3:15am

<•>

unlike a first kiss, a first love,
the premiere awkward first coupling,
which when one recalls it
appears with ever increasing fuzziness (intentionally?)
or not at all, so much so that making it up based on
fleeting hazed glimpses of unmemorized dreams
just to have an “official entry in the cloudy memory,”
is a semi-necessity for regaling...nobody

but you never forget your virginal
projectile vomiting

there is even an emoji for it,
a hurling curling celebration

like a computer reset,
a confessional admission
that includes your own original
original sin,
a purging so complete,
it is a rebirthing of sorts,
a human do over

(c’mon c’mon get on with this, this
no kiss, a most undeserving bizzaring poem title choice)

each and every time I draw forth
the words on the in sides of me
they are ejected with force comparable,
my body rejecting l'étranger,
who’s now escaping

no first kiss, miss, no laughing at one’s first tumbling fumbling,
there is no smiling recollections sweet,
a cover up for your exciting intimation initiations faint revisions

but your first writing!

given up and out in a ejection burst,
a needle in the arm, gunshot
fluids *******, spit out,
without malice aforethought,
and this your last writing

this one, yes, this one.
comes quick, rough and inelegant,
expulsion combustion leaving you
panting on the cold floor you emptied
but
sorta of whole, a clean sheet, so to speak,
swearing you’ll never do this again,
must be an easier way,
to just slow secrete it holy,
or give up the drug of writing
raven forevermore nevermore

nope-u-dope

the vision of a long ago rabbi,
being burned to death slowly
by the Romans, wrapped in
dampened torah scripture scrolls
to lengthen the burnished burning,
a vision burned into a
very youthful boy’s consciousness,
the holy black ink hand drawn letters flowing
from martyr’s mouth, flying heavenward
this fresh within,
a childhood image primal mind,
is ways present
as each letter typed, formulating mathematically,
based on an artificial intelligence theorem,
that updates itself with every missive,
until the new poem is
projectile released in
a single ***** bursting,
purging of the urging

and guess what,

it just happened again

4/27/18

~for Sky, whose poems endearing found me, in her brazen ways,
which is what poets do~
https://hellopoetry.com/sheepskyny/

consciously, willfully, I wish it

quietly the Sunday, the sun day, drifts toward,
in its natural game, set, overmatched,
the foregone conclusion, nightfall diminishment

the water songfully swishes,
as the tide departs for places unknown, this then, now
the only natural authorized aural apparition,
the power boats renounce their normal noisy conditioning,
honoring their silenced, under-sail brethren,
as well as admitting their noises disfigure
the fast approaching majesty of the end of
our summer seasoning of humanity

consciously, willfully, I wish it

once again, lush is the quietude,^
now given up, surrendered and surceased to wonder,
how come I to write of these moments so oft,
thenever-ending quest to re-inscribe it on my sensibilities,
in vainglorious hopes that this stamping will last, be the last,
see me through the turgid frigidity of my Lucifer life,
come the fall, the winter, the early dark,
the daylight's brevity, the hurricane season of the mind,
that...need I say more?

consciously, willfully, I wish it

the particular white cloud formation of the moment at hand,
shall stay in place,  be the capstone of my summer living vision,
become permanent part and parcel
of the sclera, the white of my eyes, and when
I will write, soon enough,
my vision white weeping clouded,
you will weep knowingly, sympathetically

consciously, willfully,
I wish for that as well*

8/27/17
6:35pm

nobody gets the cancer twice.  
(a blues guitar riff)

blood in the stool
ain’t nobody’s fool,
whent to high school
did not graduate,
but know it wasn’t no thing I ate

scale greets me friendly like,
long lost buddy from yesterday morn,
‘let get right down to it,
let’s see how much less of you borne
leftover alive from the prior day’

spirit spit blood from my gums,
got me a woman, she’s way over town,
woman said I’m brushing with
too hard a brush, alright, alright,
make no fuss, she’s good to me

nobody’s fool whent to school,
though I did not graduate,
a mean riff is better than a
slow moving woman blues cry,
got the strings to do my screaming

doctor is a fan, name is Jimmy,
played music like last time round,
Jimmy-jamming, dancing in the waiting room,
“that cancer got kick, it’s gonna get ya,
think I told ya that about hunner times before”

‘nobody gets the cancer twice,’
an old wives tale for unlucky po’ somofabitches,
do you some tests, tell ya the specifics,
right now, lay, lay down them new tracks,
no quitting time less the good lord comes a-calling’

blues guitar makes a man
cry shiver scream and shake,
progressions licks and tricks,
so you can’t tell what’s making
a grownup man cry and laugh louder

bring me my medicine
bring me my guitar
all I know is how it makes me feel,
oh baby once a night it’s true,
nobody gets the cancer twice

