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"Don't Pick A Fight With A Poet"
by
Madeline Peyroux

When you're walking on the street,
and the people that you meet,
make you want to start a big fight,
'cause they talk as if they're so right.
There is one thing to remember,
in case you haven't heard:
You can **** a mighty emperor,
but you cannot smite a word.

So, don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it's wrong or it's right,
there's a lesson in life,
and to learn it, you have to give in,
cause the poet knows you can't win.

When you're twitching at the bar,
No one knows who you are,
and you want to prove them all wrong,
you think you are so strong.
You can try to make them listen.
You can try to be the boss,
but the storyteller is the one
who calls the toss.

So, don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it is wrong or it's right,
Whether it's wrong or it's right
there'll be a lesson tonight,
and to learn it you'll have to give in,
'cause a poet knows you can't win.

Over there in the corner with a Cheshire grin
making rhyme out of broken hearts
cryin' the hymn.
And two tokes from a good time,
a toast away from fist flying,
congregating the world
with a paper and pen.

Don't pick a fight with a poet.
Don't raise your hand on a whim.
Whether it's wrong or right,
there's a lesson in life,
and to learn it, you'll have to give in,
cause a poet knows, you can't win.

Madeline Peyroux
Left Foot Poet Jun 2023
where do a good man’s dreams go?

they leech, from brain to fingertips,
they fall & rise slow to the toes, no,
not gravity, but the weightlessness
of good dreams, up and down,
lets them invade our extremities,
so the migration is a transformation,
from dream to possible, from ephemeral,
to hardened becoming, to a realized


dream retold, nay, foretold,
in deed,
indeed,  
always, better!
6/21/23
Left Foot Poet Aug 2020
they hit you everywhere,
bruises, slow faders,
pretty much all over,
spaced out, body and time

some, they come back,
months, years later,
enticing, devising,
with revelations perfect,
you melt with helpfulness

some claim they are born
with only questions and an
insatiable quest for knowing,
but line in the soil tween rows
is there for you not to cross

some proffer their pain,
asking for ablution and absolution,
from demons they wish to share,
but refusing the smoke of my offering,
that could cleanse both our inhalations

like highway men of yore,
they hit everyone, below the belt,
stave breaking into the heart,
slow bleeding, with answers
received in absentia and silence

until the till needs refilling, and they
renewed, reappear, reformed, with
perfect words, even better questions:

my portfolio of replies mostly go/grow
old, noting the obvious, we are socially
distance by age and geography and
degree, I free and clear to provide while
they just free to hit and run, one more time
if you think this poem is about you, then it probably is…
Left Foot Poet Aug 2020
morning contradictories: mourning our poems, falling stars


awaken to a sunshiny Saturday,
the lazys, their coverlet of flowers,
inhibit our movements, now, as it nears
high noon, we have yet from our bed stir

August has be-come, the grass pockets
of gray and green, swaths of sunburn brown,
reveal how far along the North American
summer has poetry passed, irretrievable

reading your messages and notes from
world over, lazy licking you poems so many,
delighting, ponderous and oft heroic, as well,
weeping as too many become fallen stars

each grass blade, from earth born and returned,
the nutrients preserved in our sandy soil, intended
to nurture next summer’s poesy new birthrights,
green+browned, weep+smile, mutual contradictories

these poem best friends, passing by each other at lifecycle’s
multi-paths, metaphors for our too many morning stirrings,
most to be falling like stars that, though in motion, need not
come to rest ever, their movement attracts a one…lasting look

it nears noon, it nears this poem’s timely finishing touch,
straighten its tie, smooth its skirted pleats, a forehead
implant kiss goodbye, sent on its way to find its own weight,
no parent ere admit, it leaves, with tear-burst showers falling…

August 1
2020

noon
Jul 2020 · 444
no better blade than she!
Left Foot Poet Jul 2020
She,
my cutter,
my body, her cutting board

sliced by tongue and fingernail,
any handy human implement,
she sculpts me to
her eye's reconfiguring delight

she,
grabs my wrist,
and my face
in her hands grasp-embraced

unblemished once,
now becomes all scarred tissued,
no guise, no lies, no bearded mask,
no disguise - all forsaken

hidden hardened skin,
speckled red/white translucent,
she kisses with adoration her
heart designed
objet d'art

no better blade than she,
with every cut,
transformed, she becomes
my devotee,
I, her escapee,
I am her, she is me,
inseparable, my every command,
she obeys

for our love
cuts both ways
Jul 2020 · 320
what color is hate?
Left Foot Poet Jul 2020
what color is hate?

think hard, answer, not easily up-conjured,
obvious choices, careful be, exclude not, some voices,
no rush, think upon it careful, after all, hate hates variations,
it, as old original as the Garden of Eden

you desire answer, something quick, *****,
look to very nature of hate, so easy spewed,
after centuries of construction, yet, there is
nothing quick about hating, tho learnt early on

some variants of millennium length, eons short,
oh weep, at this great irony of ironies, hate is so
innate engrained, is it in the red blood, cells of the
white colored brain apparatus we all share?

unnatural impossibly genetic. don’t believe it.

hate is colorless like air, like clear water.
how else could it be so easy given, taken.
innocent innocuous is the color of hate,
easy transmitted, and never to be a vaccine

until it can be seen how we implant it within ourselves.


11:40pm
Sat Jul 11
Left Foot Poet Jun 2020
Hafiz
 (1320 ~ 1389)


The tide of my love
Has risen so high let me flood over

You.

Close your eyes for a moment
And maybe all your fears and fantasies

Will end.


If that happened
God would become an infant in your


Arms


And then you
Would have to nurse all


Creation!
____________

L.F.P.
(20th - 21st century)

the floodplain of my love
has spread so wide encompassing all of

You.


Opened your eyes forever
And every prayer and wish uttered see


true realized.


Since this is inevitable
God, our parent, will have raised us well,


each ever cherished.


