The Poetry Marathon

Questions for Tech Support

When The Cloud loses your files, where do they go?
Are the byts and bytes encapsulated in the raindrops?
If I set out some pans, could I get my documents back?

What happens to corrupted files? Is there a trial?
Do they go to prison?
If they want to put them in protective custody, I’ll take mine back.

When I log into my account with my email,
and the site asks for my email, and I give it back the email I logged in with,
and it tells me I can’t use that email because it is already in use, I want to know:
Does the program understand irony?

Is there any way to turn off ChatGPT? Like, for everybody? I think someone has created a monster.
It just hasn’t eaten any little children yet.

Why so many upgrades? I just got used to the way it was –
why can I not find the double space button now? Or change case? Or page borders?
Do you hate me? Or is this all an additional perk of the program?

Wonderland

There is a place where flowers sing
Cards are guards to Queen and King
Turtles tell a tale of woe
And poetry is status quo

Rocking horses fly with wings
Eggs can do a back handspring
Caterpillars blithely smoke
Grinning cats tell arcane jokes

Cooks spread pepper everywhere
A tea party is a rude affair
Mushrooms make you short or tall
And sense – why there is none at all!

Pizza

P is for the painful way you burn my mouth
I is for incredibly, incredibly hot
Z is for a zillion degrees, the temperature of this pizza
Z is for zombification. From the too hot pizza. It could happen.
A is for AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

(Maybe next time I should let it cool down for a bit.)

Running

Running late
Grabbing a coffee
And my keys
I head out the door
Without my lunch

Running copies
The machine jams
All my efforts to fix it
Are in vain
No math paper for
my kids today

Running my mouth
I reveal a secret
About a fellow teacher
My cheeks grow red
As she walks past our lunch table

Running errands
Prescriptions
The post office
Dropping off donations
Looks like fast food again tonight

I want time to sit
Enjoy the seasons
Read a book
But I find myself always running

Giving Up
– A golden shovel based on To Be Known, a song by Carsie Blanton

Isn’t it interesting how
as you grow you
let go of all you had:
your home, your beliefs, a
clearinghouse of the child’s
ideas and ways. a-way
with the garden of
your past, a dreaming
memory. then, don’t
you know, you
turn around and miss
those very things. it
is gone. you now
must live without what you’ve
given up. sucks to be grown.

In My Room

I have the whole world here
Next to a magic window
that looks in on places near and far
The ancestors look down from the wall
On an array of chemical concoctions
waiting to be ingested
A minor forest sends out tendrils
Under an example Edison’s invention
And everywhere, dead trees
Pressed and printed and placed on shelves
Escape hatches out of my universe.

Ghostie-Ghost, Come Out Tonight!

Arms linked
We marched around the yard
Shouting and shivering
In fear, in the dark

One o’clock – no ghost!
Two o’clock – no ghost!
Three o’clock – no ghost!

Somewhere in the bushes
Or around the next bend
A companion waited
To jump out and scare us

Ten o’clock – no ghost!
Eleven o’clock – no ghost!
Twelve o’clock – Ghostie-Ghost! Come out tonight!

Having played both roles
I now wonder which was scarier:
Looking for the “ghost” in the midst of a gang
Or waiting to make the scare – alone

Kaleidoscopic

Multi-colored bits of glass
Tin boxes full of rattling buttons
Polka-dots on little girl dresses
Varicolored jellybeans in a jar

Science tells us
We are attracted to these things –
Multitudes in prismatic array –
Because they give us a feeling of plenty

Dot stickers in rainbow colors
Plastic bins of building blocks
Cupcakes covered in sprinkles
Bright fish darting through coral reefs

Deprivation dogged our ancestors
So they filled their larders with jars
The bins and barrels and boxes
Made people feel safe for the winter

Christmas trees decked with lights
Colored markers standing in a cup
Glittery beads sliding on a string
Fancy flowers arranged in a vase

Next time you crave colored candy
Or buy yourself a box of crayons
It may, in part, be nostalgia
Or it’s your ancestors keeping you alive

Advertisement

For Sale
One used car
Unknown make, model, or year
It’s sort of a silverish color
Four-door hatchback
You know the type, smallish
Foreign, probably
It runs
I mean, mostly
You might just put a little extra aside
For repairs
I’ll take as much as I can get for it
Which I expect ain’t a lot
And frankly, I don’t know what I’ll do without her
She gets me back and forth to my job
And all around the town
And even to Ohio once or twice a year.
You know what?
I think I’m not ready to part with her just yet
Unless you got a better car you’d like to take in trade?

The Imprisoned Flame

– Title taken from The New Colossus by Emma Lararus

Framed in copper
Covered in gold
Liberty’s flame stands frozen

motionless

If the beacon of Liberty is imprisoned,
is freedom still free?

Who are we without it?