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Arrive in a neighborhood not mine.
Phoenix sun splits the mailboxes,
Cracked cement, bald lawns, deflated kiddie pools,
sippy cups gone brittle in the sun.

A toddler screams
until a sibling gathers him inside.
Helios whips his chariot down the street,
steals my parking space.
White Shell Woman hushes the child
with a wind of cool dust.

I buy
donuts, Cheetos, pickles-
eat them in the car.
Gas station sink, hair and grit.
I scrub off orange powder.
Kokopelli swings from the paper towel rack,
flicking drops of water onto my face,
flirting, laughing at my small hungers.

Cemetery, sitting on the hood.
Graves hum in the heat.
Yours more-so.
Hecate steps from the shadow of a mesquite,
offers me three paths,
none of them home.
Coyote pads along the stone wall,
head cocked, grin sharp,
watching my pulse quicken.
White Shell Woman whispers:
Run.

The blood in me stirs-
knife-bright, restless.
I step off the hood,
already fleeing toward
any other life.
How shall I discover, uncover, and re+cover you?

the goal?
to make you mine, a follower. a fan, an intimate, a lover of'
each others (words?)

My options?

offered thee three to me!
A~Z,

or  
your successes by
Popularity!

then of course,
read each crafted in order
of appearance,
but even that,
can be forward and back,
latest to last~est,
oldest to the knowing~est?

value your insightsfuls,
oh! on how to get best
into your insides but through
your
insights...

do I detect a tiny tremble,
in your finger writing tips?

random < in no particular order order>  helter skelter?
you mean, be keen,  like falling in loving,
discovering, the nuances,
old and new, prior and au courant,
just jump in, and let the au current
take me//

mmm
do admit, like a bit,
being big fandom of random,
which feels a tad like falling in love...
when the little surprises,
come best unexpectedly

tonight,
I will stuff myself with carbohydrates of additional sugar,
me love me sweets,
love me my bittersweet chocolate of triste,
which in english, has multiple levels of
most interesting con-
notations....

so down the hole,
who knows what will be
discovered
unveiled,
recovered,
hidden weaknesses,
historic strengths,
you asked...
and I shall be
the uncoverer
of the little tidbits,
that satisfy so much more
than just poetic simplistic curiosity

it is no wonder to me
that prolific and profile,
are rooted from the same
rivered source...
until later, then
sad eyed lady of the lowland (see note)
lyrics to sad eyed lady of the lowlands

https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=lyrics%20to%20sad%20eyed%20lady%20of%20the%20lowlands&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5#ebo=1
They said I drowned,
but the truth is softer:
I laid myself down like an offering.

I spit river into their open mouths.
I bit the lilies in half.

Silk turned cathedral.
I let my dress balloon with river light.

The earth had nowhere else for me.

If you pressed your ear to the surface,
you would have heard me humming.
They didn’t write that part.

When they pulled me out,
I still had violets in my teeth.
I still had the nerve to look alive.

If ruin was the crown they gave me,
I wore it dripping.
I wore it bright.

You think you know the story:
girl, river, grief.

But the water was warm that day.
The sky was a soft ache.
I was tired of carrying everyone else’s ending.

So I wrote my own.

Not drowned.
Not tragic.
Not accepting their ending.
The wind is changing.
If I start shouting,
It only attracts
Those who can't tolerate
A humble human pulse.

They’ll come, taking away my calm.
I will be forced to fight at the wrong time
I can, after all, silently feel compassion.

Decisions flow each day
From the breathing mind
The water is wasted for soulless tools,
Not for thirsty, dry eyes.

Then a sarcastic ambiguity
Touched my body
And an unpleasant shiver
Ran under my skin,
So cold,
So emotionless,
As if this muck wanted to melt
My stubborn intuition.

I can’t erase my feelings,
So, I turn my soul inside
To dive beyond this reality,
Not to betray what I believe:
My unyielding, simple sincerity
With myself.
Six
On a day that was
fraught
with anxiety and anger,
I sailed on
to the
other side.
The two pens that
blew up in my hand
foreshadowed the
prolific writing
streak to come.
Six poems today,
a personal best.
Bukowski would be
proud.
He might even
wonder
How I did it without
******
***** and
cigarettes.

It was easy.
I had bluebirds for
lunch, and listened
to Vivaldi.
I just let the telephone
ring
ring
ring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMbrfKP2H38
Here is a link to my YouTube channel where I read from my recently published books of poetry. The latest video is a reading I did at the Clear Lake Public Library.  They are Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, It's Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump to the Madhouse, and Sleep Always Calls.  They are available on Amazon.
Sacrament of an autumn park:
yellow wafers on green tongue,
blowsy refrains of early dark.
Head spilling and heart sprung,
I step across these broken shields
to a new-faced evening street
under clouds with bruisy weals
that peel, reveal white meat
of moon, sliced thin to eat
& maybe sate a null that gnaws,
a null that was born when I was:
a branch is incomplete
until the last leaf falls,
transfigured into scrawl.
ABAB CDCD DEED FF
The nightmare of a father, to outlive his daughter.
The dread of a mother, to bury her son.

When the ****** war comes, and heroes wear holes.
When the plague comes, and babies don't cry.
When the reaper comes, and the young ones rust.
That's when we declare war on the army of bugs.



