The Poetry Marathon

Acrid tang in the back of the throat,
Stinging, shallow breaths as I gasp.
There’s no air. I feel the heat suffocate
and begin to bite as I fall, stumble,
and it begins to roar a floor below.
Sacred things, family relics, going up,
burning away to nothing, and the bitterness
in my chest isn’t the smoke, but the years
lost, and the fire isn’t warm, a gentle pet
but a hungry, possessive thing that rips,
tears, and swallows your life whole.
Before you can breathe, before you can blink.

Slowly rising, steaming coffee
wends into cool morning air,
sourdough toast crisping with
sweet mellow butter melting
cold feet on a warm floor, and
slow big band sways.

I remember the first kick.

The small, rapid thumping of hearing his heartbeat for the first time.

The ultrasound a galaxy of stars, constellation Leo with a small fist

and fluttering, birdlike heart.

The want to cradle small feet in my hands and marvel,

this pain that brought you to the world wasn’t divine,

it was real, us and nature and human intervention that brought you,

crying, into the morning light. My lion child,

the innocence you carry isn’t skin deep. One day you’ll grow, and walk,

and marvel at miracles as I have, as you do, and wonder

at what makes us human, and bright in the dust

that angels have dared to trudge with bright wings,

and you will learn that there is more to holiness than a temple,

that to look at someone’s smiling face is worship,

and divinity the smile in their voice as you fall asleep.

Walk amongst angels one day, in a silver future, and remember.

Not all that is glorious is godly, but every miracle is divine.

Slip under surface,

cool blue gently lifting.

I glide, float, imagine

wings through the tide,

diving in, slipping out,

turn to the sky, a breath,

before slipping under again.

Hard lines and harder dates

Outlined in red, two dots

indicating sign here, and here,

congratulations! You know

absolutely nothing!

Here’s a degree.

Ordinary,

middle-of-the-line,

average,

simple,

median

midline life

of what was Before,

but it’s the After

post-crisis,

picking up pieces

and trying to fit

the ‘normal’ in the non,

the average in the odd,

the sane in the new.

There is no turning back

to the Before, the world

spins on, and we try

to follow the median,

Happy Medium, but never

truly can be it again.

I thought I’d take a slow stroll down Madison and Main,

Stop by the coffeeshop where they know me by name,

slide by the diners, and grab a bite or two,

Step to the blookstore and listen to canned blues.

I call it what it is, a simple hop and stop

to places where I’m known, where it’s home to shop.

To those that know me, it’s plain, easy to see.

A simple wandering ramble to places I’d like to be.

You see, a poem’s got to have rhythm, a certain kind of step,

A shuffle and a slow note and a certain feel for rep-

-etition, word division, a stringing of reason and rhyme.

A poet in search of words that mean a certain bounce in time,

a step, a stride, a slouch-along word for talkin’.

A simple, slow, jazz-boogey slam-slugging other word for [walkin’].

Clean white walls, decorative jars

and deep basin, stone, porcelain,

channels dug deep with pipes

for fresh water, advanced society?

No, someone with no taste.

Leonardo’s Modern Man lounges,

slouching in a bath, the perfection

of symmetry sterlized and cold

in a lackluster, ‘modern’ palette.

“It was so live.”

-Christopher Snow, Seize the Night. Dean Koontz.

To live, to ride,

the salt crusts the lip, underneath your feet

dark shapes float unseen.

Feel the swell of the waves, and the deadly undertow

as seaweed eddies like ghost hands

plying for a lost soul.

Smell the brine as you wait, breathless,

for the tide’s growing, rising,

and the inevitable crash comes as you paddle

past the surf and past the breakers, deep,

where foam laces and crystals hiss in the air,

flung by some furious sea-god, and you,

rushing on those waves with a sleek board,

the salt on your tongue and the waves

with the primordial call to sink you back to the deep.

Yet you float, skim, skate, defiantly, victoriously, live.

Ashes and ashes and dust to dust, cold iron body turning to rust.

Turning of the fields back to forest, barn in timbers and smelling of fust.

Ashes and ashes and dust to dust, cold iron body turning to rust.

Old hand in stye and bones in the garden, flowers gone wild and reckless abandon.

Ashes and ashes and dust to dust, cold iron body turning to rust.

The cowhand’s daughter is buried at the cradle, the rancher’s life gone at a gamble.

Ashes and ashes and dust to dust, cold rancher’s body left to burn with the rest.