Im so sorry that i let you down. It hurts more than you know that I’m responsible for that frown.  

You cant please everyone thats what they say, but i serve up my heart on a silver tray.

I try not to breathe afraid of this ache. scared to move, one wrong step might cause the glass to break!

Walking on egg shells everywhere, all around, don’t say to much, hold it in, don’t shake the already unstable ground.

I can pretend i don’t have to be truly me, i can only show what they want to see.

Dial it back, hold it in, “we don’t air our ***** laundry you know.” Smile, just pretend, put on a show.

I long in my heart to be authentic with you, but i dont think you want the version that is true.

Secrets and lies!
Betrayals and alibis!
No one to trust!
No where to turn!
Don’t put yourself out there unless you want to get burned!

Heartache and pain!
Thunderstorms with acid rain!
It washes away dreams, hopes, all traces!
Nothing left just empty spaces!

You give it all, and when nothings left...
You find you’ve died, and no one is bereft.

We start out young so full of hopes and dreams!
By the time we are old we know nothing is as it seems!

Disappointed,
Disillusioned,
Heartbroken,
Lost!
Whats the point? When you add up the cost..

No one who you can feel at home with.
No one who understands.
No one to guide you.
No one to hold your hands.

How did you get here from where you started?
Peace and hope from you seems long ago parted!

Innocence lost and been replaced
Cynicism and denial taking up the space.

Just one summer               like no other
                        that is what it was !
You and I across the field
                          playing like wild children
          in the playground of my heart !
Here and there, everywhere
                    we were
                            angels soaring o'er daises
     unplucked*                           breathing *
Rain or shine, we were always together
                       drenched in sunlight we were poetry  
                                          As we lay softly on the
                         summer grass
the heady scent of flowers clothed us,  
                                    even rain could not wash away
                    the inhale of our innocence,  
It was a summer               like no other
the summer      when                      we first met ,

Why open my thoughts for the world to see,
if no one dares to acknowledge me.
     Why even bother to scream out loud,
if no one cares enough to stick around?
     Why do I still long to breathe,
If I know that everyone will leave?
     Why do I write stupid poems about my life,
if no one will read them?

<>
“Stop this day and night with me
and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun,
(there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things
at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either,
nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides
and filter them from your self.”

Song of Myself (1892 version) by WALT WHITMAN

                                                      ­§§§

*These admonitions are the ten conditionals
commandments of straight talk,
boy,
you’ve spent a life lessening and lesson-learning
and all laid before you for taking, gaining,
but for what? for naught?

Start this day, having spent my night with you,
possessing less than what is my now
completed,
this,
my unfinished commencement,
provisioned, a simultaneous beginning and finishing,
emptying a void of
fulfilling questioning.

What does this life desire of me,
that it granted and then removed,
the knowledge of perfection?
leaving me striving, writhing,
shivering unceasingly,
in my saddened, bursting, hacking
and hackneyed chest.

I walk the same cobblestone streets,
observing the descendants of your ancestral tugs
portaging, paying homage to East River tides,
carrying those goods,
the origins of all poems,
from where? to where?
unknown,
but always past our conjoined eyes.

And yet do I look, with our merged eyes,
filtered by a century’s discoloration,
forgive me Walt, for now recalling sights
that you first observed,
that I witness first hand,
100 and fifty years later,
sharing a stolen wisdom with you.

Todays new millionth sunrise bids me stand,
observe the river traffic from my kitchen window,
accept that my takings are debts,
a few, even paid back,
yet, most still owed,
for the origins of all my poems,
are oddly and oddity old,
unoriginal, second, third handed
as I look through the eyes of the dead,
and yours too,
this my unoriginal,
original sin....
(pretending  I am a poet)



                                                   §§§§§

6:24AM
Manhattan Island,
By the East River
Thu. May 14, 2020