pick a word, let it lead you astray, then (soil)
a poem to exclaim, refracting the sun rays emerging
from the curves of your chested heart, the waggle of
ten fingers conducting your inner song, the baton first
waved swipe to earth pointing, let us commence there:
think of yourself, entirety, as soil, you the potter,
what has been planted by others, nourished by others,
along sides of your ingestions, you the grower, seeded
anew, each word, hybrid edging with existing vocabularies
the sun from without, the sun from within, the rivulets
of water, the arterial pathways, feed the treasure chest,
and you, farmer, planter, grower, picker, plucker of the
produce, serve us, baskets grown on the fruited plain of
poems’ soil consisting of the writings grown in the
unique you,
all of you,
body & soul
Aug 26, 2020
Aug 26, 2020 at 11:28 AM UTC
no can do the turning of water, the greatest magician’s trick ever, but
turning words into wine, that I can do,
ready your life, go get a wine glass,
sit down, this is heady stuff, be prepared!
you’re thinking, shoot, I can do that too,
no, you just think you can, for if you could,
you would be drunk already, making typos
all over your shirt, thinking’ bout your next
verse, a great love affair, the one you never
should let get away, the wrong choices that
fed on each other, living with a hateful woman
for the better part of your whole life, the children
who don’t even call to wish you happy birthday
and you would be drunk already just like me,
writing poems like this, a poet sitting on the roof,
and you would have written this whiney poem,
not me, pretending wine can wash your conscience clean
<>
“*I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream*”
Losing My Religion
Song by R.E.M.
Aug 24, 2020
Aug 24, 2020 at 12:31 PM UTC
strange professions and true confessions from a lockdown town (4/17/20)
————————————————————————————-————-
not a great idea,
in the not-yet-dawn,
to write
a poem entitled
strange professions,
true confessions
dried stains of prior leakings
upon old ‘n yellowed linoleum,
no need for more friends,
for sure, for sure,
that’s the smart play
you see! right there
I’m professing age
old wisdom,
confessing my sorry face is
well acquainted with
floor coverings,
where even the
soles of my shoes
won’t admit they been polluted,
having stepped in rooms
of low and ill repute,
those them there,
right in here
poetry writing sites
where there ain’t no
guideposts, reminding
what’s in the heart
pretend stays in Vegas,
but what the heck,
since I’m here already,
might as well,
ready go and spill,
things you don’t
need to know but...
help the time pass
in this lockdown town,
where total silence is
the loudest sound around
wine, empty beery bottles,
bad rhymes give me up,
just before I start a hey look!
it’s a brand new
sunny rain afternoon
the governor pronounced
we all gotta be masked,
24/7 inside and out,
the women complain that it
musses hair, the men say,
who me? nah, got
nothing to say about that,
We, don’t make no con-cessions...
when you can’t see
my lips moving, or my
one good eye be winking,
means it’s likely that I’m lying
they say, I’m going
stir crazy,
not me says he,
unlike some guy who
wanted to blow up the
Alice-in Wonderland statue in
Central Park, hell,
u could look it up!
guess I coulda call this
here epistle, official “Lockdown Blues,”
but I jes heard gotta stay inside
till June Seventeen
that’s the good news,
plenty o’time to set
my affairs in order,
burn the poems nobody
needs seeing, those them
there with weirdness galore,
say no more,
you can whine, it’s fine,
no caring, no hearing,
past way the point,
where running or returning
is an option viable for nut jobs
them, with strange professions
and true confessions...
Aug 14, 2020
Aug 14, 2020 at 4:32 PM UTC
How one must declare his way of thinking,
Without offending another's way of breathing,
How must one walk his own journey,
While plowing through the lilies of the field?
The silent chill of the nights sweet calling,
Will one ignore the way it is drawing-
The coat around the stranger's back,
The wool it clings like soppy wet paper.
The pines reaching into the black silky sky,
Stealing wonder, boasting like the badger -
Make shifting the scene into his own world,
Backbone reaching, strong, furrowed.
A note, a baby's innocent cry, a laugh
Seemingly part of every single night-
One does not live without repercussion,
There is no passive in passion,
everything around is connecting,
This, offended men, is this possible to deny?
Aug 2, 2020
Aug 2, 2020 at 1:35 PM UTC
<•>
***for all the Ella's of the world,
who wonder
"what the seagulls talk about all day long. while looking up at the gentle sky mixed with blue and purple, their white feathers glisten from the fiery sun."***
<•>
one day when you arrive,
visiting, at my isle,
of Where Shelter,
(with signed parental permission slip),
resting upon weathered worn, Adirondack non-slip covered thrones,
in the official Poetry Nook,
a seashell throw from bay and dock, where the seagulls
thrive and dive, in between pooping, pollinating, and
rest up after day trip visiting the town dump
then,
together we will write a poem about
what the seagulls talk about all day long
having employed them long time as co-conspirators,
editors and a test audience (assayers of my essays),
sadly must report they
occupy themselves in mostly matters culinary,
local gossip of my neighbors and other avian interlopers
(geese and osprey)
hoping this doesn't disappoint,
but know this,
it was the sand, the breeze, the trees,
the moon and setting sun, the waving waters,
animals of all kinds,
that together, taking years,
taught me to write like this:
<•>
*the sun 7 o'clock afternoon sky low,
warmths the world, as did its morning glory reciprocal,
a dozen hours earlier,
both a low heat,
a sky stove top
'keep warm' setting,
a desirable global warming temperature
recall that promise not to burden you
with a hundredth scribing of his
lottery luck, this poetry nook and the
idyll of its surround,
but!
