everything in life is tech-ordered,
in this age of mega-multitasking,
the brain poorly functions, so in its defense,
the brain leans on learned reflexive behaviors

she, on the couch, cashmere blanket covered,
the Tv platform reconstituted as a drone,
a politician in front of a camera pontificating,
while she scans the Ipad, and both me and god,
don’t know what more she might need (to buy)

so when I stroke her legs, to give
added heat to her fiber-edged warming,
I do it more than once to test my theoretical,
she responds repeatical, unhesitatingly “hello my love”

after the fourth or sixth testing,
she looks up, ears perking, sensing,
knowing, something is afoot (a-legged?)
quizingly asking, “ok, what’s up?”

I smile, and explain most rationally,
that in furtherance of my current poem,
now underway, I was testing my leitmotif,
that even love benefits from proper training
<>
no, I will not show her this poem,
lest she show me in return,  
her new self-improvement,
her recently-learned-at-home,
mindful, meditative training in
kickboxing skills.

a woman comes to me at 2:20am,
from across the world, asking if I am that cool jew,
occupant/son of the unholy hours when death and crucifixion,
them two old friends, are waving temptation with both hands,
never mentioning heaven, offering .99 cents of sanitized compliments,
which for a fifth rate amateur writer is revolutionary,
as close as you will ever come to global recognition

that woman says, yes! you’re that insufferable fool whose
suffering keeps us awake when he should be sleeping in the
half-death state, in the unholy hours, only reporting back
what he has seen across the borderline, in these times
when a thousand-die-a-day daily from suffering
that is uniquely human, a wracking medieval torture,
granting those viral messengers, slow extra pleasure

be nice to yourself for a change, write ‘bout what they want,
broken love and suicide, mundane pain, keep it plain, short!
easy stuff that sells records, making you not whisper words
never meant to be shared, the language of the unholy hours,
a dialect unique, that Google can’t quite rightly translate,
for not every vision is substitutable, suitable, rated G for babies, so,
keep it short like a miserable life that needs a prophecy to complete

48 hours ago thought I was infected, a glide path to rocky moon-smooth,
a landing where words unique, taken away, sealing your mouth with
tubed oxygen that inhibits thinking, air that might **** all of you, not just pain, but what makes you unique, your own 10 commandments
of speech, the old testament, the source book of insight into whatever
makes your lungs breath in rhythmic to heart beating, and dying
discordant disrupts the gene sequencing of inhaling and exhaling

the editors and the critics overlooking, that sit on both shoulders,
are already complaining, no más, no más, no más!
suture that incision, close your mouth, the unholy hours
need a special silence, Ruth’s lips that move but go unheard,
make no mistake, we want to listen in, voyeurs of visions
but we need you broken, we need a break, from confronting
the repeatedly delayed, but undeniable, the clockwork orange
second coming of the ungodly hours

4:02am
Sabato
4/11/20twenty
new york city of lips

up at your regularly scheduled night sky patrol,
the colorful clock says 2:47 and
dark skies confirm which 2:47 it is,
for flecks of blackened peppery light exude at this hour,
a time period for former lovers, those old writes enfolded, enveloped,
hiding an active poem volcano spewing bare feet words in clouds of
kidskin soft velveteen cumulus, fleece-comforting slippers of poems

there are half started poems waiting, more than one, triplets in fact,
waiting to be born in the time of pandemic, thinking quietly,
will they emerge healthy and living and grow up to be adults
contributing to society, additives to the engine oil of human living

but the old familiar, dissatisfaction with quality control leaves them
unfinished, poet lurches from dead roses head hanging, a new blues,
disease as an economic and societal differentiation, that you hope,
believe, poems that in due course, all will emerge, for better or for worse,

poetry birthed in the time of pandemic

the city of new york, where I was birthed and will die, a city of
tall buildings, tall tales, short attention spans there is but one nighttime moving automobile observed in a city that never sleeps but now hides blanketed in weariness of trepidation of what are the

well known unknown possibilities in the time of pandemic

and you wonder in this new, different quietude if poems can be born
with birth defects and survive, breathing on a ventilator till they can
breathe by their own lungs, or were they perma-infected on a supermarket trip, a walk by the East River, a pizza delivery man, even

if inspired by a decade-lover, next, in bed, in the time of pandemic

waving to grandchildren in their second story window, you on the street, keeping them safe from you, a modern Auschwitz train station where they separated, the we-useless out, children and their parents, safe in a barbed wire atmosphere, a demarcated world, where some billion of brimming droplets of tears are stillborn

stillborn poems, or perhaps just poems-in-waiting, to still be

born in a time of pandemic


3:29am Sunday March 22, Twenty Twenty
New York City, the epicenter, crossroads

a thousand days, mornings of mortality debated,
irregular they come, days of stranger awakenings,
my soul kept, yet residuals of torn indecision,
what value, do I bring, purposed me for what?

