The Poetry Marathon

I poured the liquid soap

Pale pistachio green shade

With ingredients to keep skin

Soft after all these years of

Being my own housewife I failed at

This and tonight I begin to

Wash some, but not all the

Dishes, pot, knives, forks, spoons

Laying there, yes I wash them by hand

No dishwasher, no modern

Apps to make things easier

Or more tolerant of tasks

I put off doing or skip entirely, no

I am defiant not going to

Do work without reward

Reminding me of the old

Fashioned way I live, obscure, dated

In black and white, no color

No stereo, no technology

To keep me company, none.

Hi-ho we ride along the trail

To find the horse to

Make a voyage, sail

Along the veil of reefs and coves

which the tourist loves to

discover and pretend they

are what the horse’s rider intended

but riddled with anxiety

the voyage is cut short

adjourned so health may be restored

to horses, pigs, livestock

unwell humans, too, ahoy

Hi-ho let’s fire the gun and drop the

revolver that killed the one

who planned the event to hell.

Meet the detective I hired to find the things I’ve lost

gold earring, jade bracelet, single gloves, my face

which disappears and only seen in shade until eyes are drawn

lips are outlined by two tubes of scarlet gloss, the nose made

less prominent and clear cheeks unblemished, highlighted

bones stark, not puffed out at all.

My face looks like someone else, unfamiliar to me, strange

to family, acquaintances unknown, I’m lost as much as each

item saved in hope for a match to appear now as this

private eye entered the scene.

Mr. Eye questions me, asks where I came from, what town,

what foods I eat, what makes me glad, who I admire, books

I’ve read, songs I like. Soon Mr. Eye believes he can fill out the

rest of me and once he knows my preferences the rest is solved.

Soon the earring has a mate, the bracelet is In its box, gloves are

paired, my face returns and everything is reborn.

Saturday evening shortens time with

less to see and lovely prompts

prepared to guide us as we work this

furtive task inhaling bliss and

calling out to solvent friends where

whiffs of jasmine, clove and

Cinnamon cling to summer haven,

lakeside bungalow believed

reality, yet still a dream built to

take us back to Neverland, a dream.

Wade into water

Pick seven stones below

Holding them for you.

Let two tiny stones

Return to sandy floor

Ocean smiles hello.

Another part of this life is finding someone else to love who can do you no harm and sends you love poems and gifts as meaningless as a prize from a Cracker Jack box. Perhaps the gift costs more money and is needed. Do prizes come with Cracker Jack now? Who loves me, not a cat or a dog. I have neither, just a pair of stuffed turtles, one beige, one brown. One is Sandy, the other Coco. Both sit on top of a bookcase glancing across my apartment seeing the clutter and even worse. These were meaningless gifts from someone I love. He loves me, too, but we live apart, never see one another, seldom speak. One year for Valentine’s day he sent me a strawberry cheesecake from Junior’s, but I was seriously trying to lose weight and I could not keep it in my home, called and gave it to a family who had no such qualms and could enjoy it. Alone, I would have had it all to myself, the greedy, needy child. Last year I received an Easter lily which I liked. This year he sent me a camera for Easter. I never asked for it. Two months later the box is opened, but I have not even tried to use it. I never had a visual gift. Do these gifts mean he loves me? I don’t know if I love him or his gifts.

He wrote, talked about man

the existential loneliness of

man I suppose, or was he

hungry for a peach out of

season he could not afford?

The prices asked for imported

fruit and vegetables! He grew old

he grew old, he grew old, he knew

where cheaper trousers were often

sold to the oldsters pawing through the

Goodwill offerings of discarded books,

colorful straw boaters, scarves, bric-a-brac,

what-nots salvaged from another man’s

lyrics. What is this diatribe about you’ve read he wasn’t very nice,

an anti-Semite too, he grew old, in disfavor, unhappily

married to a manic depressive, who was put away. She grew

old and barely ever complained she dared not eat a peach.

The brilliance of the butterfly is

headed for destruction

as humans kill the things we

cannot spend or make

space for in our ample schemes

of prosperity and wealth.

I shall not write a lyric about bright

Lepidoptera or variety of

bugs, hold back from imparting gilded

Remarks on ecological conversation.

Yes I am grateful I have known and seen

rare melodic inspiration from

episodes god sends me, beloved hymns

sung by flying, floating imps.

I do not dream in pink with familiar notes of jazz clustered in the background I am mired here in blue, green. Do I dream these tones or brown, black-white? What can it mean to dream I have my theories so did Freud so Jung. I want to open up the dream, dissect it further than a childhood myth or learn I long for ache for when we all lived together saw the sunrise come together and the moonlight begin whenever we glanced from the porch at night to see radiance design my fantasy residing in the sea, the edge the blue deposits, red coral reefs, forests of kelp The underworld my home at last reveals the place I know, not a dream of pink or silver stars but instead cascades of froth nestled in the sand, rocks, muddy liquid drops all falling to build the cabin shelter made for lions in the sea, the cast of ocean depths.

I love you person

whose name

I cannot say

shamed to

acknowledge how

much I want

love with whomever

god has sent

me but I love you, too,

Man of romance

eternally we met and loved

Then you left,

Then me, now barely

Part of us, but

For forty years or more

I loved you always

Separated, near arms

Untouching until

Tomorrow when tomorrow

Is a day we cannot name

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow

Repeat this phrase today.