The Poetry Marathon

Not down and not out

Mingus bass thumping heartbeat

Never underdog

Liberation soup

Spicy sax and a fight on

Your hands Mingus style

Tried to keep you poor

I’ll be a Haitian with you

Your fight is my fight

Bum bump a doo dah

Bum bump a doo dah

Bum bump a DOO dah

DOO dah DOO dah

A list like any other

Would include purple socks

Red pepper hummus

A flat-head screwdriver

And coffee beans from exotic sounding places

A list like any other

Would include step by step instructions

To a recipe that still needs

A couple extra cloves of roasted garlic

A list like any other

Should always include

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

Doubt on my shoulder

Humid summer afternoon

Pen in hand…pensive….

Some may think of memories

Only covered in dust with

Pages fading into opaque forgetting

But memory doesn’t have to work like that

And if our honesty

Does not blur and fade

We find our memory

In shards of talk

In whispers and glimpses

 

You see, memory is a meal

Savory…bitter…sweet…salty

And water to cleanse the tongue

We make our memory

In shards of talk

“Remember that time…?”

Poetry in search

Of me. Suspect I’ll be caught

Soon on the back porch