The Poetry Marathon

AND THE TRUTH SIMPLY RESTS

honesty doesn’t have to cut

“tough love” is a bully with a smile

there is space for a kinder truth

the curiosity to ask your anger

which raw unseen vulnerable face

he thrashes so fiercely to protect

so really query yourself in the heat

whether the flames are worth the ashes

and what can be lost forever to the cruelty

of misplaced rage disguised as love

or you’ll never know the tender touch of honesty

ROSES & BONES
Or, The Marble Maze

a whirl of rose petals amid a dark fairytale

there’s a sense of urgency in the modernness

retelling the classics in a newer thinner skin

hungry for a truth that will stick to our ribs

sustaining us until the next meager meal

there inside each of us, our final form

beyond a maze of addiction and pain,

tolerance and trauma,

regret and reclamation.

chandeliers glitter like diamonds

in palaces and train stations alike

for the shiftless the difference is hassle

nothing heaped beyond that except

a shot to get us out of the dark

somewhere between disney and rob zombie

neither happy endings nor horror shows

in the wisest sincere wish

cautionary tales are to be read, not lived

EAGLE-EYE TREASURES

“Look up,” you say, “there is water on both sides of the road.”

and there is- an expanse of glimmering blue- I’m lost in it

“Look,” you say another time, “Moss on rocks. Frozen streams.”

and these are a few tender handfuls of my favorite things.

Tenderness like the way you pick mullberries

the way you hand them to me in my white dress

our fingers stained purple with sweet satiation

drifting out of time and back to our innocence

if only for a treasured twilight moment

Tenderness like the way you catch fireflies

cupped in your palms and give them to me

because I’ve always been too awestruck

and fretful of accidental firefly injury

and I could go on, too, all these small gentle ways

you give love to the whole universe from the center of yourself

like the way you prepare a meal, and also

the way you know when your friends are hungry

Tenderness like those words you never heard

like the words you still worry to feel and stumble to say,

and glitch to hear but still not in a good way

so we have three taps instead and sometimes two more

because these things are armfuls of love already by themselves

moments without the need for a single superfluous word

UNNECESSARY GRAVITATIONAL ROUGHNESS

.                       (CONVERSATIONAL)

I can make jokes about it

I can even craft a script to include every egg,

and I’ll make them crack themselves up.

But instead I dance around your eggshells,

I hold up your umbrella in the rain. I remind you

to pick up almond milk for morning coffee.

Every day you remind me a little more of my mother.

I’m not saying I hate you.

I’m just saying, someday,

I’ll stop answering the phone.

**BREVITY FOR THE SAKE OF THE PROMPT, SECOND VERSION: 54 Words including the title which surely shouldn’t count 😉 **

UNNECESSARY GRAVITATIONAL ROUGHNESS

          (CONVERSATIONAL)

I’ll make jokes,

craft scripts highlighting every egg,

and they’ll crack themselves up.

I dance around your eggshells,

I hold up your umbrella in the rain.

Every day you remind me more of my mother.

I’m not saying I hate you.

I’m just saying, someday,

I’ll stop answering the phone.

SECOND BREAKFAST

the way we wake, lazing against each other’s warmth

when your voice breaks across my mind like ocean waves

I drink you up the way my skin drinks the morning light

my iris opening to hold all the beauty bestowed upon it

this oasis itself is my breakfast, shimmering sustenance

whether or not I slept through the night, I feel restored

so we wander out to the kitchen for coffee, dazed and half-dressed

I’m smiling with a secret glow and not quite ready for second breakfast

CITIES OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

Or, Finding the MirrorMask

~inspired by the movie MirrorMask, written by Neil Gaiman

it’s a dream but it’s not a dream

because really it’s another world

this is a city of front and back

a city of light and shadow

a city created by dreams,

and drawings, and wishes

hopes and fish swim along the streets

sphinx cats will chew the pages of books

it’s always dim here, twilight, like in a dream

that’s part of how you can tell, unless

you are the type of artist who can easily recognize

your own work made life-size and living

so find the key and then

the lock and then the mirrormask

the last door left will take you home again

GEORGIA O’KEEFE’S EXTREMELY EDIBLE FLOWERS

“I want a whole garden of the flower that you are,”

that was what I wanted to tell you.

I don’t remember what I really said,

something about Van Gogh or Monet

and nearsightedness, if I had to guess.

we stood on every side of the barn, dwarfed,

engulfed by reproductions of famous artwork.

we hadn’t planned to come here, but we saw

the installation as we were driving past and thought,

heck, why not. We do love art.

the wind cuts and you pull me close for just a moment.

there’s ice on the puddles and I crack it with careful delight.

I tell you that I always think of creme brulee and Amelie,

which is one of my favorite movies,

if only because it saves me a lot of time and explanations.

months later even summer can’t match the warmth

of standing at your side and losing my sense of scale.

flowers bloom on my palette as I try to name these feelings.

maybe there’s more to this than Georgia O’Keefe’s extremely edible flowers

or the way the sunlight catches the red and silver strands around your smile

we’re breaking apart any ordinariness with just a gaze that we share silently

redefining our worlds again in these mirroring moments of contentedness

PAPERBACK PICKUP LINE

“Have you ever thought about what would happen,”

he said, “if a mermaid and a minotaur got together,

and their kids got the human half of each so now they’re just,

some dudes?” She sipped her wine and arched an eyebrow.

“Can’t say that I have, no,” she replied cautiously.

“Well, me and my brothers. We’re those dudes.”

He did sound matter-of-fact, in spite of the ludicrous

nature of his claim. She smiled to cover a scoff.

“So then, what do you all do, with that?” she asked,

sincerely curious, at least to know where this story was going.

“We fight crime!” he declared proudly.

Later, many years later, she told him that she stayed,

not because she believed him, but because she had to know

how the story ended, not whether or not it was true.

EVERYTHING OR NOTHING

You can call it faith, if you like.

If that’s easier than leaving the unnameable to itself.

There’s an exploration that goes beyond naming,

But revelations are only for the curious.

Enmeshed in all these distinctions,

refracting a reaction like lightning.

So can you tell me, then, sunset chemist?

What secrets lie behind the sky?

WHO KNOWS WHAT’S GOOD OR BAD?

a farmer takes his horse to the county fair.

the horse wins first place.

his neighbor comes to congratulate him,

but the farmer only shrugs and says,

“Who knows what’s good or bad?”

that night the prize-winning horse is stolen.

the neighbor comes to console the farmer,

but the farmer only smiles and says,

“Who knows what’s good or bad?”

a few days later, the farmer’s horse returns,

having escaped the thieves, and leading

a herd of wild horses softly into the farmer’s pen.

the neighbor comes to celebrate the farmer’s good fortune,

but again the farmer only says,

“Who knows what’s good or bad?”

the next day the farmer’s son tries his best

to break and tame some of the new wild mares.

he is thrown from a horse and breaks his leg.

the neighbor comes again to support the farmer,

but yet again the farmer only replies,

“Who knows what’s good or bad?”

within the week the army comes to the village.

there is a war, and every able-bodied man is called

to serve their country in the coming battles.

because the farmer’s son has a broken leg,

the soldiers pass him by… and the neighbor

wonders to himself, astonished,

“Who knows what’s good or bad?”