The Poetry Marathon

In my wallet I still keep
the travel card you gave me in 1973
which grants the bearer, me,
immediate and instant passage to somewhere else

This 2 by 3 inch rounded edge card stock,
illuminated in black ink
from a 00 rapidograph pen,
I hold for an emergency

The front side shows your
drawings of our first months together,
while the back lists
the privileged destinations I can go to.

Over the years, the edges have
curled and frayed leaving
some of the destinations
and memories in doubt

It was from a time
when it was just the three of us,
you, me, and Peter the cat
with your dragon blowing hot air onto our bed

My card numbered 0000001 does not give
instructions in how I can use it
or warn me about the consequences of
such transit.

I have never asked you
if you have card number 0000002,
if the same destinations are on it,
and if you have used it.

Grow our my hair and beard
and parade up and down Holly St weekly
in neon colored tunics
carrying a sign warning about the coming apocalypse

Memorize Robert Pinsky’s volume of poems to read aloud
and go to the torn down mills site
reciting them weekly in a voice that vibrates with
the gulls and rusting rocket-like silos

Go to every major league ballpark
and stay long enough to sit through the national anthem
while carrying a sign with a quote by Borges
“poets, like the blind, can see in the dark”

Open up a small bookstore in an out-of-the-way basement office space
and change weekly the order of
how the publications merge in various piles
of animal sculptures

Reduce my what will I do list
and cross off the penultimate possibility
leaving a final and ultimate descriptor
of how I will spend my time until the last line is erased

Sitting on rocks above the alpine lake
our spare dinner eaten under
a canopy of high sierra sky,
we waited for the full moon to rise.

We planned at the end of our 30 day trek
to climb the back end of
of Mt Whitney and arrive on top
just as the sun rises.

Miscalculations of food supplies
left us with hunger in spirit and mind
with all thoughts of glory abandoned.
Hail on top sent us back down to head home.

I turned twenty-one during the trip,
broke my glasses, lost weight, climbed Mt Sill and
had my first peak experience
which still gives pause me now.

I have lived here for 20 years
in a wooded ravine outside of town.
My campsite is well hidden but
I get break ins from time to time.

I have stopped speaking,
so I am writing these notes to you.
I am happier this way
and avoid much trouble.

Don’t get me started on the government.
I will not sign anything,
as it is too risky for me.
I can barely stay in the waiting room.

Can you spare some money?

Lucky or not I see faces everywhere.
Walking in a Death Valley canyon at dusk once,
I became overwhelmed by the changing animal and human faces
reflecting off the canyon walls.

I rejoice in that negative space
around and between the images where
the new pictures that are created
hint at a different version of reality.

In Jewish mysticism, the torah scrolls
are described as black fire on white fire
where the deeper meaning is inscribed
in the white background.

I reside in those backgrounds
roaming about in the hope that
it will become clearer what
those faces have to tell me.

Looking at the long wooden boardwalk
threading through a wooded wetlands
takes me back to the fjords of Gros Morne.

Newfoundland, with its sparse inhabitants,
confounded us with its odd houses without stairs
to a front door high above the ground.

In Twenty-Nine Palms, we were perplexed
with the eery abandoned homestead houses
scattered in the high desert.

Now, the nearby Joshua trees, my totem plants,
are dying and
will be empty shells soon enough.

In April, during the time of tulips,
we revisit the scarlet pimpernel,
princess Irene, the red emperor,
and the queen of the night.

Seeking relief from the aristocratic tulips,
we find solace with the dreaming maid,
Aladdin, Abigail,
and the elegant negrita.

Once, we babysat Ms. Negrita,
the typhoid Mary of lovebirds.
Our parakeet went wild with complicated acrobatics
to impress her. All she would give him

was a deadly infection.

My first hitchhiking trip was from Toronto to Cambridge.
10 rides.
18 hours.

With my long hair, beard and back pack
I blended in easily with the other hitchhikers.
The drivers were mostly lonely salesman,
who needed an audience.

My role was to listen,
almost priest like,
to their sins and troubles.

There was nothing scary except
for the man with 12 inch knife
attached to his belt.

Scary would come on our hitching
trip across Canada
when the trains were on strike.
We survived and have stayed hitched ever since.

He is completely untrustworthy…

Ask my sisters,

they’ll tell you the same thing…

Hee hee hee hee .

There is one in section 2,

that I think if I wanted to pick the perfect building…

I think pasta,

you know something soft…

I went running and the air feels thinner.

I don’t know.

Our air seems thicker…

What are you doing?

Having dinner?

Every time when I see it,

I hear my mother say that…

In the old days it seemed clear.

A human is a human

A cat is a cat

Time is regular, straight, and linear.

It is all confused now.

A human is made up of many different species of bacteria.

A lichen is made up of 5 different species.

What seems like one is really a commune of many.

Replacement parts are available

and ever expanding to supplement living matter.

In the future, creation of stories

will revolve around Hal the computer,

the gods, and us, hubrogs.