The Poetry Marathon

Dear Mr. Whippy
VCS

Mr. Whippy is ganging up on me
With his gang of thugs
And his alphabets
He hems and hrumphs and I know
He knows how to rap knuckles
With that stick
He keeps telling me
That Diacritacal marks come later
First learn to make the lines
‘But,’ I protest, ‘I fear that
My pronunciation is quite off.’
He sucks in his mustache and his lips disappear
Underneath his disapproving
But very discerning over-lip hair
And when John Dee
Makes his foot notes
In another tongue
I know that Mr. Whippy will translate for me
But with many a disapproving air
At kids these days
Who aren’t taught ancient Greek
And barely read Latin at all
How remiss my classical education
He will groan between making marks in shorthand
(Another dying art! Ah, why don’t they teach
the children shorthand?)
Dear Mr. Whippy, I fear of opening
The door of every room of learning
My brain is only so big
And I haven’t read all the classics
My education is appalling
Why bother to read them at all
If not in their native tongues?
It’s with dragging feet that I carry my notebooks
And my tomes
To Mr. Whippy’s door
And hope he won’t berate me
I fear my head will explode
If I try to learn any more!

Fragrantly
VCS

Fragrantly
Wafting through the air
Rosemary cuts an acrid trail
For pungent sage on his way with
Parsley on his arm in her feathered finery
And crisp bouquet

Olives pressed
To make sweet oil
That sizzles softly
Around pink salt that came
From the tallest mountains
To my pallet

My mouth fills
In anticipation of the
Mingled essences in the air
I am grateful to each living thing
From the beasts who walked
The plants that grew
The herbs that sprung
The olives that clung
And the salts the flew
From the mountain tops

Fragrantly and Thankfully
You fill the air
And my tummy
Powering my body
For another day of living

Flip flop
VCS

Flip flop
On the table top
This won’t take a minute
You won’t feel a thing
Except for this
It might be hit or miss

Flip flop
Lying on the table top
It’s a bit of a miracle
A dash of science
Maybe a placebo
Any way I like it

Flip flop
Do the drop
On the table top
It’s magic and a secret
But something says yes

Flip flop
Flip flop
A little dab will do you
At least it’s a start

Butterscotch Sunbeam
VCS

In the afternoon
When things get still and slow
I watch a little sunbeam
That escaped into my room
All is quiet and dim
Except for the roar of that
Little drip of sun
And the scent of butterscotch
Running off it’s light
And puddling onto hardwood floors
I don’t know how it got here
Or where its friends are at play
But this little sunbeam
Has fallen my way
It’s as loud as a freight train
In the otherwise dark room
Dimmed for an afternoon nap
After the rising of noon
It shines its spotlight on every spot of dust
And lets me know its noticed
Every bit of muss
Even though it woke me up
With its demand to play
dripping with sweetness
To remind me of the summer day
It’s impossible to do anything
But smile in a wistful way
The sunbeam’s found her friends
And vanished in her play

Something New
VCS

Darkened hallways
Turn darker still
The last lights of what was
Are dimmed and gone
The wind has stopped
Rustling the leaves
Only evil beasts still caper
Through the bowers of the trees
What is
What was
It is no more
I can’t recall ever working so hard
To get rid of something
That I loved so much
The bitter pain
Gnaws at me of losing the potential
Of the life that was never had
But holding on hurts exponentially in score
And now there is time for something more
Something better
We deserve to have something good
Not poisoned by the ghosts that lived here
Before we were ever born
and the angry spirits that came after
Yet here we linger
On the edge
Of a new adventure
Where it goes
The path that shimmers
Into reality before me
Is all still shrouded in mystery
But what I know
Is that those old halls
are darker and smaller
than ever before
Life has fled these paths
And it is time for something
Entirely new
Just me and you

He Ain’t No Nice Guy
VCS

They called him insane, the man of pain
They called him lame
Some just said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’
But none of that was true,
it was just an angle of the sun
beaming off a diamond
He didn’t ask for accolades
He said, ‘I’m the boy in the box’
They made him the holy ghost
They said he moved through them
They said he spread death on the air
He said, ‘leave me alone’
They said, ‘You ain’t no nice guy’.

He didn’t ask to be put in the center ring
He didn’t ever want to have it be a whole big thing
They copied him in every way
They stole his hair and his poetry
They called him a saint and took away his privacy
They called him insane, the man of pain
They called him lame

They cut hairs into splinters to make each accusation true
Until they drove him into the arms of madness
That’s where I met him
And I could see why they did what they did to him
With his nose broken
His long hair hanging in his face
I found him on the mens room on the floor
A needle in his arm
He whispered to me, ‘get back, I ain’t no nice guy’

I sat beside him on the floor
the tiles were cold, his body radiated heat
the toiled smelled like shit and vomit
‘this ain’t no nice place to be,’ I replied as I sunk down
So our eyes could lock

I wondered if I was his hallucination or if I was his
Either way, he stroked my hair away from my eyes
And I felt his fingertips, as soft and real as a spring breeze

‘They’re always going to do this to you, you’ll always end up where I am’
I nodded in understanding
Looking at him all I saw the preying mantis from the classroom
And he was the bug caught in her grip
‘So what do we do?’ I asked
He laughed, his laugh echoed and then he stopped because
We both knew how it was
He was mad

‘We pray.’

He took my hands in his and started to pray
Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil
He opened his eyes and I opened mine,
We had each dug half moons with our fingertips
Into the other’s hands
His eyes were the only thing in the room that wasn’t
the color of bile or other exudate.

