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

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

"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."

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

own the title, and perhaps
what follows, but,
“it,”
came & went,
like so many desires,
moments to momentarily,
only to retreat to unreachable
recesses,
shelves in my mind,
for Without Witchcrafon Steam,
no ladder exists
for them be cleansed
or reached,

except when my dreams bleed

it is almost unfair that time is
not
on my side,
that I am eaten alive
by insiders, no
that self~kerrects,
to mere acquaintances,
more or lessened to

NOR

does the peculiar rain’s
that exists in my brain,
permits the razors
not
to go undulled, unsullied,
no,
they are scathed to
unshaven , un-sharpened,
where &
when I search for a
bon mot, invariably
the answer is a 503.
gateway closed to thee/me,
by virtue of your lack of
virtues

nor
is the motif,
my scrappy pieces
of no resistance

for all are closing rapid,
and that’s an endpoint
of sordid…

now the brain bleeds
persistent
no contented to wait
for just dreams,
the rain is hard at work
24/7

~for Jill~

“from your messages”
elsewhere scribed, a
confession that your comments
be challenges like cool
well water drawn, a
fresh mix and minx,
a two flavored scoop
on a waffle (or sugar) cone,
mmm call mine, flavors of
inspiration and aspirations

it’s 2:46am, one would think
that a deadrose would know
better behavior, but up is up,
and down down down-come
tumbling words, as usual,
each screeching hoarsely

“pick me, pick me!”

uncover your note of appreciation,
side splitting laugh in shame md shock,
that spellcheck has altered intent,
one day, likely a  cause of a war,
or e v e n a new poem

peddle a rose
became
“pedal a rose,”
invitingly nonsensical,
my point exactly

but the awake-too-late idiot,
can’t stop me now ~ urgency
has mastered my     common
sensibility, thus        commanded
me to write and shine

somewhere nearby,(1)
babies be borning,
and flippers of coins,
old humans too,
be expiring on the
sell-by-date
some surrounded,
all surrendering

Angels sent to
both sides now,
to ferry them
back home,
their adventures
completed or a
preface begun

Oh
for the ferryman
to ferry them
across rivers whistling
hello my darlings,
to a new home,
with a clean
writing tablet
to inscribe their
owned
future or past,
making their case
for a future or a
memorized posterity

I am dancing on the edge
of that first category,
dancing tap before that ——,
unwilling to cross over
and the angel sent
with collection papers,
mine and JoeBideen,
can’t touch us yet,
while in the middle
of our latest composition
(ya didn’t know?)

where in the world
has this to do with
pedaling roses?

the angels offer enticements,
write like the great ones,
sit at the feet of Leonard & Sylvia,
get introduced to the author of
“Leaves of Grass,”

who will amend and correct
(using spellcheck)
your own new scriptures

for rules From Above,
are carefully careless,
and don’t care about
impossibility so
leap with me,
onto a bicycle of roses,
each pedal a petal,
each tire of  woven stems,

our destination is
everywhere, our purpose
to bring scent to those
who still have need to
breathe, and those’d who have
ceased
being needy
forever

filling nostrils
with colors of roses,
and finding poems
on the floor, full writ,
purposely scribbled
and scripted for just
a jilly one,
(just like
this
one)

just lacking a title,
just lacking a name,
customed for a single
customer, now a custodian
of a new born baby
poem
ready to be fedex’d
to its new owner
and deposited in
the this bank here,
right here

so thank you for
revealing my
inadvertent typo,
and aiding in my
quest to bring it to
a new life,
but must petal on,
for new babies are
being born and need
wrapping in a
a bed of white petals,
fresh happily donated from
living roses!

3:19am

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

a passing balloon piece,
his, within in a message,
makes the imagery explode
with numerous contractions,
even confusions, and requires an
explaining explication and a fresh
application of sealant

men see the words ~ think war or football,
women think of the lyric, phrase in a sad
love ballad that means recall, and a
moistening  tear drop that liquifies but doesn’t drop

but that word, pulverized,  has an enormity
attached, that conjures destruction total,
s battlefield’s aftermath, tree stumps cut
down, synchronized with bodies in parts,
sole souls departing
without reasoning/justification

the lineage upon her face,
pulverized by sorrow and
no expectations for the morrow,
gaveled into existence,
by losses and carried
for a length of  a term ill defined,
as “life”
with no hint of irony, for it’s not life
when  it’s spent reminiscing remembering
the dismemberment of what was a
joy taken instantly and perpetually inexplicabe

the tragedies multicolored in black,
a solid stolid state that nary a meter,
talking centi’s here, pinch of breeze
and /or hurricane alters status quo,
both of us have long known that, but
we nonetheless pick up grains, single
alphabet scrambled pieces to put the
whole together again, but it’s a cause
hopeless cause we be
are
pulverized inside so
the chorded chore is
a double whammy
and still
and yet
we say
but,
for we cannot stop our fingers
from their appointed rounds
and we think in term not of hope
but a thought out louded,
the eternal question,
what if
we do not try?

-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.

it’s early, a stilling stillness
everywhere a spilling,
earbuds enforce the silence
pushed off to one side,
to lay still,

&

let the music
gentle us
into
the
possibilities of the
day a~head,
before us with,
its many complications

three songs about the heart,
love lungs singing and ****
reminders that this loving,
    this unscientific unscripted
heart felt notion is but notional,

that heart
is a hard thing to use,
more complications than
mundane body parts,

I’m thinking
what is it,
a regulatory body,
a government,
a conspiracy of certain cells
of cells
to charge a toll
to let the blood be pumped
back and through,
that the billions
may live on

now after many decades
this decadent heart
wonders less what
is it about this
***** that we
breathers
believers
that we
ask so
much?

short sweet answer complete;
work forever
so that we
may never be
a too deaden
flower

and let us peddle our
poems like petals,
*and even petal them
roses to those whose
whose scent lives for
more than
ever
than
just