The Poetry Marathon

Oh Mother Earth, what’s with this wind?
It’s summer now, and time to send
the twilight heat, not rain and hail!

I had to turn the heater on
and with a blanket keep my tootsies warm!
The winter snow to no avail

Is months away!
It’s time to play!

I walk,
but never enough.

If I could, I would walk
for endless hours
across the forests
where I love to walk.

I hike
not uphill.

The lowlands call me.
Rivers, streams, creeks mostly…
those tight, shady spots
where the water is shallow and clean.

I wander
rarely too far.

Safe and secure
my inner compass guides my path
North or South
East or West.

I play
always alone.

Too old except for cards,
I muse my journey
meets a queen
or king of some other realm.

I walk,
it’s never enough.

Assume the dream!
Wake up!
Question vivid detail!

And when perhaps something more
just happens in our lives,
we have experienced such a time
that most, or perhaps only some of us
will wonder if it was so.

I, at the last decades of my journey,
have dreamed, and know it wasn’t
just a dream.

I’ve never been to Kansas
Or been swept up in a wind.

I’ve never seen Loch Murington
Or had my collar pinned.

But neither place is near to me
And neither method known

For taking my heart dear to me
Or riding a cyclone.

Death never has been
my favorite song,
and now I know why.

With all due respect, Cat,
I do not like the idea
Of nothing.

She watched from the treeline
in the heat of that summer evening,
a strange ochre colored beast with cotton ears
and short front legs – white,
like she was wearing stockings.

In my lethargy, I watched back
as she crept closer, and wondered
of my camera’s zoom setting.
Ah! It was still in the cottage
next to the half-eaten bowl of porridge
and bottle of fresh cream
from the farmer next door.

Nice man, that farmer.
Young. A widower seemingly desperate
for the company of his next wife.
It wouldn’t be me, but I was down
for an evening by the fire pit
with his home-spun ginger beer.

He warned me about a strange cat
after inviting me to dance with him
and the fireflies that evening.
“It’s firefly season in these parts,”
he boasted. “My wife and I made an event of it,
until that dang cat got to her. Demon cat it was. Black as night.”
A fleeting rage crossed his face before he smiled,
proud of the fresh cream.

I never expected to encounter the creature
that afternoon, and I must admit, she was beautiful.
A black mask framed her yellow eyes,
making them pop like diamonds.
I would swear I saw a menacing smile
before she leapt forward to attack.

BOOM! The cat fell to the ground with a screech
that surely was from the depths of hell,
like nothing I’d ever heard. A rustling to my left
suddenly made me more scared than had the cat.

BOOM! I thought she was dead,
but the cat had, miraculously, gotten up
before the farmer could get another clear shot at her.

Demon cat indeed!
She seemed to fly back into the dark forest
through trees, vines, and ferns,
as if they weren’t there.

“Hold on just a minute so I can check for blood,”
He wasn’t talking about my blood, but that of the cat.

“I know I hit him, but I never can find nothing to track him,”
he said, puzzled. “I hear him scream, but it’s like I hit his
dark soul, and not his mortal body. You saw him, didn’t you,
that black cat with the yellow eyes. Same one that got my wife.
I had a hunch he’d be after you,
so I came to see if I could get a shot at him.”

I must have been in a state of shock,
not having realized how close I had come to
some sort of immortal death.
It took me until just this week to wrap my head around
what he said next.

“My wife is still out there somewhere, I know it.
I see her from time to time, wearing the same ochre colored dress
and the white socks I’d given her for Christmas,
And those godawful white ear muffs, made her look like she had
giant balls of cotton wrapped around her ears.”

Look, Sheeple, to the higher purpose of life.
I’m not talking about men, women, children, or marriage;

Or unhappy grown women with jobs and no man
and on and on and on with the other redundant world issues
Or whether it’s ok to make peace with the majority of the world.

Water, Sheeple, filled up with ick, ick, ick!

These are additional icks! Look, Sheeple!

We’re here, but you’re not listening.
You, the self-appointed, peer-appointed pukes
whose voluminous barf gets washed by white gloved bankers.
The barf accumulated in the trade of the diminutive.
Little people. Little. People.

We scream. We cry. And I, like a good little gadfly,
tell my truth to your minions, who then erase the tape;
clear the trail of emails, like it never happened.
But it did. You know it did. I know it did.

We bite with our words. We sting with our debate.
And, we laugh when you come back with
driveling twists on our intent.
Ours is purpose. We are small. We are many.
We are the people upon whose land you tread.

We matter, but not to you. You, who, chronologically, taught us that
Native Americans didn’t matter, African slaves didn’t matter,
Mexicans didn’t matter, women didn’t matter,
and WE didn’t matter when we were children.
You taught that only white men mattered.

You lied. You always lie. You live a constant lie.
You are nothing but lies swimming about in your
white halls of injustice. You weave lies into desperate false truths
using the latest technologies, never thinking of me.
I invented technology. Yes, trust in me, and I’ll bite your ears.

Admit it, and we’re done. Admit all of it.
Admit that you were, and still are, afraid.
In case you don’t realize it, that’s our common ground – fear.
Admit that you cower at the very thought of death.
Your own deaths. Admit it now before we lose our fear. Or not.

We will keep biting. I will keep fighting in my sweet little gadfly way.
And you can keep swatting at me. Keep trying to kill.
I will keep laughing; because, surely, you know by now…
I am a spectral gadfly. The one you saw coming
The one made of my will.

I will win. Gadflies always win.

What the nuggy!!

Booming man
Thundering jokes
Endless tales of elk horns
and hidden islands.

Her quiet husband,
His IPA,
“gimme another bitch beer.”

Too sweet for me,
but funny.

Three admirable marriages
of adorable souls make
six cherished new friends.

Love is everywhere
Like rain that’s sun
or sun that’s rain
in a cloud that’s not opaque.

Laughter!
More than I have ever
heard in a day.

Silent, beautiful forest
Ancient, like forever.

Stalking morels that pop
like homes for gnomes.
Pounds of them!

Cody, Cory, I said it wrong!
Jumbled mouth of old age
fuzzy with beer.

A herd of deer!

Deliciousness out of
charred earth
and pine needle blankets.

Too much beer
for them (not me).
Bumpy roads.
I could have another.

Flowers.
Trees.
Rambling creek.
Hills to climb
another day.

Wild horses!

And laughter.
Lots of laughter!

Mine is a rudderless vessel
guided by a Pharisee wind –
the breath that no one sees
but me.

He was there at the porch
that day I knocked
and said nothing.