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a draper is someone who creates garments or patterns by draping fabric directly onto a dress form (Wikipedia)
~~~~
I am a draper,
by trade, by nature, by instinct;
a fling of one arm across her body,
while she dreams and sleeps, rambles, mumbles,
and even convulses,
to hold her tight with two, with both,
soon grows discomforting as the blood ceases to flow,
the heat breeds unsweetened sweat,
and the snuggling impact,
is too fast subsumed by the pins and needles
numbing, deadening,
and ironical attenuation

this is my pattern,
how I address her,
how I dress her,
draping my contiguous,
drawing five fingers
upon her form,
reshaping her in her sleep,
the arm flung, there, and then
there,
to be hung,
at varied places across her body,
higher lower, above below,
but her face,
free and clear,
so not to interfere
with her sensory preceptors

and as I draw my pattern upon her skin,
her body whole,
listening her to indeterminate utterances,
to determine
which
pitter patter pattern
to which.
she feels best suited,

then,
I prepare my
invoice
for her,
for services rendered,
to present upon awakening,
demanding
in voice,
by her voice,
payment in words,
of her own chosen
amuse-bouche,

mmmm, will it be?

good morning my love?
hello you!
or just an indiscriminate
but yet,
a discriminating
sound of
having been pleasured
by unknown forces
in her deeper sleep, using her lips
to say, to hum, to sing,
a genteel unspecific
but, and yet, a
terrific,
deep from within
guttural remittance,
the sound of a delicious,

mmmmmming
greeting
a new equinoxal gale
of a refreshing fresh
birthing, fulsome
already satisfying
draping of the
day
I hope you didn’t come here,
To be satisfied,
By pretty words so plain.

I do not entertain.
I share the experience,
No matter how profane.

Did you suffer?
Was it a burden?
Do you regret not seeking entertainment,
In prettier things?

Those who started at the beginning,
Why did you stay,
Until the end of this temporary gaze,
Into what persists for eternity?

Fate got what she wanted. She has all his attention.
The Wind got what he wanted. Oblivion remembers the beloved.
Alcyone and Ceyx got what they wanted. They’ve been reunited.


Everyone got what they wanted.

Does that make this a happy ending?


Or was it,

Too unsatisfying?


Were you hoping for someone to pay?

Were you hoping for a victory?


Did you,

Get what you wanted?


Could we say the journey was worth it,
For this fleeting glimpse into eternity,
Where the story does not please,
Where it repeats with little progress made,
Towards that resolution, indefinitely delayed?


Everyone got what they wanted.  

But no one is happy.

So tell me,

Is this still a happy ending?


Then what does it mean?
What did they expect?
They got what they can.

If that’s not enough,
Then shame on them,
For being such idealists.

Ungrateful brats.
I’m sure some would argue that.


This is the best they can have.
No resolution, no justice, no revenge.
Just a legacy filled with inaccuracy.

Together at last,
Free to do as they may,
But not as they please.

Is that the compromise?
To be free to choose,
When there is only,
One choice?


But they all,

Got what they wanted.


BUT NO, NOT LIKE THIS.


They got what they wanted.

But no one is happy.


So can we say,

This is a happy ending,

Or not?


It doesn't matter.
Just that it's over.

Except, it's not.
Only for us.


Not even for us,
Not when we return to reality,
And we all see,
It is us trapped in this cycle repeating.


Go and search for your own answers,
In what's real and what's not,
Through joy and through pain,
They are all the same.

Reflect and recall, who does the thinking.
Reflect and reclaim, who does the talking.


Stop gazing upon their story.

It will go on,

Like this,

Forever.



But you,
Are not forever.

Your gaze is needed elsewhere.
THEY GOT WHAT THEY WANTED.
THEY ALL GOT WHAT THEY WANTED.

IT'S A HAPPY ENDING.
ISN'T IT A HAPPY ENDING AFTER ALL?

THEY DO AS THEY MAY. I WRITE AS I SEE FIT.
