The Poetry Marathon

“I’ve never been to heaven, but I’ve been to Oklahoma.”
–Hoyt Axton

No one I know
has made the trip to heaven
and come back to tell about it.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
landed on the moon,
and brought back photographs.

Marco Polo came back from China
with noodles and other treasures.

Heaven, though, if it exists,
we can only imagine.
If someone tells you they know for sure,
pretty good chance, they’re lying,
or taking some other liar’s word for it.

Here’s what I’d like it to be:

Nice weather, but not the same every day.
Work to do, but not so much
that there’s no time for play.

Healthy children
with fields and forests to explore,
Dogs, cats, goats, and llamas,
Elephants, tigers, rhinos.
They’re all vegan now.

Everyone has a home,
and if they want one, a garden.
No one is shunned.
There is no such thing as cruelty.
Or boredom.
Politicians are not required.

You’re there with me, love,
as young as when we first met,
when we were in our prime,
but knowing what we know now,
how precious time is.

Life is full of losses.
Nobody warns you.
You learn,
one loss at a time.

I could lose my eyes,
my legs,
my mouth,
but I’m not as cavalier about it
as Cat Stevens. He doesn’t say
that what you really lose
with each of these losses
is your independence.

Some losses are necessary,
like innocence,
or inevitable,
like virginity.

Some people never lose
gullibility.
Politicians and salespeople count on it.

We lose our looks,
plastic surgery notwithstanding.
It’s good to have character as a backup.

We lose lovers, parents, friends,
and we cope.

We lose children,
a loss I can’t even imagine,

and memories,
a loss worse than death.

When memories are gone,
do we welcome loss of life?
No one can tell us this,
or what lies on the other side.

Like all the lessons of loss,
it requires experience,
a step into the afterlife.
Maybe it isn’t loss at all.

It’s cruel to put a firefly in a bottle.
I wish I’d known this as a kid.

It’s cruel to put children in cages.
This isn’t a fairy tale, and the president is no kid.

A knee on the neck or shots in the back!
Either means someone’s daddy isn’t coming home.

Then there’s the matter of Confederate statues.
If only we could save the horses and remove the traitors.

Hiding monuments won’t fix systemic racism,
but acknowledging racism is a small first step.

The first Civil War didn’t end white supremacy.
A second Civil War won’t either. Let’s try something else.

Covid-19 isn’t classist, but the healthcare system is.
Essential workers die for capitalists’ sins.

Can you eat porridge in a mask?
If not, can you safely open restaurants during a pandemic?

You build a cottage above the treeline for the view.
You build in the trees for protection from the wind.

If you can hide away in a cottage,
you probably have other resources.

What strange times we’re living in. Dating by Zoom,
goodnight kisses are less than satisfying.

This lethargy! Is it heat or anxiety?
I guess we’ll know when winter comes.

Do cats build campfires?
Tell stories?
Watch fireworks?

Never mind!

I understand emojis
about as well as Blake
understood tigers.

And who is that ghost
lurking about?
Is someone framing a shot
or giving the ghost a sign?

Maybe I’ll do better
with Whitman.

Blackberries, big as my thumb,
but for every one, expect two chiggers.
You won’t see the chiggers,
but you’ll see the little red mounds
where they’re sleeping
when you take off your socks.

They’ll wake you up in the middle of the night,
partying, I presume.

I wonder if they’re jealous
that mosquitos get all the press.
Probably not.
It’s safer to stay undercover.
There are no government spray programs
for chiggers, are there?

Are they related to the no-see-ums on the beach?
Do they know the biting flies
that share the season with them?

I should be grateful
that all the biting monsters
come in one season,
albeit a long one, spring through fall.

Through all the long months,
slather my legs with geranium oil,
careful not to miss the spots behind my knees
that itchy little seed ticks prefer.
Wear crew socks, toe-enclosed shoes,
and look forward to the first hard freeze,
just making sure, before the happy day arrives,
that all the green tomatoes are in.

Start fresh, sun through windows,
bright or clouded,
it doesn’t matter.

Coffee burbles into the pot.
Its acrid scent,
an empty page, and
a purring cat on the table
are enough.

