The Poetry Marathon

Sleep is lost to me.
She has nothing on me.
Give me another chance to dream.
Please just let me be.
I am lost to sleep.

Is it too late to turn back now?
If only we knew how to fly,
Do you think you can show me how?
Through the mirror we go just one more time.
Paint the white roses red
Please hold onto your head
You’re not the mad one
Put your hand in mine
We can make it out of this, just hold on tight.
Only the white rabbit can tell us what happened to the king.
You can be queen…I don’t want to be she.
I am king.

Sometimes I feel like I’m dying outside of your walls.
I’m not giving up on you but maybe I need a minute to find myself.
Because you got me feeling crazy over you.
I was praying for you for my whole life. I just didn’t know it.
My heart was a hardened dead thing until you beat it to life.
If I scream it to the world would you finally hear the words inside?
And I wonder if you see the words stuck in my eyes.
They say everything I can’t bring from my lips.
It’s another night unraveling the seams from these dreams.
I’m writing you into these books maybe you won’t read.
You’re part of my story.
You bled yourself in between every line until you were brought to life.
I poured every ounce of myself out to try to make you smile.
I lit myself on fire to try to defrost your defenses.
I made myself the joke just to hear you laugh.
Now here I am with nothing left.
Contemplating your missing shadow with something akin to tenderness.
Got stuck in your games and missed every step I was supposed to make.

I was not born to be a calm sea
I was born to be a hurricane
I never wanted you get to caught up in my heavy rain
Lost to the puddles as the current overflows
Share my umbrella it’s just you and me

Take me to the edge of the world.
Strip me to my barest bones.
Remind me that I’m not alone.
Ship me off to the cosmos.
Mysterious shape of an empty room
Silhouettes against a dark moon
Let me bask in a field of dandelions
Braid them into chains in my hair
Bottle up the summer fireflies
Put your lips to mine if you dare
Walk me up to the watchtower
Lose yourself in this torrent rain shower
Encase me in my funeral pyre
Send my soul off to the stars

You aren’t really asleep.
Not even at night
You’re just waiting for the sun to rise.
Your streets always welcome me home.
Late nights under streetlights
Farmers market on Saturday morning makes me smile
The magic I felt as a child seeing your tall buildings come into view through the trees.
Getting lost, first drinks, and tattoo stings.
These streets helped me become me.
So here is my thank you for the memories.

Can’t you feel the magic?
The air is alive.
Your hand is in mine, feel the electricity rise.
I’ve spent the last year tightrope walking for you in my dreams.
I’ve been talking to the flowers again. (You know how I do that.)
They whisper I got it right this time.
I find you in the hand knitted pieces of the sky.
You’re always there when I don’t even try.
You’re liquid sunshine.
I find you in every silver lining.
You arrive right on time.
I wish I could bottle this feeling.
Maybe I could just watch my heart healing.
Because I can’t forget you.
You’re engraved on my heart.
All days move exactly the same.
You encompass my brain.
It’s a silent refrain.
I sat still in an ever moving world.
I watched everything around me turn to rust.
I watched the flowers in the vase turn to dust.
I pressed down and left my fingertips on your heart.
I just want you to remember me.
Lately I hope that the memory of the warmth of your heart can’t be lost to time.
I wanna be where you are.
Because I know somewhere you’re mine.
Across the oceans or maybe in another timeline.
There is no way we don’t work when I know your hand fits perfectly in mine
She’s the music in the movie without her it just doesn’t make sense
Because when the book finds its end she is where we begin.

She is a goddess and the stars are alive on her skin.
The oceans are alive in her eyes and I’m outside her walls just dying to be let in.
She is a never ending dose of sunshine.
A daydream that has come to life.
And when she is away it is the darkest moon you’ll ever know.
She pours herself into your veins.
Plants a garden within your heart watching the roots dig in.
You might fight back but you will never win.

I know that I’m not pretty and a few likes on Instagram doesn’t make me important.
Life isn’t some fairytale it’s just a lot of bad with dreams thrown in it.
It’s a silent room trying to make my body fit your shape.
The pieces of my heart burn.
The edges catching flame, until there is a fire roaring inside my chest.
They beg for you to smother them out.
Drown out the pain and take me down.
The edges of the scars you left tug at me.
The pain makes me dizzy and close to throwing up.
This grainy picture is only the build up.
Sometimes I ask myself if I ripped my beating heart from my chest and handed it to you would that finally be enough for you to see I care?

She was born from earth
Meant to lie beneath man
That was never her plan

Now she dreams of wings that shimmer like mother of pearl in the daylight.
Sometimes they were golden.
Never quite the same.
They were warm, her shelter from the rain and the snow.
They cradled her while she dreamed.
She looked in the river and she was gorgeous, her wings reflected back in her beautiful ocean eyes.
This is always when the dream changes.
She screams.
The false god rips her garden away and her wings.
She used to know how to fly, that was before her bones were broken.
Trapped within a hurricane, long forgotten the art of taking off.
Bogged down in the wind and rain feels like drowning.
She reached for someone and they freed her but with freedom she lost her wings.