The Poetry Marathon

Ode to MTV Catfish

I watch this program like it’s a religion.

Nev and Kamie are like Jeckyl and Hyde

for on-line daters around the country.

I like some of their repeats with grey-haired Max puts his true sense in.

Together they photo search if pictures are real

see if phone numbers are legitimate not apps.

Find out if a person is who they say they are.

I celebrate with a victory glass of wine

if the catfish is real.

I dance and laugh when it’s a spouse testing another to see if they will cheat.

Developing fake profiles I cringe

when it’s the opposite sex, a bully, or an obese loner sits behind a screen all day with a box of bon bons.

Socially awkward mental illnesses should not be glorified on television.

Eight seasons later I’m still glued to my couch watching who’s who as Nev and a variety of cohosts run around the country.

These reminders why I never trust on-line dating.

Sunshine Mourning

Case file open, ready for solve

Apartment door unlocked

A mystery to resolve

Empty room, wheelchair middle

A shrine of color sitting atop

A confusing riddle

The sun may have been shining through that window this morning

Until one let out a scream

And as we stood mourning,

Case file closed, a haunting sunshine through our dream

For said shrine was not but a grave

Ready to be planted and engraved

 

The Thief

It wasn’t much of a mystery.
The facts were plain as day.
She had opened the door of her life
…just a crack.

And the culprit
stole her heart away.

Nawlins, or Annoying my Girlfriend (5)

Crawdads.

Nawlins.

Crawdads in Nawlins.

‘No one even says that here,” she says

having been here many times

dancing along the French Quarter

eating red beans and rice

coming in and going out on the Ponchartrain

‘You sound like another tourist,’ she wails

while we are in Nawlins

and I’m squeezing through the crowds

her hand in mine

‘A target, people will hurt us’

they might

they might hurt us in Nawlins

but I am inclined to believe

as the waitress puts down a high pile of crawfish

that I rip apart with poor technique

to her side-eye from the corner

while my girlfriend eats a po’ boy

backed up from the table

because the juice is going everywhere

that they won’t hurt us

they won’t hurt us in Nawlins.

 

 

1:20

A Mystery at Dusk-an Acrostic Poem

Guess who is at fault

Under a microscope clues are examined

In the sunken ground rests the ache of sadness

Let the authorities reveal the truth

To capture the shameful one as others halt in a hurry to heal

You’re sure that soon it will be revealed

The M word #4

Love, if I love
I love with the same intensity
If I love in a sun dappled meadow,
In hazy summer heat
Taking in the birdsong,
The buzzing of bees
And the scent
Of fresh cut hay field
Then I love in the storm,
In the freezing, biting cold
In the damp, sodden, unrelenting days
In the grey, dreary days
Of chilling mists than gnaw the bones
If I love under a magnolia tree
By a river, as the world slows
Like autumn sunsets
Then I love in the bramble thicket too
Torn by sharp thorns
In the smallest turn or attempt
If I love you on the easy days
The carefree, have enough
Soft and gentle days
The nights of abandon and lust
The evenings of quiet togetherness
And the Sunday morning papers
Then I love you too
When the world bites
When we fight
When we let each other down,
When it’s hard to see a future
Or even a present
When the struggle tears at the soul
Like thorns in a bramble thicket
And it’s weight is a mountain pressing down
Seeking to choke the very love from life
But love doesn’t care if it’s easy
Or if it’s hard
Only that it’s worth it
And by all the Gods, you are.

War or Peace?

With peace comes ease, or

With ease comes peace?

Are we creating war in peace, or

Creating war and peace?

The street is not smiling on our feet,

Hence, we’re not smiling in the street.

 

Indeed, legs were wax,

No one is here to relax,

But, cutting down joints with knife and axe

To God, this is the greatest tax.

 

Behold a ragged and homeless child,

He had in his eyes a look that is wild,

Healthy and sick with nothing to yield.

 

This may mean his end at worst

The world should be his host

Before the brain lost what it lost,

And the heart plots what it plots

Tanka style poem-also ekphrastic

 

this is what remains, our

love has vanished from this house

anger, remorse and jealousy replace

kindness, sacrifice and hope

nothing left but this chair

When you see

Hope is impossible when you look,
and actually see,
when you witness the fires,
the wild winds and the
ferocious rains.

Hope is impossible when you feel the heat
of your silver earrings against your neck
after minutes outside and you pray
that the power grid doesn’t fail.

Hope is impossible when you listen
to the myths being spun by
those who don’t want to see change and instead
want to bank on destruction.

Hope is impossible when you comprehend
thousands of penguin chicks
drowning on melting ice and the deaths of
deer and otters and falcons and – then –
us, our family and friends.

Hope is impossible when
you know it is only getting more
dire and
there is nothing, just nothing,
to do to stem
the tide of despair.