The Poetry Marathon

I’m worried about what happened today;
These people, these catastrophes that slipped
Down the slope toward me that I couldn’t
(Or wouldn’t!) avoid. I’m worried and maybe

I won’t sleep tonight. Maybe I’ll dream
Of those faces, all twisted and wrenched,
Like dried fruit, fanged and hungry for
My soul. Oh yes I’m worried and anguished

And suddenly I know how Satan was conceived;
Where his scythe of retribution, his dagger of
Malice, wrathful horns on my own face,
Poking backwards into my curdling skull, came

Into the universe; a fiction both horrifying and real.
Hell exists. I built it. And I’m worried I’m going there.

My tendency is to rewrite every adjective
A dozen different times
To sketch again that eye and then again
To get THAT note perfect before moving on

While the rest of the bird
Waits in the nest
Waits for a worm
Longs for wings

If Nature made the robins thus
The Earth would be a rotten place

When grasses grow from black to gray and wet with dew,
The awkward totter of the limping god comes tramping through.
The mocking cackle of the laughing god
And misty eyed Sounds Perfect scurrying too.

Then humans ought to show a little sway;
Like Nudge One Inch growing less immaculate every day,
And Silky Ears and All Over The Place too
Who talk too much with nothing much to say.

“I wonder why I built these beasts?” says Limping God
“These out-of-kilter cocky, smelly clods.
And yet they’re lovely in a slanted way.
I have a thought to thicken up their blood.”

Sounds Perfect wept to see such devastation,
While laughing god fell into furious cachinnation.

I know which came first
I’m not telling anyone
Because I’m chicken

Oh this big talk here
And so much cloudless laughter
And my butt is too big

A baffled
Dragonfly
Floats and falls
Floats and falls again
Puzzled
Closed minded
Climbing up a
Wall – a monolith
Neither
Evil nor kind
Then down its weathered bricks
Again to pavement
Where rain
Rises up in steam
As a memory
Of one long
Sweltering stretch

I wonder who
Has more questions
This green/gold miracle
This winged one-seasoned
Idiot
Or me
Gazing sleepily
From across the quad
Attempting my
Less than Herculean
Task of negotiating
labyrinthine Grubhub

Unfortunately
There are too many people
And not enough ducks

Yes, I said ducks!

Here outside a door
Wondering who is inside
Waiting and waiting

What makes a guy
Go charging down
A hill at an
Innocent bear

It’s not the bear
Out on the hill
No it’s the one
Up in his throat

An early morning
There so many kinds of
Sleep as the rain falls