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what does her true voice sound like?*

going on seven, maybe eight years,
know the thumbprint of her stylish,
at twenty paces, her tower recognizable,
leaning in, she is the garden, can’t tell
where the garden ends and she begins

she opens the pages and lets slip out the
exposed flora+fauna of of her heart’s eyes observatory,
revelation unintended but wanted, she can’t be helped,
for she, both a revealer, reveler, party girl, beat poet

know her
in the bursting:  of the spring welcoming festival
in the bursting:                     of the season of loves busted unhappiness,
I know her well enough but not at all

in the sparse, frozen soil, and in the contra-blooming,
in every season, she warps my judgement,
with words unheard, unknown, the dictionary my accompanist,
what she says is a language purportedly in common, maybe not,
she takes me on a tour of her symphonic insights,
as my foreign tour guide

enwrapped, entrapped, I am, as she crooks her hair, in the
curved shape of a question mark top,
unknowing what does her voice sound like?

try different versions, a tasting menu of mellifluous, and
imagine myself to sleep, wondering and wandering,

what does her voice sound like?


off to sleep,
smiling, frowning
upside downing


11:51pm Tue May 5
“the irrepressible impossibility of not-writing”

not my phraseology, cut/saved/pasted from the tens of thousands
of words my eyes imbibe daily, waiting for a Fulfillment Center to
deliver a perfectly completed poem matching, equal to the Ah Ha!
uttered when he first read them, understanding the need, the surging
urging when a chest concaving with irrepressible bursting purpose,
just has-to hasty expel, never considering the possibility that I, I do not have something worthy of stating, right now, an inside insight...
someday we’ll meet/(the agenda)

in the flesh,
touch elbows,
staying masked
investigate each other’s
eyes;

discuss
rock ‘n roll
choices,
favorite
anything;

no need
to start falling
in love

with you.

unmasked!
we been there,
we done that.

so,
everybody knows,
that’s
old news!


p.s. yes babe, that’s the truth
while out walking...on a SUNday afternoon...

the senses five have vacated the premises,
sun doesn’t rhyme with June or moon BUT,
two out of three say get thee to liberty child,
go outside, find the mottled color rabbit and
smell the light, its scent arrives with hints of
old lyrics, huckleberry friend, feet humming to
let the sunshine in with “visions of harmony and
understanding, sympathy and trust abounding”


so you see the writing comes hard, but the knees
promise with every step to return, recur, recapture
each pleasing flag and line, every odor, all the perfectly
nonsensical so that a walk is a poem, an exercise in
harmonious...that a drifter like me, vague remembers
someone singing, like him, that he is:


“off to see the world,
there’s such a lot of world to see
we’re after the same rainbow's end,
waitin' 'round the bend” and a moon river...
<>

“where all my journeys end”
————————————


§§§

she gets
breakfasts in bed,
an all-pandemic menu benefit

I smile,
as I carry delicately
her coffee, berries, & bagel,
a happy house divided,
stroked even sided
1/2 French pear confiture
1/2 NYC  whipped cream cheese

I smile,
as I am now an imagined,
a heroic carry-out guy,
an ear budded delivery man,
whose ears are filled to the brim
with words of an old love song,
“where all my journeys end”^

this poem is hers,
an ending for her
bed breakfasting,
and a commencing,
for her living well

an ending for her bed breakfasting,
and a commencing, for her living well,
a place where,

all my journeys end.

§§§§§

May 8
twenty twenty




^Traci Chapman
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tracychapman/thepromise.html
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