Once before, in 2012, I undertook a massive poetry Marathon on New Years to expunge the old year from me. I have done so again. Patreon backers, as well as people who checked my social media, could request a poem, and I would write one for them. Thus, all poems are named after their requester. They'll likely be reworked and renamed in the future, so take them as they are: A celebration of the new year, and a laying to rest of the old. Take the future on, together. We'll need each other for it.
And of course, this all all brought to you by my wonderful backers on Patreon. So without further Adieu... New Years Poetry Marathon, 2017 Kate Preece I had half a heart of stars coughing up pinpricks into a basin like the pitchers of libation in low end Grecian celluloid we mark these days by where we are in this parchment sky with sextant eyes hovering over the water I take a deep breath and blow that sweet sickness over a torrid ocean * Kenneth Smyson Couldn’t you burn? I asked, impatiently to the fire shoving the wood with my boot cursing as its too hot through the toe I’m full of bad ideas like that dropping another log on the fire. And a tireless pile of leaves. * Jo Smiley We stand on a precipice. That sort of finality where you drift off to one side, held on by my hand staring down below you the hollow crack is a cacophony a screaming father a you who wasn’t you a drifting memory of controlling boyfriends and dead identities you held onto. We stand on a precipice. And I let your hand loose. Only you don’t fall but rise like the sun itself your skin peeling away to reveal the bright * Steph Ragno There were Greek Gods Sitting on a mountain and calling the shots you open a floodgate of pages and you unleash them Dionysis drinks on your streetcorners there’s Poseidon hogging the pool Zeus fly’s Delta whenever he can (which explains a lot about Atlanta) Hera’s LuRaRoe business is doing as well as your high school facebook friend’s Apollo headbobs at a concert Artemis is there to, but only with the girls And you’re there. Always been there. Singing an old legend anew The bard of old with a tea mug * Rachel Crozier we called down raindrops and they fell and kept falling to our outstretched hands and Lethe layered fingers closing in on the rooftops like that mattered what is warmth out in the realm of adventure? * Brandon Derk overlooking a wasteland turning out majesty carpet a picnic basket the moon shines spotlight sandwiches and bottles popping like fireworks higher than any star * Nozomi Neko Has she always been jealous of cats with tails? Foot by foot across the back alley fence tails high as a flag to signal YES The balance is here! The balance we find straddling that line between the yard and not unafraid to fall eyes dizzy with surprise If somehow even with all legs down we don’t keep our feet on our path * Kariann Kirby I remember after I saw the body still and fresh so posed like he’d taken a breath or a wax doll I went to sit watching the reel of his childhood memories I’d met him too late to join they asked me if I’d like to try the sandwiches and I can’t remember if they were pulled pork or sloppy joes but they were damn good and so was the coffee and I felt alive in the midst of that beautiful life turned to wax his grandmother recommended a desert and it gave my mouth the warmth of his youth when he too would have come in from the wind and seen a plate sneaking it off before back to play I came there for death but left unable to ask for a recipe it had been too filled with the love of all his kin for me to ever taste that life again * Gara Gains Eyes up. Its the motto I hold when she comes into the room. She churns the passersby till she turns them into buttered up But I keep my eyes up. Greeting me as old friends I try to avoid the massive tattoo of Hellboy that blesses her bosom in spirit to make DaVinci and Michelangelo spar over who gets the needle next an immaculate aura opening its Mignolia petals signaling to all where the heart of glory lies but for now I just don’t look at it cause that would kinda be rather rude * Jeremy Crozier I used to not know the difference between an Emu and Ostrich I do now, obviously. I’d hope you do to. Those big flightless wings co-piloting their way along gangrene soil eyeing the other things in their enclosures their talons like velociraptors imagine a chicken breast and a knife and I imagine their feet and my chest they try to tell us chickens are the mighty of the earth but they forgot the birds big enough I sometimes wonder if they make saddles for them. * Nicholas Scott Kory Oh sing me a song and I’ll tell you a tale of a captain, a ship, and a star sailing away on the light of the moon with tides that were astral and fun they bounced along quasars and even their names are around us in all of their wins for a ship is a running forever it gunning for ports, and for treasure and loot Oh, so sing me a song of these astral tides a tale I will bring you anew sailing away on the light of the moon we knew they would learn about you Michael Robertson Once upon a future dreary while we pondered fairly clearly I asked you what the point of this muddled mess of color light and scraping sound dismay to senses toil to thoughts and broil to minds could be in a world where nothing was even able to be burned down at the roots So you said and so it was cutting on right through the fuzz That kinder days were kinder still when we acted with our own goodwill Rebecca Jacob They only tell you dreams are good Not the toil, Not the soot And I believed them, when I could The clapping masks thoughts of would your failed sales make your funds caput They only tell you dreams are good take off your sandals, as you should true genius walks on knives barefoot And I believed them, when I could I have a purpose, pull away the hood To become a measure of output They only tell you dreams are good Losing blood, you always say you stood craving, thirsty, they tell me not’s afoot And I believed them, when I could I quench my thirst in petrol, fire to the wood My toil foils all as soot They only tell you dreams are good And I believed them, when I could * Sasha Andersson I’ve never been across the way and seen the desert and the birds you cut your hair short like a shush to an insult the world had been yelling since the day you were born revolting with anger while it smiled like