I heard a father, he screamed in pain.
But it was not flesh's agony.
He swore, his heart was dying.
And he grabbed onto me

"I've done it, I've won, I've outlasted my son.
I'm not a father, I'm just a winner.
I have no son, he was my only one.
Tell the devil I've won, and I'm nothing without my son."

So what happened dear father?
Why did he meet the reaper?
What happened poor winner?
What did he eat for dinner?


"First it was flies, then he survived.
Then it was a hornet, and he fought past it.
But he swallowed a wasp, and now his body rots.”

It stung, and it stung, and it stung.



I saw a father, he cried next to me.
But it was not heart's agony.
He swore, it was time for dying.
And he grabbed onto me,

"I've done it, I've won, I've outlasted my son.
I'm not a father, I'm just a winner.
I have no son, he was my only one.
Tell the devil I've won, And I'm nothing without my son."

Father, what do you plan to do?
You know this is cruel of you.
I know what it stole from you.
But you shouldn't do it too.

"Trust me, I wouldn't break the law.
But you can't arrest a wasp.
It's an insect's life or mine.”

It stung, and it stung, and it stung.



Whether they are flies, Drowning weak cries.
Whether they are beetles, shooting from rifles.
They can be a wasp, and never get caught.
They can even be a butterfly, accidentally children die.


A winner cried in my arms.
I felt a father falling apart.
He couldn't ****, not even the wasp.
But still, the reaper appeared.

"Come and take me, drag me away.
Tell my son, he needn't wait.
I won't join him in heaven.
But tell my boy, that I do love him."

The reaper took the winner's hand.
My arms held the empty shell of a man.
With a knife in his hands, the winner became a wasp.

He stung, and he stung, and he stung.
Kościuszko was never loud, never gilded.
An engineer, he built freedom stone by stone, trench by trench,
more mason than general, more architect than conqueror.
He fought for America, then bled for Poland,
but never belonged fully to either.
He carried liberty in his pocket like a compass,
offering it to all who hungered,
even those enslaved, even those history ignored.

Poland remembers him as a failed uprising,
America as a foreign helper.
But the truth is larger —
he was a bridge,
a man between worlds,
a man who knew that margins are where the real battles live.

I grew up in Florida,
the peninsula that America laughs at,
a child ostracized but indispensable.
Now I walk toward Poland,
the Slavic child the EU scolds,
but cannot do without.

In both places,
I feel the echo of Kościuszko:
understated, underestimated,
and yet unyielding.

He is not my idol —
idols are for worship.
He is my companion,
a reminder that freedom is rarely polished,
never granted from the center,
always carved from the edges,
by those who refuse to be dismissed.
another diurnal marker attained,
but no one will be issued a
Boy or Girl Scout badge,

an unverified few will remark,
"this is a day that counts
my halftime voyage
circulating the sun,"
but detect no
other difference tween
day prior, day after,
and will let the passing thought, pass into the fibers of their
existence, aling with the millions of others that humans create,
then let lay,
absorbed into their uncountable,
uncollected collective

but it is the divisor!
the median mark
of a year,
and the world Earth
will be however old it be,
plus a half, like some of its
inhabitants

to be X plus a half,
is not an indifference,
a halved year is
better than no more years,
a solitary tear
still marks the moment
of a moment,
a refraction pointillism,
to reflect a passage

so treat it
not!
with
cavalier,
but go off and pause,
in a quieting places within,
and think,
I am more,
greater than before,
and with grace elevated
will complete my space
occupied on this rotund,
robust earth,
and
be thankful for the embers of
oxygen in and ex
ha(i)led,
greeted,
stating
this breath next
is an opportunity,
and will spent it
usefully
"lie still and let it wash over you, the was and is and soon to be.
How frightening yet effervescent the next 24 hours. The lust, and musts of future days revert to the ancient past..."
patty m.
><
the irony!
when I am stilled,
the effervescence of me
unbounded, unleashed, and the torrential rain
of words fulfilling and departing from my interior

I am
a Grand Central Station
of trains labelled
"the was and is and soon to be''

all moving in an unscheduled mayhem,
but never crashing. never accidenting,
only accenting my racing against time,
my oldest and fiercest Super Villian,
and one just knows, never can you beat time,
time, that old rascally up his sleeve card magician,
who when shuffling the deck,
he knows
what was,
what is,
and here his red eyes gleam with satisfaction,
soon to be...

He and I,
old familiar adversaries
addicted to living.
never leave the table,
never leave a *** or
a poem on the felt,
and having always felt,
firm believed,
there will always be one more,
one more gamble, another day,
to write another poem
and turning my cards over
to reveal, to revel,
in my Royal Flush of creativity,
when time, smiling face,
with his
wild card,
**** time,
who trumps me for
it,
in possess of a Five-of-a-Kind(1)

~'
and the new players,
the young poets,
slap me on the back,
saying I had a great run,
but they don't know 'bout my
secret stash,
preprogrammed to appear,
long after these fingers
cease their tangled tango of tap dancing,
my dust,
my lusts and musts
will unstilled yet be
blowing, floating in the
soon to be
so ha!
                         nml
6:30am
Wed Sep 10
Twenty Twenty Five
(1)
The strongest hand in poker that cannot be beaten in a standard game is the Royal Flush, which consists of the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 10 of the same suit. It is the best possible hand in poker because it is the highest possible sequence of consecutive cards in a single suit, making it unbeatable unless there are wild cards in play, which would allow for a Five-of-a-Kind.
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