The Poetry Marathon

You left the gun down. He picked it up and shot her. Now, they are all gone.

You left the gun down. He picked it up and shot her. They’re changing his name.

You left the gun down! YOU LEFT THE FUCKING GUN DOWN! YOU left the gun down! YOU!!!

You left the gun down. He shot her tiny pink face with four year old hands.

Now, they are all gone, because you left the gun down, and he picked it up.

You left the gun down. We’ll never see them again. You left the gun down.

Look what you have done. No animal would do this, only a human.

Torturing children, dragging them from their families, leaving them to die.

You justify it all in the name of your god… so superior.

Babies in cages. You have become so human, you are inhumane.

You have gone too far. I swear on all you love, your god is ashamed.

I have no eloquence left. All of the poetry in me has drained out. I am simply screamingrage, bleeding, unanswerable questions…

How could this have happened?!

How did you not play this out in your head for lifetimes before allowing this to happen?!

How could you not be more mindful?!

How could they be gone?!

How could you let this happen?!

How could you not know it was down?!

How did you not know it was loaded?!!!

How can they be gone…?

How can I ever hear your voice again without the crack in my head splitting wider… without this new crazy swallowing me?

How do I begin to forgive you?

How do I begin to want to…?

At this point, I should know about these things, but I don’t. I should see then coming, anticipate them, but, they stretch my skin tight, and beat themselves against me in strange, terrifying, war rhythms.

I want to know if I am too simple, or if they are too complex, for me to see, feel,  hear, smell, taste, know that they are bearing down and about to blanket me.

I want to learn how I can condition myself not to let them steal the breath from my lungs, the sanity from my head, the hope from my religion. I want to know the escape route for when I realize I would not survive a conditioning of this sort.

Babies in cages.

I am not too simple. There is no escape. This really is war.

I want to do what the kids call, calling you out. But, if I do it, I will lose you, and some version of you is better than no version of you, so I don’t.

I want to unravel your twistings, but when I try, your sprintaway catches me out by the feet, and I am looking up at you, bees curiousing around my soft middle where I made you, and me just trying to shake you off, to stand and try another day.

I want to want to know who you really are, not who you have masked on for me. I want to be brave enough to want that enough to spoon out my mom eyes, so I can see you.

I want to be strong enough to live through what happens when I see you, and invite you into the truth, and you let me go.

She is a period. Period.

Sometimes, she is an exclamation point, but not before she is a period.

She is empty quotation marks… for days.

She is, ” I’ll call you right back”   ellipses

She is, “My phone died”   period.

She is the newest stranger in my life.

I am learning she always has been.

It is common knowledge that otters sleep on their backs on the surface of the water, holding one another’s hands so they don’t drift off and get lost or worse.

It is also known that bees snuggle together when they sleep, often intertwining their legs, curled into the soft bellies of flowers, maybe to protect one another.

I do not sleep holding another’s hand, or intertwining myself around any person intertwining themselves around me. I do not sleep swaddled in anything, and much prefer an open space in front of me as I drift off.

I suppose on some carnal level I am a predator’s dream, on the outside of the outside of the outside, completely untethered.

But, that doesn’tbother me nearly as much as knowing I hope someday to be as good a person as an otter or a bee.

Lyrical Toad wrote like a blues man, like the blues man he was… meter, rhyme, meter, rhyme… If you can’t dance the slow boogie woogie to the blues, it aint the blues. Years and years of his life… meter, rhyme, meter, rhyme. Caught in the spokes of conformity.

Then Toad, from his horsehair lily pad thought, what if I stopped writing for the dancers in my head, and wrote foe the music in my soul instead? What if I stopped obeying all those rules, and just let words fall out of me, any words, all of the words? And, Toad closed his eyes and let himself go, no rules, no rhyme…

and for the first time in his life, he wrote about the night sky without using the words moon or stars, he wrote about joy without using the word happy, he wrote about Sarah without using the word beautiful, because he didn’t have to. The words told his every feeling, his every unchained emotion. No line lengths, no counting, just paragraphs of truthful, free poetry…

and Kerouac smiled over his coffee cup from wherever he was in the Universe at that moment, looked over, and saw that Ginsburg was smiling, too.

Truth is subjective. Is an orchid a flower, or a bee’s lover?

Is truth mutable? One turns my truth a lie’s nest, and hollows through my soul.

Oblivious truth… one calls me all the uglies. Lies become my truth.

Lies are not my truth. An lover’s still a flower. The bees and I aren’t fooled.

Certain dogs can look like mini llamas when shaved short. Some dogs don’t, just certain ones. That doesn’t mean they are mini llamas. They just look like mini llamas.

I tend to look like a stereotypical lesbian when my hair is pixie short. Some women don’t, just certain ones, like myself. Not that I mind so much looking like a lesbian, but I would like to look like what I am, neither llama nor lesbian.

Those same llama looking dogs will look like giant collies when their coats are grown back. I grow my hair out, and look like a soccer mom. Not that I mind looking like a soccer mom, but I would like to look like what I am.

A collie looks like a collie looks. A llama looks like a llama looks. A lesbian looks like whatever she wants to look like. A stereotypical lesbian looks like a stereotypical lesbian looks. A soccer mom looks like a soccer mom looks… what does a Pan Grandma look like?

I want to look like whatever a Pan Grandma looks like, not a collie, or a soccer mom, or a llama, or a lesbian.

I want to look like what I am.