The Poetry Marathon

[untitled]

Close eyes and breathe
The voices called your conscience
May be ancestors
Returning to you in the
Most familiar image

Spun

On the edge of spinning
spiral of a galaxy
Is a system of 8 or 9 planets,
thousands of comets and asteroids,
each with its own unique-
despite the existence of a infinite number of spinning planets-
Spin
Spinning around a hot ball of spinning gasses
Many with their own moons
The third of these spinning planetary orbs is teaming with sentience
All trying to put their own spin
On what we are here spinning for

The tree has no idea
Who parked underneath it
What birds perched on top
Which ones violated the car parked underneath it
The tree doesn’t know who left the empty burger wrapper on the curb,
Why the cracked concrete had to be replaced and repaired with a new no parking sign
Tree doesn’t care about the peeing g dog as long as it’s over there
The tree could jade a sasquatch in plain sight as long as the tree is as inconspicuous in plain sight
The tree does not notice you not noticing the tree…
Until
It does

That’s Sports

Just before the last cliche-laden interview
Before tens of thousands left the arena
as the winning score sends them ecstatic and broke into the evening
Before great and televised struggle of elite athletes and millionaire buddies
Before the bad call by the bad ref
Before the haaaalftiiiiiime shhhoowwww…
Before the pain and sweat
Before the drop, the jump, the kick, the green flag for aaalll of those pretty zeros on the contract
With franchise
With broadcast network
With corporate interest
With city and state
…Was an eternity of laughter and yelp
from parkway to playground
gym class to basement
drive way or alley
Where every single day was a gold medal

…For a second try, as it is the only way to top such glorious failure.:-)

Let the games begin!
B

Abandoned notebook
for safe place in basement
Tornado warning

The Hermit,
inverted,
reads isolation, most often
personal
Interpreted as needed rumination,
deep introspection to, hopefully,
a semblance of enlightenment

And as we creep from our terrariums (right KG?)
These humanariums, this innerverse of avoiding the horribles
Of plague
I wonder if this card is telling on us
Or warning us
Again

Absorption of all light
Of every visible energy particle
Of all portions of the spectrum
Like a signal to an antenna
Like vitamin D to soil and bark
Like builders to work on monuments
Like scholars to an archive
Like prophets to canon
Like dusk on Manifest Destiny
and midnight over America
Turning barbarians’ wack linguistics to motivation
or, at least, pride
Like sunlight to melanin
Like…since Pangea
They can not outshine
that which absorbs all visible energy
All portions of the spectrum

HipHop music
carries folk tune and dance
Has the same echo
as Negro spirituals
Bears the sin of
crossroads blues
Sweats and wails
like Saturday night jazz
Cries for truth like Sunday
storefront gospel
Begs sincere like soul
with rock and roll abandon

…And…

Dresses differently
Speaks in authoritative code
Paint broad-spectrum
or not at all
Erase old self
and build a new monument
to your moment
Baptise them in style
as you dance paise to every
god
of spin
and lyric
and hook
and cut
And bring that muthafunkin
beat back

Just imagine reacting, almost daily, to…

A few steps out of the door
and twilight
You run into a wall but turn… left and stumble forward
Into dim light. Because it’s light.
Kind of
And it gets comfortable for…
A block or a mile or a week
And you have a smile and water
When the goddamned ground stars buckling
And it’s pouring
with vultures circling
And a childhood bully robs your house and
Sells all of your shit for drugs
But you keep walking as if you
will get all of your shit back
(You will NEVER get any of your shit back)
And there is a corner and another dim mile
And a hole in your shoe
And you are late for…what the fuck ever

This is the emotional absurdity
Of living with racism