The Poetry Marathon

This new poem is demanding space

Its own room actually

It insists I clean out cobwebs

And put new sheets on the bed

It insists on regular meals

A full deep cleaning

Hourly sprucing up

It demands its own shower for new ideas

It wants room to expand, grow

To evaporate and come back again

It wants it all,

This poem wants it’s own space

every bit of attention

It has baggage

It has trunks full of memorabilia

This poem needs space

and I am forced to give it

I don’t expect it to help with the rent either

Poems

The Final Frontier

These are the voyages of Metaphor and Simile

Our 24 hour mission

To explore strange new worlds

Seek out new ways of describing normal situations

To boldly go where no poem has gone before

Grandma had her tea

Once at breakfast

Once around lunch time

Green tea

Steeped in her porcelain tea pot

With matching cups

I was invited sometimes

Sitting across from her

My tea weaker

with a spoon of sugar

Hers sweetened with saccharin pills

Mine lightened with milk

We would sip and talk

I felt grown up

Important, almost Victorian

Grandpa never joined us

He was a coffee man himself

But he set up the service for her

Boiled her water on the stove

Filled the pot for her

Added the bags

Their ritual twice a day

Every day

Later when they were gone

Mom and I had our own tea days

Earl Gray and Lemon Zinger

A cup in the microwave

Replaced the whistling kettle

Porcelain tea pots with matching cups

became decorations in the china cabinet

After Mom passed, it was just me

and soon the tea

Became coffee on the run

Sometimes I imagine sitting there

Gently holding the fragile tea cup

I can taste the milk

Hear Grandma’s laugh

Perhaps one day I will buy a box of green tea

Maybe pull out that whistling kettle

Let the tea steep in the Porcelain Teapot

Set out a fragile matching porcelain cup

And sip slowly

The way Grandma taught me

Life, death, love, loss

It’s all cliche

It’s been done

Overdone

That broken heart

That dead loved one

That big hole left in the soul

We all live it, survive it

Poet’s write about it

Musicians sing about it

It makes our ” I can’t” Into ” I can”

This time I refuse

I can’t come to some grand acceptance

Fuck loss

Fuck death and it’s dirty tricks and games

There is nothing glorious or manageable

About a heart being ripped apart

Friends gone

Family dead

Another loss, another funeral

Another sad goodbye no one wants to do

No it doesn’t make us stronger

There is no God plan to rescue us

There is no brighter tomorrow

Just more of the same

Poem sixteen

Bummer

Lack of sleep catching up with me

Need to infuse my caffeine system

Maybe throw in some protein

A vegetable

Some inspiration

A song from Sound of Music

Sixteen going on Seventeen plays in my personal

brain music network

A few minutes ago it was Putting on the Ritz

The Peter Boyle Young Frankenstein version

My husband singing it as he struggles to find his muse

I need Starbucks

I need ice cream

I need a diligent house boy

I need sleep

The enemy sleep

It has ammo aimed at my weakening system

I should be writing from a fictional character’s point of view

Stuck somewhere between

Jane Eyre, Maria Von Trapp

And Frank Underwood

All I can do

Is feebly limp through sixteen

On my way to seventeen

Waiting for life to start

Putting on the Ritz

Maybe cheese on a Ritz

Dipped in coffee

What is a myth?

A story we tell our selves

To give someone else the blame

To hand them the control

To beg them to save us

Or venge us

Or fix our broken soul

We wish we had the mighty powers

Ruled from Olympus

Or protected the oceans

with a magic Trident

We imagine ourselves as the hero

in the belly of the whale

Willing to sacrifice

Everything so god would favor us

Give us all we need and desire

Because we remained faithful

Because we are worthy

Our myths feed our cynicism

our bigotry

Our self loathing

Rescue us from death

Somehow Jesus will save us

Vishnu will rescue us

Zeus will appease the volcano

and we will be free

We will load the animals on the ark

We will wander the desert for forty days

We will complete the tasks

And we will be the favored one

The Hero

The great master

God will call us to his side

Grant us ever lasting harps and forty virgins

But it’s just a story

A myth

A hero’s journey

A lie

Just a carrot we dangle

To keep ourselves blameless

Powerless and amused

It was a hot muggy evening

I was in my raincoat

Carrying jars

Steam rose up from the grates

My elbow hurt

The jars were heavy

Frogs were everywhere,

Basking in their new sauna

Tomatoes were hiding behind every bush

It was a mystery

I couldn’t blame them

The children had been unusually destructive

I swore I would rescue them all,

Children, Tomatoes and Frogs

I tripped, I broke the jars

Rescue mission aborted

In a different world

You and I

would be walking upside down

On a balance beam

Or flying a kite

Beneath our feet

We would be challenging each other to duels

With cyber sticks

And puppet guns

We would go to work

And play with anti matter

Come back home and work with

Quantumless Mechanics

In a different world we would cease to be limited

And limit ourselves to being different

Our questions would be answers

Our answers would be questionalbe

and our facts would be fiction

In a different world

We would spend our lives and end up young

We would boast of our poverty

Make pets out of trees

Wish on Tootsie Rolls

And chew on stars

If we were in a different world

You and me would be me and you

But we would still be together

No matter how different the world

I would still find you in it

Walking beside you

Or maybe above

Halfway there

Like to think the worst is behind us

Or below us

Or under the bed where we cannot see

But this is just that drop off point

Where the sleepy give up

And the die hards keep going

Our brains have been mutated now

The regular day to day

Has been replaced by poet brain

A strange beast for sure

It rules from here on out

As our eyes being to close

Our shoulders begin to lean

This is where we lose control

We lose our critic

Where we lose common sense

!2 more hours

Halfway point

A milestone has come

A milestone to go

A monument to poetic perseverance

And masochism.

When we are very young

We dance, we sway

Instinctively

We watch others

But we swirl on our own

Letting the music take us and we take the music

In youth we dance in circles

Laughing

Alcohol, the sensuality, the joy consumes us

We stop only when the music stops

Anxious to jump up again after a quick swig

And an electric touch

A few years later

Responsibilities consume us

Dancing is for the frivolous

We dance when we must

At weddings or parties

Consumed by how we look

How we measure up

In middle age

Our defenses begin to come down

We move our feet to the music

We get up for a few

Smiling until we are out of breath

Joyous until our bodies grow weary

In old age

We sit more, dance less

We smile watching the young

Wistfully trading places in our minds

Our souls are lifted with the music

Our bodies weighted with age

In the end it is the music that pulls us

Out of our bodies and to the light

Weight gone, responsibilities relieved

We no longer care about how we look

We are our sensuality

Our joyousness

We dance into light

Casting out our judgements and limitations

We are the music

We are the dance