my best poems came:

in months, days of desperation,
hours, moments of elation, it was the
always imbalance that just was, that
was/when the karma-was in-balance

my best poems always, always,
came accompanied by tears, many,
before, during, certainly after, even
twice, when a later returning stumble,
brought the sentries to open old gates

never, at any time, was a man with many
friends, reasons plenty, reasons mine,
it was an imbalance that just was, that
of the karma-when-in-balance, except,
the creative offsprings became children,
painful to raise, coming to visit occasionally

hear no quiet trumpet moaning, nor a violin
shed the human cries that only a man-made
instrument can be forgiven for being better at
than their own creators.  Much by choice, or
criminal laziness, all tinged by a fear so subtle,
don’t think anyone knew it existed, yet, always
humming “see the man running against the wind”

there you have it. no summing up necessitated,
because how the numbers add up, the total is
just the total, and know, you can finish this one,
the total is just a rose by any other name, it’s a
number that by definition was the of, the when,
“when an imbalanced karma-was-in-balance.”

not even, your doubting Jill-from-the-hill voice,
asking, are you sure? really confident?

you desire me
to seize up,
cease the finger pointing
and begin the fingernails
scratching glass, agonizing

what I propose,
why I came here,
to defend and protect

women

demands I, we,
answer to no one.

especially
the little voices implanted

to erode our con-fidence.

indeed, they are the con.

(Inspired by and dedicated to John Edward Smallshaw, and his "Spice")


I am a summer-man,
Because I'm blessed to sit by the sea.
Let it and the other two Musketeers,
boon companions to me,
Sun and Wind,
erase my discomposure as I
reside in the Poet's Nookery.
Let them have almost
all that troubles,
but not all.

I am a summer-man.

On the bay, on the beach,
I see birth, I see death,
osprey nests, carcasses of
mussels and horseshoe *****.
This, somehow reassuring,
the cycles,
this circularity,
the tides and inevitability.

I am a summer-man.

Student of languages seasonal,
Peaches, plums, cherries, poetry
and loving Woman.^
This, the  summer alphabet-soup
of my multiple tongues.

I am a summer-man.

Sancerre and Pinot Gris, super cold,
Paul Simon, Nina Simone,
with proper aging,
getting  hotter,
Salsa and Afrikaner hints,
super louder,
Even "Still Crazy After All These Years,"
that-who-wud-be-me,
chills outer.^^

I am a summer-man.

When ever this lad's writes appear,
it proves once again,
there is no truth that his  
name was once Dr. Seuss
In a prior life, even if
each is signed by
Ogdiddy Nash

I am a summer-man.

Disrespectful of the calendar,
if I can, try to make
summer season stretch-marks from
May to October.

I would add April,
but the IRS is already
****** at me.^^^

Though the cherry blossoms of May
now gone away,
the lilies of June
arrive, but but for a week or two,
soon, like my mom, withered away.

Acorns in August^^^^ have arrived too swiftly.

This summer, beloved,
and love of summer,
deep-rooted.

Season of my Peter Pan Poetry Galore Festival.

A love,  incapable, impossible, of ever
growing old, ever growing cold,
it cannot wither.
It is summer heat reminders exposed,
how it misses its man,
that hide in the flames of
the teasing, popping, reminding
Winter fireplace's crackling popping

degree of overcast

so the day begins
and so will reman,
the week predicted
the same, only one
variant, degree of cloudy,
mostly, partly or just...

it saddens me deeply for
I contemplate all the lives
with this whether forecast,
or rather,
the absence of
whether,
the only variant,
the degree of overcast

9:34 AM
Fri Jul 17
Year of the Covid

those who created wind and water had many reasons,
but their first purpose was to constant enliven the human mind
with the softest message that true freedom is never bounded

nature’s song is refrained, “man, be unrestrained,”
nature’s majesty is then greatest, for men fool
themselves with lines, divisions and walls.

Earth’s best, humans too,  best seen in its
    unconstrained, searching character.

this is the one, only truth.


12:07am Sun Jul 12

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.”