The Poetry Marathon

When you’re footloose and fancy free

Do a little shuffling off to Buffalo with me.

If perhaps you’re want to wend or wander,

Along a trail that gives you much to ponder.

We’ll promenade or per chance take a stroll.

Along Broadway’s Boulevard, away we’ll go.

Tread the boards or take a hike along a trek

Like Marco Polo from Italy to China and back.

Relax, Jack, at day’s end there’s no more strife or duty.

Fill the tub, grab some wine, and jump into the Jacuzzi.

If you wish to merely chill or lift those petty thoughts aloft.

Put your Bosch head phones on and listen to Rachmaninov.

Add some Dr. Teal’s Epsom salt and lavender bubble bath

Should tonight you desire to seek elusive Nirvana’s path.

Now dim the bathroom lights, turning them way down low

And bask in the rainbow of an aroma therapy light’s glow.

“Send me word that he has come back,”

Said the prodigal son’s father.

“Admittedly, he often gets way off track,

Blows off steam easily and hasn’t any tact,

Yet his return is worth the bother.”

“Send me word that he has come back,”

Said the much-aggrieved son’s dad.

“He spent his share from what I had.

For he’s not much for filial piety and duty,

Instead, going after fast living and booty.”

“Send me word that he has come back,”

Said a most-proper patriarch.

“Any criticism is off the mark.

For P.C. and woke I can’t be.

if I ask for much, he’ll flee..

Send me word that he has come back,”

Said the prodigal son’s father.

“He’s back, come Hell or high water.

Kill the fatted calf and make amends

I’d like to see his familiar grin.

From a planet “scarcely bigger than a house”

The Little Prince has now returned

From a foreign land’s temptations

To where he once called his home.

“Send me word that he has come back.”

The last and first line of this poem is from Antoine de Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince.

Water, a solvent

Inorganic compound,

Falling and flowing.

Water, H₂O,

Earth’s air and liquid mantle,

Falling and flowing.

Water, a blessing,

which also doubles as a curse,

Falling and flowing

Water, a solid,

which also turns less dense as ice,

Not flowing, freezing.

I’m the proud pet parent of a Yorkie named Dooley,

Who alternately irritates and then pleases me truly!

Sometime he’s a yapping, carpet soiling pest.

But as a watch dog and a true friend, he’s the best.

He’s both a beauty and more than slightly goofy.

Birth, then life’s journey, a term’s initiation,

followed by death, an auspicious occasion.

However celebrated, just another graduation.

Whether lived by a valedictorian

Or a lowly sinner who just keeps on sinning

Is it just the finale, or is it the beginning—

Only a life well lost or a quest worth-winning?

For in the grand scheme of things, ultimate success

Might mean it’s hard to tell the starts from the endings.

Since memory erases flaws and remembers the best.

If an atmosphere defines a moon, Saturn’s Titan is much like Planet Earth,

And although no one will most likely land there without lots of protective gear

a trip to the largest of Saturn’s 82 moons might well prove its worth

since as starlets might note a year orbiting Titan knocks off many a year

while a space hotel orbiting Titan’s side always turned to its giant neighbor

might be a once-in-a-lifetime travel jaunt that Space-Ex tourists would savor,

for it would feature a spectacular view of Saturn’s rocky, ice-encrusted rings,

so if Elon Musk makes it past Mars, he might to Titan the star-struck bring.

The moon’s shadow comes and goes, waxes and wanes, and ebbs and flows,

Thus, if I ever lose my hands, my work, those I love, or else my place of birth.

I pray that I might see God’s master plan as my missteps make me who I am.

So in my Job-like trials l might have grace to say, “Bring it on, oh, Adonai,”

for Earth is not always guaranteed to be a Paradise or a place of mirth,

but a pilgrim’s progress where stretching our wings we prove their worth

Thus, we daily reinvent the self whether Cat Stevens or a.k.a. Yusef Islam,

for who can second guess what hardships can make our dross dreams grand.

Taking the heat for not wearing a face mask, for not saving time in a bottle,

for problems transmitting Zoom to teens, using the virtual classroom model,

for sinking into the depths of a quarantine-induced, stay-at-home-lethargy,

for longing for once upon a time (three months ago) the way it use to be,

for not seeing beyond the treeline or adapting to things passing strange–

more than a few souls find it difficult to endure the psychological strain

as they find it hard to swallow an increasingly foul-tasting porridge

while stuck inside an isolated, sequestered, fractured-fairy tale cottage.

Thus, this sordid tale might end with either tears or heart-felt laughter,

so all God’s children will wake up to a tale of “happily ever after”!

From https://www.themarysue.com/emoji-poetr/

Translation for the poem on the left-side of the page:

The balls are on the green,

the cure for all ills is playing ball,

so even behind the eight-ball,

stay on target, in the running,

to be a king with diamonds sparkling,

perky like fresh-brewed coffee,

dressed to the nines, in all weather,

wearing top hats and tails, or

the highest of very-high heels,

sipping martinis (or is it wine).

So swallow the right pills,

staying right-on target,

walking through towns

in the rainy weather.