The Poetry Marathon

Ten years ago, yes, I was five years old.
Ten years ago, with hair like wine, she told
Me that she loved me. And ten years ago
My heart shattered in a half moon’s  cold glow.

A decade back I broke my neck to make
A dime. A dream is something you can take
Too far. Ten years ago my father passed
Away. And then my mother. And I asked

Myself how much I looked like them, or how
Much I wanted to. It’s hard to shed now
The decades I have pulled behind me. And
Ten years ago I’ll be breathing sand.

Philosophers and gods brocade our lives,
While decade after decade we survive.

Eight years old and
Frozen in a candy store

Aromas of cherry
And licorice

Wrap around me
Like a corset

I’m crushed in
An avalanche

A flood of colors
A cascade of chocolate

This deluge
This ocean

This bottomless
Pit of possibilities

While my sister
Gently without hesitation

Cinderella-esque
Chooses just one

Steps to the register
Her eyes neither right nor left

And I feel like shit
While my mother says

“Hurry up, Leroy.
There are people behind you.”

These origami cranes crafted from
underwear catalogues (which slipped,
quick nipples, into my mail)
are an improvement on
paper promises
of bliss that a
purple bra
offers
me.

A manic young poet named Moore,
Penned poems ’til his butt became sore.
He was reminded, at last,
To rescue his ass,
Because Grubhub had come to the door.

Now, at this long end of June,
Unplug those showy winter lights.
Leave them to crumble.
And year after yawning year,
More slowly than
Your own beauty grows
Then goes away,
Begin to comprehend
The solemn logic of
Candles in December.

After a long pause
Nose downward,
Watching waves polish
Her feet, lick at her ankles
Repeatedly, a clock’s tongue,
The background hum of sea
Echoing some famous adagio,
And my round reddening belly,
Patient as one of those
Smirking stone buddhas,
Yet desperate for her answer,
She at last mumbled,
“Maybe once in a blue moon.”

Looking back,
I don’t think she knew
The weight of that phrase,
Massive as the gravity
That yanks salty tides,
Into which she lurched,
Bobbing up a second later
Beckoning me in.

Turn the world upside
Down and tears rise like hot air
Balloons to heaven

Normal is a cobweb
A zombie a tomb
Normal sedates people
Who without knowing it
Rot in concrete cells of normal

Run from normal
Fear that unsettling illusion
That barren tree in darkness growing no fruit
That madman murdering your children

Oh, the only cure
For a world yearning
For normal
Is your hoarse throat
Croaking croaking croaking
At the window
“Nevermore!”

So, two hikers, lost
In Lost Creek,

Asked to follow me
To our cars.

There’s no disgrace
In getting lost;

Rather the opposite.
You wouldn’t know

Any ancient Greeks
By name had they turned

Promptly home and calmly
Docked by lunch.

Yet, every step we took,
Those Minnesotans and me,

I wondered who
Was robbing whom:

They me, of my Golden Fleece,
My solitude;

Or me them, of their
Triumphant return,

Their Penelopes, hungry
After all these years,

Aroused by every half healed scar,
Every punishing bruise of the gods.

Anyway, we arrived at the parking lot
And I took their picture

Before driving myself
Home over Kenosha pass,

Safe and alone in my car
Listening to Bach

Without much to note
Except a mosquito bite or two.

Lascaux’s lost cows tick
Backward across time-baked walls,
Shoving,

As I stand
Awed beside my ancestors’
Scrawls,

A spear into my fist.