello me,

The last time I saw you was during our times in the village. Our secondary school environment was soothing. Apt for learning. The luscious green and unhurried lifestyle was calming. Now that you have come to the city, how is it been with you? Have you completed your uni education? Have you aged? Or matured? Have you married? Or parried?

Life in the city has a way of turning one into a harassed dog. Pretending to be busy. You are looking over your shoulders. Looking over the boulders. Running after things not lost. Running after things long lost. Running after things that exist. Running after things that do not exist. Creating a hill out of a molehill. And a molehill out of a hill.

Have you also joined the rat race? And become a rat that can never win the race? Are you engaged in the unseen race to nowhere? Or you are being pushed to embark on the visible race that leads to jeopardy? Please, avoid this tragedy.

I have moved on. I have left the city. But the city refused to leave me. It is a tragedy. I have also moved from my last post. I have moved to the next post. I am now running from one pillar to the next post. Please, avoid this predicament.

If I am wrong, correct me. You are married with children. I guess right. Keep yourself away from the hawks. The skimpily dressed ladies. They cannot satisfy you. They cannot be satisfied. They will not satisfy you. You cannot satisfy them. So, what is the sense in meddling with them? Please, avoid this predicament.

Let me summarise my letter. Do not run after things not lost.

 

2022 prompt 6 / hour 6 “sonder adjacent”

2022 prompt 6 / hour 6 “sonder adjacent”

 

Are you here? Are you there?

Are you above ground? Or below?

You helped me, taught me, encouraged me and caught me

You drilled me in skills to instil and fulfil

What I learned I passed on

When I could. Where I could.

You may not pass this way again

You may have passed away already

But I say here, clear

You changed me *your teachings* changed me

Teaching me allowed me to help others

Wherever you are, or were

Whatever you believe, or believed

You go tell your higher power you did good, k?

 

Merry – LordCricket 2022 poetry marathon

Hour 6

Dog’s make the world a better place

Give me a dog, let it lick
the serotonin back into my nervous
system – who called it the nervous
system anyway, as if any part of the body
wants to be the self-fulfilling prophecy
of a breakdown planted in its origin.

I have always wondered
how I would die. Like, overthought
it a hundred times, played it
on a loop so that every time I see myself
crossing the street I see me
getting hit on by a car.
Only the car did not like me, it hated me
for getting its bumper blemished.

Or when I walk down the stairs, I will see me
tripping and falling down.
I can already imagine the way my bones
will protrude my thick flesh vessel,
the dopamine-releasing adrenaline that will not be working
because hello, worst-case scenario doomsayer over here!
So yes, I will feel the pain.
And yes, it will feel like I was born three months early
and don’t know how to breathe yet.

So get me a dog, a fluffy puppy preferably,
and let it make me drown in oxytocin.
I will overdose on oxy if it makes me even the slightest degree
happier.
Make me believe my entire existence is not
what I thought it was, a miserable dark hole.
My birthday the devil’s holiday.
So let the dog’s birthday fall on this same satanic celebration,
where pigs are slaughtered just for the fun of it
and their organs are handed out as free-for-all gifts,
and then maybe,
maybe, it’ll turn angelic.

Maybe, I can call my dog a saint
for teaching me that life can be precious
when you give it the meaning
where there used to be a black hole.
How it would be so dense even light got sucked in,
but now the world is pulsing
and radiating like a PET-scan
of a cancerous child.
Because yes, the world is fucked up.
But yes, dogs make it better.

Partying With My Pup

My pup likes to party,

but it’s all so very sad.

that treat he hasn’t had.

For thirteen years,

He has given me much joy,

for he’s a “good boy”!

Now, we’re seniors,

I’ll throw a birthday party,

for time gets leaner.

For in people years,

he is now turning seventy

like his owner–me!

Scrub flop (Hour #6)

Chores and kids seems to
go together; 

Do the dishes,
Stop doodling silly wishes,
Get the fishes,
Clean the peaches,
You're not allowed alone on beaches;
Responsibly learn what life teaches.

But should chores and teens 
sing the same chorus?

Go do the laundry,
Hands off the pantry,
Stop being lazy, are you gentry?
You came late! You're passing your boundry!
Babysit your siblings - I appoint you sentry,
Study hard and be a blessing to your country.

I'm not trying to express feelings 
of dissatisfaction; Actually - I am.

Yet the main point still centers 
that chores are a major inconvience
at large in the society we live in.