He arises in the morning
with nothing to say
He arises in the evening
after being quiet all day

His thoughts they are a dancing  -
The future is dark
The past is bleak
with nothing to dream

The dawn it arises,
At night, the sun
it heads down
Time it stands still
when you have nothing to say  -
You've tried your best in
your own way
Nothing seems to come
but
despair and dismay.

A lover she comes
A lover she goes
Your creations,
they all grow trite
and old

Playing cat's cradle
with a line of string
at the tear line
not knowing
whether to cry
or go numb

Like our lives,
a spider web
on a tree
blowing and shimmering
in the sun light winds.

He arises and dresses
Heads out for his day
With nothing to say.

Must have a goal
Go get that thing
What if I want
To stop and sing

Retreat inside
Wait out the storm
Else feel the wrath
Of nature scorned

Instead a kid
I wish to be
To feel alive
And so carefree

Each drip, each drop
Upon my head
Wish I could splash
In rain instead

I'd watch the sky
Explode with light
A warming joy
Not filled with fright

When did I lose
Sight of it all
Predictable
Pattern I fall

Start living in
Every moment
Past and future
Wasted and spent

Granted a new
Chance I'm given
Can not redo
But start living

Each day awake
Fresh start; Can be
World's my oyster
Alive and free

and

you think you are done with it.
but the notion potion returns
with your stolen free will
taunting and tearing, sealing
and then dissolving
the seals

no retirement in this world
from where human means pliable
and pliable means capable of being
twisted; nay, retwisted...

last we left you,
we were weeping on the
concrete sidewalk of
Third Avenue, the police,
giving you a move on command,
as Jean Valjean earworms one into
the incapacity of movement  
because of the audacity to request
to bring him home

such is the sorrow of the lost child;
it comes with irregularity
yet, never failing to return,
the child lost, the residual, resides
within like a violin adagio reaching
the punishing silence
after a crescendo that  pretense
promised momentary relief

we struggle to keep any and all keepsakes,
polished and fed; rust and time,
no polish in the five & time dime
that does a good enough job,
but you buy it anyway

well aware that fate will inevitably
rob you, it’s so purposed

twist you, retest you and re-will you, to never forget until
you have no need for forgetting but the peace of
constant remembering when all on that day
molecules and nucleotides
collide in the atmosphere,
dog licking, cat weeping purrs, meaning hallelujah home

the endless sadness of the lost lad-ness,
dimly grow the recollections of the first word,
the first delight, the confidence complete
that your babe is non pareil;
the violin sweeps you along and the
genteel tide still too string strong to resist

the woman comes into the room;
the reddened eyes no hide
the weeping outside and in the centerpiece of a soul;
why she asks, not surprised for she’s seen it
too many **** poem-times:

my Adam, I answer;
suffices and wisely
leaves me to
compose and decompose simultaneously
weeping weeping forever weeping
even when not

furious eddies rock smashing,
curious they splash me with taunts
"you want for naught!"

but naught is the only possess
that owing it makes one impoverished

perhaps he will email me, ewail me,
does he know I am at the
Wailing Wall, Jerusalem,
insert parchment prayers for his safety

oh my Absalom, oh my Adam, my favorite first born,
come sit next to me on the sidewalk
so close to where you live,
comfort me as in the days of your youth,
now that we are both
so very much older

sleep well all you lads and children,
never mind these unstoppable tearings,
never mind the heaviness,
for it has passed
as the tears ~shed,
enlighten and lessen
my embodiment

7/16/18 prone and alone

it's funny the things you forget
when asked for an 'interesting fact' --

you sleep on them for days
and exhume them from the ground
because they matter! so deeply!!
there's no metaphor that does them justice!!
it's poetry because it isn't!!!

i don't know my siblings.
my parents sleep in my dead grandad's bed
and i received his cupboards:
yeah, we're pretty much begging to be haunted.
let's be positive, it'd be nice to see him again.

thanks to reinforced childhood superstition,
i still pick up pennies from the ground
(yup, even with my germ phobia).

i used to write to the tooth fairy!
she warned me about gum disease.
her name was tiffy, but it turned out to
just be mum writing with her left hand.

as an internet-addicted hermit,
little me hated going abroad
since the only friends i felt i had were online.
there's thus a list of places to someday re-visit -
rotterdam is one.

i'd like to be somebody's muse.
if my life plan fails,
i want to work in a funeral parlour:
it feels as though i'd do it justice.

watching the same film more than once
just isn't something i do -- except grease --
exceptions can be made when it's on TV.

i mean, c'mon, it's grease.

~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.