this letter addressed to the however, the whomever,
who know the asking is greatest yielder, creator of
valuable doubts

them those, that beggar the question,
their unceasing answer repeated, confident and
without shame and remorse, their constancy, granite,
the surety of logical visions sourced from the holy dark,
give yourself away, what you got, give, let them take it away

let them reap what you have sown,
for the great designer will surely inquire
what everybody knows is the forecast standard to be met,
it is not what, how much you got, but what you begat, when, left

gave yourself away till ‘tis nothing right is left, and the emptiness
is greatest fulfillment, the slate shared, is the joint fate best reaped,
your best storehouse spent on the sustenance of others, give, away...

improving our collective lives, one pandemic poem at a time...

<>

a stray-dog-thot that bites my ankle,
saying ouch, you see a poem here?

it’s 1:14AM on a Sunday and generally I see at this generalized
pre-dawn, can’t sleep pleistocene period, non-extinct poems
roaming everywhere.

but the pandemic on my mind and giving me pause to wonder
how much can I love, and a questioner-poet needs and desires an answer,
post haste, pre apocalyptic.

S. travels for two days by airplane to fulfill a promise
only to find out, upon arrival, the promise made is
pandemic cancelled.

but the-promise-I-made silently, to her, faraway, that she never heard,
for why, stir-up-the-ruckus, asking for a visit from the evil eye,
if she falls ill, coming back to me, is stone cold stolid, no cancellation policy,
I will:

nurse her, brush her hair, anticipate the achey need normal, before she can ask,
hold my body’s warmth full and frontal, a cooling blanket for heated times,
retrieve her ***** tissues from the floor and make lousy jokes about her lousy aim.

and what I wrote, “improving our collective lives, one poem at a time,”
is here institutionalized, organized, galvanized, mesmerized,

legitimized and lionized,

proving only that stray-dog-thots @nite, they  bite,
hard immediate, and that
later is never better

she would say,
“what would I do without you, my children so far away,”
my reply instanced, nuanced, instantaneously, non-Amazon delivered with a double frosted eye twinkle, no-extra-charge,
“hey! that why I get the big bucks, god’s love to deliver!”

she, a profound atheist, snorts with practiced derision, which is fine,
cause I see the welling, tear droplets, laced with viral virus communicators, smiling weakly, asking, instructing a cure:
“play for me some Janis and some Joni, some Mozart and Mahler, climb in beside me, my old man, let us, let us rock our gypsy souls, drinking a case of each other.”

who could refuse such a invitation... to become the plasma of the sun’s corona, if only for a moment

<>



1:38am Sunday March 15th, Twenty Twentyfold

<>

she raw whispered, edginess deep in her throat,
combo of delighted annoyance coated in
wary weariness of she-wanted-wonder,
what he wants that I can keep/take?

my untold secrets he knows how?
needy aches unsatisfied uncovering,
his knowings creates unfamiliar needs,
accentuates secretions of secrets discovering

did not ask for revelations without no resolution,
how dare he tense me in private places hid,
my properties aren’t his, my neck, eyes,
tonguing my senses is crazy senseless

this schema, this tracing of a figurine,
braising my body in his, its own sauces,
while perfume of mine unrequested are mined,
taken away in railway cars to his treasure houses

left utterly gagging and gasping
to hell with him, unbounded gone,
to heaven by him, I went bounding up,
giving me that everything I never desired

but only knew him as the my-mysterious,
tales unwritten yet tensed in the familiar,
poems elucidating, all that I didn’t
write, knew,  but never uttered

now, now! all are freely spoke aloud,
outed, foundering, highlighted and now
decomposing me, I’m honestly betrayed by
what he calls the sense, the knowing of the unknown




Friday, March 6th, Twenty Twenty,
2:47am