the Never-Ending Poem by the Poets of Everything

a tether uncoiling here taut there slack in déjà vu loops not pushed with will but drawn haphazard on walls through doors across the worn smooth floors of years in slippery umbilical time tying together beginning and end - Richard Krasin 2021

 Ode to an Ode Oh, Dearest Ode with clunky name, we use you. No matter our choices from pesky gnat to Grecian Urn, you do not block or mock our pure or snarky impulses to please. Why wait for funerals to laud? Extol odes upon the living, lift the truths and tiny lies with form and purpose to ease a subject’s desolate days.  You gave Neruda and Lorca a box to hold their love of Whitman. Wrapped  words shaped into sweet, sweaty bits of soil,  skin, and sky. On and on you share yourself. Ancient as kindness you are, old as  papyrus, yet alive, young and pleased with yourself. Mary Strong Jackson

An Ode to an Ode She is not a Limerick nor a Sonnet not Haiku nor Renga but ... she does a good Obituary or Tribute The Death of an Ode might begin: "She left an Ode size hole in my Universe"  So humble So everyday So common all rhythm no meter no rhyme Oh you wonderful ode you make me want  to sing! "Oh Doh de Oh Doh" "Ode Odey Ode Ode!" "dah dodey a doh!"

Oh Xaos     casting shadow on bright reason     boiling chaotic oceans     casting doubt on certain causation     roiling cauldrons of emotion Marauding and bedeviling     coiling and taunting         and stalking a thousand             thousand millennia of trial and error                 tooth and nail                 pick and scrape                 malice and mercy                 truth and deceit                 force and concede                 recede and advance                 regret and rejoice                 forget and remember                 awake and ache … Oh unconquered Monster     stung with red intention     ensnarled in abstraction     gaffed with calculation     entangled in deduction Diving, diving     deep below reason         down below enlightenment             seeking the incomprehensible Deep             the numbing loss of memory             the narcotic Entropy

  Oh Poetry how facile your written record churning and remixing words carving chimeric sentences from stodgy fact ignored by some enslaved to authenticity who enlist the uncorrupted pixel to certify the truth from fiction or so they think ...   Oh Photoshop delivering us from not quite realized perfection de blemishing the de facto showing us how it all should be replacing boring skies with blood red sunset removing wrinkles from the clothes and clothed disappearing those who no longer claim our favor walking us in swanky shoes so that our fat will fade away buying us that chichi bag so that our pimples disappear slathering after shave so that our macho abs will hypnotize you are so mischievous and clever conjuring the funny inappropriate mixing metaphors A Chimpanzee God of Wine The Duckling with the Pearl Earring Mona Lisa wearing Michael Jackson glasses and yet ... Oh Authenticity taunt me to peel back the veneer of Wordshopped worship of illusion confront the fear of imperfection

  "It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness This stanza was to be for you      a sunny affirmation to shine through foggy doubt but last night she climbed into my dreams to play      hide and seek with moony memory      tumble with my rhyme and meter      then chose to stay in quilts and pillows      leave me here to blush and fumble empty headed but she's still there just waiting to be led to daylight      to meet you and hand you my words She places words into my hand I fear clasping too hard, but if the boulders of memory tickle my palms, I may loosen letters letting them fall between crevices or into wells where women chant songs of enticement promising   the good luck of a copper penny wish with this closed palm of words, I choose a path to pass into the inescapable landscapes of love and sorrow in unforeseen measure              and wild  wild metaphors  We arrive  bel

Ode to the Swimsuit In 1870, you came  made of wool covering arms and legs your cumbersome suits found themselves on tossed on bushes, or canoes if swimming  with the likes of Walt Whitman who sang the body electric. Decades later you ballooned in softer fabrics reaching to the knees leaving bare the juicy curves of shaped  calves, descending to nude ankles tempting tasty toes, bare glistening shoulders  made beachgoers thirsty for a lick  of salty skin Soon enough, you came in steaming colors of sun yellows, creamy whites, spicy reds,  and the blackest of blacks, your high cut lengthening the look of bare legs, exposing the buttons of bellies, perfect lines made cheeky cheeks, flat or chubby, beam below Came the day, your work shrunk to 3 triangles and string, or one triangle and string. Still there is magic  in the shape of your efforts.  A power  to draw the eye to the places you are not but more to the places you remain Mary Strong Jackson

Ode to the Power Grid Oh you ugly power lines your demanding right-of ways your high tension towers     marching across the landscape     like invading aliens your poles waiting for cars to crash into them your transformers filled with toxic PCBs your 60 cycle buzzing     a whiff of ozone your threat of electrocution your belching smokestacks your dam whining turbines     blocking rivers     salmon spawning Fukushima Daiichi, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl     glowing memories when you fail     no light     no heat     no interwebs     appliances don't even blink     cell phone almost dead what time is it?     eating our ice cream before it melts      as we watch TV by candlelight     and  pedal our electric bikes     chop wood     carry water      oh you terrible no-good horrible power grid      we miss you so much      please come back soon! Steve Smith

 During our hiatus as an active weekly group, generating running multi-voice poems, I was struck with this particular one from Poem-a-Day which moved me and I thought to share it here: Moving the Bones Rick Barot There are too many ancestors, so we are gathering their bones. The poor ones, their graves broken by the roots of trees. The ones whose headstones have been weathered