The Poetry Marathon

HourTen ~ Christmas Time

Text Prompt

Write poem about any holiday in December/early January.

Christmas Time, Christmas Time and Prayers,

Prayers for peace, a peaceful refuge,

Welcome Light, with lights on trees,
Green and white, in coloured deluge;
Décor delight diversity diverted;
All hope one, all call one, All pray one;

Life to begin, or life , to cease?

Christmas Time, Healing Time and Tremors,
Tremors of blasts, killing blasts,
Farewell Love, with flags on caskets
Red and Blue, in deathly solitude,

Sacred silence spirit severed;
All around flowers, all fresh now
All withered now, none in baskets;
Christmas Time Christmas Time and Salvation

Salvation, for every nation?
Salvation Eternal, end of turmoil
in blood and sand, crimson and cream,
a moaning scream, a shattered dream?

One for one, each kills one, one by one, till none is none.
Christmas Time, Christmas Time and Love;
Love for All, a Tolerant Love,
With Gifts garlands and Gatherings,
Silver and Gold, Young and Old, the Brave and the Bold,

Weak and Strong, the Fighters for Freedom for the World;
All with Love, All at Home,
None at WAR, Glad Tidings for All.
Amen.

 

Fairy Children

Purple eggs laid on large fern leaves
Sunlight dapples across their shells
Tiny wings of gossamer gold
Emerge just right, just when they’re told

When the sun is high and the sky is blue
Little fairies chip through
Fragile shells of porcelain
Broken through by dorsal fins

Into this world of black and white
They call to me with joyful voices
Happy to see me they are
I could never traverse too far

One, two, three and four
five, six, seven, eight
Oh my, two more and we have ten
Wherever will we put them and when

Come my children, let us fly
Through these woods and to the hills
There you will find the pink unicorns
I assure you they are quite norm

We circle, we glide upon a rainbow cloud
See how the turtle shells glow and the robins egg sounds
Look there and you will see
Our beautiful home, waiting for you and for me

So when next you see upon the ground
Purple spheres with no known name
Place them carefully back upon the stem
So they will come back and stay with you again

Hour 13 – A Promise & a Friend

A Promise & a Friend

 

When death owes you a kindness, 

he will do it without blinking. 

He will look into your eyes and 

thank you with genuine earnest

for the pleasure. 

Death asks only 

that you pay it forward

and hopes you wear your incisors 

a little more proudly. 

 

That is how death befriended me. 

Not by asking me to smile, 

but by making sure I had a reason to. 

Death told me jokes about the universe

and made me a playlist of all the songs

I had never heard before. 

Death bid me farewell with a kiss

so softly on my cheek that my eyes swelled

and Death did not ask me not to cry,

simply wiped my cheek with soft black cloth

swathed over bony fingers. 

 

I lend every book I read to death

and he always gives them back.

Says to try again.

Read a little slower.

Drink in the words with a more luxurious tongue. 

These memories

he says

are not only yours but the author’s. 

That ones even in my care. 

Take care of their words for them,

for no one else will. 

 

Invisible Boy – Hour Fourteen

My handsome invisible baby boy
I’d be proud to call you “my son”
If you were indeed mine, you would bring me such joy
From the moment your life had begun
I would raise you with guidance and a loving heart
And teach you to be humble and kind
You’d still have my soul, even if we’re apart
And you would never once leave my mind

We would fish together, we’d ride bikes and race
We’d learn and we’d play through all our days
For no one could ever begin to replace
The love that I’d have for you always
Even as years went past, my baby you’d be
Whether three months or eighty-three years
But lost from my eyes, you are now to thee
And I say that as I wipe my tears

I’m glad for my girl, but I can have no more
My invisible boy, you will stay
I oft think of all the fun that we’d have in store
And send thoughts across clouds marred by gray
I have no regrets, my life is complete
Yet, sometimes, I question in strife
If things would be better or left not as sweet
With a precious boy here in my life

Hour Fourteen, Imaginary Children Prompt

Dream

Eva Suzanne and Adam Michael,
those were the names you would have had,
you black haired, green eyed children of my heart.

I dreamed you for so long,
I longed so for you in dreams,
I now feel your presence around every corner,
just beyond my peripheral sight, waiting.

I had already had my three living babes
when I met your father once more.
Before me, he was convinced
his two living children were all he would have
but he soon began to dream you as well.

“In the next life . . . ” we tell each other,
“when we’re together again . . . ” we always say,
you will come to us, be fully present,
be ours, be real.

Until then, dream, dear souls.
We will meet again.

Poem 09 – To Turn a Phrase

Two birds with one stone
As if it’s an accomplishment
To snuff out avian lives
With prejudice
And it begs the question:
How big are the birds?
How large must the stone be?
What is the purpose of this wanton violence?
Is this hunting for sustenance, or vanity?

Similarly, would it not make more sense
For it to rain a catadupe, rather than
Cats and dogs? How is gravity doing?
How has it failed our feline and canine friends?
Questions rise up like dandelions through concrete
Or like hatching birds
Making me question the hubris of humanity
In its war waged on the animal kingdom
Through sayings

What does it say about us, as a species
To continue dignifying and celebrating
Destruction, cata doxa
Really though, how much meat is on a sparrow?
And if dogs and cats are falling from the sky,
Are they alive or dead upon impact?
Why not just wait for a deluge,
Then sustainably harvest the sinister rain?
At the very least we could claim to save the birds

Hour 14_holes

Just how many holes
does it take
to fill the Albert Hall?
Ernest O’Follipar,
Chief Executive, Royal Albert Hall,
objected
in the strongest possible terms –
Concert-goers will not attend
out of fear of falling
into a hole!
A self-appointed hole-counter,
O’Follipar tallied all the holes
and came up with 32
(if you include the doors).
Proposed lyric changes
submitted to Brian Epstein
were not accepted.
John Lennon forthwith
dispatched a note of reply,
further angering the
esteemed Royal Albert Hall Council.
A ban on performing the offending song
continued until Milli Vanilli (by God)
unknowingly played it in 1989.

I’d love to turn you on.

Prompt 14

Dream Children
(Title taken from Charles Lamb’s Essay)

Black hair and brown eyes
Obviously!

Mischievous, like me
But sensible, like him

My love for books
And his passion for life

Dramatic, like me
Gorgeous, like him

And full of kind strength
Like we both could never be.

Tomorrow I might be Enough

“Tomorrow I might be enough.” Idorenym

Today I stand before you

in hopes you’ll accept me.

Acknowledge my words upon my lips.

I bleed out my love to see.

My dreams inspire you to believe, the real me.

The one ticket in the crowd, proud 

to have found you

like a sand dollar in the sea.

All these cliches and rhymes are ways

I express my feelings towards you.

Every phrase and epigraph, or quotes

left in lined spiral notebooks.

I dreamt these words would be heard,

place them upon these pages I touch,

how I never needed someone this much.

My hope now is the world will see,

you mean everything to me.

I hope I am enough.

Hour 11 (2021)

I sneak past the forest ranger
and run into the skyscraper trees.
So tall, the clouds become jealous of their height.
My heart is beating so hard,
but I’m just getting started.
Now, I climb.
Up up up
Past the birds
Past the clouds
and into the thinnest air.
I pause
and watch the periwinkle twinkle of the stars.
A sign from the universe
that it’s time.
And I’m ready to spread my wings
and jump.