The Poetry Marathon

A Modern Response to Euripides’ The Medea

Jason messed with the wrong Corinthian
in that ancient play about the dangerously
pissed off Medea, the “X” of your nightmares.
Jason starts knockin’ boots with Creon’s
daughter, a genuine princess with a royal
bank account balance. Jason up and leaves
Medea and his own babies behind to
marry that spoiled brat of a princess so
he could hook it up with King Creon’s
power and financial means of success.
Well, the shit started gettin’ real when Medea
set the plan in motion to take out the royalty
and her own two boys of tender age to boot.
That girl was straight trippin’–wouldn’t hear
anything the sisters had to say bout
doin’ the right and ladylike thing.
Medea was straight out of her head when
she poisoned the princess and the king,
and murdered her own flesh and blood–
two snot-nosed little brothers with smart mouths.
Then, just to make sure those missing marbles was a lost cause,
she scooped up the kids’ dead bodies
and took them with her to God knows where
just so that rotten Jason couldn’t have ‘em.
Lord, if that ain’t a revenge tale for the ages.
Chicks and dudes been lovin’ each other to death
since at least 431 B.C., huh?
That’s some crazy ass shit right there.”

One Lesson I’ve Learned Well

When I was fragile as the bones of birds,
unbroken by the way things go,
I brought a baby chick so tiny and new
but sick and frail and maybe suffering
to my grandmother’s house.
I came looking for her time and tender
fingers that could heal any hurting
with words and attention.
She stared at the small life in my hands
and shook her head.
“Leave it here and I’ll take care of it.”
I was shocked and dismayed. I said “No.”
I began to cry for this helpless feathered
being and wrapped him back in the box
he’d come in. I had no intention of leaving
this soul behind and Grandma knew it.
She reached for my bangs, tucking them
behind my ear, and said with a gentle sincerity:
“Sweet child, not everything in this world
is meant to live.”

In the Dressing Room: A Prose Poem #7/24

“We still have a pay phone back by the three bathroom stalls with the doors removed cause someone got caught smoking weed or doing coke or something else equally bad in there but the girls in this place don’t really care cause there’s nothing to hide around here other than your money and you better keep that in a place no one can get at or you’ll be leaving here with tears running down your young and disillusioned face broke as when you came in so you’ll be smart not to trust any of the girls and don’t loan them your stuff or you won’t get it back–here you go! here’s a locker you can use just don’t leave nothin’ important in it if you don’t have a lock cause you can leave your things and your money with the house mom who’s right over there on the other side of the dressing room. Up those stairs and through that curtain there is the main stage and you’re up first so you better get dressed–My name’s Exotica. Good luck out there, girl.”

In That Old Photograph

It looks as if my skin’s too tight
like my soul hasn’t had the chance
to work its way to the surface
of my then smooth mask of face
I don’t know who she was
the way she tied her scarf like that
made up far too much for a young
girl so unformed and unsure
of everything around her
Life has a way of loosening
the skin of the soul
of pulling down what once
held firmly to the bones of youth
and still the one similarity:
that uncertainty about it all

#5/24 Some of my Stage Experience

The best written script
from which I have played lead
is an intriguing, unpredictable tale
of an odd woman at the age of 50
who is living almost alone, but not really
alone enough for what she needs to do
(It’s the backstory, really, that is compelling
in a dramatic way, wonderfully emotional
monologues achingly written with such realism
makes you wonder what sort of life she’s lived)
I have lived a colorful life of many experiences
that culminate beautifully into the director’s dream
cinematic in vision and powerful in emotion
(We don’t see everything. Ever. The small tense rooms.
The anxious waits. Things she’ll never tell us.)
It’s not all a bed of roses and that’s what makes it magic
on-stage. I’m choosing my words with far more
discrimination now that I’m fully aware
of the way the head writer
has arranged it all–
the big finish, the falling action,
“the end”

#4 Poem for Nick Drake

Strange that I’d never heard
the haunting words you wrote.
Not once had I reveled in the
darkness found between the notes.

I think I have been in your room,
stood at the round window you had there.
I’ve gazed, misty across the meadows
that felt the weight of your thoughtful stare.

I see you were one not sad, but sick
the gloom that consumed you organically grown,
while your light long fingers danced on strings
words and melodies were born straight from bone.

My soul knows you, Nick, as a quiet man.
Your laughter comes from another room.
Your sadness comes close now with each careful word
I find you everywhere now, like the moon.

Fishing with my Father, 1970

He’d have a Pall Mall hanging loosely from his lips,
his eyes squinted tight behind sunglasses.
That habit he had of moving his head to the left
to shake back the sun-bleached hair that fell
from a side-ways part. Old dark green
boat shoes on his feet, holding the bamboo pole.

1970, probably. I can remember how it felt
to be small and unknowing. This man
who was everything good and true,
bigger than the sun, wider than the water.
His instruction so tender and slow,
taking the hook and the worm, baiting my hook.

My father, squatting behind me,
his tanned hands placed over mine so tiny,
we cast the line into the quiet lake.
Promptly impatient, I needed your steady
slowness to keep me still until
we had a tug, a heavy signal from

underneath where it was always dark.
Then dad pulled hard and the bamboo bent.
Out of the water sprang a mid-sized fish.
Dad was smiling, so I smiled back, until
he removed the hook and threw the creature
in a big red plastic bucket behind.
My even then poetic soul, was thrown.

Panicked by the death of anything living,
I remember begging and crying, “Throw him
back! He can’t breath!” And my father laughed.
That made me cry more because it broke
my heart. But he saved my fish.
Shaking his head at my silly indulgence.

That was the conflict that lasted a life.
My father intolerant of my different way of
being a human being–someone beyond your
self-imposed, limiting scope that meant fatherhood.
Where did my poetic, vagabond soul come from?
I have seen your paintings and have your jazz albums.

As I age, my face is more yours.
My one-liner sarcasm comes from your habit
made mine. Sometimes I catch myself clenching
my jaw, holding it all in just like you. And as my
beauty and health start packing, I recognize your pride
pulsating through the pronounced veins I got from you.

Your Face Reminds Me #2/24

Your face reminds me of lines I need to write.
Your lips speaking poetic words about this world
we visit when it’s just us two.
In the room where love came to find us long ago.
I was so far from anything relevant
and you were very bitter like strong coffee.
Late afternoons, the sun slanting in through the blinds–
stripes on the lined shelves of literature.
A place where all else falls away, unnecessary.
Pushing the papers and opened books aside,
sudden lust was a visitor we welcomed.
Pleasure had to be restrained there,
kept quiet as a shameful secret we shared.

What do I miss the most?
The urgency.
I miss
the urgency.

Poem Written Underwater

Strange to be swimming in my favorite blue dress
the skirt billowing slowly around me
an odd fish to say the least

Deep in the liquid atmosphere and breathing well
no struggling for the old oxygen
that used to keep me

Death, I have feared lifelong my own drowning
and I wonder now why so much
now new inhaling preserves me

I’ll not walk on dirty sand this afternoon, laughing
mirrored back in a lover’s eyes
My reflection extinguished

I’m not gulping and crying for rescuing hands
They reach, I push away, not to be reached
I’m choosing the deep this time

Let’s unite and flaunt our natural creativity! Let’s find out how strongly left handers are represented in this Poetry Marathon!