And then you and I
obligated to write His song, name it



Hallelujah!
Jun 2020 · 446
troubled waters, Paul
Left Foot Poet Jun 2020
_____


another mourning morning, usual signs of warning,
wanted to wash away the distress signs of no sleep,
turned on the tap, out came only troubled waters,
my only friend, the voice from the mirror, pretending
to be coming from me, speaking: Oh Lord, Oh Lord!

is there no surcease for me, somewhere, can I find,
little bites, small plates, pieces of peace, the kind
of kindness that eases, repairs the dividers of mind,
the country stone fences that been growing wilder,
when, troubled child of 10, window breaking, beyond
youthful mischievousness, evil streaked, so deemed


Give me a boat, give me a bridge, give me a road, a home,
one of those things poets, songwriters about, wax lyrical,
Oh Lord, give me time, 45 seconds, even two or three,
Being strong, being confident, am I not entitled to that,
a boat, sturdy mast, cause sailing from storm to storm,
just glimpsing dry land, is that too much, a pale beyond?

love, nah, a bridge too far, not even on the menu, not blinded,
I am off key, not well enough, between the peaks between,
I am out of sync, bubbling discombobulated, a **** besided, behind,
lend  me a finger, not even a hand, a kernel, not even a cob,
a string, forget a rope, a washcloth to bathe and dry,

lay me down, lay me down, to live, even just not dying.
When you’re weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all, all
I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Sail on silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Paul Simon
May 2020 · 129
the fratricidal words
Left Foot Poet May 2020
no plea here tendered,
long time are we past
the boundary of cooling
cooing brotherly tenderness

reason has been Joseph sold into slavery,
nary a Moses, who talks to God, is answered,
be seen or heard, to reconcile the divisive souls
of our fratricidal words

a morning’s reflection,
soon to be gone, passing,
of two pockmarked differing clouds,
scratching this morning blue drenched sky

a white, rotund cumulus rose,
one gray, rough, tumbled, worn,
ill tempered, of rain possessed,
but both clouds, each purposed

but this Sabbath day,
as this pale land reopens,
to bitter cries, minor rejoicing,
wise counsel, foundering, ignorance prevailing

forbearance, a weighty silence, circumscribed,
daytime highlights, disregarded, heads closed,
nowhere to found, just, a colorless pallor, a rasher
of fratricidal words
Left Foot Poet May 2020
I was never told about the sorrows

Bill of Goods,  after 5 beers confesses
that ‘hopes and prayers’ was his boss’s construct,
making a ***** business, an easier swallow

the born babies soon forget the special instructional
video they watch before departing for the lower earth
that reminds of the bi-polar nature of  being human

the script pre-provided each descendant gets rewrites,
because of choices, false described as free, yours, for
there is nothing free in the decisions, each costly difficult

did you ever wonder where the next line comes from?
create it, you mislead only yourself, because you were
told about the sorrow, but just forgot, too too painful
Apr 2020 · 189
cheating life
Left Foot Poet Apr 2020
cheating life

when that day comes, officially,
maybe, anyway, someday here,
yo! made it through the pandemic,
y’all backslap and affirmatively robust
announce: dude! you cheated death!

maybe I’ll smile, maybe cry, maybe, nah, surely
both, cause we now be practiced in arts of survival,
I’ll reply the real trick is not to cheat death,
that don’t require much, just careful preparation

my file still not closed, and will be unsealed,
seen both what was done to me, what I did,
on my own, insufficient smiling, inadequate crying,
everyones imbalance cain forehead-charted

so when you examine your empire on your face,
think not you cheated death, you’re a stud,
no siree, think about how you cheated, cheated
yourself out of life, with insufficient risk taking

don’t be stupid, don’t mean going out w/o a mask,
ignoring social distancing. that’s just common sense,
what I’m talking ‘bout, taking that chance, falling
in love, and doing it again and again, before you


cheat yourself out of life...
thurs apr 30 twenty twenty
nyc, epicenter of death
9:37AM
Apr 2020 · 130
gazillion on your plate
Left Foot Poet Apr 2020
<>

i know you got a gazillion on your plate

know that i think of you often

how u r doing

juggling  just a few huge

balloons,
(that when the kids slap them up to the ceiling)
metaphorically meteors don’t travel in any foreseeable future path,
you’ve coulda predicted

be well.   and if needed,
      just ask
Apr 2020 · 97
the sidelined
Left Foot Poet Apr 2020
months do not diminish my
curiosity

you ask brave questions
and are answered in
works harvested
from
my fields

ah!

you went away to fall in love!

no?

illness?

a course correction?

I’m a-live in New York City,
where almost 800 persons die each day.

my perspectives have altered.

what are your questions now?
Left Foot Poet Mar 2020
<>

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
Left Foot Poet Feb 2020
as our letters age

my twenty six best friends gather round a winter fire,
a Valentine’s Day retreat from the bones internal chilly yellowing,
we’ve been together from the Day One beginning, a life of
commencing conception, deception, immaculate and messy mixing

practicing fumbling, making and breaking the conventional,
we arrange and rearrange our unique ordering, overlapping
with your version, cousin, so we communicate, but uniquely ours,
individualist letters, witnesses, markers, word~children, born, lost

soon seventy will come, and a party, a literary review to be held,
mourning the many, works uncompleted, toasting the few that satisfied,
acknowledging the collaboration of all the twenty six with
special guests,
an aging five senses
that were the kindling that sparked them into action

oh my dear ones, my best friends, your knew me too well,
my best, worst,
my progeny, blood of my blood, voice of my guts,
consoling friends, who
brooked my self-deceptions, yet denounced them when
over-the-topping,
comforters of our mutual ashes buried in one casket,
our final poem, clutched, at last...
my alphabet of life...




Sat. Feb 22, 2020
10:26am
you will be invited.
Left Foot Poet Feb 2020
blessed are the tangents (what you imagine are needs)

the wrong roads that take you to your
beaten, off-road track, the ones you think,
tangents that ought be refused, smoking fumes,
dangerous inhalation aromatic spirits alliterating

the overgrown little paths saying don’t go,
but every instinct begs this is a blessed tangent,
convince yourself, not cause you wanted to,
you do it anyway, the undiscovered, undisclosed

what you imagine are needs; the computation that
begs for solution the risk fire extinguisher, expiring,
a tangent eye piercing, when all previous notions
finally, safe securing, take you nowhere, a treadmill

He is not modeled on old schemes, his provocative poems,
stop the samo thinking, you think what if, I need his risk,
he is what he is, willing me be to be broken and healed,
our tangents don’t overlap, but,  how they cross, a pointillist perfect

the intersection point, fulsome, each caress , a soothing explosive,
when he gives, you take, reservoirs refilled, wen he leaves,
leaving you whole and dissatisfied, you remember ******* punch
of his first words, blessed are the tangents

and you sleep deep, dreamless, your residual smile, modest,
almost linear but for the curly ends, pointedly upwards,
seeking new tangents, needful for new, the sacred prior,
stored but set aside, the new tangents, afired, offer blessings unknown


