24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Home Stretch
By: LuvMiFreely
(Hour 22)
Lights out
Yet my room is illuminated
The morning sky reminds me
I’ve made it to the home stretch
The birds are chirping outside my window
I’ve convinced myself they are cheering for me
22 hours down
My eyes are heavy
My body craves sleep
Yet my hands rest on my keyboard
Tapping away at the keys
Clearing out the last of my thoughts
Before darkness becomes my peace
“Will you marry me?” he said.
Nearly dead on two of three, I replied…
“Can I think about it?”
They wanted me to speak.
They wanted me to hear.
They didn’t want me to feel their fucking,
those two doctors, local cop, and a politician’s son.
Sisty, bitch, what were you paid
to send me rape?
I should send you brownies.
I
sit and watch the clock,
hear its slothlike tock,
ask one last time for inspiration.
(A four-line poem consists of four lines with a syllabic count of 1/5/5/9.)
The house behind glass walls
I groom my grass, push the blades
to the side and expose the dirt.
I point my finger and drag,
tracing a circle in the dust.
I watch ants slink by, snails pull
their bodies and make their spirals,
mazes that never end. The butterfly
floats by, wings quickly flapping,
preparing to land on the purple
clover perched above the earth,
I grab my cage, turn it, poised
to capture. Slowly I inch,
new house in hand, then zoom,
catching air on my way down.
I leave the glass and creep
back, and watch it flutter,
fly into the walls, trying
to reach the sky, same as I.
Thanking Him today,
Praising Him, worshipping Him,
Blessings overflow,
Everyday, I must thank you,
Praying for grace and mercy.
I was on the road today
city-to-city
with ample time
due to detours
and errands
spent driving
through
smaller, rural
communities as
well as city and suburban
neighborhoods
It is summer
the weather good
leaving me
puzzled, in dismay
passing
well-stocked parks
equipment filled
playgrounds
baseball diamonds and
soccer fields galore
all devoid of
denizens
We do our children
our society
a disservice by
allowing this disuse
not in
squandering our
resources
but in not letting our
children
squander their time
without putting these
resources
to use
– Mark L. Lucker
© 2021
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd
A swelling reservoir of insignificant bustling, the roaring byproduct of crowded masses, shapeless faces, eyes that count lights, eyes and mouths speaking, so many talking, breathing, wasting themselves all over the surface. Death by automobile, gasping like malfunctioning robotic fish, mouth agape in the thin hot air. Bloody divers unleashed from his abdomen. Death by diet, by pills, by isolation in a crowd of unconnected persons. Masks and decadence. Images paraded above life dying within. Unaware of the slipping veil, too consumed to feel the soul's departing bit by horrible bit. Swathes and swathes of people. Names and places, but the crowd is nameless, all people taking up space, what disconnect has led us here? What disenchantment eats at my own heart? The rush to sell and buy. Thriving measured by consumerism. The chase and competition all around. To live and die for turning that great wheel. All standing on the backs of some, to lick the boots of others. No ones back is weightless. No ones tongue is clean. We deserve our cancers. We deserve our failing hearts. We deserve the strangualating cholesterol, chemical sterility. But our children dont. The children deserve something better.
The moment when the sun subsides
from cloud to fire and dips behind another
hide-and-go-seek through the outer rims of space
given to those who want it
to feel like it had before
when nothing was innocent
Is fair game, what did I have to lose?
Except my soul tied ‘round with a necklace of rope
Swinging on the gallows, my heart
A cursed thing tortured like those swinging roaring
Twenties, where the speakeasies served
Their purpose for that time
When I used to fancy myself a poet
And I didn’t know it and my feet show it
Like you mean it, don’t just tell it-
Feel it in your marrow
In every ventricle and chamber
Pot is smoked reaching a high
Like a kite floating catching wind of
The truth as it exposed
Like bare breasts tore asunder
A pirate’s plunder
I’m left to wonder-
If I make any sense at all.
If I had energy,
I’d bring out Lizzo
Who’d ask me how I was feeling
And I would stick out my booty,
Grinding to the rhythm,
Tossing my braids while checking my broken nails,
Shouting to the world and Lizzo,
“Good as hell!”
Because dancing to Lizzo
Always wakes me up.
If I didn’t know it would put me to sleep,
I’d bring out “Storyteller”
To shake up my memories,
Massage my poetry muscles,
And coolly slide home.
But without energy,
I have no story to tell.
So I blink my eyes,
Grab a peach,
Guzzle some tea, and
Keep LIzzo and twerking inside my head,
“In an ocean so huge,
We lie so tiny.
The ocean churns,
Like a fruit in a smoothie,
With storms so violent,
Waves rise and crash,
Back into the ocean,
Yielding no mercy,
To the unlucky.
The ocean is merely,
A big pot of soup,
With landmasses as its croutons,
And life its garnish,
But one day,
The big pot of soup,
Will be devoured,
And will be yielded no mercy,
As it once,
Yielded none.