The Poetry Marathon

O Spinner of a Thousand Tales
(That recycle the same four plotlines)
O Maker of a Thousand Worlds
(Populated by the same 6 characters in different hats)

I plead to you, Creator of (clean, black-and-white) Conflicts,
that my narrative be flush with thine bounty.
Let my bitter rivals be placed upon buses,
let my villains be as obviously evil as they are one-note
and let them receive their grim and tidy comeuppance.
Though not by my hand;
the audience must needs think of me as pure and merciful.

I beg you, Sovereign of Stories,
(we’ve all heard a million times)
Let my challenges be overcome
by montage and instant mastery.
Let that to which I turn my hand
garner me praise and jealousy
of my peers and instructors both.

I supplicate myself before you, Manager of Meet-Cutes,
That all of my crushes shall,
in time, turn out to have loved me in secret.
That I might find truest love,
without more than a glance at growth or self-improvement.
That I might blunder into the life of someone special
Just when that special someone needs me most.

Of you, Architect of the Profound
(as long you don’t think about it too hard),
I request the most saccharine of happy endings:
Let my finances be ever sorted off-screen,
and my hair only ever fetchingly tousled.
May my recklessness be vindicated,
and my actions have only positive consequences.
Grant me a conventionally attractive one true pairing,
whose only flaw (by the closing credits) is clumsiness.
And if it be thine will, equally appealing children
who speak and reason like tiny adults.
Gift me, O Cosmic Hack, a place for my came-with-the-frame family.
A gleaming castle, a stately manor, or a shimmering starship.
Even a nice brownstone would suffice,
Your servant is not greedy.

With greatest humility
thy most devoted disciple.

Mary Sue

All life is sacred
Maybe some is more sacred than others.
The life of the deer is not sacred to the wolf.
Nor the corn, to the deer.

And nothing is sacred to a fucking chicken.

Slurp a worm from the earth,
Snatch a fly from the air,
Rip a seed from a pod,
Bite Charlotte from her web.

It’s all just “FOOD” to a hen.

Some chickens lay eggs, yes.
Others drive their beaks into them
to sup on the yellow goodness within.
Or whatever else they find.

All life is sacred, until you’re hungry enough.

Chickens are social animals.
And they welcome each other
by trying to break the necks of new hens.
If you’re too big to kill, you’re in.

All life is sacred, unless you’re too weak to keep it.

When a chicken dies, it stresses the flock.
But that doesn’t stop them from pecking.
The eyes and flesh of their fallen comrade
A snack for the survivors.
Even with a bounty of grains, they’ll sample the dead.

All life is sacred, but what’s left behind is just meat.

Roosters are cowards and rapists,
on top of being braggarts.
They’ll work their harems into featherless misery
Defending them only from rival roosters.
When predators near
proud cocks can be found
hiding under piles of their brides.

All life is sacred, and none is more sacred than our own.

Keeping too many roosters is a cruelty.
To hen and farmer and other roosters alike.
Nature makes far too many of them
For any farm or flock to keep.
Culling is a pretty word.
Exsanguination is lovely.
They both mean death.
Which means quiet, and peace, and health
That life would have denied.

Death, too, is sacred.

The thousandth, drawn out, pleading “Daddy” of the day
Grates like corroded metal on raw patience.
A long breath hisses inward between teeth clenched without volition
Look up, let the breath hiss back out, tuck the aggravation away.
Two more “Daddy”s have passed, whining, in the composure time
Demanded by the thousandth.

Yes, hon. I turn away from the work that feeds and houses us to ask. What is it?
“How do I make a table?” She replies, waving a tablet under my nose
A resilient sleeve of brilliant plastics making the experience immeasurably pinker.

I ask, resigned, what kind of table she needs.
A crafting table?  To bend the blocky materials of her world to her will?
An enchanting table?  To twist the magics of that bind all life in ways clever and profane?
An alchemy table?  To brew elixirs of power and danger unguessed at outside of imagination and helpful wikis?

“No daddy, a table like the villagers have.”
A what?  I inquire, befuddled by the purpose and construction of this apparent necessity.
“Look!” She turns her tablet and shows me the treasure her tiny heart desires.

Ah.  A fence post with a slab on it. I see.
I explain as much, and a smile splits her gap-toothed face.
With a voice like heaven’s wind chimes she says “Thank you, Daddy!”
And one-thousand-and-four makes all the ones before more than worthwhile.

I return to work with a smile
as she plunges once more into the realm of blocks and creepers.
I settle into a pace, reminded of why I do it in the first place.

And then the air splits with a shout: “DAAADDY!”
“HOW DO YOU SPELL ‘FENCE’?”

The pump still works, but something’s broken.
Some busted pipe under tons of concrete.

Without that one little tube, nigh impossible to get at and fix, the system failed
And you stopped being a swimming pool.

But a pool you remained,
as water shifted from blue to green,
clear to cloudy, vacant to crowded.

Chlorine and chemicals thinned by rain, absorbed by leaves,
perhaps imbibed with gusto by some intrepid microorganisms like moonshine-drunk prospectors plowing into an unexploited region.
You became habitable, then vulnerable, then welcoming, then home.

In time, enough brazen algae and audacious critters crawled into you,
and did those creeping, growing, icky life things
that you went from a sanitary refuge for overheated children to
a strange captive ecosystem, bound by four concrete walls, a deep floor, and a few clogged pipes.

A palette of greens: from sickly, puke pale to nearly bile-black.
A scent not of pond, but off; a smell from the uncanny valley.
A habitat for bacteria, paramecia, amoebae, and fucking mosquitoes but
Woe betide the snake or toad, or frog that tries to find refuge in you;
those walls are a lethal prison to wrong-size creatures,
And the accretion of thriving muck at the bottom hungers, always.

And yet, to others, to so much that spawns and blooms and perishes,
You are home; you are enough.
Their tiny lives pass, full, within your poured walls;
content to have served their purpose.
However unnatural their place, and unwelcome their habitation.
They get to live.  Because of you.

Two rooms away

Enough to muffle, never enough to silence

The tone carries through; Frost’s sound of sense

But snarled, sharpened, and lacerating

Frustration meeting rage, puberty facing age

Mother versus father, father versus son

Never me, though. I only listen

I can’t drown out that rhythm of venom, that cadence of wrath

Slammed door, sarcastic greeting, drunken retort,

nasty reply, escalating insult, menacing pause,

and before ten minutes are out they’ve found eachother’s throats,

my hands have found my ears and my tears, my eyes.

Nobody knows you like your family.

I get it.  I understand the sides, the reasons, the tactics,

And the agonizing, fundamental, waste of it.

There’s no point to this battle; no growth, no change.

No speeches or screeches or infuriating “SO”

Can mend what’s broken in them, in us.

Tonight could be different.  I could march in there.

I could tell them where they’re wrong and right and wrong-est.

But they’d see it as another army on the field.

So why join a war with no winners?

How do you pick a side when you love both and hate the fucking fight?

And so I listen to the people I love most in this world rip into one another,

Their barbs and shouts and pronouncements muddled and blurred by wood and drywall.

Biting back tears and words both

Two rooms away.

I woke up to the scent of dog shit, cleaned three chunky piles off the floor, and a friend told me I was hour behind.

My PC wasn’t hooked to the internet, and there’s no coffee left.

But nevertheless, I’m ready.