the Never-Ending Poem by the Poets of Everything

Curly Black Bit of Doggerel Little dog, little dog Curley Sue Malarkey   Wag, bite, run, chew, sleep   Little dog, little dog I can hardly see your eyes maul the cat, maul the cat   What do I know? Stupid Human!   March 2023 Otowi, NM

5 Road Poems (5 Aspirations) and a Song of Despair      a nod to Pablo Neruda Ode to the Open Road Open Road!  You call me Locked down for over a year Behind my mask Afraid to breathe others' breath     to touch what they had touched We traded the silver screen     for a big screen        or a small screen          or a tiny screen Now we go back the righteous windscreen     and roadsigns     Interstates     byways     flat horizons     rumble strips     diner coffee     local AM stations          storm warnings         piglets, quilt-scraps, and firewood              for trade     NPR everywhere         Amy and Terry and Ira and Christiana...

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 con...

  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 impe...