New Years Poetry Marathon, 2017

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