what is the what, this simplicity, the great difference?


                                                ­  ~~<>~~
he reads certain words,^ then

the poet uncovered, stumbles upon, a rhythmic bearing, provoked,
his own bearing now  lost in contemplation, exits the cottage, wandering on the always wet grass, observed by animal menagerie,
espy him watchfully, a human directionless wanderer wondering, asking himself the meaning of it all, knowing answers reserved not him

we celebrate subtlety, process the minutiae of extracting an exactitude of  the precious précis of each momentary why, only when he honest confesses his ineptitude, can he truly begin to pluck words from the airy atmosphere to assemble them in format that mines the great difference in everything, the differential veins

the creatures, unshy, wish to contribute, suggesting editions, subtractions, this turn, this twist, this nuance, always clarifying, valuing utility beauteous, making the meaning perfectly clear in ways that make you gasp at words, their powerful, to define, then refine, then just plain be, be fine, finding, exploiting, drawing freehand the lines of distinction exacting
this great differences
                                                  ~­~<>~~
^
“and next to nothing is everything, all worth knowing,
you, write my poetry, as I write of you with breathless
ease and comfort, for the thoughts of all men in all
ages and lands, are original to where our eyes espy
each other, where our lips kiss to cross, cross to kiss,
what is the what, this simplicity, the great differences?”

a truism, an overused, abused entrée to the first poem of the day,
they always are night-born, from a slow passage of dark to a light-triggering recording event, a 6 hr. poem period, gestation, incantation

and a sort of relief, temporary

many the miles voyeured, a mentaller feasting sated,
simple rhymes to covet, rephrasing the complexities of
our other lives, where our sub-selfs exclaim, out loud!
this is me unchained, this is me chained, this is...someone

besotted by the rottenness of honesty, once air-exposed,
eyes fixed, no away-turntable, all that well hidden spoilage
in dreams reverent, forsaken, my ashamed-ness, is willing
taken to the scaffold, and by daylight first, perceived, conceived

we may examine the half of me, nay, the all of me, open-face
secrets secreted in my nighttime travelogue, of crimes, revelations,
insects, drownings, strawberry moons, all the fraying edges of a
linen covering, my cadaver pouch of well used words

inscribed thus:

”human born from a sac, and to earth returned, in sackcloth

“your arrhythmic rhymes, skinflint perspectives,
this is what I ask, what I need, what you can give,
what is in your possess, what you need to unburden,
making me better for making you lessened”  

<>

she offers me this,
a way out to more,
a way in to lessen,
knock on heavens door,
a suggest tendered,
treaty of mutual arms-ments-to-be?

perhaps is my answer,
utter the skinflints perspective,
maybe it is no treat, this treaty,
but a rad road well traveled to
mutually assured destruction,
the intended embrace
of unintended consequences

~for r, just because~


put her in my mouth and she became my
mouth.

put myself inside her and she became my
insides out.

spill good words on her belly, licked & laced us together, then came my 
poetry.

on elbow, she claimed coauthor-ship, demanded her name above        
          mine.


I smiled, answering most matter-of-factly,
surely they’re your creations, you-a-ruler, procreator, foremost, first,

the ABCedarian

the muse goddess of alphabets, all that is poetic divine mistress to
thousands

I’m mortal,
your transcriber, copyist, alphabetically seconded, merest mere,

the ABEcedarian

I’m rudimentary without you, lost midst the masses o’poets nameless.

She snorted, said
“sounds like poetic ******* to me”*
but returned to her sleepy heaven,
mumbling most contentedly.

she said:
you are a man knowing cruel, knowing hard,
with strangest soft skin, a funny way of talking,
lick my face with your words so I’ll learn,
to be tough and tender too, this I want, wanted

he replied:
life gave me splinters, broken from rough edges,
left under my exterior to fester, blister, and scar,
life licked my face, taught me mean, and the words
that came with that, were sand papered on my skin

she answered:
I’m not blind, I can feel, smell your contradictories,
want your antibodies in my blood, survival skills,
to be what I am not, and keep too, what I’ve got, to
be infected and protected, knowing words defensive

he listened:
what you desire, is the health that comes after,
after what you don’t understand, until you’ve
loved, lost, been beaten down so that getting up is
miraculous, this unteachable, this licking by words

she insisted:
your arrhythmic rhymes, skinflint perspectives,
this is what I ask, what I need, what you can give,
what is in your possess, what you need to unburden,
making me better for making you lessened

he wept:
and said nothing.

for nothing taught appreciating silence and that,
was the beginning,
of what she wanted,
of what he did not,
of what he gives reluctantly


8:16AM
Wed May 20
Isle of Mind

<>
“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