The Poetry Marathon

Packably speaking, mentally packing is arduous and
like its cousin, list-making, is easily crossed out and restarted.

Some of my kitchen utensils and overripe junk drawer quiver
in anticipation that they’ll be finding new places to disappear
when most needed and reappear, straight-faced.

The comedy of errors that is the printer table, a repurposed
television cart, hosts an orgy of discarded magazines.

Other hideables and tuck-aways will be handled finally and firmly
with the brusqueness they should have received originally.

All those socks, all those socks, and his watch
in need of a battery remain in the open, packably speaking.

My error, a comedy with no test audience, was to procrastinate
painting that antique dresser, which looks more and more
like something I’ll see on someone else’s Instragram.

Beckoning still is a basement, forbidding and dank,
daring me to turn my list into action.

Birds practice their plaintive twitching for crumbs and scatter
like dive bombers
as I toss pinhead size morsels of my breakfast burrito shell
just beyond the perimeter.

More and more, the city market morning feels
like the calm before an indefinite storm.
My day is divided into specific slots. Even
under the glaring sun of the deepening morning, I still
have a breeze of hope that I can recalibrate those slots
so they’re fused into one unfettered day.

I close my eyes to absorb the smell of the smoke from
the coffee being roasted next door, and the myriad sounds of the market itself
–  the vendors, the streetcar bell, and the birds chirping as they swoop
and echo under the stalls – and gather myself for the commute.

Dearest Friend,
Who are you reading? I wish we could enjoy a cup and
you could tell me what happened to the story you sent.

I heard your tribute. I drink much less  than Baudelaire,
but I chuckled at the words as much as I sympathized
with your shaking hands. Stage fright doesn’t equate
to being ill-suited to the stage. Lose your self-consciousness.
and you won’t realize – or care – that you’re onstage.

Have you filled that notebook yet? If you haven’t or lost it,
find another and fill it. Lose your consciousness of having to be
right the first time. Make all the mistakes now. Make all the mistakes
you were too careful to make. And write them all down.

Art of Noise on Sirius is punctuated by
passing cars and the same unhelmeted motorcycle
driver
who boomerangs this street every hour.
Morning has shifted from shy sunflower
to clear and stridently hot pale blue noon.
My mental satchel is packed without an itinerary
apart from warming my coffee and washing last night’s wine glass.
Voices on the pavement close to my door
raise my hackles for a minute – I’m not dressed for unannounced
arrivals
– but pass like a blurb on a hardback.

Have you seen John Cazale’s Wyoming,
a play about a scandal that would presage the rest of the 20th
and, thus far, most of the 21st century’s preoccupation
with raping the land for greed?

We have a minute before the show starts,
and need to make room for the actor
playing Albert B. Fall to find his
seat in the house.

No one who props “gate” next to a news story
to indicate malfeasance, proven or not,
ever uses “dome,” but why not?
The past is just the alpha present.
It was our predecessors workshopping the outlines
we’d use later on unheard-of platforms.

Did soda jerks know
their moneymaker would be the
meme of their day
if there were memes in 1922?

We never talk about
where we go when we sleep
until we have been awake
long enough to kiss good morning
and you wonder, but never ask
why I break away first.

Marjorie says we let kids should arm themselves.
Oh, no, say the neighbors.
What about last year’s kids?
Won’t our insurance rates go up
because they weren’t armed, either?
Well, Netta twists the phone cord –
she won’t let go of the landline in case
of the border wars Teddy whispered about –
if Marjorie says so, nodding her head
as she watches the scroll
and reflexively clutches her heart
when the face of the man she didn’t vote for
comes on the screen.
Marjorie says we need more guns
and to return to God.
Netta is calmer now.
Nothing bad happens at church.

The judge was tossing out pills
when the stewards found her
No turtle ever slept sounder

In mortal Kate Bush territory
apartment rangers and Louisianans for Luftwaffe
in matching camouflage mimicked the scepter

Five houses from Ginny’s horoscope,
His Royal Retired Flea was finally happy
whose ass he had found his larder

No one talked about the economy
but knew the price of what herbs
to induce before the first trimester

Whole text conversations
with comic fuck yous interrupted by poop emojes
were saved with street photos in the drive forever

Hey, this is me here in the void for, I believe, my seventh marathon.

Having time to find the perfect place
almost demands being in the perfect place to leave.
Landlords reward good tenancy with rent increases
so paying month to month increases the urgency.

Almost demands being in the perfect place to leave,
but can a place be found perfect sight unseen
or right after it’s been vacated?

Landlords reward good tenancy with rent increases
so someone is always fleeing the scene, looking
and, finding, at the last minute, something perfect.

So paying month to month increases urgency
and everyone is urgently looking for the perfect place
even if they thought they already had it when they first moved.