for Jul
<•>
your style, it is who you are

some can dance only to the music of haiku,
some, in anger birthed, can only call out, cursing the world,
with poems beginning and ending with a rousing fk you

your style, it is who you are

most guilty of only perspective inward,
micro-scoping to the cellar cellular level
where in glass stained slides everything revealed, criticized,
the tissues of selfish, the cancerous fears, the shocking
discovery that we are mostly mineral water of kindness galore glory

your style, it is who you are

a few see a solitary leaf,
gravity kissed, flutter to mother earth,
and write of a voyage re-versed,
life in ascendancy,
upward bound, and cyclically, seasonally hopeful,
a reminder that the straightest lives are but a composition,
a series of rainbow colored curved lines,
connected dots on an arc of two by two,
say it's so, Noah!

your style, it is who you are

a handful see the morning daily in their first cuppa,
thinking
"when I look up it is quite possible,
will see the moon and the sun simultaneous occupying
a sunrise and surely more miracles
are possible, unseen, unnoticed, god bless"

your style, it is who you are

some will have their inscribed words endure as long
as the Georgia granite, their retainer, resists the elements,
overlooking the marks left on the human brain that
are a poetic monument invisible but far more
everlasting

your style, it is who you are

one or three, will write daily, chasing music, trying to forget
what just cannot be, and the abased case, there is no
The End
when offered a choice
to chase reborn every time, or not, always choose,
just another photo or poem continuum
for memories are multi-generational in both

your style, it is who you are

are you the one who loves to write, but more so,
writes of love over over repeatedly, for the words
exotic, ******, poetic and ultimately infinitely~intimately,
one and the same?

are you the young one who needs to expiate the sin
of a broken heart, a broken home, a brokenness so
persuasive there will be no relief until someone
person n e w will be a stumbled-on, and the earth will be
torridly recreated and the prior ache just a discarded bandaid,
come the go-morrow

your style, it is who you are

some write to heal, just to feel, to be sure,
they are who they claim to be, wise old young men who've seen too many big rivers that cannot be man-made dammed,
and even the tiny eddy flows of their skin will generate electricity
in praise of nature, never realizing that the human kind is
always the ever greater

your style, it is who you are,

those who are confined by the ropes of rhyme,
or to a script pentameter beaten and measured,
to you, gift the freedom to scream any way, any time,
that pleasures us all with words jointly treasured

your style, it is who you are

some in their garden write in both wistful
contentment and dissatisfaction of things
never to be crossed off, sallied forth, on the list,
but no mind, no matter, the generational ladder climbed,
looking ahead is a looking back of a life richly deployed,
and even the many...in between the poetic words,
and the poetic days, when one day, will be filled in,
these...
will be will be the pits, the seeds bearing still
more of the ripened fruit of that tree

your style, it is who you are

me?
as if me mattered, the littlest bit,
surely the o'clock nearest,
a boundary that cuckoo states
like a good ole friend,
dummy, as usual, you've gone on too long,
but that's your style, it is who you are, so leave some choice,
Grade A, poetic cavalcade of noises for the better poets,
who come everyday, new babies for a better day,
leaving me behind, so happily contented, to be just another scribbler

in my style, it is who I am
  
<•>

September 3rd, 2017
2:01am ~ 3:01am

before~after / conception~completion (my coordinates)

<•>
for the caretakers of the next generation
<•>

comes the everyday, the mundane,
the profane, meeting at
the X,Y ordinates of
ordinary sweat and struggling tears

oh! this stuff of life,
makes me groan and wonder out load,
what is the purpose beyond the
existence of being a
constantly in need of maintenance,
sustenance machine

then I hear but do not see
the hallway pitter patter,
the thrumming of purposed
direction certain,
four little feet
who between them don't posses
even a decade yet

on their way to the
sunroom, now renamed,
the playroom,
expropriated by their toys of eminent domain,
on their way to the life between the
before~after / conception~completion
and this point,
of a single moment,
an invisible sound,
of this particular life,
this extraordinary ordinate,
this X,Y locus,
this precision perceived location of something real,
it is a realized abstraction,
the exact point,
where my **coordinates are
harmonized

9/2/17
5:11am
SI

~ For Eliot York~
& Sally and Patty m
who convinced me to post it


The answer my friend is
but one,
just one.

Blessed are those who bless you.
I say it.
20 times a day,
and sometimes 2000


I have lived this life,
afraid to fail,
and in doing so,
in deed, because of it,
failed repeatedly.

yada, yada, yada,
in a gadda
da vida,
baby,
don't you know that I'll always be true.

nine lifetimes
all, longtime gone,
yet, I still talk among you all,
for which the
requiring, surviving,
is
a tiny tablet daily,
of swallowed pride, history and
adult/e/rated luck.

omnipotent natural forces,
pretend to manage human affairs
most unnaturally,
sandy gods of wind and storm
bring dämmerung's
Sturm und Drang.

these forces are the
placers, surveyors, tabulators
and ultimately the
takers
of the divine sparks within us.

yet,
before them,
on bended, torn knees,
I am humbled.

for knowing just
one read
is all it takes,
to be acknowledged and
thus begins a commencement of a life
of indentured servitude
in gratitude
to
le rêve poétique
(the dream poetic)

yet,
I.am read more oft
hundreds of times a day.
~
who could have foresaw,
prophesied this outcome,
a statistical anomaly,
that the taste of me
could be so,
miracle of miracles,
wet warm and well received.

