The Poetry Marathon

I Listen

Every day she smiles

with a cup of decaf

“Yá’át’ééh abíní.” (Good morning)

 

She’ll talk about the days

of black and white photos

when polaroid pictures were still new.

For her in those days,

the smiles came by a dozen.

 

She would switch to

family issues:

of sickness and

deaths from covid or natural.

Her amber eyes droop to her mug

as her wrinkled hands tighten.

 

She thinks I don’t listen to her.

 

But her voice is

shaking with each word.

She continues

and forces a smile

“I love you che’e(daughter)”

 

She waits.

 

“I love you to mom”

Her smile turns genuine.

Her shoulders drop slightly,

her grip loosens on the cup.

“God loves you too.”

 

I nod.

 

She doesn’t think I listen.

Her words at times

sting like a wasp

as she leaves an awkward silence.

 

Her hair is loose

and falls about her oval tanned face,

with strands of silver and grey.

She’s still holding her decaf coffee,

Her gaze is unfazed

as she looks into my eyes

searching and waiting for something.

As if waking up, her creamed coffee eyes

light up, “My coffee, I better drink it.”

 

She turns to leave,

and her footsteps echoes

love you.

My Babies

My children…
The stars in my eyes
The breath in my lungs
My reason for living
I don’t know what I would do
If not for the love
I have from the angels
God has given me.
They are my legacy
The best of me.

Rebelí

[Hour Fifteen]a regret, one decade later

Fifteen, a rare, precious, peach-skin thin age,
with a ticket to fly out, far away from home.
A few months gone across the sea, to the Isle of Green.
Work in a shop, in a foreign land, with friends.
But twisted in a toxic relationship, hands like vines
that said, “I don’t want to let you go, you’re mine.”
How much a life would have changed from a no to a yes,
if I had gone across the sea
Ten years earlier than I did for me.

Hour 15-I Refuse to get Botoxed

I refuse to get botoxed

I don’t want plastic surgery

I want to grow old the way the universe intended

I want my wrinkles

My gray hair

My cold sense of humor

I could use less creaking

I wish my back felt more lively

But growing old doesn’t scare me

I never was a twenty year old model

I don’t ever care to look like one

I want the wisdom that comes with age

I want the wrinkles to reflect my laughter

I want my forehead to wear my worries for the world to see

I refuse to be botoxed

I don’t want puffy lips

I want my lips to kiss those I love

Comfortably

Let me grow old the way the universe intended

Don’t shame me for who I am.

Hour 15

Yes

 

You never asked the question

But I didn’t either

And some days I wonder 

What would have happened if we had

If I said yes where would we be

If you said yes where would we be

You could have asked 

And it would have been yes

What could we have been

If you had asked

If I had asked

If I just said yes without the question

Hour 15: Eventful Breakfast

When I was young I was very shy
Scared to even look people in the eye
With my family at breakfast one day
I looked up in total surprise.
Sitting at the next table
Was a group I did admire
They saw me shyly glancing
And came over to inspire.
First they took my grapefruit
The breakfast I would eat
I just smiled and squirmed
Shuffling my little feet.
Next they began to tease me
In a funny, gentle manner.
The Haarlem Globetrotters tried so hard
But my shyness would not join the banter.
Curly smiled and joked with me
My eyes kept glancing up
And up and up at his tall form
And then he took my cup.
After we ate breakfast
In the elevator we all rode
I could not find the courage to ask them
For their autographs, it showed.
I wish even to this day
A bunch of decades later
That I had found my voice to ask
For autographs in the elevator.

Rusty

You left no traces

I looked no where but your shadow was away

Just a sorry could save the dust from rising

All eyes are dusty

New plates are rusty

It was a word to dig the well well

 

Hour 15 – Yes

Yes

Yes, is such a hope-filled word

I wish I had said Yes to Brant

when he was tangled in

the emotions of being an

8-year-old from a broken family.

Yes, to being the kind of teacher

that gave him permission to be

“naughty” (whatever that means)

Yes, to a memory of him not

shaking his head no.

 

Amalgam

Amalgam

Stank of fur burnt and tree rot maxed out slammed into nostrils until nausea

caused the burped vomit to pop out against wills and through the bracing of fingers

mixing with the aforementioned and growing into quite a putrid thing with

sentience cobbled together from the chemical waste of everything being deconstructed

down to the element.

It got damn hot, so hot that everything melted into one big slow pile

pouring itself down everything and taking with it like magma

becoming bigger with each inhalation it mustered through movement

you didn’t scream because if it got in it melted you from the inside

it was alive, crawling and making its own religion, then science

The abacus of filth ran amok decimating and corrupting everything

with what it managed to learn in the heat speeding up its evolution

it used to build a ship of scrap and go to the stars in sludge

it orbited the sun and absorbed the heat until near destruction

in a week it declared itself ‘supreme being’.

yes

I’ve never been the type to make a fuss

I keep my head down

Let other’s walk in bigger and louder strides

 

And when he asked me if I wanted to call someone

to help me

I wish I had said yes.

 

I was seventeen and thought I knew everything

hard-headed

self sufficient

 

But this was an instance where even the strongest people’s

facades will crack and weather

and crumble

 

I felt the initial fracture

and if I had said yes

maybe I could have prevented the canyons that formed

 

I wish I had said,

yes, I need help

but I didn’t

 

I buried my face in a blanket

and laid in the grass

wet and cold on my back

 

An ice pack trying to soothe the swelling

inside

and I wish I had said yes

 

Things turned because of the absence of

yes

I said No No No No

 

I pushed

I pushed you have to believe me

I shut my eyes tight and tried to breathe

 

No

Yes

Ow stoppit you’re hurting me

 

Flashing lights and car alarms

No

No

Please no