The Poetry Marathon

Rush, rush, out the door,

trip on the mat, urging,

“Hope you brought wine,”

then hurl yourself across the street,

open the car door,

hit the gas,

speed through town,

hit the brakes,

open the car door,

trip on the curb, impediment

to the pace of the next gig,

flying by,

screaming at the back of your neck,

run, run, run for your life,

as if you could,

as if the hurt never touched

down in your cells,

fueling a body on the move,

a mind at odds with feet

that rush, rush,

out the door

avoiding

evading

eluding

coming home.

No nonsense, no bitter and tease, no games for he

who knows how to sit in ease, soaking his bones in a tub full of tunes,

eager to please the senses, not hers but his, alone in his cocoon,

his lair of potions and scents, smiling to his core, through a heart’s lens.

Manhearted he is, easy to see, plain sight, no need to believe

an explanation for every cause, an analysis for every disease.

He’s hard around the edges, tender to the bone, and mean

when it matters, telling it like it is or should be, without making a scene.

No drama, dilemma, duress, or domineering desires to be yours,

he’s content where is, what he knows, and how he keeps score, for

what is a man but his mood, manner, and masculine mimicry, one

more father, son, uncle, brother, nephew, pal and bearded chum.

Blissful fullness, he steams in his own juices, a masterpiece in tile,

mosaic of a man, centuries stained in porcelain, skin of his brethren

swirling about him like bath salt silk and scum, floating atop the womb.

He’s a man from his wrinkled toes to his shit-eating grin, a y to her x,

not a performance, like the band playing in his head, but still play, effects

drilled into the cerebral cortex, the veins of desire, a man-hearted display.

“Could the Truth be so simple? So terrible?” Tim O’Brien asks,

finally, and the answer is a foregone conclusion, no secrets to hide.

Did he whisk her away to the lake of the woods or in it?

She was his world, he admits. So how could she vanish at his hands,

on his watch when no one was watching, secluded as they were?

She peeled back the veil, her first mistake, and the last of her seen.

It could have been the war, the memories, the love, the lost babies,

bayonet babies hanging on the clothes line in a weaver’s yard.

O’Brien’s tale, a mosaic of mown down wives and children in heat,

asks us to remember what he himself cannot forget, wants to dream

away in the river of Lethe, where souls drift loosed from lives lived.

The Sorcerer only giggled at the legions of corpses lining field streams.

Where is he now? Where is she then?  In the Lake of the Woods.

Had I known what I knew then,

I would have done it all the same,

hit the roof, flown the coop, kicked the bucket,

but not without a fight, without a last stand.

You don’t finish last if you quit the race.

Starting is the hardest part, when

your feet won’t go and your heart beats fast.

Had I known what I knew then,

I would have done it all the same.

Nevertheless, I’d have taken it slower.

When the going gets tough, then you soften

the pace to a crawl, belly down, back to the wall.

They can only keep your head under water so long.

Still, had I known what I knew then,

I would have done it all the same.

Regrets never pinned me like a voodoo doll,

and wishes fall into the well like a dull thud

in a distant hollow: what I know now, what I knew then,

It’s all the same, what I do now, will never be again,

Yet, it never mattered to any of us anyhow.

A drum beats blindly, pulse-passes on to the next one in line,

and the baton passes from your hands to mine and mine to theirs.

I give them nothing more; they earn nothing less.

Time trims the sun’s beams shorter, molds the sky round,

and I if I ever knew it then, I know I know it now the same.

Just before he died, my daughter asked him, “What is your favorite color?”

And he said it was yellow.

“Send me a sign when you’re gone,” she said.

He nodded weakly, though he appeared to dismiss her.

“I saw a yellow bird. Here’s a picture,” she texted.

And then the yellow butterflies flitted by.

She never doubted Grandpa’s sending a sign.

Who watched your wife die for 15 years, the last five

under my roof, as we both gasped at her final inhale?

Who changed your i.v. every 8 hours when they almost killed you?

Wasn’t it I who wet your lips when they were dry, set your game up

when the sickness took away every last pleasure you relied on

to help you forget, tuck her under your pillow at night when you dreamed

her young, dreamed her beside you, spooned in sleep of the living?

Didn’t I watch boxing and Gold Rush and the Angels games

with you, despite my mad thirst to work, work, work to forget, to pacify?

Where was my sign?

I cried at the stop light, the traffic a crawl.

Did I kiss him enough, tell him I loved him?

And I saw it then, the cloud break, the golden rays at dusk,

last shudders of daylight, like yellow hands upon my heaving shoulders.

I see you.

She wore a suit to the office and slicked her hair back.

The sun rose over her desk on the 12th floor each morning,

some mornings with her still at it from the night before,

way after the fireworks at Disney lit up the sky over the Matterhorn.

