The Poetry Marathon

They want to see the good stuff

what was sourced at 3AM when moderation was low

and anonymous evil was untethered

WEBMs downloaded and put in a secret folder

It’s how the brothers gut check the new recruits

after getting them drunk and high

and making them run until they puke

doing other things their fathers wouldn’t even laugh at

It’s this weird test of manhood

watching people die

their final experiences fed from my laptop

to the TV by an HDMI cable

Tonight’s menu includes some favorites

Hi-def ISIS executions

Cartel footage set to Mexican techno

Fatal accident photography

But we start with something mild

cellphone footage of a building leap

the crowd below turning just as

terminal velocity is suddenly stopped

This new hopeful lets out a scream

and then falls in the floor sobbing

the other rushers can’t calm him

and he leaves to a chorus of laughter

He doesn’t show up ever again

leaving the school the next week

the lead brother is chuckling as he tells me

‘That’s how his dad died.’

E has the lab grade stuff

commonly referred to as research chemicals

the kind you can’t buy off your local

but are smuggled out of lab environments

or made in college chemistry classrooms

that cops find out about and crash down your door

putting knees on backs and making arms Kimura

‘I just wanted to be enlightened, sir,’ is never a good excuse

or a joke that’s appreciated

earning neither laughs or nods

but quick knees to the ribs.

***

He leans over

his pupils like dark lakes

‘You know what’s funny?’

I don’t

one time it was clockwork elves

crawling through the walls

one time it was that my veins

were visible through my skin

and many times it was nothing

‘Governments,’ he says

and then he laughs

throwing his arms up

letting them back down slowly

amused by the motion

‘Voting!’ he yells

and the laughter becomes shrill

he starts coughing

‘I can see them for what they are, these politicians

these so called kings

and leaders,’

he points to the television

where some man in a suit

is selling his party wares

healthcare and bringing them home

‘Under their skin, if you look hard enough,

you see veins pumping blood,

a brain no bigger than ours,

and a heart in darkness,’

he stares up at the ceiling

where something I can’t see

is keeping his attention

‘Why rule others?

We can’t even rule ourselves.’

CLIENT:

Her mother signs her up for the class

and tells us that she was ‘assaulted with words’

at first, this brings to mind swarthy strangers

chasing her down the street yelling gibberish

‘Tomato sandwich!’

‘Abscond!’

‘Prairie dog cowboy hat!’

angrily as she cries

but if they’re willing to catcall

commenting loudly and with suggestive subtext

about the body of a 17 year old

it stands to reason

they might do much more.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

The marine in class before she appears

says it was all just cowardice

that a real man approaches

sacks up, says

‘Hey pretty lady, how about we grab a drink?’

a perfect white smile appearing

on his permanently-tanned face

to the applause of the other older men

and when she appears

he tries to teach her

‘The good ol’ 1, 2′

belly jiggling as he punches the air.

SERVICE RENDERED:

I start them on a simple drill

and take her over to BOB

a man-shaped target

with incredible abs

sculpted shorts hiding invisible penis

standing on a plastic base

I show her feigning surrender

slapping the ears

clinching behind the head

dropping the chin

for a headbutt.

RESULT:

surrender, smack, grab, slam

she plays an excellent victim

before obliterating the nasal bone

with a wrecking ball headbutt

and adding the knee to the crotch

like I showed her

I ask the marine

‘Do you feel like approaching now?’

smack, grab, slam

surrender down to half a second

knee hitting rubber crotch so hard

BOB’s base, filled with water, tips backward

‘Lord no,’ he says.

They appear on the screen of his flip-phone

small squares becoming large

grainy, somewhere below 240p

he took them on the last call

‘You know how some people say we’re social animals,’ he says

as I’m met with body after body

bullet-riddled and bent over

limbs lackadaisical or ramrod

eyes wide with mouths agape

‘Well, we aren’t.’ Dragging on his cigarette

fathers, brothers, husbands

rendered into useless fat

mind-break fuel

free anatomy lessons

funerals without open coffins.

Hello,

I’m Jarrod.

I’ve participated in the previous two.

The challenge, of course, is fun.

It is also nice to be forced to write and submit continually.

There’s no time to get lost in self-doubt, endless comparison, or editing hell.

That comes after the marathon (though hopefully a little less).

For the last time, see you on the other side.

Upside down in metal origami

spiderwebbed windshield

roof smashed to almost top of head level

seatbelt preventing neck fracture

as far as I know

daring to squirm

risking the hangman

it was all going so well

I don’t even remember how it happened

there was a brief moment

where I felt like I was floating.

God loves gas stations

there’s one on every corner here

a discarded chick tract looks up from

a shiny, rainbow pool of oil

mad at the world still.

Sign says to turn the car off during fueling

sherriff on the sticker points to remind

but as hot as it is

we’re leaving ours on and risking it.

It started with solar panel smashings

fields littered with black spaceware

twinkling in shards in the sun

next, they took down the turbines

felling them during maintenance

two workers were seen on top

embracing before jumping together

from there, it was the hydroelectric dam

hole blown in wall by homemade device

thousands of gallons crash through

drowning what must have been thought of

wrongly as an acceptable cost

soon the smog returned

and every anti-green hick

worshipped at the rigs and

returned to the mines

dying, choking, but feeling free somehow

pulling us with them into an Earth on fire.

Scorpion pose, on the neck

Feet thrown forward behind the head

sculpted perfectly

comet being

tighten trucks next time

Blue barrel

filled to the brim

in which we will place memories

still in tact but cut down

and wait until they’re an unrecognizable soup