The Poetry Marathon

What is not inside
Among tidy shirts pants ties
What wild beasts seas rains

In 1947 Leo returned from The War
Purchased a table saw and joiner
Welded a steel stand to support them

He married made the first television
In Denver built his house board by board
That table saw grinding blade after blade

Chewed and chewed upon pine oak cedar ply
Repaired televisions for forty years
Colorblind though he was

Built his daughter’s walnut wedding dais
Solid as rock beautiful as daisies
By then the table saw forty years old

When I received the machine
It was over sixty has gone another fifteen
Leo watching me half those years

Tables cabinets ukuleles chessboards
And on the side of the steel stand
A storage bin holds literally

Every weary blade that saw spit out
For the life of me I cannot
Bear to part with even one of them

The
Most
Remarkable
Biochemical
Oreo
A
Person
Could
Hope
To
Twist
Apart

They don’t make Easter any more
The way they did when I was four

My father wears a jacket and tie
My mother too and so do I

My auntie sings Blue Bayou
Under the carport with cousin Lou

At my elbow are the beets
Next to them are grandpa’s meats

The elk he shot right in the keister
Which elicits a tremor from my sister

My mother runs to get a bucket
In case my sister has to chuck it

I wonder why the lightbulb’s dim
And why the milk tastes like cinnamon

Whether Jesus had such an Easter
Including a nauseated sister

Whether elk are wild in Jerusalem
And if their milk tastes like cinnamon

Whether lightbulbs gave Joseph fits
Whether Mary sang Roy Orbison hits

Whether women wore clip on ties
And where they parked their cars at night

We bow our heads to save us sinners
Then tuck into our gamy dinner

Ahh, they don’t make Easters any more
Like when my sister heaved on the floor

Come Monday
We know what you’ll be sipping
And what you’ll be munching
And where
Come Monday
I’ll be getting a brand new tattoo
It’ll be a real beauty
And it’s your damn fault

When talking to a bear
It’s tough to listen
Those teeth you know
That peppered breath
Like sandpaper

It’s easy to lose track
When talking to a bear
You get roughed up in
Rocks falling around
Flutes shrieking

Rabbits become an issue
Hunger creeps in
When talking to a bear
But you’re aware that’s
What got you talking

So rattle your brain a little
Scrape a picture in the mud
Use a stick use your shoe
When talking to a bear
Get down to it

Get up at a reasonable hour
Shave and shower
Scrub your ears
You’re darn lucky
To be talking to that bear

There once was a fellow named Pratt
Convinced that the Earth was all flat.
So to prove his weird whim
He set off for the rim,
And got back to where he was at.

The mystery isn’t
In those fascinating
Cobra fangs

Nor in spiders waltzing
Willingly into
Their wives’ lacy webs

Nor in the flapping orange
Glory of conflagrations
That recycle thriving forests

Nor in the natural
Heartbeat of a river
Repeatedly eating its own banks

No

The mystery
Is why do humans
Believe

With the same
Brains that
Build cathedrals

That they have a right to
Pass moral judgement
On God’s ethics

Ever wonder
how a tree
grows? It
makes no sense;
not like baking a
cake or building a
guitar.

A couple of
peach pits,
tossed
out the window,
and then, one day,
without even trying,
there’s a damn

tree
full
of
peaches.

Life folds you into a paper crane;
Yet you feel like an alligator,
Taste sweet as honey,
Look like Garbo,
Sound like a Stradivarius,
Smell like mangled marigolds
Smooth as glass.
The tinkle of fresh bread, Leonardo and Paris remind you that alligators can’t be creased.
Yet a yellowed amphibian in your scrapbook begs to be folded.
Galumping downhill sends you backward faster and faster,
Until you taste like a fool.
You are the wooden dragon of yesterday burning yourself with your own fire, and that Phoenix actually dies, never to raise hope again.
So you fold yourself into that paper crane;
And Bucky is so proud of you, of what you will be, a wad of wobbling glass making sense only to the logical mind of your smiling swamp thing.

“Vive la France!” you hear him say, scaly tail scraping circles in stinking, fertile mud.