2/1/2020 7:52 am
nyc everywhere


https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3691113/how-i-know-we-will-make-love-somedayprimal2/
Left Foot Poet Jan 2020
how I know we will make love someday / primal2

whatever you think of overwhelming distance,
thick black lined international boundaries,
no Westerly wind, snow binding, winter blinding, can forbid
the innate desired connectivity, the eye locking messaging,
the shared shards of losses cumulative, that we alone can relieve/repair

I will travel by jetliner, car, to unpack you from snowdrifts,
write quatrains upon your eyes, elegies on your lips,
epic poems using every body space possess-able, asking for nothing
in return, for living is hard enough, no need for quid pro quo bargaining

do not ask what am I to you, resist classification, place me not,
no slot, no rowed field, under closed eyes remember, recall,
better the butter of love and loss, which I’ll take and also leave,
summer spreads and relishes kitchen canned for next year’s winter

did you know, of course not, my name is Mordecai,^ the same who,
was Vizier to Darius and Xerxes I, meaning pure myrrh and
master of languages, but this is not the time/place, my secrets two,
to give away, and yet forbear, you may ask questions that no sensible human answers

honestly

but I have, and will do so again, against all odds, we will
compose original numbers, all prime, all natural occurring,
divisible, yes, but  only by the number itself and the number 1,
1,
a number that answers:

the equation, the prime ideal,
why only 1 + 1 equals:

primal 2

~
it takes one to create two
^https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordecai
Left Foot Poet Dec 2019
a new born poet-babe was born this day!

more of a surprise to the baby than the
supervising family members in attendance
in the delivery room, they, unafraid of the blood
and amniotic fluid coating the baby’s first
poetic cri de coeur, a screaming wail

for well do they re-envision their own birth

the poet babe cuts their own umbilical chord
with a scissors snipping named and engraved
SEND,
which irony galore, reminds/rhymes with The End,
this misnomer a challenge and soon the babe
cries out in surprise, it is twins, and the second poem
emerging stating in a tone solemnly serious and formal,


”more to follow”

and the room bursts out laughing,
including you!




Saturday Dec. 14th, 2010
Aug 2019 · 656
lender of last resort
Left Foot Poet Aug 2019
“many who are first will be last, and the last first.” Mark 10:29

the mixed drink of finance terminology
my stock and trade, or,
used to be anyway, when I was gainfully employed,
intersects with a place I don’t habitually frequent,
seeing as I am an Old Testament kinda guy

dollars to doughnuts,
this errant thought makes me smile,
the devil and me (a/k/a the devil in me)
have a warm milk with KAHLÚA,
in the dead of night, across the kitchen table,
doing repartee and bad poetree
and biblical textual emendation
on the verse in question

having been present, the devil likes it just the way it is,
but the old nitpicking me always thinking,
a little editing makes the ‘milk’ go down easier,
suggests a reversal of emphasis:

the last shall be first,
for many who are first, will be last

less threatening and the point better made

lead with your right, taught my boxing master,
and the last shall be first is
very right

you see, many call me,
the lender of last resort
which is true enough,
but my preference is best
when addressed as

lender of the first resort
Jul 2019 · 913
I, too, swallow.
Left Foot Poet Jul 2019
swallow


I,
too,
swallow.

each groan
repressed
each longing
suppressed,
each nightmare
revisited.

the semantic fluid
stains
my teeth, my face,
no erasure endures,
tracks of my tears,
skin etched everlasting,
beyond camouflaging.

the weights owned,
that the scale
does not register,
stones of stones,
add to a total
that has no
agreeable total
but is a totalitarian oppression
of all day tongue depressions

oh god,
mercy from the weights
I have impressioned and digested
of own free will,
to misbalance my posture,
crook’d, my soul ever reciped,

stains collected,
each stain
swallowed,
see my markings internal,
you have never seen
until you have seen me
7/20/19
Left Foot Poet Apr 2019
this is a depth bomb cutting,
a midnight message for me,
a Zola accusatory,
“You make me think about death and doorways and sleep”

no mere paper cut incision,
bandaid and triple bacterial,
a forehead kiss
and an-on-your-way

nope serious business

death and doorways and sleep
and all that is in between,
nightly rehanging the me-moon,
on that curved tip

the onerous tasks of child raising,
you, the perp, the perpetual kid,
the holy version victim trinitized
too?

hanging your self right on that shining orbital,
leads to unquestionable answer processions
ahead of the unanswerable, they ask,
what’s behind the screen door of

death and doorways and sleep


life is hard,
but without questions,
it is unquestionably
harder

find the doorways.

this explains so little
and so more much.

reminder: make doorways - open them

11:10pm 4-10-19 ~ 10:31am 4-16-19

~for AH~
Left Foot Poet Mar 2019
~~~

“La natura è piena d infinite ragioni che nò furò mai in isperiètia”
Leonardo da Vinci

~~~

think
that the very next millisecond blink
will be, reveal a, theater curtain rising,
a play of your composition,
a painting of your composure,
a newly cresting reason,
infinite in number,
infinitesimal aggrandizing majesty in granular shapes,
a shock so grand you say out loud willingly,

therefore, I am

the first word
of the next page or poem you turn to,
will change your No. 1 reason for living,
to your knees dropped trembling,
comprehending the renaissance of his
isperiètia (experience)

there are infinite books and infinity words,
do the probability calculation of inspiration
and confess
every sun rising, every rainbow unexpected,
every moonlight solstice,
every glance freely stolen taken,
is nature,
your nature, revealed,
unsealed

these are your unveilings,
revealing the fullness of you,
the likeness of discovery
how what we see in our uncommonality
is our communion










~~~

This year marks the quincentennial of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance master who died in May 1519.
4:24pm March 21, 2019

This year marks the quincentennial of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance master who died in May 1519.  

Read

http://www.italianrenaissanceresources.com/units/unit-3/sub-page-03/leonardo-on-painting-versus-poetry/

Leonardo da Vinci
Left Foot Poet Mar 2019
The Fidelity of Transmissions

”Cells, the units of life that compose our bodies, are able to make copies of themselves to help us grow, fight disease and recover from injuries. Cells have built-in mechanisms that maintain
  the fidelity of transmission  
of genetic information from one generation to the next, and to control cell division in a timely manner, allowing our bodies to build or rebuild various tissues.”

