The Poetry Marathon

The sad ladder I climb, quietly visible
on glinting walls, a vast canvased possibility,
the unstained imagination.

How alluring the mystery before words,
the images birthed in the fires of my soul.

How to paint them with the smudges
of calloused fingers. To bring color from inside,
to darken the boundaries set outside.

Perhaps it is better never to touch the rungs
but to stay in the eternal hint of wonder.

All my gifts will merely clutter this serene
clairvoyance that beckons the best of my soul.

Perhaps it is better to stand apart forever,
listen to the call, watch as my thoughts arise and fall,
contort, and reform.

There are no steps reaching high enough
to see over this seething storm,
unless I never bless its form
beyond the waves of my mind.

Handles retreating, disintegrating, impure.
Just the vast, blank world, a colorless universe
that contains all we could ever create.

Darkness calling, pierced by the lone
cyclopean eye, a road that bends beyond sight,
to roll through the forested bosom of enchanting night.

Where the asphalt holds a small barrier
upon undulant roots and curving earth,
where all is swallowed, digested,
reborn through midnight wonder,
until the blood sings with ancient notes,
once again remembered, stirring the soul
to dance with itself,
to love that primordial familiarity.

No path is too long to return to this place.
This place that has been dormant inside you.
Go there now, in the deep dark of your modern slumber,
awake the beast that seeks to revel there,
forget the names of things, forget the things you were taught,
act on what you feel in your bones,
act on what you already know,
on what you’ve always known.

We huddle, we hope, we play card games on the floor, eat takeout for every meal. Pizza, lo mein, cheeseburgers, and Gummi bears.

We watch each other’s luggage, and sleep in dog piles against the wall. We walk around the same terminal that we already scouted out this morning. We laugh, we crumble, dreams of travel thwarted.

We continue to belong to our time together, despite the walls falling over on us.

Sporadic chattering, the twisted breasts of a tree, like an aging woman turning to look behind her, arms outstretched above her head.

Is she stepping out of the shower? Why is the bark so smooth? Shining like wet skin.

A talking smile speaks with rolling bursts of sound, his head falls back and his shoulders shake, the table at his stomach trembles, bent knees jerk apart unseen beneath the table, the inside of his thighs are hairy, like uncooked ham that has fallen on a dirty floor.

There is a truth that lies behind my unblinking eyes. A truth that is uncomfortable to hear because it is spoken with a forked tongue.

In the stillness there is transformation. Scales that protect,  harden and dry, a time for abrasion arrives. To move in obstruction with everything that surrounds. Until the old skin peels in waves.  Strips of white webs lacing down my spine. These are the scripts that bear this old law of the Earth.

To stay close and give your pain to Her. You cannot carry it, it must be shed. You too will outgrow the form you inhabit. What was once your armor will begin to suffocate you. When the pain won’t allow you to rest, let it go. The time for transformation is continally at hand.

Resurrection is the lesson of the serpent. Long before the garden and the tree. Long before He hung on the cross. Didn’t the fruit I gave you change everything?

1 slice of American cheese, singles, each wrapped with their own expanse of plastic.

Throw it in a bowl, microwave for 30 seconds twirl melted cheese around a fork.

Insert fork  to mouth.

Life is a labyrinth of suffering.

Pain that reverberates through a smashed face.

Immediate signals that bombard the brain,

There is no escape from this suffering.

It is required to endure living.

The obstruction to my trajectory,

change came for the plans I intended to see.

In crowds of people I ache for lovers

I’ll never share, to never see so many people

honest and unguarded, and to love them for it.

Life is a labyrinth of suffering.

The obstruction to my trajectory

My desire to change what has been

The origin of all my pain.

It is only this suffering  I can remedy.

By simply greeting life as it is when it arrives.

A sparrow drinks from the pooling water in a brass water fountain. Fallen parts of trees and flowers partially cover the drain as the water slowly recedes. He drinks in quick quivering gulps. Shaking his head, and droplets from his tiny beak. Someone walking by gets too close, their shadow passes over the fountain. With a ratcheting of brown wings, he retreats to the trees, vanishing in the engulfing green, then returns in half a second, to trot along the rim of the bowl and drink.

In Newark Liberty Airport Station, America is two men in airport security uniforms sitting in wheelchairs.  America is hiding in multicolored faces, eyes, hairstyles, standing in line, staring at screens, talking in many languages, complimenting the air and echoing from the concrete pillars and tile floors, scuffed with the oil of a thousand handprints, the skidding soles of a ten thosand shoes, and countless spilled beverage stains.

America is various patterns of family, standing around a luggage carousel, old and young, man and woman, child, children, students, filed through aisles and ribbon-drawn walkways, waiting for the weight they drag behind them. America is hardshell suitcases on wheels, masks under noses, protective cardboard sleeves for 24 oz. coffee ups, signs, music, symbols in lights orchestrating the competing rivers of people moving.

In Newark Liberty Airport Station, Terminal B, at 4:45 pm on Saturday, America is 3 women behind a check-in counter for a Polish airline, a blonde with sparkling earrings, a cream colored woman kindly adorned with a navy hijab that at he’s her attendants’s uniform, and a brunette with with a wide smile and perfect teeth. Talking, questioning, directly, indirectly, assertive, scanning passports,

America is hordes of people shuffling, crowds gathering, and sitting together on the floor. Flatbed carts rumbling down the corridors transporting silver kegs of beer. America is someone singing “I need love” and their words rise above the incoherent jumble of languages unchecked, and spontaneous.

America is the empty spaces that form from the ebbing of the crowd. Remnants, wreckage, America is the elevator doors shutting on pressing people trying to squeeze into maximum occupancy. Oh, the beauty. Oh, the disgust. Oh, the mundane!

The turn, the approach, the slice through each moment with drive and craze, in tune, in place, we sail in confidence, with charm and luck for wings.

Changes fold over our outstretched arms, lifting us, trembling into new ascents, we shake, we falter, instantaneously thwarted we drop and recover, drop and recover, drop and recover, recover.

Surprises, obstacles, momentum steady, disappointment, killjoys, steady, steady.

The adventure continues looming over, under, it is now, we all feel it when it gets close, we all feel it when it slips away. Steady, stay steady.