know not this craft,
unaware of its conventions,
meter rhyme and to the
other laws of poetry,
I plead a woeful countenance,
even a willful ignorance.

yet,
here I am bowed
by the weight, of the good graces,
so many have bestowed,
from the four corners
of this Earth
and worlds beyond.

a nubile newcomer,
who long wrote to himself, for himself,
audience of
one + one = two,
the man and
his foolishness in words,
now betraying publicly
what no counselor, doctor judge or lover, lawyer ever knew,
even family.

but who are you?

plainly admit,
do not understand.

ok there is a handful times five,
we are well connected,
a small coterie who
share each others
most private painful secrets,
pari-passu-mutuel,
mots friends of faithfulness,
dare not, deign, diminish them
ever
by calling them followers,
for now they are friends

but who are the rest of you?

step forward,
identify yourself,
that upon thy neck
I may fall,
whispering in your ears,
sweet I.am thanksgiving yam-words

none of us can be a sweet poem pie
unacknowledged,
unstated, unsated, untasted
and forever believe.

it takes lioness courage
to present your naked self,
place thy head in the guillotine,
expecting the silent applause of ignorance,
expect to be ignored,
just another head in the collection basket,
accursing those who curse you with
the now quieted slaughtered lambs,
the scribe's swords of smoke,
plaintive waterwords vaporized,
seeds unplanted,
the bleating sounds silenced.

He crouched, he lay down like a lion
    and like a lioness; who will rouse him up?

I am a poet of the present,
you have brought me out of Egypt.

you have roused
my present days dying,
making my days of dwelling,
in the tent of Jacob,
an encampment of palm groves,
as a present
unto me.

The answer
is indeed just as you expected,
blowing in the wind,
through cedar trees beside the waters,
in the gardens, beside a river...

just one,
how thankful I.am to say,
blessed are those who bless you,
each and every
One.**

<•>
written so long ago the date was erased,
back when the journey of a thousand too long poems,
was just beginning
posted only because
a few of you insisted.
If perchance you think this is some kind of self-glorification,
then you don't get me at all.
<•>

"the ever shifting light of ourselves"
(a poem such as this)

For Jamadhi V.

<•>
8/28/17

at 11:09am,
the phrase arrests itself, then assertive,
ungently demanding fulfillment,
implanted, it cares not my whereabouts,
it is a child~phrase, inexact, mysterious,
wanting its breast milk feeding immediate
no matter where my presence visible

but to me, it stinks of familiarity,
for my shifts, my redrawn shapes,
exhausting, giving me cause to grieve,
write poems such as this,
which I regret both
before~after conception~completion,
written in a fevered misery of fervor,
hoping,
no one ever likes it and its witnessing

as light ever shifts,
it consumes, extinguishes, reignites,
poorly lit, revealing dregs and dustbins

better then to sit in the darkness
the one you call,
getting it over with...

6:00pm
<•>

~~~~~~~~

*the swelling and the spume

for Lucy:

who gave me the title, three poems, a compliment, and the X Factor {inspiration}
~~~
the spume, the sea foam concentrate,
a greener white
by the the salt and the souls of the
million dead organisms,
that are are the compost of its formation,
it, watches the poet, who watches the spume,
come ashore for its final act of
immolation by evaporation

which is why the random act of
an unseen ministering force,
fills my ears with humbling glory of
Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei,^
my fresh reminder that this swelling chest
in this temporary abode of mine,
by the sea, passage is prepaid for my
expiration by evaporation too,
all lambs march to the sea,
returning to spume
~
Lyrics to Agnus Dei:
^ Alleluia Alleluia
For our Lord God Almighty reigns
Alleluia Alleluia
For our Load God Almighty reigns
Alleluia
Holy Holy
Are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
You are Holy
Holy
Are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
Amen

~~~~~~

"may all my lost lovers haunt me"

for Vinnie Brown

even your kindergarten crushes?

what burdens you seek to retain,
the edgy border of delicious and pain is a raggedy cut line,
as lost lovings rhymes with duality

Once upon a time,
a middle aged man
left the woman he married,
the one who drained and cruel reigned
over the destruction of his-dreams
for one accidentally stumbled into,
the love who blurred his edges as well,
between forgotten happiness and
pain so bad when she grew tired
of his life's complications and the
valises of drama,
she left him,
weeping on the corner of Broadway and 83rd Street

was that 20, 30 years ago?
a memory
from no matters land
but
the physical ache that marred the hearth in the chest for months and months,
sent him to the doc who smiled sweetly
but gave him, had no, no relief for busted grownup hearts
that had normal  EKG's

and that remains a treasured affirmation to this day of
life's capacity to love that comes with an ingrown danger
of never forgetting

did you know the French outlawed the use of the term
Mademoiselle in '12 (Mlle.)?

I loved that salutation,
calling my one true lovers
with the soft feminism of that address

and still do

and you want to recall
kindergarten crushes?

Mister Vinnie
possesses a lovely contradiction,
holding onto
lost lover sickness
that lives on in good love poems

this my new found poet
is how that he, this aching heart,
fast approaching his shore line for one last return and final departure
repays a sweet compliment,
from one who complements
another man's lovely's insane desire to
never forget any of it

~~~~~~*

reading love poetry and listening to
Joni M.,
at 3:09AM
never wise,
but always full of hindsight