~~~
when the poetry cri de cœur grows unbearable ,
sound mystery-science calms his tumbling transcendency

alas, here too, his ears sit up straight when stumbling on a invitation to
“come write,” for hid within the science jargon, oft rests a snipers shot

redirecting the didactic mind back to the
everyman’s land where-poetry cells split,,
commanding him to delve into, visit new brain wrenching vistas
“the fidelity of transmission”
at its macro level, for science is micro-poetry,^
n’est-ce pas

~~~
when you love another
the transmission is a slow pour,
or a radical jarring,
the fidelity extremely extraordinarily variable

the loveliest unpredictable

the sip sip of eyelid kissing adoration,
the irrational irrigation of the no-space-between,
when the television remote disappears in the couch crack,
the screen, complete static, perfect complement, to a rigorous experiment of

the loveliest unpredictable

we manually conjoin fluids in her mouth’s petri dish,
stain the slide for observation,
in full Imax color observe the cells busting and doesy-do’ing over to
a new partner, where bonds of fidelity attach a partnership clause to

the loveliest unpredictable

when a child emerges, the first words are
find that remote, just kidding, first comes a comestible demand,
mother’s milk 98 degree heated,
feed me a white solution to any unanswered cell’s questions, what a

loving predictive predicate

scribble this, ****** that, change a diaper,
while debating whose baby’s assemblage resembles,
overjoyed at the experimental outcome,
proofs of the fidelity of transmission,
the outcome notated, but science demands no bias confirmation,
another test required of tissue rebuilding

the loveliest unpredictable