When we had prayed and I was still there
He said to me, ‘I shall fear no evil; but it still
smells like shit and I still ain’t no nice guy.’

I saw the syringe had fallen from his arm and rolled behind the toilet.
A drop of his blood brightened the room on his forearm.

He saw where my gaze had gone and pulled my gaze back to his and said,
‘Ain’t anyone got to be nice to know this ain’t real and we’re both
being eaten by the world. What’s a few painkillers between me and the Lord?’

That was the first time I met him, when I fell asleep in class
But it wouldn’t be the last
Call him the Holy Ghost
Call him the Angel of Death
Call him a Poet
Call him a Priest
He doesn’t owe it to anyone to be a nice guy but I rather think that he is.

The Words are Marching
VCS

I wrote a hundred thousand words
I tossed them in the air
I wrote them in a coma
I wrote them on the stare
I tried to keep the words down
With chicken soup and ginger ale
But gypsy curses and wandering street light people
Threw my words like cookies
Back out of me and I brayed them
From the steeples
I thought that eventually
They would be picked clean
When I hung around at rookeries
But it was not to be
A million words came marching
And jumped right out of my cerebellum
Not caring a dash about what happened to me

Words are thoughtless creatures
Even when used thoughtfully
Marauding little beasts
They have complete control over me
Sometimes they pick my hands up
Even when I’m sleeping
And ghostlike pluck the keyboard
Into unknown symphonies
The words are coming from the rafters
They live in the crannies in the walls
They live in desperate lovers
They make the weak tremble and fall
They make the strong the same if they’re not careful

The words are marching out of me
Brazen creatures they! Coming out of my hands, my mouth my eyes
And yet you make them say to you as you would have them speak
That’s the way they like it
Twisting
Making wind
Tornadoes swooping down on landscapes
Leaving ruin
Or bringing us to brand new worlds
The choice is theirs
It isn’t up to me or you

Perching
VCS

I sat on a pole
Held aloft
Under the sweltering sun
Of the rotting waste
Of the battlefield below me

I looked out of a telescope
Harangued by flies
Gnawed at by hunger
Smacked in the chest with despair

I scan the horizon
Looking for anything that moves
Hoping for rescue
Fearing more attack
From my lofty perch
I can avoid most of the perils
Of the decay of war
But I make a handy target for arrows
Or any muck someone might want to throw

There is something coming, I see it moving
Slowly and steadily it comes towards me
I take out my scroll
And my precious bottle of ink
There are plenty of buzzard and crow feathers
With which to make a new quill

I sit down
upon my perch
Listening to the sounds of death
and write about the battle
I am the only one to have survived
The trust is mine to tell their story
Survivors guilt makes the ink
Thick with survivors guilt
As I form each letter with great care
On the only scroll I still have
Waiting
The form grows larger
My fate no more sure
Than any other mortal
On my pole overlooking
The charnal pit that holds my family and friends

Spitballs and Evergreens
VCS

Wrapped in torn remnants
Of papers
With names and places
Most of which mean nothing to me
They have stuck to me
Like spitballs
Cast by naughty children
Sitting bored
At the back of math class
Immobilizing me
Pumping me full of immortal resin
My soul pushed and pulled
In a stream of paperwork
I didn’t start
With a zip code written
On my DNA that branded me
Before I was made to order
Like a homunculus with no purpose of my own
Full of amber sap dripping from evergreen trees
Buried under the earth
I ring my bell
I’m still not dead
I’m still not dead
I ring my bell
From my tomb
Encased in my mummy suit
made from ancient scrolls
I never read
I’m still not dead
I ring my bell
My soul is my own
I did not choose to speak
Yet I must
I will not be an Immortal Buddha
And once more I rip off these
scabs of paper and emerge newborn
from the grave you’ve already dug for me
Because I’m still not dead
I walk the earth
I ring my bell
I sing my song
I will not drink the poison
The evergreen is ever dead
But I am not
I’m still not dead
I’m still only just a new born
Ringing my bell
As my cry to the universe.

Tap Dancing on Puddles
VCS

He went out the door at noon
He arrived at the pub at two
By three or four he was playing billiards
After seven in the evening
He couldn’t recall
If he’d told his wife
Where he’d been off to
(She tended to get mad at his leaving)
With his blood pumping heat
from his head to his feet
He walked home in the snow
Northern lights overhead casting
Their spelling, singing like crackling glass
Lighting his gaunt face in their green and pink glow
Like a tap dancer he skipped across a puddle of ice
With the grace of Gene Kelley
And now one to see
The voice of a pipe organ
He serenaded the moon
Until he came to the front door
Of his own little home and remembered
That Marjorie hadn’t been told
That he’d been gone since noon
(Or more importantly she hadn’t told him
that she was okay with him coming home
by the light of the north and the moon)

The door creaked on its hinges
The house looked deceptively at peace
But he knew that Marjorie would not likely
Have gone to bed so soon
Peering with wide eyes
He took off his crushed fedora from his
Creased working man’s brow
and tossed it into the dark by the couch

His breath blew out of him in clouds in the cold
He rubbed his arms for warmth
And cursed in a whisper
As his hat
Like a miracle
Flew back to his hand

Marjorie was awake and her message was plain:
He was not welcome here until the ‘morrow
Sweet bottles of sorrow
He closed the door with a prayer
To the God of his fathers
(That he said he didn’t believe in but
he prayed to all the same)
And tap dancing over
The frozen puddles
He went to find a couch
To sleep what was left of the night away