is the one you earn...

which is why we usually say,
with a tiny trace of irony,

live and (l)earn

oft & long,
do I write,
but not for here…

but today great happiness and a worldly sad
intermingling and in it,
                                        within it,
'tis a day for short,
a shrift (1)
of a great brevity

for the truly important things in life,
there exists already, a single word,
that hints and speak volumes to our
soul;

today, that word without further explanation is:

*shrift

writing poems of love from the lost and found

you go to the closet in the school office,
for having been realtime been schooled in the mischances
of ill-iteration of life enhancing love stories, teach says:

the only peace now to be find from another lost soul
in the cardboard box of one right glove and one left sock,
ugly scarfs, mismatched two left ventricles, hats with lice,
sneakers good for nothing, but maybe some comfort for the lost,
for in the midst of the other miscellanies tales of lost one’s,
a match, good enough, can be found

makes no sense but perfect in its nonsensicality,
a word perfected script of his life, the chest pains too real,
to the gathering of the found, then lost souls, he retires,
perusal of assorted messes, textiles of the human variety,
a good enough accident will be stumbled on, hope restored

it is December and school is closing for winter vacation,
going home with one hand and one heart unsheathed
is not tenable, parent-able and just impracticable given
the coldness of isolation, a mismatched mitten selectee chosen

the yellow hell-o bus ride home is full of tortious interference,
the mismatching hand covering is an announcement of
‘please ridicule the loser’ that will be great, great fun,
I considering doing the undone, that hiding in the
lost and found for two weeks is mighty tempting and
a realistic possibility

slings and arrows of verbal definition slung and spat,
the general hysteria to his Travel & Entertainment account expensed,
but the gentlest shotgun tap of a hand upon his back, reveals a
folded scrap of a notebook page cornered in a cashmere gloved,
in her hand container, taken and secreted for in private-perusal

an address, an email unspoken written invitation to please contact
if you’re home, not going vacationing anywhere (ha!), me neither,
let’s get together, get married, have three kids, and get the hell
out of this frozen hearted land of misery

so I would like to tell you that is indeedy what happened,
so that is what I’ll tell you in fact, that,
that is exactly
what occurred with two more trips to the L & F
for different colleges, different coasts, different continents,
more lost and founds of accidental lost luggage meetings,
long distance loving worn down, too hard, lost, time eroded

till came the realization that love from
the lost and found
might be a meant to be message,
cause those words always end in...
found

unsure, uncertain,
of the laws invested
in the realms and reams
of poetry ingested,
am i addict,
or supplier,
retail consumer
or
wholesale supplier,
a mom & pop candy store,
or a metastasizing intelligence
that takes any thing, and all,
a solitary letter,
an instance of a sighting,
a gasping palpitation
and reformats it into
a hehe literary madhatter^ piece

you supply, I demand,
I supply, boy oh boy,
do I ever, but you never,
come to me directly asking,
write me a poem, thick or thin,
witty fitty or an overly looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong
e~pistle (a/k/a e~pistol)
yet the trade goes on and om,
the marketplace never closes,
except when periodically the
gatewaykeeper is slow to pay his bills,
and the trading centres are global scattered,
young entrepreneurs try to sell a single
piece, as if it was breaking news history,
and tired old men, review their lived,
eager to memorialize, so it's ok to forget,

in retro!spect perspective,
the mirror who cannot lie,
states affirmatively, you are
both ****** and dealer,
a corporation scientific
of ancient biblical origins,
a psalmist, a deacon,
a lyricist, but thankfully
not a singer,
an essayist who writes best
when ****** by tawny port wine,
who snatches inspiration with
equality of equity,
(wait! that's wrong,
the equity of equality,)
where he can
find, ***** city streets, the deaths
of heroes, the sunrise calm miracle
he drinks in daily, by rivers, by seas,
by estuaries brackish, and streams
of watered purity, the riveting bays,
the individualized glisten deflected
into my eyes, that each
contains one pure blessing within….                                                 nml