~~~

^postscript
for is He not laureate greatest poet of all,
developer of the scientific architecture,
inventor of varietal sunsets, moonscapes,
individualized singularity of snowflakes,
love making, gravity and the preprogrammed death
of your own cells,
etcetera etcetera etcetera
all just poetry in motion in fluidity,
ah, fidelity fidelity
fidelity
Sat., March 9, 2019
Jan 2019 · 2.6k
Mapping My Blessing Season
Left Foot Poet Jan 2019
"Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!"
                                                          ­Polonius (Hamlet)
~~~
read these words in a past, as a punk teenager,
back in the mid-you-wouldn't-believe-it-flintztone-age
returned to them, nowadays
when I am seven by ten decades squared, older not wiser

three people told me
what a lucky man I am today,


Even before the noon hour dare arrive,
a shocking delivered by an electrocardio telegram,
thus instigating a product recall of Shakespeare’s blessing season,
drawn from a stale teenage memory storage fast depleting

"This above all: to thine ownself be true"
which denies the false escape
of being false to any human

ingesting this thrice lucky man observation
into the internal inward-facing telescoping observatory,
where I map the true course of the
star-stories
well held in the constellations of my life,
never forgetting that this holistic ecosystem that is my
mind~body must evaluate the truth of this claim

its veracity will differ when assayed by
the big toe of my left foot from whence the poetry comes,
as well as those other interfering guys,
body, mind, heart and soul,
then re-evaluated by the internecine warring of those whiny parts,
the tongue, the hands, the eyes saying me, me,
that perforce means a dynamic constant changing
of every thing

in other words,
thine own truths are fluidity ever changing,
the mapping of your blessings,
best done in pencil with room
for expansion, reversal, and misdirection

have I lost you dear reader?

My Left Foot squeals,
fools, you just hammered
three more nails in the coffin of his depression,
where woes and toes know the inevitable repetition of the troubles he has already deemed, and now foreseen are yet,
ladies in waiting to take him to the tower

My Mind says
in obvious aspects people, you are 100% correct,
but the Inquistors are not fooled, patient in their queries;
My Body simply asks, err, does that make me look fat?
My Souls defers with a yada yada, not my problem, deal with it...

The facts tranverse and reverse,
Ah, the truths of my blessings
As much confusing and last defusing

The little drummer boy marches me in reverse retreat,
while shouting out in time a marching refrain:

Luck can be stored, used then, never more,
Its algorithm, a lifetime calculation,
Woe is me, thrice, deemed lucky,
But the map of my blessing reveals my positioning,
At the map-edge I stand, the last border be just ahead,
Seasons, maps, blessings must stop to journey,
What others see upon me outward, outdated,
All maps, all blessings are black-line bounded,
So too, am I, bounded, confused and confounded

The algorithm computes my nine lives are now radium depleted,
The shell, the shell no longer can be fired,
Even the half life has evaporated, used,
Though it looks fit, the luck has eroded, the feet now touching
My map edged in black, its legend, of use, never more


November 2017
Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for.
There; my blessing with thee!

And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means ******.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade.
Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
Left Foot Poet Aug 2018
pale dead moon

them the words heard, cloud covered, make the few streaks visible
look like mocking smiles saying see we got your numbers,  
play pale and dead you’re sure to win and add an over/under
and a trifecta guaranteed

everyone is willing to take and give you thanks
with a nice tap on the head which buys them
a grimace smile of 2 seconds recognition and
further confirms the crumbling internals
and unless you walk away,
into solitude and recall from
high school language class

répète après moi "c'est la vie,” repeat after me, that’s life

no, now,
pale dead moon,
that’s life
Left Foot Poet Jul 2018
this man of constant tomorrows,
hopeful Mondays, bad Fridays,
a man of constant sorrows,
pictures and poems from a life
celebrating constant recalibration,

never allowed to forget that the
years of lucky will run out,
like the string you saved from packages were delivered,
when come the years with
no luck and no more packages arriving
Left Foot Poet Jun 2018
a thousand brilliant lies
(Hafiz,  Iran 1320-1389);      (L.F.P., USA 20~21st century)

- Hafez -                                 - Left Foot Poet-

“I have a                                  if only, in my meager possess,
thousand brilliant lies,          but one lie when easy asked
For the question:                    the simplest damning of,
How are you?                          are you generally happy?

I have a                                    what is god you ask,
thousand brilliant lies.          no lies required,
For the question:                    many answers upon my face visible,
What is God?                          unsure if any worthy of believing

If you think that the               8 centuries separate us, yet
Truth can be known,              you lie; we poets - you, I, all believe

From words                             in the divinity of words

If you think that the                a thousand brilliant sparkles
Sun and the Ocean,                 when Sun loves the Ocean,
Can pass through that            each one a poem passing,
tiny opening Called                my mouth, my wide eyes,
the mouth,                                uttering a Cohen's hallelujah

O someone should                 So we gleam, mirthing in glorious
start laughing!                         and gleeful delight at ourselves
Someone should start             for your brilliant happy lies easily
wildly Laughing Now!"       
                            
                      
­                            unravel into a thousand laughs
hafez
May 2018 · 1.6k
sleep poses
Left Foot Poet May 2018
human revelations in our sleep poses

she sleeps with both arms back, murmuring,
  flung over her hearing head,
as if she is surrendering

nightly

me slip away for a few, only to find  
her left hand ****** by her arm crook'd,
fit to her temple, as if to bear the weighty weight
of a heavy head plein des thoughts, dream-mares, tales and talks,
too dense to contemplate
without assistance,
armed support to hold on, hold up,
fighting/ accepting as a unwanted outcomes
or retrying old misdeeds
(no, no, oops, that’s me)

stirring,
she swift motions/crisscrosses her arms into an X,
a human parts tiara atop, on blond tresses, that fully messes
any remaining daytime efforts and her nighttime wild dancing^

no one reveals me,
none inform on me what positions
my containership adapts, adopts when my woke-guards
are dismissed/released and
lay unprepared to disguise my innermosts exposures

ow, early am resting comfortable with a six poem-pack of
slept hours on my tool belt,
so far this weekend one shot fired before the day officially
is belle rung and these poses thoughts
are upon what my eyes alight

can’t decide if knowing how I dance in the bed at night,
reflationary, deflationary, worth fact facing,
for this is no secret

my sleep hours are colored,
admixture of moving pictures,
punctuated with
stills of past and future,
the poses
of how to greet, were greeted,
withstood upheld ran from wept, murdered,
faced up, faced down, go unrecorded
and the
poems residuals
and the
poem prophesying-
both!

fearful confessions for acts
committed and foretold


Decision: I don’t want to know
7/20/18 7:08am

^(tango-ing with both, familiar and the unexpected men
who are she-allowed to lead for few minutes,
her cover up pose
expertly rigidly flexible, but her head thrown back to say
this is how far you will be allotted, allowed to dance/take me)
Apr 2018 · 22.1k
"man the tomatoes?"
Left Foot Poet Apr 2018
man (?)
the tomatoes?  

patty m.,
a grievous error thy commissioned

tomatoes are the quintessential feminine fruit
red juicy, round, curvy, sweet
with a flavor at once the same,
yet never again always different, diffident,
asized, and blonde or red, never contrived

without it,
would pizza be pizza?
without it,
would **** ***** love,
be merely a good salad

or a poem

ever be the same?

“me love tomatoes”
cookie monster
Left Foot Poet Apr 2018
(seep yourself to leak away)

all reveals are feints;
I take you right
but I am moving left,
always left,
then left again

when I turn the faucet of me on,
brown, rusty pipe water comes out,
never turning clear,
even if the flow
went on for a millennium

someone traveller passerby
reads my excellent explicit illicit words,
with kind sweetness
observes a valid conclusion:
Poems take.a lot out of you

