The Poetry Marathon

Look at your hand
And think of this:

However close
You concentrate,
You’ll never see
Those elfin, subatomic crumbs
Crammed in there,
Undecayable;
Existing even when
That bog you’re buried in
Is swallowed
By a dying sun.
And think of your descendants
Ticking their hours away;
Reckoning decades
By the clicks
Of my slim quarks
Thumping after you forever.

Look at your hand
And think of this.

She wore silk and issued citations
To asses and pulled fools from
mangled messes of their own creation.
And he dreamed constantly of her perfume.

There once was a poet so serious
He presumed that his muse was imperious
But when he attempted to write
Poems all through the night
This minstrel proved purely delirious

Slowly slowly
I am slipping

Yet more quickly
I am sipping

What once approached
The alchemical

Has steered its way
To the all comical

And if you think
This poem’s a gimmick

Then please avoid
The next hour’s limerick

To sit is a blessed thing

To sing a song while you sit
And put out your hat while you sing

Wearing dignified clothing
While people fill your
Cavernous hat with silver

To be naked beneath those silken clothes

To grow feathers through your nakedness
Launch into the air singing
Like a meadowlark
Like a chorus of geese
With water in their migratory eyes

To sit on that water wearing your hat
Your hat full of coins jingling merrily
That awful melody that took
Your naked beautiful body away from us

Tell me the story of Great Grandmother.

Again? I think you only like the farting part.

It’s funny. Pleeeese. Tell me.

OK. Great Grandmother is very beautiful.
She is not young or old. She is not big or small.
Her clothing is completely made of numbers
and it is see-through.
And even Great Grandmother is see-through.
One day…
One day…

Yes…?

She didn’t do it on purpose.
It just happened.
One day she…

She farted!
Was it loud?

Probably.
You’d have to ask the gods.
They were the only ones around to hear it
because they were in the fart.
And so were all the tiny grains of everything.
The gods started putting all those grains together,
playing with them the way you play with sand and mud.
And they made the stars and planets and Earth and sun,
everything, even the animals.

Even me.

Even you.

Tell it again!

He built the best damn furniture in the world
And he smelled like sawdust. He wore bow ties
At night and let his limbless hair unfurl.
A thousand miles away she saw him in the skies.

The shackled place
From where they came
Had nothing to offer
Their daughter but shame

You can’t teach a son
What is good and right
When bullets sing
Him to sleep at night

When drugs and money
Dazzle his eyes
And what is correct
Is violence and lies

It isn’t correct
In a father’s heart
To choose who eats
And who must part

It isn’t right
It isn’t respectable
To raise your girl
In such a receptacle

So that’s why they
Are here tonight
Because this place
Is a little more right

How difficult
Can it be
To show a little
Propriety?

you know Joe
a wise old hermit
a sharp cookie
crazy
nuts
homespun

the trouble with living like Joe
is it’s easy

Joe’s beans decided to tromp

tromped up into the hills
thinking

you know Joe
the first thing that went through
Joe’s mind was I bet this
is gonna look really cool

Joe was alone in all the wrong ways
he stood there a minute
then he stuck his arm up in the air

you know Joe
a wise old hermit
a sharp cookie
crazy
nuts
homespun

it’s just too damn easy

I love to eat my thelery
In the thenter of my houth
But thertainly not with peanutbutter
That thtickth it to my mouth