The Poetry Marathon

poppies closed up tight
keep your secrets close tonight
release them at dawn

There once was a coon who went berry-ing
It ate the whole bush-full fermenting
it wandered too far
and was hit by a car
After the feast comes the reckoning

Leave your children, you can have more
Forget your pets, new ones can be found
Forget your car, it is a dead weight
Forget your clothes, they will turn to dust

Books. Save your books. Save as many as your two arms can carry.
No, as your two shoulders can carry. A backpack full of books
Save them.
It’s double helpful you see, because you’re removing fuel from the fire.
In time, the pages will be curled from frequency of use
instead of the instant heat of flames
Those words in books you see, when they’re gone, they’re gone forever
No flotsam floating in the sludge
And in space at the end of the world, just carbon will fill the air.
Even the person whose memorized their words will pass.
And the words, the wisdom will be gone forever.
Their words cannot be written on earth or air and spun into cloth.
The books are worth saving.
Always save the books.

When I see the dandelion
Reminds me of the weeding
In the garden my grandma
Full of native wisdom
from the sun dark-skinned
kneeling with her cane

Leaning on her cane
poking its end at the offending dandelion
wrinkled in the sun dark-skinned
in her childhood of farming and weeding
she gained so much wisdom
what she had gained, my grandma

I miss my grandma
and her wooden cane
from abuse she gained such wisdom
and her laugh delightful as a dandelion
her laughs did not need weeding
she was more than dark-skinned

in her time those dark-skinned
not like everyone’s grandma
obsessed with dandelion weeding
all summer leaning on her cane
I would make a wreath of dandelion
crown my head in her wisdom

now here i walk in wisdom
like her I walk dark-skinned
making medicine with the dandelion
not like my grandma
not yet in my hand, her cane
my hands know by heart the weeding

with my bare, brown hands I learn weeding
taking and leaving, weeding wisdom
use my fingers to point at each cane
I walk this world dark-skinned
how do I emulate my grandma
draw a tattoo of a dandelion

through life the weeding, in life run dark-skinned
with simple wisdom I am my grandma
one day I’ll have her cane wreathed in dandelion

You whose eyes I knew at once
As eyes are windows to the soul
a face familiar as my own
from when we met so long ago

soul mates you may have more than one
good friends are soul mates too
though our “ship” is struggling so
I know that I need you

Again we met; kismet, this life
and how you understand each time
when we’re alone our secret strifes
emerge and we recognize our souls sublime

Soul mates you may have more than one
but your soul is the one I want.

Dear friends, you have hiked a mountain so have I
On this treck I’ve been home meditating in silence
Writing poems and thinking about what it is to give up.
When is it ok to quit, and when to keep going?

You have hiked a mountain and so have I.
At the peak of this mountain of words, now
I must begin the trek back down, back home
back from this peak of experience,
back from these new views I’ve discovered

You have just hiked a mountain and so have I
Let’s rest awhile, sit around the table and eat.
I found a recipe for vegan enchiladas you will like!

here i am here i stand
the product of three lands
no ancestors to guide me
like salmon bred in hatcheries
and carried to the ocean
i have no guides, no memories
of how i came to be here
only a vague sense of home
and the inevitable perish
never having quite made it there
to where my heart tells me to be

The ceiling fan moving the air in silent waves.
The blinds swaying gently in response
An airplane high above, its shadow tracing over the window.
Rise and fall of my chest with each shallow breath.
Must close my eyes again for just a few moments more.

Loping through the grass
That loving gaze trips my heart
Bright pink tongue lolling

emerged from the void to face the sun
scrunched into a wail of pain at its first breath
faced whales in the ocean, cougars in the woods
faced bully’s and lovers
faced a life of goals unfulfilled
for now