She often trembled and screamed in frightful hysteria,

whether in terror, rage, or frustrating fear, the office mates heard.

Until that day, when the mine went off, a planted time bomb,

and her head exploded inside a cage, inside the cement, inside–

When the four-wall howling ended and the gavel slam echoed

through a billion steps home, a fish tank then, she walked out.

And never looked back as the deputy screamed, “Get the fuck out!”

So she did and freed her bodily being, her mind not far behind.

She wears slippers and pajamas to work now, flexible hours,

and whispers, “thank you” to all she meets and all she doesn’t.

For all terrible storms, wind, fire, water, pour over the dead, or

soon-to-be-dead, until they learn to awaken and be, live and breathe.

The girls may have been 4 and 7; their mamie was in town,

winter, Christmas Eve, 2003.

We had live lobsters swimming in a pot most of the day.

Jordyn watched the claws open and close slowly.

“What does a lobster eat?”

I had to look it up.

And when 7 o’clock rolled, my mother in law filled a great big pot with water,

turned up the flame high, and salted the water.

I kept the children entertained with decorating dessert.

At lightening speed, before we could recover, she tosses the lobsters in,

quickly takes them out and slams them onto a platter, stabs them

down the middle, with a butcher’s knife, one, two, three, four,

crack, split, crack, split, crack, split, crack split, her hair tossed back.

I turned my head to look at them, their little mouths agape, eyes

wide open in disbelief and dismay, stilled by the violence

they had never seen before; a Christmas they always remember.

Add a few more dollars to the therapy jar–and more.

His hands shake so badly he can’t tap a smart phone.

That didn’t matter until last year.

Every college kid I’ve taught in the last ten years

writes about their first phone, but this one will be his last.

He’s 86 with familial tremens, the least of his old age ills,

and first we had to get a phone with big keyboard letters.

And that served him many years, just pressing a big

letter “A” programmed to speed dial his sister, son, me

his bridge buddies, his poker buddies, and his old buddies.

He’s older now, though; they don’t make them any more.

In his creeping demented brain, he asks a hundred times

a week, “Why can’t we just get the same phone we had?”

“They don’t make ’em any more, Dad.” And he sighs.

The smart phone rings and he taps, taps, taps, nothing,

the caller gives up, and I have to call them back for him.

The missed phone calls, voice mails, all he can retrieve,

He misses his wife, his card games, and his flip phone.

When I wake up to a clean sink, I feel its fullness.

A quick phone call on the way home from work, “Did you eat?”

My daughter’s knock and muffled offering, “I made soup, There’s plenty.”

The last one out the studio door, “Thank you. I can’t tell you how I needed that.”

A Starbucks gift card at semester’s end with a note, “I learned so much from you.”

Taking a time out during the busy day to close my eyes, breathe and chant.

Asking for advice from my mentor, “Who is my client avatar? What can I offer?”

She says, “You are deeply humble, non-judgmental and compassionate.”

He always emails a good morning with a wish for a wonderful day–every day–

and he says he digs my hair, a hodgepodge of incoming gray and outgoing brown.

She winks from afar, a giggle on Instagram, a blue, violet, yellow, or blue heart.

My 9 year old great niece’s FaceTime every week, just because.

My sister’s generous gifts, her texts and memes of beautiful, powerful women,

saying, “These remind me of you and your daughters.”

My other sister’s cakes, soft voice, and tears, she never forgets to say the words.

Like the senile song on repeat he is, my father intones, “I’m so lucky to be with this family.”

My brother’s responsibility, a loan when I was down and out; it’s his way.

The wag of the tail, the light stroke on the cheek, the giant grin, fist bump, and kiss.

This is where I live–in the house of the heart–cracked, shattered, scored, and <3’d.

At 16, I flew to California, leaving for good,

a first for me, as I had never traveled by plane.

It was one of the coldest days of winter,

the windchill bringing the temps down to single digits,

and Long Island’s wet winters freeze your bones.

January 17, 1977, I boarded a 747 to LAX from JFK,

with a box of mementos, a suitcase of flannels and 501’s.

I sat in the way back, the last seat, nothing behind

when I felt the wave, the suffocating notion,

“I’m in a tube, oh my god it’s a tube!” and

there was nowhere to go, no place to catch air.

I stripped off my flannel, only a thermal undershirt,

and cooled off, popped a white or blue or red,

I don’t remember but the thermal shirt was white.

And when I opened my eyes, I saw the guy looking

My row mate, only two of us, was watching me,

well, maybe my white undershirt, my bra peeking

through the thick cotton, like my head, light and warm

And when I next opened my eyes, I heard a faint voice

announcing, “Welcome to Los Angeles.” I was home.

I flew. I panicked. I slept, I awoke. The world blinked.