The Poetry Marathon

When Kristen retired, we thought to take an adventure.

We went to Yosemite, where Dad had taken me and I had been a Dad to mine.

One of the rituals was to take the walk to the viewpoint for Nevada Falls.

Vernal  and Nevada.

With my little ones I had walked to the top of both  falls and lingered there,  and came down in near darkness on the wet narrow Mist Trail of fame,an adventure of marginal safety and much  to the great annoyance of their even tempered mother, who blamed the whole adventure on me as though she had not been there as it unfolded.

Kristen, at 5foot 4 and over 300 pounds simply had no upness to her stridel

She walked on level ground for distances, but lifting her bulk each step up the fairly easy slope was infinitely demanding, and we stopped every fifty steps.

Families with young children passed us, but we kept on.

Kristen is determined, and we made kept on to the goal of the viewing point, the bridge over the rushing water from the falls that, one after another, roard down with the snow melt, even in the drought year.

Up we went so slowly

To see the memorable

Water rushing down

RULES DON’T APPLY TO ME

I m the teflon poet.

they do not stick.

I do as I please

so there!

The rules don’t apply to me.

We need bad boys in poetry

and I am a STINKER

Putting 7 syllables in the iambic pentameter

and sprinklin, commas, like, table salt just- to -a-muse- my-self.Makin

Making fun of love and not one flower or unicorn or clever turn of phrase.

I don’t take poetic license-

I on.y got a learner’s permit.

The marvelous poem

spackled with images like a plastered invalided

sneering at my plain homespun clarity.

just say it plain I say

as the elegant verses laght behind their hands.

They gave us sheets with pictures of money so we could circle the and make change.

Now it is all figured by the mah-sheen.

Humiliation comes with every new credit card

every new mah-sheen to read the card.

We used to make carbons,

now we insert a chip.

But I like the instant approval, after humiliating myself before a millenial.

They couldn[t make  change in their heads.

if I give them some extra pennies they cannot handle it.

If i live long enough it all will change again.

i am so  glad i never owned an eight track,

and Pokemon Go will have gone bh the time KI every get involved in it .

I had purple fingersfrom loadingmy fountain pen

gthen lived with ball;points

now oyou write on a screen.

i refuse to be hip.

Last night as I was ready to get some much needed sleep I got  a private message from a drunken women who had ripped me off by having me be sorry for her and supportive and kind, then telling me she made it all up.

I was furious and somehow the rage turned into an accusation that she was doing this for her sexual stimulation, and I was right.

In my elevated mood the whole thing went out of control into cybersex and then she suddenly withdrew.  All this in public, to a considerable bit of shame and blame.

She excused herself for being drunk.  I was Bipolar aroused and showing poor judgment, but nobody understands things like that, so what’s the use.

And here she was again, playing me in her drunkenness, coy and needy.  I wrote tender words that got her hot, then she stopped.  Bummer extreme.

Two hours we toiled through the mess she had made of her life: an affair with her husband’s best friend.  The lover died before she could leave her husband,, who was also sick, and the grief wound became infected.

A plot right out of a soap opera, but real, and I was hearing it for the second time, and making some pretty shrewd guesses about why she was drinking to dull the pain of guilt and grief.  And anger at her husband for NOT TALKING ABOUT IT DAMN IT!  and not going to the doctor with his serious symptoms, as though he wanted to die, and, as I was exhausted, she shared that she wanted to die, so I was stuck longer.

She had kept drinking, so she hadn’t sobered up and wasn’t more intellectually clear, but much more emotionally clear.   A huge mess and i did not want to try to unpack it instead of checking on the marathon site.

Two hours invested in a sloppy drunk, and i was tender and supportive, because I am a good boy.

This was too long an assignment to finish and also have a break for life tasks.

Somewhere is a draft of the narrative that I will work on in the future.   When I can find it.

A love poem to a stranger on the internet is a challenge.

These fantasies of power.

Disturbing.

Fear of the dark,

Fear of the big kids who can  puy you in a locker r a garbage can .
As a big grown man it always wrenches me to learn the sense of physical danger that women live in and the fantasies of being able to control a physical situation with violence.

Violence I set aside as a strategy decades ago.
Disturbing to realize the grown man privilege of freedom from fear,

some people smoke it

exclaim upon it:

“this is some GOOD SHIT!”

but i tell you  true, my darlings,

as the years advance

your priorities shift

and nothing gives more pleasure in the morning

than the natural rhythms of life asserting themselves

and no red blood on the tissue.

prs 3.x 2016

Such a joy to put down my my lines, turn on the trolling motor and catch such a plum in the pudding of Nina G!

I live.

The time is coming when the sordid stench of confusion will rule my brain.

but before darkness there is this glorious moment of light.

before darkness

is the magic time

the light is just right, caressing

revealing what was hidden in the glare of noon

before the winter darkness

autumn’s glow is warm and nourishing

I feed o  all the wonderous sights.

Oh  Brave old world

that has such beauty in it.

PRS 3,O 2016