The Poetry Marathon

They shouldn’t see our faces. Which is to say, our faces shouldn’t be what brings people to us.

They should want to listen. They should all want to wear their own masks. At our shows with the lights and sounds.

I’ll drum. I’ll beat my drums with sticks. I want you to create the beats I play my drums to and I want to see waves and waves of people when looking out from behind that series of cylinders of wood and hide. From behind the shiny metal disks. I want our vibrations to move people. Without our faces. No one should see those. It’s been done before. But not like this. Not like this. Everyone does everything but not the way we will.

They don’t have to move with us. We will move them and their bodies will make their own decision. Writhing. Jumping. Shifting. Sliding. Bumping. Banging. Whipping. I want them to be sore from the overdose of sweet endorphins that our music brings.

There should be a place you could walk to

When you’re young.

A place with hills, gauntlets for the bike with one speed (as fast as your legs can move it)
and one brake (better hope the wires don’t snap).

Hills that are narrow and paved from a time when gas was cheaper,

and are cracked and split by roots older than the lake on the next block

that was filled with buckets of some local government (can you swim to the dock?)

I learned to sail on that lake. I learned confidence on that lake.

But on those hills…

Easing off the brakes…

On those hills, I was Achilles.

I am the Wolf

Ya Volk, in Russian, for you gypsy types (my types)

You can find me in the dark, look for me in the night when

The shard of the crescent moon slices through smoky clouds, shades of black

Against a velvet sky, crusted with splintered glass stars

I am the Wolf

An auburn wolf, with hints of yellow ochre and russet (is that white?)

Eyes like the ocean before a storm, swirling, locked

Hunter’s eyes, eyes of a predator

You must not fear me.

I am the Wolf

The darkness fears me. For I am that which stands at the gates (your sentinel)

Ready to do violence against that which would storm your gates

I bare my teeth, lips quivering and a rumble, almost endearing

Echoes in the cavity of my chest. A war drum.

I am the Wolf

And you must not fear me. Are we not animals ourselves? (hold your heart in my heart & listen)

Every human given an animal soul to find and cherish. to hold. To become.

Become what you are. What you have been. Be wolves. Be lions. Be dolphins.

Be jaguars, and dragons. Be the creatures of Gaia. The Ravens of Odin.

Where the ocean ends. Where it chooses to end
on the shore. On the beach. Where families sit.

Contaminating the sand with oils and plastic,

Synthetic chrome wrappers and aluminum.

Yet, stoic, powerful, ominous and effervescent.

A leviathan of forces unfathomed by those who sit

And gape. Breathing from open mouths. Screaming, shrill

Staccato. Dotted liked tacky mustard yellow and cobalt blue

on a stretch of beautiful umber that should flow. like the webbing

of foam that floats atop the gentle viridian monster.

I wait for the day when we prod it to the breaking point.

One final sliver of glass, catching the sunlight on one crystal edge.

Rips one final gash in the sand and the waves reclaim what is theirs.

Learn to swim.

How to say how I long for you

Like an obsession, black, oozing,

Gripping my mind with inky talons

I’ll handle it. With my hands I’ll handle it.

Grappling. My fingers lock around its neck and I squeeze.

I’ll squeeze until it bursts in colors of crimson and ultramarine

Black and white and emerald green. Yellow oxide.

Colors of flames and explosions. Colors of forests
and dark haunted lakes. Sunsets, fogged banks, and cityscapes

I’ll squeeze these tubes of color onto a palette and scoop them up

With bristles, real and synthetic.

The only way to tell you what you do to me

Is through acrylics.

On stretched canvas.

There isn’t a lot that frightens me.
not anymore

Anyway. It would seem that maybe death

Should

But it won’t. It can’t. It doesn’t. Stepping outside, the sun burns.

A fire in an aqua sky. Sustaining life, yet scorching, enough to maim

Without even a semblance of pain.

Then take the Ocean,

My lady. My love. Gaze upon her vastness and tremble.

(Shut the fuck up.) Such endless wet, salty, terrain. Undiscoverable.

What a thrilling luxury though, to watch the waves crash.

An Endless roaring symphony.

With grasping arms, strong, wiry, ancient arms.

Sturdy enough to rip you out into its blue mouth

And then for a second consider the wind.

A force, unseen, unheard. Using the trees and the waves of the earth as the messenger.

The most chaotic, In my opinion.

(does anyone give a fuck what I think)

Using trees as the bringer of its message.

That the end comes for us all.

Not a whole lot scares me anymore

Least of all death, but (but)

When I am to go

Let it be the cradling arms of the waves

Or the swift silence of the wind

Or the immense gaze of the sun

That puts me in the darkness of the earth. (To stay or to live again?) Time keeps that secret.

Good morning beautiful people, 
Allow myself to introduce…(myself) choosing only now to do so, of course. (What artist isn’t a well practiced procrastinator?) I am a writer (one of many) in L.A.

That’s all anyone needs to know for now.

This marathon will be my first and I am hoping that it re-ignites in me the fire that took me on the path to bohemia in the first place. I am here to create (it’s one of two things I’m good at. The other being helping people, move their shit)

We shall all ride into the halls of Valhalla. Shiny and lettered in chrome. Witness.