it was cute that everything was shit * Evan Foreman Stop being so fucking cute ya dick the rest of us are out here in shags and brambles while you walk in with white silk robe and half-drunk champange glass stained with red lipstick you smile with its just not very fair that I look like I need a donation while you’re out there kissing the sky * Duth Olec A singular splotch of brown on white the blur of sack-cloth can’t feel their purple toes but its only a few more feet a few more yards a few few they aren’t found till morning till their precious package pulled from frigid fingers reveals itself plays it seems greek ones and the brother is mourned the books put on the shelf no one knowing till scholors poured eyes and drank ink it was the only one saved in the snow * Jessica Beauchamp On my breast I wear your Porg for months, my bag bore your badge and you mark my clothes with rolling visions of something beyond me keep reaching out your hand push it past my ribs I’m only here in passing Porgs last forever * Jackie Barr I think it was outside a restaurant in the backroads of Philadelphia the throng moved around me and my tape recorder that never had a tape back when we dreamed of something different than our future and our footsteps felt momentous but we still have feet and we’ll walk on till someday we meet again outside some forgotten backalley cafe then, you’ll tell me a different story that you wrote with your own stride * Eric Asher They say you’ve got jokes but the jokes are no good please sir, come around and make me understood knock knock who’s where? There once was a man from St. Louis, whose life seemed so fortuitous, beyond just the punchline two writers walk into a bar it was always known that a voice was nothing without a wink to make sure I spilled my ginger ale on the most elegant bad pun to grace North America * Ahliah Bratzler You set up the keyboard “My mom’s in the backroom” Head tilt. Hand gestured. Got it. No trouble at all then. Sheet music litters the floor note by note we craft and go back and forth on lyrics I’d look back on with a cringe and a throw the papers snow on my tongue I never thought I could grow out of being in a High School band * Elizabeth Tock hand sifting through a bin finding each piece threaded through and still to sit upon neck or hand or head fine tuning the look till the room is a sheen of gold * Luther Siler There was a room and that was a place filled with breath from you to the board and from the pupils to their desks chalk by chalk and ink by ink you scoured minds cracks to plaster in and built something from cells There was a room. And that was a book filled with ink or pixels from years of wisdom to words never stopping the life of teaching just changing the medium from breath to eternity Taylor Davis It was another thing crossed off that list just getting on pouring that bowl of oatmeal with the daily spoon and the mastication of carbs into another start and repetition ensued till we all got along and the days blurred together till incongruity struck in a dazzle of something beyond predictability long past boiling water Briana Crozier You’re an engine, and I’m at the light hoping to catch a glimpse at the crosswalk pistons grinding As I run with burning legs to even meet you where you’re going cutting the lawns and crossing the creek as your tracks turn the landscape crosshatch and I arrive to see your caboose tailing away in the distance again ever ambling on Andy Frankham-Allen two inches, measured in gaps a tremor in the hand the J key awaits beneath for lowered touch to spring again and go back down its such a simple job up and down becoming something of characters winding its way back to forgotten pip-squeaks of strawberry barely growing on the lawn their berries weak and strained at liberty of its fact the key goes down with memory to kneel in grace as fertile harvests came of weeds and the darkness in the sky was written out by the author before it could latch into mind * Uncle Jon Cobblers all that stood between man and ultimate glory roll 20 or 1 * Anarchic Did you forget on the last hanging tree when the black squirrels sang and the cackle birds fleed? Did you forget what we told you to see? In the hollow, the trunk, the confidencey, filled to the brim with bones and with tea holding the earth as an ossuary you find a bone, and find a home within that fertile wall the dirt does fall the worms do maul but tis nothing with a face of bone * Abby Halling South of the Bend and up the stream back where the water still followed a dream and a rhyme and a rhythm and anything yours before we cut back on believing in words before it was cold. Before it got hot you opened your hand and walked through the dark as they stumbled around you dashed rocks and a stream you crossed the river eyes closed, but you did And you’ll do it again, you’ll do it again. * Elijah Efsits You agreed to it. Folded as Houdini in a box carried like carrion used as a chair and forgotten till you ripped that stage apart with your untempered voice forged in something hotter as the stage lights up in our illumination in precious metals and strange accents * Me In 2012, I became a werewolf my skin split open, and I clawed at the earth tearing at it all foam seared lips, and panting teeth I gnashed for you and for all my rage the earth failed to budge as I shoved it in furious aching I left behind my skin, somewhere with a sea dropped into salt ocean burning cuts to larger myself smoke out the impurities and poison my ability to listen to the sounds in my chest and call it anything but meat I closed that box, left it hidden wrapping the locks and soaking in tonic water anything that was left from me but it shook In 2017, the moon rose again over men who fancied themselves our kings having only been the jester over screams and disillusion and I gnashed at the ground by rote clawing with a sad sigh till I found my skin and robed myself again to walk the halls enclothed in something resembling myself
2 Comments
Jo Smiley
1/3/2018 09:41:14 am
Jim. These are amazing. I love them.
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James Wylder
1/3/2018 02:35:28 pm
Thank you so much Jo :D!
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James Wylder
Poet, Playwright, Game Designer, Writer, Freelancer for hire. Archives
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