The Poetry Marathon

Eternity Now!                        (palace of justice 3)

social justice you

pick a side here and here

or there (there)

choose a number (there now) (three)

spin the orb along gravity’s song lines

chips lost at lost at lost at

so far as you could               sea

lotteries last for

s/ever this code if you could (ever this could if you code)

in the dream antigone hungers for justice like a child

needs breakfast after the fever has broken fever so high

like a fever has stepped on a crack and snapped its own back

antigone all white robes as they wore back then a rope round

her waist though she is daughter of a king always daughter

of the dead king a life defined by ghosts another life defined

the hunger a wolf clicking its wolf-teeth the father dead

it is the only taste at the tip of the very very edge

if you won’t serve it to her serve it here fill her with it

fill her hungry me poor antigone axed for lack of it

for saying there is none

so a man would make a play about there is none

so you will know there is none

so the hero of the play can learn something new, true

and you learn maybe but not antigone (who was right) is

only need is never satisfied we are never

i drag bodies around this earth i haul buckets of sand

toss sand on them, on him, on my true brother

where tossing sand is best next option but i starve.

Palace of Justice

J — man — a threatening man —

lifting weights in lights-out jail — it’s his apartment —

and again

— glistening as we do in want and work —

glistening across his back —  U — S —

glistening black against wormy white skin

— T — on the long slog to this

moment — this computer —

these hands these keys tea cooling left — I

how the body — this body — has plotted and waited

labored and coded — C — elaborate braided

codes tattooed permanent black, ever unseen

— make it —

make it — fixed — who is fair? of them all?

E — waiting.