I spoke to Kissinger this week

~for C. C.   the reluctant poet~


read him your poem,

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1933595/kissinger-on-park/

spoke of your reluctance
to write without the encouragement of others
(see below)

K. said poetry writing
very similar to decision making -
a single letter addition makes it into a wry thing:

writhing

but once you’ve published,
  once you have made the policy decision
then and only then begins the incision
that others cut upon your chest,
to fill with infectious assassination or
admiration,
at the risk taken

K. said: pray and trust that you reluctant fellow
and I
can non-disclose (hide) our internist discordance,
neath a sheen of stolidity that is a
pretense gravitas cover-up certainty,
for we wince when they shoulder tap you with
hindsight queries that you recognize
as retro grade F seeds
of inequitude

if you require recognition as encouragement, K. intoned,
prepare prepayments for your poems,
you have failed before even starting

please your self, lad, no one else,
reluctance is the chief ingredient in failure
do the work and pray for grace to do some
yeoman-well-enough to carry others upon the outgoing tide
of your burdened shoulders

this man who transmits my words
has been kicked off the fence, rejected,
a
frequent wrong road chooser,
for at least 25 years too,
stiff-necked like me, refuge survivor,
who leaves it all the way out
from no one nothing hiding,
freely acknowledges the policy errors of his wasted life,
can not be but the finest fodder for the retrospective historians
but he reminds us
loving children and animals is one way to say
I am so sorry for
the human judgments one must make when
first you sign your true and honest name
at the end of a
poem
or a war they call yours

reluctance is a luxury one can ill afford,
it seeps and permeates in the guise
of a sleepless temerity
and cracks the reflection served up
in the mornings first judgement,
that is,
if you dare to
reflect

<•>

~ a message from the Reluctant Poet~

“I'm a reluctant poet myself -
just started getting some
positive responses here recently,
which is ever so heartening.
I have three poems total posted!...
I'm just happy when
I can get deep down and say
what I want to say, and
hopefully give it a little beauty and
poetical magic for good measure.
The rest is up to the dear readers.”*
<•>

Life comes at us in waves
Instead of hiding away in a cave
I take to the water
I glide to the bottom and look up
Sunlight on the surface is breathtaking
It breaks into a million pieces
Glittering like diamonds in the sea
The light bounces and does a dance for me
It is soft and serene
and puts me at ease

~for granddaughter Wendy on her first birthday~

mailman delivers a
a small bubble wrapped envelope,
an internet purchase made a long sometime ago  
accompanied by an enjoyable, self-served and self-serving,
"you're a good fella"
          pat on the back        

a spurting act of the what-the-heck,
trigger pulling, self-pleasuring,
donating a few bucks to saving poetry,
****** in by a suckers click bait

sent money to the
   keepers of poems;   
they even give something
in return.

sensible pencils.  

a non-rational purchase;
@ $6 dollars per leaded squib,
a wooden helping kiss rife with possibilities

all for a goodly cause
preservation band society poetic

this one-and-done impulse many weeks ago, 
followed by an immediacy forgeting,
then, an eye stabbing,
a widening wow weeks later
upon receipt
of an unexpected 5 pencil's all poems poetry reciting!

5 pencils. No. 2’s,
on each a phrase,
a poet's name and their singular words parsed
(see the notes).

paired passages from five poets,
deemed and distinguished to be
commemorated-worthy
and
what's more apropos than a dangerous  instrument of a
loaded leaded pencil,
that can be used to add to the  
Ever Expanding Universe of Verbal Liturgy
("and I helped")
.
once briefly dusted off the top of closeted dreamy days,
my notions of acclaim gone, silly gone,
my only marks now are erasures,
tiny rubber sheddings on paper
that's my marker,
a minus mark of deletion.

may yet come the day,
one will one gather up the
many survivors,
poem fauns, all my orphans,
give them to the
Wendy baby,

first,
she to metamorphose those
baby squeaks and  giggles,
weighty weightless poem noises,
clapping, waving, delighted and delighting, kiss-throwing videos and that milk covered face,
into her own living words

all these noises that makes even non-poets
smile ear to ear unabashedly,
nodding in delight agreement
to her own non verbal
original poems
:
perhaps
one day a little girl
will stumble on five pencils,
mixed in within fifteen hundred poems not particularly well hid,
between worthless insurance policies and other artifacts,
memoirs and pointless depositions,
hid between her older sister and brother's
crayoned keepsakes

  with pointed newly sharpened pencils
the very same,
this,
his Wendy,
might add
to the grandpere's poem collection with
pencils begging to be used,
for they are generationally and genetically,
pre-poetically enabled,
weighting the old memories
with new ballast and new balance,
from new verbal babies
all of her own.