this lyric licks your face,
leaving you-salty-caramel
smiling, while listening to Janis, singing
”(You Don’t know What It Is Like) to Love Somebody”

no babe,
nothing lasts,
not you, not love,
not me,
no matter how hard you
rhyme, theorize,
forget and memorize,
life’s only constant is
constantly refreshing all,
endlessly remembering
and forgetting how to
hold on to a heart, to love...

sometime a breeze, usually a hurricane,
comes along, prying your hands
off what you got, or,
prying your eyes away
onto something new, cause
that’s just the way it is
with human foolishness,
you gotta
“to walk, talk,
rhyme and theorize,
forget and memorize,
always refreshing,
knowing that
nothing lasts”


until it maybe does...









———————————————————————————————

“To walk, talk, rhyme and theorize, to forget and memorize, always refreshing, knowing nothing lasts, except things that last forever, last never, poems and decisions needing completion, choices, reordering songs loved best, replete all sorrowed pains, uplifting prayers, hallelujah hymns, last rites....”^



—————————————————————-

(lost 13% of my baby)


the littlest one turned three in May,
haven’t seen her in the flesh since March,
parents inform, all gone,
they’ll be disappearing
to another state,
all of July, gonzo.

I say
go forth safely, that’s great.

redefining social distancing.

measured not in feet,
or even by Sara B.’s
borrowed ‘many the miles,’
but in longer specificities:

maturities,
weeks and months,
parts of years,
parts of lives,
March, April,
May, June,
now July.

five months.

counted them on one hand,
many times,
at 3:00am
cause I could not believe
the summing of my subtraction

somehow disappeared,
from our calendars
these monthly ** markings,
months wiped clean permanently.

did a quick calculation.
we’ve lost 13% of her
entire life,
can’t be regained.

her first:
big girl bed,
playing first video game,  
another birthday party,
candles extinguished by
a single big girl blowing,
dancing, dancing, and more,
driving her scooter in the apartment,
like only a mad woman can,
(stuffed animal riding the handlebars,)
blowing pretend Zooming belly kisses
on her button,
hiding neath the dining room table,
her laughing uproariously,
with never a “stop poppy.”

13%.
a specific amount,
a poem irretrievable,
a blood loss, that
can’t be transfused,
plasma irreplaceable,
containing antibodies
to a specific virus
Sorrow Unique-19

nah,
nothing  
it got nothing
to do with that new forehead
furrow, that slow-suddenly appeared.

nah.

“just, these are the days...”^

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.