The Poetry Marathon

Our crooked mail was bleeding surreptitiously
through its envelope.
Upon opening – gingerly – the crusted folds
(obviously, the delivery had reinvigorated
the wound), we sighed with relief
even as the paper therein snarled
its intent to drain us of
our combined incomes with bold-formatted and triple-underlined
claims that sounded like they were generated by
a program, not written by a cogent and reasonable
human being.

Foregone conclusions in mail extortion
being one of the signifiers in the
fall of the Roman Empire, we knew,
in a dead second it was either us or it.
Wordlessly, Ron and I danced the mail
to the sink, cornering it with the
mercy it had shown us and we drowned it
to a pulp, then finished it off
with the garbage disposal.

Just to be precariously indulgent,
I bleach bombed the drain and plugged it
with the stopper. Nothing must return
to infect our other correspondence.
We count our guest appearances
in civil dinners, and consider ourselves
pen pals with battle scars.

We are victors.
We demolish the undead.

You take so much for so little
Your victories are a meal for one
that you bring home in a doggie beg
to share with me, waiting for
something good
to land on your shoulder.

If I get a cell-
and I’m saying IF –
I’m very popular with the warden crowd –
you can’t outfit my cell in any more gold
than one of the Louies –
you know, the big ones before all the
head-chopping – what’d they call them?
Gillotines? Our friend Macron, he
should be scared they don’t bring that back.

So, let’s all take a bow of silence
for the real criminals.
What’d I say? A bow? Why not, they act like
royalty, maybe they could get a pardon for
their sins. Knock on King Charlie’s door
and demand a pardon.
No one’s ever going to believe
I’m the biggest sinner.
Not when you’ve got chumps like –
what’s up with Prince Harry?
Little Harry out writing nasty things about
his family?
What a shame, what a shame.
If that were my son, I’d
cut him off.
Talk bad about your own father?
No security detail for you!
That’s only fair.

And, I’d be the most secure in prison.
I don’t need a gang.
Secret Service
would be there in the shower, which –
I’m in talks – would be private.
And, maybe I’d get a suite. A prison suite.
I could still get things done.
I’ve been promising my many, many friends
as soon as I have time, I could write
my memoirs.

They were on a break –
the three of them affecting the vernacular
of the men
who wrote for the paper they were hawking on
a street corner in St. Louis –
when a photographer
saw them laughing
between puffs.

Previously, they’d been
standing apart,
the tall one, holding court,
arms akimbo,
swearing his arm strength
should get him in the St. Louis Browns.

The others joshed, but, mainly, stayed reflective.
Frank Truesdale was from their town.
Their fathers, when not drinking, had
taught them all how to throw a ball.

When approached by the photographer,
they regarded him warily.
Was he a labor official? A truant officer?
The man asked if he might take their photo.
They sniffed. What do you give us?
The photographer went through his pockets,
handed them a dollar bill to divide
amongst themselves later.

They shrugged, then posed as
the photographer asked, each of them
with raised cigarette to mouth.
Years later,
one of them was shown the photo and
couldn’t remember what had happened
to his friends, only that they all
wanted to play for the Browns.

The J.M.W Turner in my head elbows me into a sense of calm,
a stillness in which I’m helpless to the interplay of sun and cloud.
Gradient tremors mesmerize, then relax, contract, then open-palm
the sky like a lightbulb pulled on a celestial cord and I’m found

in an almost painterly meditation, a state my schedule precludes
but, today, encourages and guides and folds me under its jacket
of air and light. And I am all that nature contains and secludes.
I belong to and am outside the moment. A pin in a universal bucket.

Shadows park and flee and Saturn yawns from a gargoyle \
somewhere \ there’s no water in the coffee maker and the water \
needs to be replaced in the cooler \ no one’s looking except for unmanned cameras \
Tell me you’re home and that you hear me \
Tell me you’re home/ even if you aren’t \
Tell me you’re home and you’re waiting up \
warm indention in TV-lit bed \
My face floats stories above dark streets \
and the phones are blinking in code no one has broken \
Tell me I’m wrong to look at pictures on other desks \
Tell me I’m wrong to make this call \
Tell me I’m wrong and let you go back to bed when you say you \
are tired \
The rest of the world has stopped crunching numbers \
I  can see by the moon how many more hours \
I have alone.
 

Nothing needs reexamining as much as a routine
for its continued use with impunity.
What habit wasn’t coddled within an instant of its perceived convenience?
I habitually tell myself a million untrue things as easily as taking in air
just to corroborate what I haven’t accomplished. To others, I appear
to be a working model of low-slung aspirations. To myself, I appear
an increasingly fuzzy picture that I need to compare with a much older
image in order to recognize.
Habits are a slow possession over the better, stronger choices –
the turtle in the warm pot of water.
How do I stop hobbling myself? Out of habit?
Would we garner so many if they were password-protected?

I say I live on David Byrne Street.
With its village academy at one end and
Firehouse 19 on the other, it reminds me of Byrne pontificating on the lives of people
in ‘Flyoverville’ in “The Big Country” from More Songs About Buildings and Food.
Is the presence of a World Market (does Byrne shop there? Costco seems more likely his style.)
just around the corner scarily coincidental?
Cue Rod Serling?
Byrne’s ironic refrain, “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me,”
sends a smile to my face as I walk home, passing
Westporters out Westporting.
Who am I to judge when, eons ago, I was one of them.
On nearby, unnamed streets the sirens shrill.

Prettiness is pain.

Beautifying is brutality.

The smile a rictus of roiling dissatisfaction with one’s own

end result.

Perfumers live to bottle summer in a ceaseless, amber-colored illusion –
exotic white flowers, beach waves, crisp linens –
and to reinforce the olfactory opulence that can be sampled, then discarded
once the tiny vessel’s nozzle expires (leaving that one tantalizing, unavailable
squirt) with names meant to evoke all the sets of every single film or show
about people who are rich or who are likewise unencumbered by what summer really smells like –
the food trash of the restaurant next door, spoiling and sweltering under the unbroken boxes;
the exhaust of a bus barely stopped for its next set of the season’s prisoners to board;
the overly ripe homeless denizen with his ubiquitous shopping cart and glittering eyes;
the stale glass of red wine in the kitchen sink every morning –
and, yet, I give into the escapism, even as I monitor the cost of summer’s twin terrors,
Ozone alerts and a blazing sun that incinerates us all equally.

–