The Poetry Marathon

wooden path bisects
slate stream and white mountain top–
Alaskan pipeline

He writes with his actions
rising from his bed each morning
grabbing his coffee before he
confronts his computer screen

Rising from his bed each morning
he remembers a fragment of a dream
confronts his computer screen
and begins typing his intuition

He remembers a fragment of his dream
because it wakes him up abruptly
and makes him type his intuition
so he does not forget to follow it.

He writes with his actions.

Each day she rises early
puts on her yoga outfit
and bikes to the community gym.

I don’t see her
for another two hours.

When she returns home we have
breakfast together. I prepare
cereal for her, bacon and eggs for me.

Both of us look younger
than we are, although I
do not dye my hair.

I silently calculate the
number of years we each have left together,
knowing she’ll outlive me by several.

Only the good die young?
I think not.

Just back from Germany.
I already miss King Ludwig,
His castle imagination,
His operatic grotto,
His mountainous solitude.
History tell us
he was as tall as an aspen,
as rich as Walt Disney,
as modern as electricity.
He walked among the common people,
yet ate alone. Who wouldn’t want to live
with one’s head in the clouds?

My readers are as close to me as my left hand as I use my right index finger to write the poem. I know you are here. I see you. I hear you. I touch you.

Just before darkness
Baitfish hit the bay’s topwater.
A lone angler casts her plug
past the outer circles
Of bulls eyes left
By a school of peanut bunker.
She’s almost surprised as she
Feels the power of striper’s strike.
Landing her prize, she removes
The hook and returns the linesider
To its rightful real estate
In the waters that lay
just beyond darkness.

We met at the beach and fell in love.
Unnoticed, sands of time removed the veneer of romance.
Now, beneath a hotel beach umbrella, we sit in our circle of shade, she with her guns and me with my amo.

I am sitting here in crab country waiting for the wind to subside.
The whitecaps on the saline bay waters shout, “Stay home.”
Blue claws smile. I frown.

Drones

When I was twelve years old, I enjoyed playing board games like Risk. In Risk, I tried to conquer the world – and so did my friend, Dwayne, who I used to compete against as we sat on the white concrete driveway behind our red brick row homes. Like military drones we hovered over a primary-colored, two-dimensional world that lay beneath us at ground-level. Dwayne and I took over countries one at a time by rolling sets of dice. Every outcome depended on chance. Whoever was lucky enough to roll the higher number conquered territories with make-believe armies. Whoever was unlucky got territories taken over. Continents fell to the victor. The game ended. No one was incinerated. No one was blown up. No one lost a son. No one lost a daughter. No one lost a loved one, like when I was twenty-one and thought I had to go to Viet Nam but didn’t because I got a medical deferment. But Dwayne went to Viet Nam. He fought and died there. He had skin in the game.

Today, alone, seated comfortably in a cushioned chair with a tablet computer on my lap, I watch YouTube videos of Drones playing Risk overseas in the Middle East. But I don’t have fun like I did when I watched the outcome of the dice in my driveway with Dwayne. Too many people have skin in the game, often young dark skin. Drones have no skin.

The Bite

With a jaw as big as butcher’s cleaver,

with teeth as yellow as linoleum scum,

with a tongue as red as Satin’s cape,

this malignant mongrel removed and swallowed

a hungry-man’s portion of my right calf.

I named him Melanoma.