The Poetry Marathon

4pm. Poem 14

What is Love? (Redacted)

Love is a list (redacted).
Love is my children
and grandchildren,
my Lucy Watusi Kitty,
all the bills paid,
and a little (redacted) over.

Love is gratitude 
and (redacted) cross legged
on my big, old, soft bed.

Love is (redacted)!
All my (redacted)!
All the (redacted)!

Love is guiltless
personal (redacted)
really good dark chocolate
orange toenail color
feral chickens (redacted)
right outside my bedroom window.

Love is
the gurgle speak of Iao Stream
chit chatting down to the ocean.

Love is autonomy
and nonjudgment
and cherry chapstick…

but, that doesn’t make much (redacted).

All these things are things I love
not what love is.

So, what is love?

Love is letting things and beings
be who and what they are as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else in their process…

Yeah, that’s what love is.
Not very poetic, though.

Let’s try again…

Love is the ache
in my ancient (redacted)
for crows and trains
and Mom and Dad.

Love is
the desparate hollow of my arms
where my grandbabies slept before the blast and splatter.

Love is (redacted)
that I will know those things
again someday.

Love is (redacted).

Yeah… love is (redacted).

.

3pm. Poem 13.

Funny, Silly, Workadays (a 3 stanza tanka plus 7 syllable line)

Everyday at work
someone throws up, pees, or poops
and it’s usually on me.
Then, they smile their tiny smiles
while I clean it all away

Everyday at work
someone hits, bites or scratches
and it’s usually on me.
Then, we sit nicely and learn
better ways to share feelings.

Everyday at work
someone runs away and hides
and it’s usually from me.
Then, we ollie oxen free
and stand still as tall statues

for a minute and a half.

.

2pm. Poem 12.

Pantry Closet

She taught through her actions
not words.

She showed silently,

“There is not enough
unless there are two or three
of each of everything”

This was the scarcity
of living on the other
side of the tracks
in the ’30’s… the ’40’s…

It held on, didn’t let go
clung like field cotton remnants
to socks and shoelaces,
raised fingerblisters from
pickin, pickin all day everyday
until every bush was cleared.

This is the scarcity of cannin
tumadus n black eye peas
peaches n plumbs
from her gardens and trees,
the scarcity of hoards
of store boughts,
of nothing gets thrown away

the scarcity
that sent her frenzied
when after Dad passed
I took to her Pantry Closet
with giant black trash bags
for anything expired

the scarcity that pulled
clear hot tears from her gut
as dozens and dozens of cans
and jars and boxes
went to the garbage
along with her notion
that if anyone ever mentioned
they wanted something,
she had it there to give

the scarcity that kept her
up in her chair for three days
“tryin’a figure out
how to get it all back”

.

1pm. Poem 11.

At the Clinic School

On any ordinary day
on an ordinary street
in our ordinary town
third floor of a very
ordinary, beige building…

a child with no speech
squeaks out, “Ooooo”
for the first time,
another chooses to pick up a book
instead of flinging himself
into a wall,
a little one
points to a photo of her mother,
and another of her dog.

Others try new foods,
share a game with a friend,
look into the eyes
of their parents,
choose to breathe
instead of scream,
wave goodbye
at the end of the day.

On any ordinary day
behind very ordinary doors
not so ordinary people
teach anything but ordinary children
extraordinary skills…

and miracles happen.

.

12 Noon. Poem 10.

What is Love?

Love is a list poem.
Love is my children
and grandchildren,
my Lucy Watusi Kitty,
all the bills paid,
and a little left over.

Love is gratitude 
and meditating cross legged
on my big, old, soft bed.

Love is books!
All my books!
All the books!

Love is guiltless
personal boundaries
really good dark chocolate
orange toenail color
feral chickens roosting
right outside my bedroom window.

Love is
the gurgle speak of Iao Stream
chit chatting down to the ocean.

Love is autonomy
and nonjudgment
and cherry chapstick…

but, that doesn’t make much sense.

All these things are things I love
not what love is.

So, what is love?

