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she said:
you are a man knowing cruel, knowing hard,
with strangest soft skin, a funny way of talking,
lick my face with your words so I’ll learn,
to be tough and tender too, this I want, wanted


he replied:
life gave me splinters, broken from rough edges,
left under my exterior to fester, blister, and scar,
life licked my face, taught me mean, and the words
that came with that, were sand papered on my skin


she answered:
I’m not blind, I can feel, smell your contradictories,
want your antibodies in my blood, survival skills,
to be what I am not, and keep too, what I’ve got, to
be infected and protected, knowing words defensive


he listened:
what you desire, is the health that comes after,
after what you don’t understand, until you’ve
loved, lost, been beaten down so that getting up is
miraculous, this unteachable, this licking by words


she insisted:
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


he wept:
and said nothing.

for nothing taught appreciating silence and that,
was the beginning,
of what she wanted,
of what he did not,
of what he gives reluctantly



8:16AM
Wed May 20
Isle of Mind
for Jeannie Kristufek Hawrysz who once quoted me Shakespeare -
"Of all the words in the universe, when stated thrice, only one royal above all gleams best, an uncoded mathematical tripartite repetitive stating:
love love love this."

----------------------------

third attempt and just not happening
then recall a Ben Folds hand-me-down
heard on Tuesday, passed onto me by Sara B.
about writer’s block

“Kick the editor out of the room”

the best don’t even flow,
they fall out of ya, rough and tumbling,
screaming did ya get that,
are ya keeping up,
you can be the self-editing-I need-perfection roadblock
or the delivery guy, the one with the towel and the scissors, who brings ya a clean new baby, and/or a veggie pizza,
which ya gonna pick?

another nougat nugget:
when you’re stuck, write about the block,
what’s sticking you; one would have thought
some one thousand five hundred poems later,
this one would have been midwifed a long, long time ago,  
but at 4:32am, it’s all I got

rather than throw false news confetti on myself
from the rafters that don’t exist in a citified apartment,
I’ll reward myself with some
rock n’ pop,
a revisitation to the scene of the crime, and listen quiet like and maybe leak back to prone sleep,
in hopes that the rest of the gang,
hoping the words to a  poem-in-transit,
“confetti is just tomorrow’s garbage”
gets off at my dreamy new subway stop


should the wordy birdies shotgun come sneaking in
thru the correct ear
i.e. not the sunken pillow one,
so I have half a fat chance of
recalling its dimensions in an hour, 
when I wake up-officially,


fat chance

later, like 4:56am

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2471979/confetti-is-just-tomorrows-garbage/
pick a word, let it lead you astray, then (soil)


a poem to exclaim, refracting the sun rays emerging
from the curves of your chested heart, the waggle of
ten fingers conducting your inner song, the baton first
waved swipe to earth pointing, let us commence there:

think of yourself, entirety, as soil, you the potter,
what has been planted by others, nourished by others,
along sides of your ingestions, you the grower, seeded
anew, each word, hybrid edging with existing vocabularies

the sun from without, the sun from within, the rivulets
of water, the arterial pathways, feed the treasure chest,
and you, farmer, planter, grower, picker, plucker of the
produce, serve us, baskets grown on the fruited plain of

poems’ soil consisting of the writings grown in the
unique you,
all of you,
body & soul
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
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