Not quite silent.
Through the open door, wind
rattles limbs, sings through the leaves,
accompanied by a host of backup musicians,
crows, out-of-tune jays,
woodpeckers, those virtuoso drummers.

No one notices when I step outside
except Nike, her tail slapping air.
Birds continue their song.
Squirrels taunt my dog, walking shoes
crunch gravel in the drive,
and a story takes form in my head.
The air is cool, but not cold.

Back inside, the television is silent
and daily chores can wait.
My fingers tap, tap, tap
the keyboard,
Nike snores at my feet,
and brushing my right arm,
one hind foot resting against the laptop,
that still-purring cat.

Who knew the real gold
in these mountains was sunshine
and summer tourists?

Umbrellas, useful
whether it rains or sun shines,
our all-weather friends.

Heart carved into bark.
I hope the love lasts as long
as the tree counts rings.

On the cusp of night
last rays warm an empty boat
as the stars move in.

Look up into fall’s
last show, baring branches hung
with splashes of gold.

Dear Hope,

Where are you?
I thought you might check in
from time to time.
I haven’t heard from you in months.

I hope you’re okay.
Maybe you are traveling,
visiting someone who needs you
more than I do.

We all need you.
Maybe you’re just tired,
or on sabbatical, maybe
in a cabin in the woods

writing your memoir.
I hope you’ll be back
before fall, before the fall,
sometime.

Only half a year,
and surely we have reached some kind of limit.
How many problems can we handle at one time–
global pandemic that shows no signs of slowing,
systemic racism, another black person shot in the back,
drought, unemployment, hunger, despair!

It’s hard to find solutions
when your president’s a liar,
when the whole dang world is threatened
by his pants that are afire.

In the south, masks are seen as too liberal.
Meanwhile, the president holds a rally in Tulsa,
bringing infected staffers with him.
Science, dear people, could offer solutions,
limiting the spread of the virus and
finding alternatives to the fossil fuels
that fuel our economy, melt the permafrost. Common sense
and compassion are necessary, too.

It’s hard to find solutions
when your president’s a liar,
when the whole dang world is threatened
by his pants that are afire.

We could change the tax laws, so black kids
and poor go to well-funded schools.
We could treat addictions like the illnesses they are.
We could bail out citizens instead of corporations, provide
healthcare to the sick and PPE to essential workers.
We could offer help instead of policing, but

It’s hard to find solutions
when your president’s a liar,
when the whole dang world is threatened
by his pants that are afire.

Okay, an hour isn’t long enough, but here’s a draft, something to work on.

When I was thinking about The Bop, a poem I wrote in 2018 for The Woody Guthrie Festival poetry reading came to mind. Here is the poem, which was published after the festival in The Oklahoma Observer and in my book, I’ve Got the Blues: Looking for Justice in a Red State:

Lines for My Friend, Sandy, Who Wanted a Lighthearted Poem

It’s hard to be lighthearted
when your president’s a liar,
when the whole dang world is threatened
by his pants that are afire.

He shreds the Constitution
and feeds it to the rats,
rules by whim and fiat
and blames the Democrats.

To think, he used to be one!
But then the party turned.
No longer segregationist!
The Jim Crow laws all burned,

at least in legal rule books.
We know Jim Crow’s still here,
and the liar’s words and actions
stir up the racists’ fears.

Adored by evangelicals.
I can’t imagine why.
This preacher’s kid knows Christians,
and this hater comes up shy.

He’s stacking courts with corporatists
undoing revolution.
We shed the aristocracy once.
This backward evolution

should not sit well with patriots,
and that’s us, do you hear,
the workers and the poets,
the brown folk and the queer,

moms and dads, day laborers,
all those who earn a wage,
who vote and pay their taxes,
the ignorant and the sage.

We’re all in this together
We all must march and shout
and call and vote and rally.
We can’t sit this one out.

Here’s hoping there is justice
and it lands his butt in jail.
Do you believe in karma?
Will Putin go his bail?

July 2018

I decided to twist the first line and make the revised first stanza my response for my Bop.
Now, I just need to write the poem. I have an idea and less than forty minutes. Wish me luck!