Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
~~
for Danel Kessler^
~~~

in the early morning
of one's youth,
going to synagogue,
quite regularly,
a fabulous, honorably believing,
father's sole request,
more than a half-century ago

time eroded,
the fallacies of organizing a public meeting time
with a deity who seemed unavailable,
when most needed

instead we chatted
in the late of night of the early morning,
a time and places of my choosing,
for human fools do like  a setting regular,
comfort food for the divine spark within

rising/writing for early morning
poetry mass,
was a noted feature of the twofold meaning
of my latter years

where and whence, now and thence,
irreverent dialogue
tween the invisible one,
that would be me,

(can you see me now?)
and the visible one,
the you-know-who-
maker-of-custom-suited souls,

(can "you" see me now?)

*had become  
quite the regular artistes salon

witty repartee, elegiac conversations,
the residuals, in a rain drain trapped,
products collected by the light of  the early dawning,
apres skiing of an all deep-night long mournful body scoring,
poetic raconteur-ing

heaping spoonfuls of two-way mutual chastising,
paeans to the divinity in human-inherent,
regular debate team features of a
contested dark bedroom,
lit only by tablet light bright,
one if by land, two if by sea,
which the shining path to be taken by
itinerant signal comedic essays,
crafted aboard frigates and kayaks
voyaging on turgid, turbulent rivers,
mean city streets, 
swath cut by switchblades of greed,
exploring stories of the dying lands
of an aging man
fed by the streaming videos tubing down
the veins and arteries of an aging poseur

so in the sleep hours,
when I did not dream,
instead nail bled from my hands
words upon  a cold sweaty screen
from fevered fingertips,
diatribe prayers of hope ever after,
after every
dialysis of the arrogance of human nature,
removing, diabolical urea of our tainted beings,
replacing, with granular molecules of wishful thinking

then it stopped, for unknown reasons,
unbegotten creativity, chilling like
***** and champagne layabouts,
on the upper shelf of a mind's refrigerator,
always ready, just in case,
say
a new borne terrorist atrocity,
a seasonal wistfulness flu,
a cold virus blue through the heart,
love came and went with nary a
how-the-hell-did-that-happen,
even a new born babe joy
to the family est arrivé,
comld torch that heirloom/heritage seeded
inert patented creativity
into anime wakefulness

so here, so hear, I paid-pause,
conclude-delude, at 4:44am on
January Seventeenth of Two Thousand and Seventeen,
winessed by numerals white on a blackened background,
of a digital alarm clock with time, temperature and
the lunar phase of a madman
who twice was Christ told
would be a poet/story teller,
like his mother

a bountiful clock telling,
precision information detailing,
a tale that tells about nothing about a man,
who no longer requires
an alarm reminder to attend
his own moring reborning mass,
on a regular basis,

for his disheartened verbs,
runaway convict adjectives,
con-nouns, whimpering exclamations,
all on the loose,
nice sounding,
but of no earthly use

his lips like (the book of) Ruth's,
move in silent prayer,
only two can hear,
but the low priest observing,
disbelieves, thinking the piety of the poet
is just drunken emotion, not devotion,
kens not the broken poems
of the morning mass service no more,
but for
this one, irregular,
unacceptable exception
5:18am 1/17/17

^
I don't think I can write a storytelling poem much better than this. So happily gift to Denel, who serves the gods of poetry and our works with devotion, and who wrote this and inspired me

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive...

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.
the other day
I occupied a chair
at a sidewalk café
watching the vanity fair of the quotidian
float by in quickly changing apparitions

an endless flow of different ages, nations, fashions,
skin colors, miens, ****** expressions, postures & gaits
kept passing through  my field of vision

it made me wonder why
some people get so furious
when they  just hear about
    not even meet
    the ‘others’ different from themselves
that they start dropping  bombs and shooting rockets

I think they rather should be curious
and eager to discover
how the immense variety of humankind
can help expand a locally grown mind

and recognize
that we are all of the same kind
There was a young man who sat by the Sea
Without fail, everyone knew, he would go every morning
The youth sat there to think and it made him feel free
Free to dream or not dream. When in bliss, when in mourning

He loved the Sea for its surface
Wind-kissed waves distorting starlight
He loved the Sea for it's depths
Churning into thick ink when absorbing the night

A love that began in small boyhood
Burying tiny toes within her cool sand
Though with the strong passion of man
The first time her wet silkiness tickled his hand

Oh, how he adored her! Through torrents and sun
Her whispers and shouts only separate intensities
But he would not go into her, for he feared just as much
She had told him, one by one, of her darkest propensities

So a sailor in heart, but in soul a wise lover
The boy, now a man paid respect to her glory
He and she, now and then, liked to play with each other
But she kept him from harm where she showed others fury

This went on, sunrise, sunset,  and day after day
Until all the young man's friends were stooping and gray
Still the lull of the sea seemed to pull him away
From reality and back into it, he'd gone mad, some will say

And the time had come finally to confess all his desires
To do what he had refrained from for so long
On a particular eve that seemed wilder than any
The hour to usher in his destiny, and feel her sea-song

The storm caused curling foam,
Both entrancing and detestable
But to him, it looked like home
Like a restful sleep, quite testable

He thought, could this tumult be wrath of the Father?
Or is this a sign--the return of the Son?
Perhaps, 'tis a warning from the Holiest Ghost
He was wrong, but just right. 'Twas all this, but in one

And nearby sirens sang
For the bravery of their hero as he was swept from the shore
And far-off sirens rang
For the fate of the old man, the sailor, who watched the sea no more
Dedicated to my friend NB. Thank you for everything.
Wild Child
Crouched inside
A naughty grin
As eyes go wide
Hair untamed
Covered in leaves
Acorn in one hand
Ladybird in the other
The trees her father
The earth her mother
Trying to free the wild child within...
Next page