correct+wrong

not take, give
they are the slow seepage
of my overburdening
which is
yes, yes, I know, all relative,
but perspective is a
sometime summer thing,
and all the springtime streets
filled with filthy frozen slush

having  come from some rusty water leakage,
never turning clear
no matter how long the street runs away
from you

so you take yourself to give away,
seeping and leaking

ah words;

so useful and so inadequate
crushed petals from the Tree of Life

you ask me If I have read my brother,
the prophet-poet Jeremiah?

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?


When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart's delight


Then the Lord reached out his hand unto my mouth and said,
"I have put my words in your mouth."


these are those words
written months ago
Mar 2018 · 1.3k
do we believe in ghosts?
Left Foot Poet Mar 2018
at 11pm in nyc
one sees what
you need to c
what you don’t want to b
what’s c-ing you
all the aleph bets
are ghosting words in your
brown i’s and clear fingernails

then when and why
you are under the
dining room table
cause you don’t want to be
a real person
it’s so oh much easier to be
in the under, the table dark thunder,
so when until you need to be a visibility,
until then a ghost is a fine impossibility

do we believe in ghosts?
girl, you crack me up
W ooooohoooo W you who?

11:16pm
the witching wishing h our
Left Foot Poet Mar 2018
in this crazed business of flighty gods and flitty humans,
this trove of love need,
this two way street for persons blind in one eye
thus they can see you,
the one who loves them
only when they squint real hard,

well it is a far better thing

to be next them,
to be seen and be seeing
than have the
ceiling be your horizon,
a pillow oscar-acting as a long lost love,
cold sheets and space heaters each losing the battle,
for when the moment occurs that

loving usurps loneliness
even for a moment’s moment,

it is a far better thing you do
than you have ever done before

8:41pm
Left Foot Poet Mar 2018
cellphone to heart, mobile to immobile, electric dead to living

you know that sleep and I are but passing acquaintances,
when it drops in, to heavy my lids, it is through a cracked window slivered, just enough for a Pan boy to grab me and away me to Almost Neverland

when the alarms sound that it’s sleepy time,
(quite like that quiet verse)
no time to delist the “those pre-shluffy to do things,”
cell drop upon my chest, like an open mic,
then the raging observatory tapestry begins!

the cell lies directly above my ventricular chamber,
and communication is live, the brain cutoff switch, well, cutoff

all manner of imps, devils, rejected poems, angels and
Greek gods and some Indian as well, stand in line for to make
free calls via a beating human message call center, utilizing my friends and family verizon plan to register complaints,
close out unfinished biz, or just contact, friends, family or other
mischievous imps or even you, in other time zone worlds

though my brain may not interfere, like the CIA, it records all
conversations and give me a list of new poem titles, notions, stories glories and wrenching heartbreaking heartbreak,
requiring “fleshing out” when I awake from my three fingers
of scotch, glass eye tears drops made me drunk,

damning this transmigration chorus of voices that offer up a treasure of divine humankind’s hopes and travails,
and the occasional call on the divine’s 1-800 confession line,
hear it all, my chewing out by one particular god of mine who does not suffer my criticisms well of his ungodly actions, nope not sweetly and

when else would he dare contact me, except when no edgewise
words of mine can appear to contradict his mealy mouth excuses

did you musty misty mistake  my poems  as the product of
the miracle water wages of my imaginary inspiration,
no, not, from the replaying of your desperate exclamations,
the cancerous shrieks of loss and prickly investiture of the aesthetics of soft whispers and solitary foot treads,
that is where my insanity is bred, and tumbling s-words, sworn

don’t consider it eavesdropping as there is no signed rental agreement, consider this unfair warning, if you should secret use my cellular line, your everything is now ******,
your genetic material is materialistic mine and my poems yours,
this bittersweet sentiment is a measure of our bloods commingling,
your tears and impish silliness, are shiny hidden within mine

somehow I feel compelled to state this unique statistic:

I love you

4:47pm on 3/11

who writes poems like this?
silly old boys with gray hair, standing on one left leg.  but you knew that, right?
Feb 2018 · 1.3k
The Commentators
Left Foot Poet Feb 2018
commissioned by and for those
who constant comment on my
            poems, my indenture


moi,
handy with verbal weapons,
cut down a few trees for my necessities,
duels or dams, written Odyssey long and Tombstone OK quick,
who was it said, I lay down verse cause it’s my daddy’s curse?

why it was me and thus the free and easy flowing from the obligatory urges, cannot be disobeyed or disturbed, ignored,
this one, inherent, so fast comes the flow steady, unbending,
the six easy pieces come up half heads and three tails

it is just dictation from the *mental musing committee
and  as far as they’re concerned, they’re the tator and I’m the tot, the
dic who just has to get it down like I knowed it complete
before they decided to speak it

ain’t deprecating and ain’t saying that a thousand or more poe’s ain’t time used well, but this one has a pale, almost Elizabethan white powdery dusted pallor, caused it spilled out in 10 minutes
with no time to get tanned or tamed

to the skilled individuated commentators
who Tennessee volunteer their skill, sight, their time, unbidden to savvy and to savage say what they see beneath the surface,
a place I’d prefer not to visit or even, just hang,
lest I find out what the heck I actually meant!

hats off to the reactors and the actors
who write their own lines
pithy and for pity sake,
hot and cold, youthful and old,
who speak without long considered pauses
and so often write in two lines the summary
of hours labor and the product of decades,
of the good and bad, the thirty one flavors in my mind stored

hats off to the gallant and the uncredited uncrowned,
who are the validators and the gladiators who enter the arena with but a short sword and yet subjugate the army of
the many verses and see close up and offer freely their
heart warming frostings over my écritures

you gladden an old man’s heart,
by the hearth, and egg him on
asking without asking for but one mort~more,
with the unintentional inspired commissions
that their comments instigate

you lay and slay me down repeatedly
and I ‘m held harmless
but not wordless for so oft have I exclaimed:

anything you say can and will be used by me
in the court of poetry**

the next to the bottom line is this:

those who comment commend condemn are the extenders
and should claim legit the greater credit

<•>
2/20/18 2:00 ~ 2:10am.

writ in a single seating without hesitation and consideration
the sojourn a quick ten minutes and with thanks and bowed head to all that commentate on my given words, a hearty god bless and accept my pitiful thumbs up for annotating isn’t a skill in my possession or my permitting; thank god for emoji's and icons and
XOXOXO's
Left Foot Poet Feb 2018
the disagreement palpable
gotta seriously disagree
the reversal is the course proper
*** backwards you are, right back at ya
forward forward, never confuse what’s past infused
never go back to old, it’s a dead weight carrying
the past is now a pretense, what we saw, believed and wrote
shuck that mao shirt, those cowboy boots, older vista visions,
the capsule you saw gone immediately to forward the blessing
get some slim jeans, fancy sneakers, a new way of seeing seeking

then the music muse interferes interfaces!

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who stand looking.

Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune,
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long,
And the forests will echo with laughter.

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now,
It's just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on.
And it makes me wonder.

“Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know,
The piper's calling you to join him,
Dear,  can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?”

*exactly
Feb 2018 · 587
what does the W stand for?
Left Foot Poet Feb 2018
what does the W stand for


my 2:00am friend?

left feet touching and yet I am clueless, unsure in what language I should compile the possibilities and

reread my poem and shotgun taken aback

you make my urgency feel so trifling

and I read your are back but you are more gone for,
love’s  misfortune has you, graced,
like a hole in the barbed wire fence,
had bled you dry and let the seeds for
the next planting go astray;
this is comprehended for my fences
