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AND HERE BE A POEM FOR THE NATIONAL POETRY DAY THAT WAS IN IT...WITH MY LITTLE ONE TRYING TO ATTAIN LANGUAGE!

THE MAP OF LANGUAGE

"Ma!" you say
"DA!' you say
your words create us

"BA! BA! BA!"
she tells the mirror
just who she is

she follows
the map of language
arriving at a new word

unable to discover
a word
she invents her own

uses words
to map
her universe

words
the how of what
is

like everything else
she puts it in her mouth
tastes the language
DA VINCI'S GHOST

I listen to
classical guitar in the dark

with only a single
candle for company.

These my teenage years.

Music and flame
travel through my mind

unveiling thought.

Da Vinci's
Vitruvian man

pinned to the wall
with most pins missing.

He comes alive
in the candle's flicker.

Gets into a flap
each time the door opens.

Little brother is spooked
by that Vitruvian stare

but is fascinated by the fact
that he exists

within a circle
within a square.

Like a priest I
dress my self in the garb

of Leonardo's words.

"Write what the soul is.

Illustrate whence comes....madness.
Whence...tears.
Whence...dreams!"

The whences make him wince.

As he sees it:  "...it is like a man
travelling through time

in his dream machine
and arriving at his own

dying
becoming his own

ghost."

Our mother's voice
calls him

and he is grateful to escape
his own thought.



Now, here I am
at your death

as you step inside
the circle
(inside the square).

You stare back at me
with that Vitruvian stare

and I " try to write
what the soul is."



And this is what I was listening to when he came in and encountered the Da Vinci. Back then he was only my little nine year old brother. The drawing spooked him but the music he liked.
THE MAP OF LANGUAGE

"Ma!" you say
"DA!' you say
your words create us

"BA! BA! BA!"
she tells the mirror
just who she is

she follows
the map of language
arriving at a new word

unable to discover
a word
she invents her own

uses words
to map
her universe

words
the how of what
is

like everything else
she puts it in her mouth
tastes the word
THAT WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS MOMENT

apoplectic God
furiously reads note
attached to branch in place of apple

“This is just to say
we have eaten of the fruit
in the middle of the garden

and which you
told us not to
forgive us it was so

sweet
and deliciously
Knowledgeable.”

so much depended upon
that rain glazed
red apple

they stand wailing
and gnashing
their teeth

beside the bitten
red apple
with the white teeth marks
ET C'EST L'AMOUR QUI S'ÉVEILLE

between one wave
and the next
the kiss

pulling them under
startling a fish
looking at them in wonder

breathing each other in
before breaking the water again
back to the world of light

and there was the sun
being a yellow ball
in a miracle of blue

swooping laughter
kiss after kiss
the seagulls heckling them
THE ONE ABOUT...

"Did you hear the one about..."
Death's
already laughing

"...a fireman, a butcher & a janitor
walked into a War..."
Death loves to tell this joke

Sometimes Death changes the details
"...a guy from Omaha, Ohio & Nebraska
walked into a War..."

"...and the shell fell into
the hole they were cowering in..."
Death cracks up

"...an 18 year old & two guys of twenty
walked into a War. . ."
"Wot's yer poison?" Death snickers

"...some guys called Sam, Hank & Frank
walked into a bar in a War and
they don't ever ever walk out..."
FAIRYTALE

I sit by your bedside
watching your dying.

Only Love
nails me to this pain.

I unable to escape
your dying.

I tell you
Irish legends
& Hans Christian Anderson

as you become
again

(if only for a little while)

the child
you used to be

once upon a time

when wonder & delight
were new
as daylight.

“Tell me Lir! ”

“Tell me the Children of Lir! ”

I tell
of how

they are turned into swans
& the loneliness of eternity.

I too knit nettles
to break the spell

throw the garment over
your cancer’d body

so you can
return again
to being

the human
I have known.

This dying is cruel
beyond belief.

An insult
to your life.

I love you so much I would **** you
if I could **** you
but I...can’t.

I want every breath
of you

not to be your last.

You journey to your death
dancing with your pain

my little mermaid
my little ballerina

I guard
your dying

a Constant
Tin Soldier

as you become
foam

foam
on the sea.

Just a day ago
******* a sultana

I held
on the tip of my fingertip

telling me to call your name.

“I love
living in your voice! ”

“So nice...so nice! ”

And I a blind Prince

wandering now
lost in the fairy tale

of your Death.

I close
your eyes.

kiss the last warmth
of your lips.
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