someday it will be willed (have I told you lately that I love you?)

that the poetry ceases,
no more birthdays notated
calendar closed, the ***’s axed,
kitchen junk drawer, a consignment store,
no longer needed, the futility of saving
knickknacks, maximized, the no lasting
value proposition, realized, eulogized.

pictures of beautiful automobiles,
decorated with beautiful women,
will forever be last year’s models,
one calendar too far, not long enough

no more of

have I told you lately that I love you?

wrote you plenty love poems so, hereafter,
you won’t be bereft, left farklempt,
arranged one-a-day, on a timed delay,
so many more that will appear in your
inbox until you too, no longer choose open it.

no more “sirprising” I love you statements,
taped to the milk carton, it was so willed,
the daily counting, record keeping, who first,
how many, secretly added to a grocery list,
in stuff that was so beloved, exasperating,
making you just right amount of crazy, smiling....
someday it will be willed, so,


here’s the first of many more....

reasons not to read my poetry:
1. it does not use cutesy rhymes
2. it usually has more than four lines
3. doesn’t employ emojis, whistles, chimes
4. non-words in poetry, a serious punishable crime
5. ok ok ok!  cause you insist, occasionally sometimes
6. it trying hard not to be depressed, (bad ok, not sad!!)
7. usually not trite, though ‘fess, it is a never ending fight
8. oh dear, daisies so simple, mine, complicated, ‘jes a tad
9. requires periodic use of a dictionary, for words of 8 letters +++
10. adjectives usually sensible, opposed to “croissant clouds”
11. free men write free verse, no need, don’t use f*k, sht
12. a poems shape is circumstantial, not circumferential
13. it’s a lot of work to get it shape shifted kerectly
14. go new, go bold, use heart + **** together
15. never recip nice comments, never fail
16. to send **** to ******* arrocan’ts
17. this is getting boring, nap time near
18. yada yada, you finish this!

Sent for our amusement, pleasuring admiration,
our funny bones, and galore (glory)  of creation,
Texas squirrels are nuts, like crazy,chasing each other ,
up trees, across the wide expanse of the backyard,
where’s the Davy Crockett sharpshooters when
you really need them? (1)

now that baby rabbit, fearless or stupid, insists on
running on our deck, looking for applause for his skinny
legs hopping neath the chaise lounges, at any ole time,
guess this ain’t the love poem you were expecting,
then again you’d be wrong again and agin, but the
grandkids going, going, gone and applause muted

anyway, one of these days gonna stop and chat with
these two species, what they’re thinking about, the
human menagerie,  its depleted numbers, wherefore
and why, did the reduction of the human stockyard,
emboldened them to occupy territory they’d otherwise
shy away, hear what they say, gonna make a good poem

p.s. the avians yap and caw 24 hrs a day, presumptuous beasties noisy
__________________­_

(1) “In fact there wouldn't be a Texas if it weren't for squirrel stew. Don't condemn the idea of stewing your squirrel problems away. That's right! Davy Crockett and his Tennessee sharpshooters wouldn't have reached puberty if it were not for squirrel stew. Besides, what do you think they ate on the long trip from Tennessee to the Alamo? Enchiladas? Nope! You guessed it--squirrel stew.”

https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/recipes/squirrel.html

she smells (nameless and shameless)


a concoction of mixed aromas,
a once in a lifetime scent,
impossible to bottle,
impossible to name,
nameless and shameless

morning coffee, last nights vin rosé,
a come-a-little-closer-tasting for the summer solstice,
the stale of the evening meals of grains and kale,
the sour remains of bedroom sweat,
the displeasing scented sight of
sweat soiled clothes carelessly discarded

the first of the season red spot-stained white peonies
fail to mask the bodies aromatic musks,
which are mostly gender identifiable

my sneakers hail mary, her stockings odorize the atmosphere
most unusually, nylon and lycra are strangely familiar,
prior memorized perhaps, from deep within, a ****** hallelujah,
deep amidst where, the ***** linens are shelved and binned,
before they journey to the Egypt Nile of the basement waters

the burnt crumbs of illegal in-bed brioche toast
amazingly invisible on unclean sheets,
state “breakfast in bed, was yummy in the tummy,
but next time use a big dinner plate,
down here, the burnt of the bread and the burnt
of other things (popcorn pieces)
is just a scratchiest fragrance too far,
needing a sheet wiped clean slate

even the colorless and tasteless water
absorb the ionosphere of smells,
because one does usually speak poetically,
one of us makes a (vice) presidential declaration:

she smells, I man-ually stink, each,
each glower shower nower,
open the window to the spring wet grass aroma fresh cut,
to exhume and then send away
this odor now christened,

nameless and shameless


11:47 28/4/19

it’s a daiquiri colored morn, countlessly
as I, gazing never tiring, of a vista I’ve seen,
awoken to, endlessly changing, voyagers of
birds and boats, the redecorating minimalists,
moving pieces on a latticed shadow lawn

the Sun eastern, asking the trees to turn and bow,
hence the shadows their branches cast are a waffling,
hopscotch pattern irregular, so jumping from/to
yellow-green sunspots, the children are delighted by a
new game, moving to and from and between an ever
changing crazy chessboard of light-patches unsquared

described, written of, yet here I am, once again, a servant
despairing, looking for new combinations of superlatives,
though I never spoke before of it as a vista,
until today, wondering why, perhaps because
it’s here, one lives, one doesn’t conceive of  being
part and parcel of a vista, humans, just visitors,
pawn observers, gallery visitors, art appreciators,
transient hobos after forty years, truthfully claiming
that they’re merely still, passing thru, passing by

