for Drumhound,
whose poems make me weep in the early morn.

Which drop in the salt sea can say
I am better, I am the best,
only the visceral,
vis-a-real,
truth from the vision.

This drop we cherish,
this drop is serious,
this drop, we keep.*

No man is a poet
to his wife and child.

First Foremost,
he is just theirs,

Then the world can have him
as just a poet,
after they are done,
loving him for his totality.


Drumhound has no definition in the dictionary.

So I wrote this, my own, my visceral, my virtual one,
my vision real and realized,
his word vise on me, surreal.

Plain among poets,
a salt sea drop I keep.

Once anything is defined, it exists forever.

like a single scraggly blade of grass
of a poem I once memorized,
about a child I did not know,
but know so well,
a human-memory survives perennial,
once defined, forever lives.

a man gave me that phrase as a gift today.
quiver of constant smiles

for well he could,
yet little did he ken
the nature of the present

because
I read the smiles as the
tween the spaces,
in between the words of
anguish that never goes away

how can this be,
how to make sense of this

well I am a father too,
of words and sobs
and ownership of sins
between sons and fathers,
who inhabit
the unfilled spaces within,
the drawers with their name
on masking tape attached

Your fathers's hell will slowly go by

Show me a man-father
whose lips
have not quiet quivered
when hearing those words sung

we ease the grip of

carrying them on our shoulders
when they are five at the
Macy's day parade,
running alongside their first
solo bicycle ride

we ease the grip of
the vise of

not seeing them for years,
or never again,
cause they hold you guilty,
responsible for their confusion

have too, ease the grip,
cause we got more than one
singular responsibility

so we dad draw,
a smile from the quiver,
that like those of the elves,
replenished magically,
strap it on wide,
mile high and move on

oh you teenage children, you babies,
with your endless angst and bravado
of drunken scar talk,
first love lost
and the hard course
of being sixteen

put down your tiresome blunt pens
that revel only in Self-intensity glorious-galore,
read of the self destruction
of love pains thirty years in the making
and fifty in the undoing

write of ancient inescapable feelings
decades in the vat, aging, but drunk in the
moment quick searing of
every life breath you take

and it's Sunday nite
and the work week hell begins
but it is no compare to the other,
but ****, you can't understand

so chant these words,

reflect on them well,
for soon while you dream sleep,
in clean, dry sheets and safe bed
a man will come for a peep,
to make the checkmark
on the all's well list

so chant these words,
a sad violin melody,
the single sole he ever hears,


**Your fathers's hell will slowly go by

a  flawless poem
if such there were,
will always be,
the next one

my poor soul,
my rag tag heart
has no censor,
so careless, reckless,
as if words were but
frivolous treasures,
easy spent, easy get

if only, how I wish I
could harvest my best,
with golden cutlery excise
the single flawless poem,
that I know in my possess

lay down this hand so weary
from cupping tears,
be satisfied at long last,
so much so,
that my casket lowered,
hands in repose companioned,
clutching his best, easing his rest,
a paper record to join his ash,
his flawless poem,
at long last