The Poetry Marathon

Missing Person

She looks at me and says, “Everyone, I think, is doing the best they can.”

By that she means herself, and me, and everyone suffering and hurting

and grasping and struggling and trying hard and usually failing.

It was a problem when the rays came, the pain, the electric shocks.

“How can you really handle such terrible inconveniences?” I ask.

She thinks the best thing to do sometimes is to nail the windows shut.

A thick layer of aluminum foil helps protect her against the worst of it.

It seems unlikely to me, but who am I to judge? Her pain and mine are not the same.

She a missing person, and I am missing, too.

The missing people walk the streets, ride the subway, sit alone in the dark.

The missing people look away, slip into the alley, avoid the crowds.

The missing people were not invisible until we looked away.

Am I doing the best I can?

You

My wishes all contain pieces of you.

Quiet strolls near sacred sidewalks

when I prayed to God for you.

 

Ode to Rita Joe – companion to the persona poem

Ode to Rita Joe  (companion piece to the persona poem)

I saw her everyday

for months

sleeping in the doorway

ten steps from the

Army and Navy

on East Hastings –

the DTES

Downtown

East

Side –

death warrant,

execution certificate for

anyone living there –

especially

women and girls.

 

The first time I approached her

to

hand her a five

she

screamed at me:

WHAT THE FUCK YOU LOOKIN’ AT?!

I looked at my feet

and

said I was sorry,

I

just wanted to

help her out.

 

She had a great smile,

in spite of the

broken,

blackened

teeth and

eventually

showed it to me more

often than she yelled at me.

 

People would spit at her,

you know,

and once, even

a car load of

frat assholes from

UBC

threw a Gatorade bottle

of piss at her.

She hissed

and spat

like an alley cat

but

her eyes

gave her soul away –

you could read

every chapter

and verse

of the rape

and the abuse –

her eyes

made her look dead

inside.

 

But,

one night,

in my truck –

she was high,

I was drunk –

she told me how

she wanted to fly.

 

She hated the mountains,

said they reminded her of jail –

and she “fucking hated jail.”

She wanted to be

on the Prairie to see

the sunset

on all the horizons.

 

But it happened –

as it always happens –

on the DTES:

the

Downtown

East

Side –

I walked past her stoop

every day,

for weeks,

but she was no where to be seen.

 

I asked around,

at the places she’d

haunt

but no one had

seen her for weeks.

 

It’s been nearly a year

and I haven’t

seen her –

or heard

where she’s at.

 

I’d like to think

that

she’s on the

red path

back to the

endless sunsets.

(c) R. L. Elke 2016

 

 

 

The Freedom of Nothing

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
-Kris Kristofferson

Preacher’s kid.
No freedom at all.
Every minute accounted for.
Every action observed and judged.

You don’t think about it too much
when you’re ten
and a boy. But somewhere along the way
to adulthood,
everything changes.

You resent the prying eyes,
the sinners who expect you to be a saint.
It was worse for my sisters,
but girls are strong as steel.
They each found different paths out.
One married a preacher
(out of the frying pan into the fire).
One finds solace in wine.
One broke the shackles of organized religion,
and found god in her garden.

Me, I still believe,
but prayer is an open road.
I can sleep in an alley
as easily as I can a bed. Find a willing lover
when it gets too hot or too cold.
Leave when spring warms the ground,
when fall cools the air.

Work when I can.
Find free stuff when I can’t.
Nothing to lose but my freedom,
and when the turn comes, I’ll consider heaven
if the rules aren’t too tight.

Pavlov was right.

Heart thumping

pulse racing

confusion and panic

anxiety abound.

In less than half a day I have come to depend on that prompt

Where is it?

Hour 9 pm- Concrete Jungle meets Bohemian Rhapsody

Hour 9 pm- Concrete Jungle meets Bohemian Rhapsody

---

I have a lemon tree on my balcony.

Succulents and Buddha reside next to a frog with marbles on his back made a local artist without strife.

Visited twice in the spring, by a bird that chirps for a full eight hours trying to lure a wife.

Orchids bloom and fade throughout the year renewing their life, one small and yellow another purple and white.

Air plants native to the everglades sit in a defunct lighthouse without working Christmas lights.

Close by, succulents transplanted last summer,suck up the sun and the rain without any fights.

Much later, turtle lights flicker in the night.

Two chairs are out of sight.

Two more face a glass table that we barely use, holding books, CD’S, glass, and basket weave…all treasures that we forget to see.

Don’t forget the plant that goes by the name “Wonder of the World”, siempre viva, grown from just a single leaf.

Shells that come straight from the sea and washed up coral sit nearby resembling a hemisphere of the brain.

And as you look down below you will see that the pavement is tempered by heat and strain.

All of these add up to my very own Concrete Jungle meets Bohemian Rhapsody…

 

Goodbye

*Flyer*

Missing
(Two 17 year old girls)
Tiffany
Tiffany is a honor roll student with her whole life in front of her. She is the captain of the cheerleading team and president of the student body government. She was last seen with Charlie, a  juvenile delinquent with a record of prior robberies. Both girls were last seen driving away from Tiffany’s house on their way to a movie.

*Reality*

Liberated
(Two 17 year old girls) 
I am Tiffany, a 17 year old lesbian honor roll student. Captain of the cheerleading squad to their disgust, bullied by my peers, I am president of a student body government composed of closed minded men who believe “God Hates Fags,” I am leaving, parents threaten me with gay therapy daily, I cannot go back there, searching, I found Charlie, she’s perfect, misunderstood by her parents and the law, stealing as a means of survival, staying true to our characters has been hard, our integrity already determined by adults around us.

We are leaving. Goodbye.

Watering Cacti

The  grumpy little curmudgions

squat there in their sandy soil

not a word of thanks for saving them

when their feet were rotten

with too much high living

They think they’re so cute and

independent,

eyes closed,

backs turned.

nobody flowering here

or throwing a party.

pretend they don’t need me

thank you.

I have a drip gardening system

and I’m the drip.

Into each pot I drip a sip

of non-potable gleanings

from my baths

carried, not always lovingly,

down the stairs, and rationed.

 

I Keep Going

When I’m misunderstood? What do I do?
I keep going.
When nobody listens;
What do I do?
I keep going.
When I work my best and hardest,
and things still go wrong, what do I do?
I keep going.
When you don’t trust me
because my thinking is different from you,
what do I do?
I keep going.
When our opinions clash, what do I do?
I keep going.
When I feel like my life is falling apart,
what do I do?
I keep going.
I keep going even if I don’t want to
anymore because nothing ever changes,
but I keep, keep going!

Searching for Dorothy Arnold (Hour Thirteen)

Has anyone seen Dorothy?

Anyone at all?

She stood a height of five foot one to five foot four inches tall.

Her eyes were grey or blue, her hair a dark, dark brown.

She was last seen all dressed in blue in old Manhattan Town.

She’d been writing and sending out manuscripts,

She’d been meeting her love in secret,

She wished to move out and be independent,

But Daddy wouldn’t hear of it.

Has anyone seen Dorothy?

She came from a gilded life,

But perhaps her soul, a writer’s soul,

Only knew the internal strife.

She was twenty-five years old

On December 12, 1910,

So all hope is truly lost

Of seeing her alive again.

Perhaps a lapis earring

Will be found under floorboards one day

But will anyone know it was Dorothy’s?

Is anyone left to say?

Dorothy never came home for Christmas,

Nor Easter in the spring,

Dorothy never came home at anytime,

And that’s the saddest thing.