The Poetry Marathon

Long-Lasting Laundry

Long-Lasting Laundry

On Saturdays, I do laundry.
But before I put T- Shirts,
socks, and underwear in the clothes
washer, I turn them inside out.
I’m told that that’s how I can make
them last longer: the colors will
remain more vibrant.

On other days, I write poetry.
But before I save my thoughts, words
and phrases on the computer,
I turn them inside out.
I’ve learned that that’s how I can make
them last longer, too.

I grab each word by its collar,
I spin each phrase around,
I flip each idea over and over,
to ensure my poems, like my
laundry, will come out much cleaner,
brighter and well folded.

Whispers

Tuck your nose behind my ear
Speak so softly I cannot hear
Lips pressed gently to my skin
Murmur nothing again, again

Slip your fingers up my throat
Utter hushed words so remote
Speak into my eager mind
Words my heart may only find

Whisper luscious words so sweet
About how much you’ve wished to meet
Soft skin brushed across my lips
Plaintive words with fingertips

Speak as though your eyes were blind
Your wish for love, deep to my mind
Trailing touches ‘cross my heart
Murmured words in silent art

11–golden shovel from a line from the “Palace of Justice” — Sophocles’ Antigone

Love, loss and grammar

[Golden shovel from “I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall abide for ever” Sophocles]

 

Not “hi it’s me” but “this is she,” as I

Was told by my mother to whom I owe

My uptown grammar, my pedantic brio, a

Punctiliousness in speech that, the longer

I stay around, the lamer it grows. I pledge allegiance

To sounding smart, to showing you I know to

To make a subjunctive case when needed, peppered with the

Interjections of a foul-mouthed sailor, or really of my dead

Father who cared less for grammar than

For words, bad words and funny words in funny voices to

Make us laugh. Malarkey!, he’d say, and o the

Delight. How words breed life, repeat first loves, fill the living:

 

Hi, it’s me. In each word my connections, every one, in

The history of its use before it was mine and that

Tale of what it’s brought to our Wednesday world

You will never know my malarkey and I

Won’t fathom yours, but tonight we shall

Put away dictionaries and tell the stories and abide

In translation for ever

The Poet’s Island Produce

The Poet’s Island Produce

In island solitude
the poet waits for inspiration
like her backyard fig tree waits for rain,
especially during a summertime drought.

She knows that insight,
that small ripe fruit from trees,
is often tough to produce,
especially during late lazy August.
But after a soaking shower arrives,
all produce: the tree, the insight, the poet.

The poet’s now ready to share her figs
with her readers who pick each fruit
one by one, savor, and then devour,
making sure no morsel goes to waste.

Like vacationers on tropical atolls
readers smile, satisfied as they return home.

Swallowtail Encounter and One more, Prompt 11

 

Swallowtail Encounter

 

As I drove along, I spot her

Floating, yellow and black spotted

wings spread apart,

riding the soft breeze

until she rests for a moment

among roadside blooms.

One moment, then frantic flitting

from flower to flower

wings pull and push air

like a crewman’s race oars

going upstream.

I marvel at her energy

as she collects and carries pollen

beauty in her every moment.

Brightening her corner of

this asphalt country Carolina lane.

I have pulled over to watch her.

She continues her frolic, her

feisty dance on her petal stage

then, dipping her

wings as if to salute me,

takes off across the field

searching for another

batch of blooms.

I drive on, smiling.

 

As soon as I heard the jig, I began to serach in my files for a poem I began and could never finish—the music was the key to finishing ti—so here it is—if using parts of an older poem disqualifies this, then I also offer the short poem below

 

 

 

Dancing from bloom to bloom

Swallowtail offers her

Yellow and black wings

As contrast to the bright

Blue cloudless sky

And the array of  purple

Mexican petunias. She flits

From bloom to bloom,

Tapping her delicate toes

Into the pollen, Some for her

And some for the next plant

On her stage.

The Alley

The Alley

We remember well the white concrete urban driveway we called “The Alley” with pairs of tall cedar telephone poles with thick black wires strewn across two parallel blocks of two-story row homes. We boys wore our high-top Keds and Chuck Taylors proudly; we boys who seldom (ever?) played games with girls, games called half-ball, wall-ball, and wire ball; we boys who, all summer long, flipped Topps baseball cards and watched them fall to the ground like helicopters landing on tarmacs; we boys who wrestled on small patches of grass; we boys who fought over “safes” and “outs” and “fouls” as we ran bases made of discarded rags, and shot basketballs at painted plywood backboards and orange rims that our dads constructed to “keep us busy” all day long; we boys who laughed until our stomachs hurt and our eyes watered.

social media
virtual reality—
girls no longer left out

Katy and Her Fiddle

Quite a week it’s been,

wars and rumors of wars;

lying, sniveling politicians.

Like my mother used to say

I want to shake them until

their eye-teeth rattle.

 

Quite a week it’s been.

Heart monitors, EKGs,

ultrasounds. I want to

take off all my clothes

and eat macadamia nuts

off your belly.

 

Quite a week it’s been,

I wasn’t feeling so keen

until Katy came along,

bright-eyed presence,

and reminded me to have

reverence for the violin.

Gumbo

Gumbo

I like my gumbo chickened
not pigged
not alligatored
not shrimped:
not what-evered

I like my gumbo chickened
morninged
nooned
or nighted:
when-evered

I like my gumbo chickened
stewed
not fried or poached
not sautéed or barbecued:
not how-evered

I like my gumbo chickened
in New Orleans
Nashville
or Charleston:
where-evered

Hour Eleven: Shylock

11 2017 Shylock

Shylock
by Paul Robert Sanford

What am I to you?
A Villain? A Joke? A Victim?

Some Christian wrote me
with a big nose and greedy palm,
burning for vengeance on those who have wronged me.
He got part of it right.

I am a human being with feelings and needs.
All of us need respect and security.
How dare you push me to the side of the street,
spit on my robes,
borrow money from me but hide me away in the ghetto.
Force me out of every honest trade into money lending
then curse me for a money grubbing greedy monster.

Laugh at me for a while.
Yes, I get the boot, I get cheated.
I let my the carry me away,
to think I would ever get Justice
from these Christians.
The fix was in from the first and I fooled myself.

One of these days my descendants will revenge me.
We will work and study until we succeed beyond your kind.
Our lives will be prosperous and secure,
at least compared to this medieval age.
But we will still be driven by the memories
of cheatings and beatings, of pogroms and forced labor.

Never again will we let the world walk all over us.
You have wronged us, and none of us will every be allowed to forget.

(Re) Vision

I wrote us into a book
well, two really
One version takes place
in Pompeii and you are
a boy named Caecilius
You are a boy who dreams
vividly of his Julia being swept
away in the tides of lava
She calls out for her love
and in your grandfather’s
house, your limbs twitch,
paralyzed in their sleeping
In the other book of us,
we are Vernon and Agnes
and we live in the shadow
of Mount Saint Helens
I sweep mounds of ash
off our porch the day after
she erupts, trying to recall
if I am in mourning, if
it is true that you were
the helicopter pilot they
can’t find and yes I know
in these books there are
too many natural disasters
but isn’t that love, really