The Poetry Marathon

Life is short, especially with computer devices. The goal is not to be left behind for any amount of time, even if you are as old as I am. Once you get behind, turning on your new device will be challenging without consulting with a gaggle of younger people who may not be able to translate for you. The game will up and you will drift into the dreaded realm of geezerhood lost in some 20th century time warp alone and sad. Creating your own rebus dictionary is essential even if you are terrible at puzzles and hate the aesthetics. It is better to learn hieroglyphics than any other language. Standing still as a political statement while admirable will be isolating. Special old age appropriate yoga poses linked to a particular emoji are becoming more popular and most communities offer such classes. Staying up to date with your operating system, whose shelf life is becoming shorter and shorter, should be as important as taking your pills and getting your exercise.You don’t have to follow your computer into senility. Remind yourself that going from rolled scroll to book form was very difficult.

Give me your tired, your poor
Emma Lazarus

Step up!
It is time to volunteer
you who are old,
on your last legs,
a non worker,
old trees,
fallen brush,
shrub sucklings,
poor,
homeless,
tempest-tost,
without an escape house,
an essential worker,
wrong color, and
all who drain our resources.
Let the virus wash over us and
we will be better off in the end
with more for fewer.
After all, there are more important things than living
Of course, everybody wants to save every life
but to what end?
Step up

Oh Dante, I am
sorry you missed the Black Plague.
What fun you would have had!
Your catalogue of Hell,
a museum of horror,
saturating all of our senses,
with its unique elevators
and escalators, is the prototype.

A close reading of your text
fails to reveal what you would do
with our leaders who deserve multiple circles
Oh Dante help us design our exhibition
where on every floor of serious hell
the same person shows up
in a different incarnation of the hell
they created for us.

The details are lost entangled
in places of granite and
water so vivid then

We four receded from being a group and
stretched along the trail after descending
from the high altitude pass

Perhaps, it was calorie depletion
or oxygen depletion or
too many Ovid stories

Call it ecstasy, euphoria,
elation, or what not
I belonged at that moment
to that moment

My neurons can still summon up the glow.

Sex, war, profit,
more sex, court intrigue,
more profit, merriment, mirth
and, yes, the sickly towne

Sad, sickly time
ill news, sad stories
poor sicke people with plasters
the dead

Never been lived so merrily
or got so much
Let us dance and
be joyful the shops are open again

When you have seen one plague
you have seen them all.

It starts quietly enough
with a flashing yellow light without malice
Without warning it turns red
eerily bouncing off the puddles
A crossroad
speed up or hit the brakes

“Bring out your dead”

Most speed up
while the power brokers
use a waxed, heavy duty canvas
to cover up as much as possible
while gathering together a raucous chorus
singing together in different keys and scores
with bluster and fearlessness
while we shudder

“Bring out your dead”

Read old musty accounts
search for ancient wisdom
it is all in the old texts
the cacophony drowns out everything
the invisible is confounding
wait it out no matter what

“Bring out your dead”

wake up
shower
shave
eat something neutral
brush teeth
go into a dark cave
sit as a lotus
wait
allow the dankness to soothe you
listen to the constant clicking of bats
hope this time their chatter will be helpful
conjure up the end of times
scream louder than you have done before
breath in “I calm myself”
breathe out smile
time to go

We have been told again and again
in all kinds of languages
modern, ancient
written, oral
rhyme, prose
urban, rural
scientific, plain English
lingua, tongue
spoken word, sign
cartoons, paintings
in times of heat, in times of cold
in times of draught, in times of floods
in times of fires, in times of melts
our ears unable to see
our eyes unable to hear
prophecy to our grasshopper play
is terrifying
is not, Rachel Carson

Call me. I thought I would sail.
Whenever my hypos get me to knocking people’s hats off
I get to sea as soon as I can.
All men cherish the ocean
washed by waves and
cooled by breezes.
Thousands upon thousands
of mortal men
fixed in ocean reveries
looking high aloft
to get a seaward peep
How are you?

Restoration is a misnomer
Can one really bring back the past?
Yes, re-introduced wolves can change the rivers
but is it a recovery or a healing or a new configuration

We like to restore stuff.
Reconstructing an old rotting mess
is an act of defiance,
like giving the finger to the universe

The universe has all the time in the world
and knows in the end
the building up and tearing down
of the life cycle will win out.