Abbreviations of the Life Human

these little stories, bejeweled poeticals, long tall tales,
short-held breaths from the savings account breast,
all slow withdrawing-dawning,
all are but the abbreviations of the life human

my fav of course,
the one, the twenty six
the aleph best bet

<•>

4-16-18 10:47pm
a mondo Monday survivors prayer

“I’m still in awe of words” (in life, as in poetry, timing is everything)

objects, humans, surprise and interrupt our
daily modalities, knocking us, yo! to the ground,
we, pounding it, for the word void appears,
the frustration of incapacity incarcerating,
accompanied by the loudest silenced scream,
of no poetry available, try again later!

in life, as in poetry, timing is everything

we walkabout, thinking of the scheduled eventualities, or
the dates calendar-circled, though some questioned marked,
in pencil inserted, will I be a mother, find me a husband,
a human grander grandee, fit to be with me a noble progenitor
of more than our generation, watching the sidewalk cracks for an
inkling of when, on or about such and such an alteration,
a seam undone,
a stumbling, seeing a realization as we fall, hands extending,
a notice of arrival,
all needing reconnoitering, commemorating, a poem prepared,
but none to no avail

in life, as in poetry, timing is everything

so we are in awe of words, so necessary, everybody knows,
the awe in awesome, a description for the pixels encapsulates
in I-phone photos,
the where and the why of when, I was grinning like a stupid fool,
the inability to deliver precisely when required the covering of
an appropriate description, your words, use your words, will
fail you spectacularly and so we remain awed, realizing

in life, as in poetry, timing is everything

but awesomely awesome word worlds, near and dear, held forever
in scrapbooks, the literary overlay of the treasures of everyday life,
are the still life of our longevity contextual, the celebratory,
the unexpected losses, largest to smallest, in size order,
kept fresh when you flip through those poems in dusty binders,
in oversized sewing boxes, yellowing in concert with our eyes,
graying with follicles of past pluperfect,
recalling not just the when’s, but the more important,  now, the
wherefore and whereupon, the words marking the conjunctions,
recoding the recorded synapses firing sequentially, brain to fingers, the ah so of the poetry of lifetimes

“I’m still in awe of words” (in life, as in poetry, timing is everything)

<>

Saturday
September
21st
2019

"We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow," U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón writes in her new poem that will fly to Jupiter's moon Europa aboard NASA's Europa Clipper mission.

"And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain."
The poem, unveiled at an event tonight at the Library of Congress, is going to be engraved in Limón's handwriting and affixed to the spacecraft, expected to launch in October 2024, Miriam writes.
The big picture: The Europa Clipper mission follows in the tradition of others — like NASA's Voyagers — that have sent pieces of art representing humanity into the cosmos.

The poem uses water as a thread that binds Earth — and all of its humans — to Europa, a moon with an ocean beneath its icy shell.
For Limón, writing this poem was a very human endeavor.

"The thing I think that makes me the most beautifully overwhelmed is the idea of all the humans that are going to read it," she tells Axios.
The poem, called "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," is featured on a NASA webpage where people can sign up to send their names to Europa with the spacecraft.
"I think to have it feel collective is really, really extraordinary to me, because it does feel like it's not my poem," Limón says. "It does feel like a collective poem. And as soon as I wrote it, it felt like oh, this belongs to Earth. This is our poem for Earth."
Between the lines: Sending this poem to Europa is an "evolution" of NASA's Golden Record, which is flying through space aboard the Voyager spacecraft, Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist, tells Axios.

Those records contain sounds from Earth — including music, laughter and animal noises — as well as a map of where we are in the galaxy. They are now billions of miles away, flying through interstellar space.
"This is an outgrowth in that we're not going to the stars," Pappalardo says. "There's no message to aliens here. This is purely a message to ourselves and a symbolic message to Europa."

-for Olson-

this gift of envisioning words repurposed contextually,
untethered not from meaning, but used in a meaningful but
newly birthed, eye delighting manner of speaking, well, so well,
somewhere between copious laughter, adulterated glee
and tears of amazed jealousy, mock myself thinking this poet
makes me feel like English is just my second(ary) language and I sadly speak no other.

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

VEA EN ESPAÑOL
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

WRITTEN BY U.S. POET LAUREATE:

portrait of author