I wonder if with every shot of fireball,
She tastes our cinnamon kisses on her tongue
I wonder if every time she hugs the toilet,
She remembers what my arms felt like wrapped around her
I know when she wakes up with no memory of the night before,
She also forgets the way I loved her
And how I always have

enlighten — verb (used with object)

to give intellectual or spiritual light to;
to instruct; impart knowledge to; Archaic: to shed light upon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
like an overdue library book,
the omission of a
failed commission,
makes me a bad boy.

request submitted.
progress stalled,
dust accumulated.
guilty of failure to perform,
a fineable offense
where I come from.

perhaps it was the word?

Enlightened...

down too many paths possible
this word obvious, but not,
a distortion, to me.
the definition I seek,
is not in dictionary listed!

for I want to enlighten you,
make you lighter, carefree,
But Not Through Spirit or Intellect.

for what spiritual guidance
can I give thee,
that would not burden you,
with collected do's and don'ts.

my intellect impoverished,
reduce to grunts and curses,
my opinions, even if valid,
are simplistic truisms.

nonetheless, I want to enlighten you.

"put the load right on me."

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me."

Give me those-parts of you,
convoluted, twisted, that need bearing,
but cannot be borne any more,
for there comes the line,
where the totals are recorded,
the sums noted,
black or red,
matters not,
disposal ready,
my truck is marked
Heavy Load.

make me fat with seven years of plenty,
plenty worries, plenty troubles,
shed those pounds of weighty words
that gain no recognition,
misheard, misunderstood,
or just ignored,
so I can enlighten you.

what skill you posses,
doing this noble thing?

skill is simple,
merely human,
only the human touch
can enlighten,
take out the trash.

I am your man.
what makes you
heavy hearted,
enlightens me,
and makes you
lighter than air,

thus, miraculously,
we are both enlightened.

send what you need to be rid of,
promise, I will read and keep,
every poem you send.

Helen sends me scraps of poems for repair.  "Shreds of lettuce," she calls them. I fool around with them in my role as Poetry Doctor (see my banner photo). In her extended absence, I will post our convolutions. While the final product is mine, the vision, the imagery, the notion of the poem is all hers and therein lies the true authorship.



From Helen, Dec 2
Here is the last of the salad,
dressing not required...

savoir-faire [?sævw???f??

Upon a plate
of deliciousness
the lettuce
is usually
pushed to the side
to wilt
and be scrapped
into an
Industrial bin
were we all begin
as fodder for worms
turning garbage
into words
Nourishing
nothing
but our own pride



bon appétit
Helen
---------------

The Human Word Salad

Now it is dressed....*


all poems, no exception,
the bad, the exceptional,
all begin
in an
industrial bin.

wormwood,
wormword
the ancestors,
feast on the scraps,
garbage letters discarded,
the wilts of alpha lettuce,
the word waste of the
every day beta jabber,
plate pushed-aside decorations,
all but none, bystanders

and they

turn them into words,
though inedible, incapable,
of nourishing life individually,
yet their recycled deliciousness,
unquestioned.

when
each sole word,
re-birthed in the compost
of the delivery room of that bin,
meet in the maternity ward
of our minds
words wed,
poems form,
and all the true nourishment
the world needs
begins anew.