9:40 am, respectable hour to meander over
to the throne room, the four Adirondacks, them,
the year round poetry nook authorities, are equal
sunned, shaded, simultaneous, stately shadowing,
observing, advertising as perfect for composing,
willing to make verbal suggestions, rhyming notions,
especially when the poem pays proper obeisance

and so it does, and so it is, as you can clearly read


9:53am Sunday Jun 14
Year of the Pandemic

This morning,
I walked with god and man, and animal

I've come to believe,
no other possibility,
He denies me sleep
as His insurance policy

some One wants to be sure,
someone sees His sunrise poem,
He selected this ancien regi-man
to be His admiring audience,
with deer, squirrels, rabbits, a red fox, an osprey
always complaining, why do they get
the cheap seats

so up at five,
no jive,
gotta get there early,
for a good seat,
on the dock by his name

watch the color blue transgender
from feminine elegy elegant pale
to peacock royal male,
the water,
a contributing editor,
phases in with a steely grin,
with ermine whitecap hints
and an orange marmalade sky homage,
I cannot try to describe

and here is where man comes in...

as the tableau reveals a still life
come to be,
a painting enlivened,
come to me free,
bursting with
effervescence and
animal life tribunes,
paying on...

strange...

my Pandora app
back to back,
plays for me
Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue,
hard upon it comes
Saint-Saëns's
The Carnival of the Animals

and I
enfeebled amateur,
needy for a
word titan Titian,
can think only
this trite thought:

I know not who is the
instrument and who
is the
artist,
but virtuous us,
We, all, now-capital-buddies,
now, all, well-color-capitalized,
god and man and animal,
crooning a chorus of appreciation

let this "accidental" miracle,
this collaboration,
enthuse me,
to live happily
with anticipation
for just one more day...

June 2014

kiss the kids good bye,
send them out on
their own find-a-way paths,
merry or otherwise,
dispatched, once and forever,
stamped, franked, posted,
Gebbie delivered,^
the poems born, borne
   are gone

never look back,
once writ and gifted,
they are an only child,
not truly orphaned
   but without parentage

miss'ed every now and then,
see them as a drive-by victims,
hit and run casualties of passing poets,
who notifiy that they saw
"so and so"
and just wanted to
let me know,
   they're ok

but never look back,
they have been disowned,
each,
a natural birth poem,
must learn
the hard way,
to stand on its own,
tested by the cruelest proctor,
   hoary time

this is the way,
the only way,
birth mother and no more,
and this why,
some know me as,
  the poet of the way...

this is my way -
my poems are my
dispatched issue,
sent out themselves alone,
to experience
cell division,
mitosis and meiosis
spawning new poetic tissue,
find their own way of sharing
  their ancestral DNA

Clueless, Restless, but then the Moon Speaks!


can you see clouds at night, askes the moon,
my train, my assemblage of word worshippers,
who ask me by the thousand for clearer answers,
“one if by day, two if by night” is my evere’d reply,
bereft of confidences, steps unsteadied, full of distemper,
shaky uncertain, so answer all, once more, but only with
difficulty am I understood, for the simplicity so so great!

the moon comes to you nightly, never! never are you ignored,
your lost alone words always well heard, we are two together,
we are all two, if by night, my lune bright, ours, your answer!

Together Nightly, Are We Not Poets of the Way?

~for VB~

<>

“A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?”

Song of Myself (1892 version) BY WALT WHITMAN

                                                §§§

­there is special delight for the city dweller,
when the first clean flushing of brightest spring green
disrupts the unending graying city ribs of worn concrete,
the alternating lifelessness of blasé brick, pretending
off-beige, ***** pale blue, a sooty furnace red,
well done,  a good pretense that they are, of color.

I am among thousands whose as a child my breath
gave way, taken by gasp, when first made
entrance to the green diamond sparkle oasis of
Yankee Stadium, hid by the urban dreariness of The Bronx,
near sixty years vision sustained with perfect clarity on
retina-implanted, a shock, an earthly con-trast.

today, an old-timer, a first timer, I’m gifted Whitman’s Song of Myself,
from a friend and poet, who lives hardy by a Port,
another islander like myself, surrounded by wet roads and
pathways to the Northern Pacific, amongst timberlands of
forested and natured grass, a differing kind of stadium,
both of us silently saying, thanks Lord, for lending us yours.

even temporarily, this day, your emeralding grass handkerchief,
equates our dispositions, so differently identical,
your name, our initials, in opposing corners, embroidered,
your grass tapestry upon this troubled earth, a scented, joint, poetic
remembrance, that though it’s but words that bind us, we! we know!
the songs we sing of ourselves, we sing in synchrony harmony.

                                                   §§§§§


Wed. May 13, 2020
Manhattan Island,
by the East River