its childlike insistence,
while stomping on the greenest sea grass
of this portly world, insistent,
"write of me, attention must be paid!"
the lightest breeze of excellent sufficiency
asks the trees to shake
their compatriot leaves
as if to applaud,
one more time, a lord of the ring serenade,
an evenstar song of
the solstice of perfection
a cloudless night but for
an occasional wispy white blemish,
hinting that the orb's final bow tonight will be
a forever remembered,
standing ovation performance
in an hour, to the dock we'll go,
joining the congregant gulls
in appreciating the edging lower of
an immaculate inception
of a dying day's deceptive departure conception
my troubles, those that
furrow and till the brow,
105 miles away, as the crow flies,
for now,
suppressed into non-existence,
as we drink to la vie en rose,
our wine glasses, ****** the salmon pink
of suns rays rippling, tippling and reflecting
upon humans, who too reflect,
upon their good fortune,
this single and singular
peeking at the peaking of their perfection,
each wishing this be
their journeys end, their final solstice
to walk into a funnel upon the water,
into the sun and the
horizon in attendance faithful,,
alighting upon the wings of the most glorious of inviting,
dying rays of setting,
answering the question, at long last,
a finale,*
***here,
here is shelter!*** ^
<•>
so be quietly patient and never
write in regret,
for you are but sixteen years old,
and could teach to this old grandpa,
(who, by the by, has an Ella-all-his-own that is
of your proximate age,)
how to write
with the simple grace,
and the fresh wisdom,
of being
sixteen years young again
Aug 2, 2020
Aug 2, 2020 at 1:09 PM UTC
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 xxx’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....
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 at 10:55 PM UTC
My Heart is Drenched in Why’s
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
climb to my listening post,
poet-on-the-roof, willing every step,
climb way up to the top of the stairs,
entrance marked POETRY, courtesy
of the bldg. super, an olden friend,
a concerned citizen, humorist, human,
somedays nurse to his corona haloed tenants.
the view of the ****** not laudatory, visible in a 360 degree perspective is of city grunched, scrunched, covered in
in silent spoke poems, overused views, words that don’t change
a thing, for my heart sees only dimly, being that my disheartened
vision is drenched, diminished, disabled by and in why’s.
ask seer~super what rhymes with why, smiling, an instantaneous poetry helper, having created, an officiel expert, as in everything, reply’s “why, why most famously rhymes with, why, everyone knows is try!”
so I try, three times, try, try, try again to puzzle
why, my heart is drenched in magenta,
who has willed this, not I, my distilled voice,
wants, does roof shout, but try as I might,
the reverb of unanswered is the slap of more
drenching, quiet silencing, and the weightiness
of too many weightless words returned stamped
“no forwarding address, and we know not why.”
Jul 12, 2020
Jul 12, 2020 at 5:25 PM UTC
“They are an inexhaustible spring of delight. Their diversity corresponds to our most varied moods, from the state of quiet content in which all we ask of art is entertainment, exquisite rather than deep, the exuberance of animal spirits, the consciousness of physical and moral health, to melancholy, sorrow and even revolt, and to an Olympian serenity breathing the air of the mountain tops. The comparative uniformity which we notice between them at first sight disappears with closer scrutiny. The feeling is never the same from one to the other; each one is characterised by a personality of its own and the variety of their inspiration shows itself ever greater as we travel more deeply into them.”
Cuthbert Girdlestone
Mozart and his Piano Concertos, 1939
Jul 12, 2020
Jul 12, 2020 at 8:42 AM UTC
“choose your hugs wisely...(the hug has to spark joy.)”
the pandemical advice columns arrive
unceasingly,
mostly repetitive, causing/repairing minor league
glitches,
but stumbled on the advice above, dumbstruck,
flummoxed
and yes, by god, even that poet’s favorite,
gobsmacked,
thinking wow, great advice,
for the entirety of our remaining days!
poetontheroof
Jul 4, 2020
Jul 4, 2020 at 12:53 PM UTC
as the
poet on the roof,
‘tis I,
asking you Lord,
would it have soiled
a vast eternal plan,
to throw some seasoned salt,
on mes écrits?
let this soliloquy
make my case,
my summer
soul-on-ice,
hungover from
**the sorrowed sobriety
that stayed, retained,
the sense of loss
that are the mainstays
of my isolated days**
long after I’ve left,
the black velvet of
my screen, and I,
***wonder where poems
come from, ceasing to
wonder, perhaps as simple
as some sweet old critter
being a human whisperer***
**** the czar
and
**** me too.
Jun 25, 2020
Jun 25, 2020 at 2:07 AM UTC