Love is letting things and beings
be who and what they are as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else in their process…

Yeah, that’s what love is.
Not very poetic, though.

Let’s try again…

Love is the ache
in my ancient cells
for crows and trains
and Mom and Dad.

Love is
the desparate hollow of my arms
where my grandbabies slept before the blast and scatter.

Love is hope
that I will know those things
again someday.

Love is hope.

Yes… love is hope.
.

11am. Poem 9. 

(Use these words in a poem…
beet, jacket, tremor, bayou, elbow, light bulb, cinnomen, bucket, elk, carport)

On Taking Mom to the ER

Bracing your elbow
in the palm of my hand
we slip your favorite red jacket
over your shoulders.
The tag says
Outer Layer: Beet
Lining: Cinnomen

You like to hear about that
everytime.

Winking up at Dad’s
old elk head on the wall,
you assure Bokie
we’ll be right back.

You like to do that everytime, too.

Your sweet, soft, white hair tremors and shakes
with the rest of you
as I place the blue bucket
on a black floor mat
between your legs,
just in case.

You marvel at the beauty
of sunrise on the bayou,
lookin like the yellow parlor
lightbulbs of your youth,
as we back out of your carport
for the ER.

I won’t tell you it’s 11pm.
I won’t remind you that
you grew up in a two room
share cropper’s stilt house,
other side o’the tracks.
I won’t let you find out
you’ve never been to Louisiana.

.

10am hour 8 poem 8

Poem for Us (written while listening to Max Richter, On the Nature of Daylight)

You come to me slightly.
You are so broken
and she is so broken
and they are so broken.
We are all so broken.

Ancient china broken

You tippy toe in
not to shatter yourself
not to drop yourself to the floor
not to kick up any
blinding memory dust
not to knock anyone off
our shadow ledges.

You skippity hop talk softly
cautiously
needingly.
You are so broken.
We are all so broken.

Forgotten promises broken broken

You come to me
stemmed and leaking
and she is there.
We bandage with cool cloth talk
gluey safeties
soft, warm blanket gauzes
that soothe us
that soothe even them.

You are so broken
and she is so broken
and they are so broken.
We are all so broken

Pangaea broken

Pieces of our whole torn apart
but still fitting broken

separated only by space and time broken.

Lahainatown (a two part viator)

Lahainatown (a two part viator)

1.

… and then they died
alone in cars
running through smoke
leaping for sea

huddled hopeless
and then they died
unthinkably
along the streets

trapped in their homes
screaming, pleading
and then they died
prayers in their throats

unanswered prayers
swept up in flames
burned with their flesh
and then they died.

2.

Lahainatown
oh, Maui’s heart
lies desolate,
suffocated.

Unmarked graveyard
Lahainatown
of bone and teeth
in powder silt

still and silent
host of fireghosts
Lahainatown
welcomes them all

to stay among
the healing arms
of Banyon roots,
Lahainatown…

.

8am. Poem 6.

If Earth was Flat

If Earth was flat
I could peek over the edge
like Lucy the Cat
looking for a gecko
or other crawly thing to pounce.
I could finally confirm that
Dark Matter lays in sheets
one on top of the other
of their own gravitational design
castles after castles after castles,
many with spiraling disks on top
one of blue and green, wet and dry
covered in crawly things
very pounc-on-able crawly things

assuming Earth was flat,
and I was the size of The Moon.
.

7am Poem 5.

Crimes, etc… (a four stanza tanka plus one syllable)

Your crime was lying.
Mine was believing in you.
Both more sins than crimes
if I believed sins exist.
If I believed in an us.

Your crime was vodka.
Mine was hiding from the truth.
Both more blood than crime
if I believe blood carries
sins and crimes lifetime to life…

Your crime was poison.
Mine was drinking you full down.
Both more deadly than we knew
if I believe in knowing
if I believed in ends.

Lie, vodka poison.
Believe, hide, slurp your posings.
Sins, blood, slow fall deaths
if I believe in cyclones
if I believed we ever

were.

.