The Poetry Marathon

Hour 22 – The Only Time My Mind Goes Blank is With Your Hands On My Hips, Descending

The Only Time My Mind Goes Blank is With Your Hands On My Hips, Descending

 

There is a moment before your mouth descends,

the pulse of breath against tender flesh, 

when my body craves for you to mold your name into my skin

to scrape teeth and tongue and engrave initials

like sweethearts do in bark. Mark me. 

Turn my porcelain to raspberries, and raspberries to blue. 

Make me yours. With that laugh scoffed into my center

as my chest quickens, back crescented against the blue sheets. 

Turn me into the moon. Imprinted with a man’s face, 

your face. Make me see stars and echo their calling. 

Can you hear them? Can you hear the night sing to us?

Darling, don’t you know my rupture is the only thing

that can make that go away? So, go a little slower, 

make it last a little longer, before I break.

Before you pull back all the pieces to make me whole.

 

#22- The one with no sleep

No sleep for hours on end,

Inches away from penning an ode on my bed,

Haven’t even risen to stretch and bend,

Typing away with one hand on my head.

My eyes burning, rimmed red,

But I keep going, I keep fighting,

Only a mere three hours ahead,

For me to feel proud of myself, smiling.

I reach deep inside of me,

To remember why I started this Herculean exercise,

A cup or two more of coffee,

To stay up until its time for the prize.

I remind myself of how fun the whole journey was,

And a smile makes its way onto my face,

Forcing my addled mind to stop finding flaws,

In my work, now time to embrace.

I am happy,

I am satisfied,

Ridden with glee,

I pick back up my stride…

~thryaksha

Arguing With Myself

Okay, body-listen up
It’s time that you lay off
The pain for a spell
With bones cracking like
A thick branch snapping
Sending sharp stings
I cry out
Silently through clenched teeth
Smile as I lie and say I’m okay
When I’m really truly not
And blink away the tears
When my knee gives out
Landing hard upon them
Too weak and pained to stand
Though I do anyway
Because I’m too young to have
Chronic illness-
To be weak.
My mind argues that I could
Do it all before
But now the body I burned through
Tells me its time to slow down
But brain says
“No, we’ll do it anyway.”
And pay the steep price of
Immobility for days on end.
My head pounds like a steel drum
With every ache further convincing me
That the folds of my brain are
Being cleaned with tiny wire brushes
Scratching away like a cat at the door
Trying to make its escape.
And, what’s more disheartening
Is that pain is a playground in my head
And like a scream but can’t be cut short.
It is forever feeling like an auto accident
The invisible bruising covering my back
As though I had fallen without a parachute
From 1800 feet-
Although I’d much rather the tequila
And drunk dial Jose.
Forty walking with a cane-
Waiting for the day when I can feel
More like a badass with a shillelagh
Wishing I was more like
a ghost in the shell
with interchangeable parts.
Knowing my limits but ignoring them
To pretend to be who I was before
My body started disagreeing with me
And decided to fight me back-
Much like my fight or flight hasn’t shut off
Neither will my pain
For they remain on like Donkey Kong
Though, I believe he’d be more apt
To win this battle-
Better equipped than I
But I try and smile through it
Brush of the electric taser snaps
In every stupid nerve
And if you hear me cursing under my breath
Know that it’s directed at this faulty meat suit
And not at all at you.

Leap!

When it’s night-time
And I’m all alone
I don’t walk.
I hop, skip,                   LEAP!
Land on a turn –
My coat swinging out behind me.

I run down the hills,
Like I ran when I was small
And the world could not catch me
And if I fell  ^{…I flew}

And on the grassy spaces I can spin!
And spin and uᴉds and spin,
Until I stumble on shadows
And sit down laughing.

People have crossed the street to avoid me
But that’s okay – more room to dance.

————————————————-
Catch-up poem from prompt twenty.
————————————————-

The Skylights – Hour Twenty-Two

You walked into the living room and flat lined by the chair
We had to let the medics know that you were in despair
They found a pulse, you tracked your eyes and squeaked a last Goodbye
Before you faded out again through the lights in the sky
I’ve always felt your spirit left through windows in our roof
And when our ceiling fan turned on all by itself, my proof
It was the saddest day I’ve known, the day you left us, Dad
But, I am grateful for the time and memories we had
Not long after you left this world, the hurricane brought close
The death of so much more in life, those skylights suffered most
And so did the fishing pier home, where we’d spent many days
The gallant pier, our second home, in toothpicks on display
Losing the pier felt so much like I had somehow lost you twice
Gone was our little piece of joy, our coastal paradise
But unlike life, it was rebuilt and the memories remain
Death is so final and so raw, I wish I could explain
You left this world so suddenly, so tragically, in fact
In all went down in front of me with that last heart attack
I wish that there could be some way for the skylights to return
Your soul back to us here on earth, for this much I so yearn

Do’s, don’ts (Hour 22 – Stay Awake Poem)

Contrary to popular belief
I do not need coffee
to wake up in the morning

I NEED MY COFFEE TO BE
ALREDY AWAKE AND ON
THE JOB! WHAT IS WRONG…

Sorry.

I do not need coffee
in order for ME to wake up
in the morning
though it does come in
extremely handy
and is therefor mandatory
in the limited set of
circumstances as such:
*Speaking coherently
*Hearing coherently
*Understanding…
stuff
*Functioning in ways
normally ascribed to
reasonable human
behavior
especially in regards
to the workplace

There are other, very
specific situations
in which coffee is required
should you want any
participatory action from me.

Any deviation from these
specifics as put forth
will be dealt with in the
harshest terms possible in
terms of law, and good sense.

Unless there is no
coffee
rendering all other rationality
moot.
So sayeth the Oracle.
Or Mr. Coffee.

I get those two confused
all the time.

– Mark L. Lucker
© 2021
http://lrd.to/sxh9jntSbd

Hour Twenty-Two, Wake Up Prompt

Wake Up Call

At age thirty-seven I returned to college
after fifteen years away,
ready to finally finish interrupted
bachelors’ degrees from years before.

I worked three jobs,
raised three kids,
attended three campuses,
and often got five hours of sleep or less,
at times getting no sleep at all,
yet still driving the hour to campus
and the hour home again.

Fourteen years after graduation,
I can barely finish the twenty-four hours
of this once a year marathon,
swaying in my seat,
bolting upright to my daughter’s phone alarm,
and micro-napping between eye-blinks.

Hour 22…wake up

The last hours linger, my eyes drop, my creativity flows nowhere, l shake myself side to side, my brain mutters, crys and searches for words, that sing together upon the page.

22. Wake Up

In early early morning
during parade season
we marched and played across the field       marched and played for two hours
across the field

marching band music
Sousa music

marching
leaving wakes of perfect lines
across the dewey grass
across the morning field.

Wake up. Wake up.
It’s time to play music.

It’s time to march
perfect lines of poetry
across the dewey field.

Playing It Safe

A Tanka

 

Playing It Safe

 

During the chaos,

Books were the best medicine.

Neil Gaiman once said,

“Books were safer than other

people anyway.” So true!