are so busted in so many places that
all the animals escaped only to return
at feeding time, their curiosity of the outside world
limited

and W has limited infinite answers

for there are no names that begin with W
for farmers in our native tongues

suspect if you are reading this it must be after 2:00,
indeed it’s 4:07am, and the puzzlement is face flushing,
annoying and curiously intriguing...

and i remain,
“sincerely” yours

L.F. Poet




p.s. thanks for reading my stuff
Left Foot Poet Feb 2018
I used to live alone before I knew you

so
of the mundane tragedies endlessly writ
repeat rinse repeat
repeat
how awfully awful
is the complaining without cessation
of busted everything;

recall the the doctor’s office sign
"no cure for the broken heart here"

so when I hear a Buckley sing
the words of the Cohen, High Priest of Songs,
I, a broken hallelujah,
smile with recognition
  though the true cure is
yet  still forever being researched

patience is a patient within me,
for my muses and their endless,
poking aching whispers of write, write, write, right,
they are the company I keep,
they are the company that sweeps me up
I, a broken hallelujah

they are not the desired flesh, true,
that affirms confirms and denies me
denying my needy frailties
but for now,
mine company to keep,
so when we do meet and
you greet me with a
tell me about your previous lovers
as you humanly must

will recite my poems from
from before I knew you
Jan 2018 · 2.7k
When I Sit Down to Write
Left Foot Poet Jan 2018
<!>
inspired by a conversation with Maira Kalman


******* a name, adopt a persona, let my fingers do the talking,
place the instrumental sharp point tip upon the blankety blank paper,
maestro baton raised, coordinating,
the first sound, the vocal chords trembling,  
the first thought, the ultrasound image, entrance of a first violin,
coalescing into, into the initializing single primary phonation,
the stinging geometry of chance at last,
throwing  down the gauntlet, glove slapping, and the
tendons tense, the mouth opens, release and indentation,
a letter's curvature, a black and white downward stroking,
a sign is televised, revealed and released

a one way only sign

time bends knee, gravity suspended, terror morphs to
expelling rapid firefights of imagery needy for spacing,
even pauses mid-word  leave just this:

where is the in in
intimate?

are you the in in
inmate,
or the jailor at the gate?

you swear never again

until committing once more,

a sentence commutation, by committing a first sentence,

and the greater toll taken and paid for,

and the in in in-nate,
questions your sanity

happily


<•>

9/17/17 10:55pm
Left Foot Poet Jan 2018
composition is a criminal sentencing,
a full-time sensitizing,
a never ending true~rue seeing,
recalling,  every photograph my eyes did see,
by word.

I am a career criminal.  I know.
nov. 29,2017
Jan 2018 · 2.5k
2am Friends
Left Foot Poet Jan 2018
2am Friends

winter has set the boundage, bars of chill, escape-urge killers,
self-imprisoned by our ruthless timidity, that both comforts yet,
worse violates our truthful, unwanted inadmissible-neediness by
purging the touches and the knowing kindage, this then,
this preface, your reminding of-as-of-yet untouched,
half-invitational, half-regret, half-cursed, whole red need for
2am friends
to fill the void that poems can n’ere fill

1/1/18
spoken while standing on one left foot.
Left Foot Poet Nov 2017
surprise surprise I read between the lines,
gobbling up the bread crumbs youse guys leave in;
yours and hers in the edible empty spaces and
hints and clues from other lines from other places

grew up in a family of storytellers, historians and book writers:
we did not play Scrabble in my house; was too contentious,
and besides, someone excelled in literary obscura and
Ancient Poets,
which made it most unfaira

instead we read the dictionary for fun and
broke into the unlocked local library at night,
were called The Borrowers in our little town,
I think affectionately

The FBI employed my momma,
the Original Literary Profiler,
cause she could see the signature of the same writer,
no matter how many names or disguises he tried,
in everything they had written

  the skill was transferred genetically,
which is visible in all my escapades poetically:
I live here under many names so superciliously,
but I never have yet, fooled myself^
I did read a first chapter of my sister's book published in a newspaper many years ago; thinking it was a well written review,   when I discovered the true author's identity, my family teased me mercilessly
11-29-17 13:18 est

^ sometimes I read an oldie and think not bad, which  makes laugh when I say out loud,  
did I write that?
Left Foot Poet Nov 2017
The Allusionists (Mary Winslow and Jeff Steir)

these two allusionists  **(not illusionists!)


composition is a criminal sentencing, a full-time sensitizing,
a never ending t/rue seeing, recalling, photography by word.

I am a career criminal.  I know.

these two retranslate by digging into word wells and
well hid storage closets under stairs so that we,
the not-in-attendance may envision their sightings with
two hands clutching, comprehending almost better than
the one who is actually there.  

for our version, the one they provide is,
coffee with cream,
scotch with a  beer chaser, tea with honey,
all to be, sipped slow, so
the hot frost on my the chest, infiltrating nostrils,
Vaporub-spreads slow and easy, brainward.  

the allusionists.

the habitual employers of this
specific filter,
(word weavers, I call them behind their backs),
weaving is not in my eternally planned skill set.  

I do so admire their tapestries
that guilt alone demands tribute and obeisance
and this poor imitation.  

I do so admire their tapestries.
November 25, 2017. 11:07 AM.
Nov 2017 · 3.9k
staying-hydrated
Left Foot Poet Nov 2017
for the 111 yr. old young lady from Mars
<•>

fluids in, fluids out  

wake up at midnight, lips, throat, even eyes, California Death Valley parched, white crusted-stuck together,
it takes Poland Spring water from the Northeast to unlock the throat, ****** not sipped, from a plastic gourd  the chilling wetness slap to the body and brain screams metaphor, poem in there somewhere,

so what if it's spat-past midnight,
isn't this one of those soul-criticality's,
staying hydrated, (is) disco staying alive  

make sense to you?
the older I get, thirstier I am, could be I'm drying/dying out from the inside out,  
doctors clueless, but then again they don't reveal all they see out of poetic professional courtesy and they are tired of
yeah yeah yeah,
my professional courtesy answer to their  dire warnings repetitious  

tonight tho the metaphor runs strong like a mountain stream,
a Mt. Marcy beginning trickle growing into a mighty Hudson,
and the driving urge to drink, simple replenishment, birth fluid  
is strong transformed into words

water is words, the water is wide, the poems hydrate what's left on the inside, and the metaphor transforms itself again

water is words, words are water,  
the difference huge, the difference minuscule,
both pour, both refresh like a mother's body fluids,
all for one, one for all, and as closing time grows nigh,
staying-hydrated is primate

place a new cold bottle in readiness for my
3 o'clock feeding
11/14/17 12:04am
Left Foot Poet Oct 2017
the sighs in our chest that emanate from a different kind of
breast cancer*

wrote these words prior,
then, certainly uncertain of the exactitude of their meaning,
clearly unclear of their useable intention,
yet the too real wrathful sensations
that inspired their caesarian creation,
the sigh's very own exhalations,
floatations devices for the interned-no-longer emotions,
escapees via the crevasses of chest ribs splitting open,
return to glory thanking me for freedom given

let posterior eloquence suffice, let brevity guide
my self's interior diagramming,
lengthy explications and deep analytics, I leave to you,
the astonished medical examiner and the horrified mortician

chest ripped, my hand reinserted, the blighted scourges,
the abscessed cancers, the obsessive relentless cankers,
asking shamelessly why have I returned to the crime scene

the sighs are air-borne, ready for air plucking,
all cloud seeded, deeded for poets to seize and commence,
to plant and invent, a mountain top trickle to a mighty
river of poems to be recovered and discovered,
unrehearsed and unleashed

but you and I have unwished, unfinished business,
as of yet unwritten, one last poem to honor our
mutually assured destruction,
for this day will be
rewritten differently
this one, a simple script, a written pyramid,
built by an Israelite, who by command, perforce
mustn't but does write prophecies
that may or may not come to being,
poem pyramids,
surely none will not survive Darius's desert sandstorms
ravaging kisses of time's forgetting
10:02am


https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2141695/my-day-will-be-different-today/
Left Foot Poet Sep 2017
