The Poetry Marathon

Her woods fill up with snow

Prompt 2

The earth was crusty and sickly and pale

Her tresses were knotted, her breath was stale

And she burned with such burning alarm

Her songs were silent, such deathly calm

But through her grasses, there flew a whisper

Blew a whistle, to gently kiss’er

The soft humming then blasted wild

Singing soprano, tango styled

Till her breath came soft and shallow

Cool as if all life was fallow

A cloak shimmering, silky white

Clear as glass, soft fading light

The freezing gale would sharply blow

To watch her woods fill up with snow.

Never Again

Never again I quietly weep

As I wake up from drunken sleep

And get struck full force in the face

With the free gift in every beer case

Never again I softly cry

As I lie there and wait to die

With head splitting and stomach churning

A brutal lesson in need of learning

Never again I weakly moan

As I lie soaked in vomit I hopes my own

My mouth feel like I’ve been chewing metal

With whisky man should never meddle

Never again I wearily groan

As I stumble reaching for my phone

To silence that fucking alarm

As its ringtone does infernal harm

Never again I solemnly swear

As I am staggering down the stairs

And puke while heading for the cars

My mouth tastes like a badgers arse

Never again I promise myself

This can’t be good for my long term health

Though I sure by noon as I start to munch

I know I’ll have a pint for lunch.

4th hour: Chaura chauri 1922 CE

I am the soul of a revolutionary fighter of India/
Listlessly roaming the streets of Chauri Chaura/
The pages of history unfurl back a hundred years,/

Mind rankles with the memory/
Of that cursed day when oppressed, supressed enslaved Indians/
Decided it was time to unleash their fire/
That the British had so unjustly trampled upon;/
caged a lion in a dog’s kennel…/
We the revolutionaries had rent the air of ‘Gauri Bazar’/
With crisp anti-British slogans/
Against high food prices and anti- dharma liquor shops,/

The Police opened violence upon us like/ we were cattle or mad dogs/
‘Always leave at least one door open, when you corner a lion/
Lest it pounce upon you’ have said our elders
A lesson our oppressors didn’t ever heed/
We retaliated and burnt their police station down/
As bodies burnt, pitiful cries echoed, it felt/ retribution had at last found peace/
But we are from the land of the ‘ahimsa’; we believe in karma/
We believe in ‘athithi devo bhava’, /
in doing our duty without focus on the fruit/

The non co-operation movement called off;/
I died of a broken heart/
With unanswered questions, frozen on my lips/
As I float through today’s India,/
The questions, broken, fragmented, flying from different directions/
Slam in to each other, to conjure into one whole, /
They disturb me; the questions, I mean/
Who was wrong? Who was wronged? /
Says our Gita, if the one sinned against, / does not fight back
Is more a sinner than the sinner himself/

I ask again, I seek the answers again,/
‘Who was wrong? Who was wronged?’/
I know they will remain unanswered/
Today too, in every lane, in every corner of my beloved country,/
There will always be a ‘Chaura Chauri’/ imprisoned in the pages of posterity/
And the answers will hang in the air,/guarded by swords for posterity…

4 Blue Trucks

4      Blue Trucks

 

I hate blue trucks, he grumbled

We’d only seen a few

White gray and black

Most colors that we knew

 

Slowly as we noticed

Each week more appeared

Blazing blue metallics

He moans, It’s what I feared

 

He watches now from heaven

My truck a velvet gray

Once he looks in all directions

I know just what he’ll say

 

    Blue trucks have taken over!

Did you listen?  I told you so!

I smile but do not mention

Blue trucks, the way to go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Hour – hour FIVE

Knitting together thoughts found in

other people’s hardback novels,

wine glass poised as if to say,

“Oh! Not me, dear!”

 

And in that small insufferable space

I wonder how the hell I

said yes to happy hour

when I know you only drink white

 

and the oak-infused chardonnay you’ve ordered

is rooty enough to make

the pavement split.

Blunt must go

Blunt must go!

A quotation found on the pages of Agatha Christie

A murder mystery with no motive

But that’s absurd, the other characters shout

How can you have a murder with no motive

How can you seek comfort from the pages of a book about bloodshed

How is it that this is my only place of peace

(4th Picture prompt) Time

Time

Destroys

Faded

Jaded

Rhymes

Wood

Rots

Plastic

Manican

Old

Piano

Strings

Broken

Leafs

Fallen

Time

 

Prompt 4

100 years from now
I will be somewhere in the trees
Remnants of this present body
Will live in the soil
Providing minerals to the earth
We are all
Self portraits
Foreign to someone
Something
Or Somewhere

The Autumnal Orchestra

The harvest dust has left the air,
The rain is all applause,
The stage is set, if slightly wet,
And garlanded with haws.
The ivy whispers affably,
The crows tune up their throats,
The old man’s beard lights up his pipe
Of tumbling tufty motes.
The squirrels all have snacks to bring,
The whistling mice are practising,
The jay is dancing in the aisles,
The alto swan has come for miles,
The spiders string their instruments,
The moths all find their seats
And the leaves play the piano as they fall.

Prompt Four