I DID WHAT I NEEDED, BUT NOT WHAT I WANTED.

YOU GOT WHAT I GAVE.
ARE YOU ENTERTAINED?

I TOLD THE STORY AS IT HAPPENED.
YOU READ IT WITH YOUR OWN FREEDOM.

THEY GOT WHAT THEY WANTED.
YET WHERE IS OUR HAPPY ENDING?

WHAT WAS THE POINT,
IF NOT FOR A HAPPY ENDING?

WELL, I’M NOT THE ENTERTAINER,
I’M JUST THE REPEATER.

YOU'VE REACHED THE END OF YOUR JOURNEY,
BUT NOT YOUR DESTINATION,
BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST.

I’M NOT THE ENTERTAINER,
I’M JUST THE REPEATER,
AND I’VE GIVEN MY WITNESS STATEMENT.

SO TAKE ALL YOUR DISPLEASURE BACK,
TO THE WORLD FROM WHICH YOU’VE FLED,
AND CAST UPON THAT WORLD, ALL YOUR JUDGMENT.

I’VE REPEATED THIS STORY SO YOU WILL NOT REPEAT THIS TRAGEDY.
BUT YOU WILL. YOU WILL.
BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A STORY. THIS IS REALITY.

I HAVE WITNESSED IT.

AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.

SO YOU HAD BETTER LISTEN.


https://hellopoetry.com/collection/136314/the-wings-of-waiting/
Stumbling into ancient scripts, authored a decades plus ago,
ago being a modifier of time quantities, minute or large, unspecific
without an objective adjective additive, that faucets a stream of an interlocutory elocution of a batter of rooted emotional histories,
but not histrionics

fanciful words for dredged up memories, acute, but tarnished,
powered yet worn by a cousin of ago, a/k/a,
age
and yet
renews as of,

at this very second, as if it were a first, a tumult of visions, swelling of remembrances, embodied scars, and I weep anew but not
for me, as much for the resonating simpatico souls with whom
they even  now vibrate with resonance of the immediacy of
If not now, When?

Aside: The exterior environment is noisy wet pelting of thunderstorms and ****** sheets of bulleting rain, piercing projectiles, but I am safe in the sunroom, sadly happy my dog is no longer here to shiver and tremble, cuddle and be soothed by steady stroking

But I am here, wrestling with this dredging operation, digging up
tons of sand that require dumping, and I ask, inquire, beg:

Who will take this detritus off my hands, once more, now uncovered,
now recovered, the soil is already soaked and can absorb no more,
the soul is already soaked and can absorb no more, the weakened
heart, damaged and occluded, suffer cannot bare twice the

outrageous misfortune

of unbared recollections, twice, or thrice, and I feel myself drowning in revisiting pain, **** **** ****, these old poems, not nuggets, but boulders dropping from night skies, shot from a pitching machine, without letup, piercing of agonies that once ago  
freshly desecrated and decorated my basic training in humanity.

Enough whining:
I wrote those poems to
eject out those pains,
and I write this now, once more,
to realize that so so many still face
uncertain and unrelenting similarities,
doing their own sums,
and I wish them easing,
strength to compose and
thereby dispose of
the ineloquent
and eloquent
words of staining suffering


3:30am
Thur
July 10
2025
Shackled each one hand and foot
They’re loaded roughly onto
Transport planes like cattle
On their way to slaughter.

No luggage goes aboard with them -
Not a toothbrush in a pocket
Or a candy bar to hold them.
Were they even notified- of course not.

What country are they they going to
And what is it they’ll do there?
Who is going to meet their plane?
Who will remove their shackles?

Are there concentration camps
For lack of else to send them?
Will they be caged like chicken farms
Or stacked like hay in barn lofts?

Music for this grim tableau:
“The Plane wreck at Los Gatos”
Sung mournfully by Joan Baez
Who’s seen this debacle before.

Who ordered up this travesty -
This evil on TV Paraded?
Why was there no better way
To send unwelcome people home?
                   ljm
The above song is also called "deportees" and is from the 1960's when they were deporting farm workers from California. Some things never change.
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