BG: On High, (He/She)  ranting about a new alphabet!

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2140791/a-poet-wondered/


YOU wrote, He/She read...

down looking to make some trouble,
what he likes to do on weekends,
heard about your poem,
trying to create a new alphabet,
and got mightily ******
(at you)

we have an open IM,
and live crosstown
from each other,
and he/she is kinda shy,
(from gender confusion,)
asked me to relay this to you,
Madame BG Star:

you, who writes a new poem
on the hour, got a *** of nerve,
dissatisfied with the limits
of your tools, should not overly complain!

you got gifted, and use up your allotment
of alpha rearrangements and never get billed,
should be more considerate,
and just
write more.

and then he said something else,
because he always gets the last
word...

you have an affinity for the letter L
it would appear, so here is your punishment,
for the rest of the week
write like a madwoman


but no words that employ this lala sound!

how do you like that my little lollipop ******?

having scored some five and dime bags,
(cannabis legal not, up above)
went home to run the world in his
usual state
of (dis)grace

don't b-ame the messenger,
cause he said over his shoulder as departing
on his fiery chariot,
that applies to you too
u troublemaking

_Eft Foot Poet
Left Foot Poet Sep 2017
"my day will be different today"

she declares, when she sees herself hidden in
in a passing spending and breaking broken
drive-by scribbled-pretend, urgent poem,
stumbled upon by a heavenly calculated accident

gladdened, saddened. now dressed to the nines,
that piece of me, wherever it be, the parade ground,
where the words and letters assemble,
where the firemen train,
adding logs, love, accursed ego,
to the hearth,
steady on burning, to practice putting out the
ohms and uh-uh's
of electrical resistance that
your response, a shiny knife of a self-reflecting observation
has...** ** **
sparkling stabbing mirror

this one, a simple script, a written pyramid,
built by an Israelite, who by command, perforce
mustn't but does write prophecies
that may or may not come to being,
poem pyramids,
surely none will not survive Darius's desert sandstorms
ravaging kisses of time's forgetting

but your simple complementation
fits inside quite nicely, for its simplicity,
because it is a
provocation stabbing piercing  a self-questioning, of
why to write I need pen paper and ink,
and don't forget those stupid teardrops in the clear vial

the Zola j'accuse
of every poet, even the gone-ones,
looking down
at highest bar in poetry!

did I really do that?

even for a brief moment,
a nanosecond,
me words
modify the entire continental shelf
that another writer occupies,
change its axis, the rate of spin,
the angle of another's
solitary human's day

nah  

all i did was read (all) her poetry, imaging imaginng
a life so foreign, putting me inside of thee, and
let my stubs, the remains of worn fingers do the rest

so I guess it could be true
what you wrote,

but about me

"my day will be different today"

and why I practice this
wonderfully ridiculous
craft,
cause the pay is so
**** good

10:36am
I came across your poem by chance. Could it be you have read my poems too? Honored to be in this exchange. My day will be different today.
Sep 2017 · 1.4k
trust in the shape of a key
Left Foot Poet Sep 2017
trust in the shape of a key,
good god how corny is that?

satisfactorily nonsensical, a Pharisee phrase,
so offal illogical,
it borders on the poetically reprehensible

who has time to state this stuff,
pretend it is worthy of something respectful,
work it into a Nobel Prize awarded script,
nominated for "really bad ****?"

an ordinary hardware key, brass gleamy,
and the squealing grinding noise
heard while a blank progenitor is reimagined,
so so annoyingly ludicrous in this century
of plastic replicators but the noise,
comfortably familiar as a sound of
things being made

run thumb test over the cuts,
as if your thumb should know
what order the points and bevels,
the toothy gap spaces should be,
the correct disorderly order of the teeth

there are very few locks on a farm;
indeed the front door key
has not
been seen
in many a year

what's that you ask?
ok ok - I get it - in harvest time
it is early to bed and earlier to rise,
conclude this mystery key,
red winter wheat needs laying down,
stop your word seeds germinating

there may be few locks on a farm,
everything rusts so quickly anyway,

but stop to comprehend just how many locks
the human body employs  -
at least 613,
maybe many more,
and only one master
for them all

a shiny gleamy thing,
strangely,
its cuts and grooves seem to
spell a word
trust

go figure

1:05am in the city
yes, for the Canadian Iranian
Sep 2017 · 1.9k
spend/broke
Left Foot Poet Sep 2017
spend /broke

I am here.  I could spend all my days reading your wires.  I could spend all my nights writhing writing responsa psalms.  
perhaps I do, for after all, I am here  
{~for Mara, Denel, Liz B.; Patty~}

I string fences too, bury birds, insects, living sons, tho just out in the back of my ex-mansion brain. want to write simple, effectively, like you guys, and want to live simple ample effectively. cant cursed, cursed canticle Kant cant.  so the day commences   2000 plus emails chirping read me and I've just arrived, but I do not, bury them in a mass grave with an effective 'delete all,'  not even thinking what might be missed, missed

what happens when u run out of fence, land, good silences, and spending becomes broken? spending, breaking, chicken, egg, simple, too many words, to read, to write, so which will come first?

738am
Liz B.Fledgling

Traci Brimhall
I scare away rabbits stripping the strawberries
in the garden, ripened ovaries reddening
their mouths. You take down the hanging basket
and show it to our son—a nest, secret as a heart,
throbbing between flowers. Look, but don’t touch,
you instruct our son who has already begun
to reach for the black globes of a new bird’s eyes,
wanting to touch the world. To know it.
Disappointed, you say: Common house finch,
as if even banal miracles aren’t still pink
and blind and heaving with life. When the cat
your ex-wife gave you died, I was grateful.
I’d never seen a man grieve like that
for an animal. I held you like a victory,
embarrassed and relieved that this was how
you loved. To the bone of you. To the meat.
And we want the stricken pleasure of intimacy,
so we risk it. We do. Every day we take down
the basket and prove it to our son. Just look
at its rawness, its tenderness, it’s almost flying.
Left Foot Poet Sep 2017
The muse inquires,
knowing that a question such as this is
cannon fodder, an off-the-shoulder-blouse tease,
just a hint of cleavage, a whiff of parfume,
something to make poet sneeze,
ejecting an answering essay
without a clue where to go, but,
now the fifth gear engaged,
compulsion full,
immédiatement, en ce moment, laisser's aller!
and he knows exactly what to say

what if poet possessed a special character,
to define the sadness that reflects that
summer has had its memory card wiped,
and even though today,
will be a Saturday of
jeans shorts, a halter top, sort of day,
the chill of dreaded winter is not coming,
already present and accounted for,
enchanté, déjanté,
has already encased his heart in ice so thick,
that even if poet drank a Joni case
of his fav summer quaff,
un provence rose,
his seasonal loss cannot be overcome,
the summer man~king is dead

all that in but a single character, a precise capture,
a labor and  time saving device, but
a character with no character
for the labor would be love lost

yet you swear by your succinct emojis,
their immaculate efficient composition,
and I would not trade one accidental,
just-slipped-out I love you
even for ten thousand disheartening heart symbols

would you prefer
|£%!<#
instead of:
I love you so much it is
driving me batshit crazy!


I'm stuck with my troop of twenty six
and their multiple endless quilted rearrangements

call me old and out of fashion,
to your question,
this poem is my ask and answered at 5:13am
In Autumn

Mark Irwin
When within ourselves in autumn we feel the autumn
I become very still, a kind of singing, and try to move
like all things green, in one direction, when within ourselves
the autumn moves, thickening like honey, that light we smear
on faces and hands, then touch the far within one another,
something like autumn, and I think when those who knew
the dead, when they fall asleep, then what, then what in autumn
when I always feel I’m writing in red pencil on a piece
of paper growing in thickness the way a pumpkin does,
traveling at fantastic speed toward orange, toward rot, when
in autumn I remember that we are cold-smitten as I continue
smearing red on this precipice, this ledge of paper over which
I lean, trying to touch those I love, their bodies rusting
as I keep writing, sketching their red hands, faces lusting for green.
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