I read of your passing and paused mid-bite.
The world seemed to grow colder, but you knew
it was time to begin your next adventure, one
far beyond this familiar world we had shared.

Scientist — no, pioneering champion —  
in the fight against cancer and diabetes,
you were humble even in your brilliance.
A giant among men, a heart greater still.

I can only think of each time you passed
me in the hallway, your shy smile luminous
even as you ducked past me as if afraid
I might start speaking about what we had both

lost so long ago. You had always been my late dad’s
favorite boss, and I remember the thoughtful albeit brief
email you sent me when the cancer took him, expressing
your sorrow that a great scientist and fellow man had left

this cruel world far too soon. Now you join him
and I picture the two of you, both clad in white lab coats
colliding in an awkward embrace, eager to update one another
on all that the other had missed from the other side.

when you understand my poems perfectly then,

their utility is inutile,
their usefulness is, will. always be, in the

nth  

reinterpretation, a million and still counting,
as long as you must guess at its labyrinth inner wired construct,
be pleasured by the roiled and rolled curves upon your tongue,
two lives (yours, mine), a paired wine tasting, we together,
believing in the greatness of joyous frustration

some say, as I do, the world is better for the
utility of thine own struggled understanding,
the truest combination of two way communication,
surpassed only by our at last armed embrace,
when at last we understand our mutuality of need and salve...

don’t believe in
divine intervention,
but all~so(uls)
don’t believe in the
accidents of coincidence

the Pandora Box gods eavesdrop on my mind,
looking to match the music to my mood,
(box to box, they cruelly smile)
Providentially Provisioning
me with inspirational food.
to collect and let
what’s brewing,
stop stewing,
and come out
in a you know what…

that old song,
500 Miles,
keeps
returning, unplanned,
auto play repeatedly
entirely accidentally,
(U believe that?)
my mind keeps on
knowing
I’m up~blowing,
there’s unfinished business
a-firing, a forest fire
of a 500 miles~s-acred blaze,
the firemen intuit ‘tis
of a kind,
it can’t be stoppered
until you and it,
self extinguish, (ex~sting-you~ish (1))
burn itself,
outside inwards,
reverse phoenix,
not sparks left,
until it’s dead

and the song,
and it’s power o’er me,
** ** **, is un~finished
busine business,
having fun with
my undoing

Lord, I’m Two,
both of us,
in words unspoken,
know that the/a fragmentation
grenade that is my brain,
dancing on the thinner
blackest
red line that asunders me,
twice, into two unequal halves,
is inflamed, infected, dejected

Both of us,
hear that dog whistle
loud blowing
one inch, a salty pinch,
or even
500 hundred miles,
makes no difference,
cause Lord, I’m two

reminding how far I am
from my owning
my very own
personal homeland security,
complete with self-sourced,
sovereign jagged glass pieces,
intended to jag, jog, tear, penetrate, break, annoy, till~this line……ends
,
the errata of this man’s
quasi, semi, repeating
mess-ups, that are
erratically invoking
benedictional confessionals,
of poems unwrit

those I dare not,
until and unlest,
you board a plane
to come to save me

Lord, I’m Disordered,
Lord, I’m Three,
a trinity of Myself & I & Me,
siblings who just
can’t along,
but can’t barely survive,
as separate human beings,
for one cord connects us,
keeps attached like on a bus,
though at a modest
moderating distance,
cause the fights are
frequent

Lord, I’m
(yeah yeah Four, say no more,
just rap it up son,
there’s work to be done!)

am I finished being,
an unfinished being,
will I ever make it to Five,
get home, even barely alive,
Lord, will I ever be One,
just like you,
put together,
a jigsaw complete,
a whiskey neat,
a whiskered gnat,
a graybeard bit
of fluff
with a wide smile of a
Cheshire Cat?

Lord,
give me sleep,
& poems born written
pre~complete,
so alls that required is to just hit
SEND,
a journey shelved,
ended before began,
a pieced together whole man,
give me rest,
eternal and blest,
make me an archaic kept,
in an archive slept,
and end this song,
with a fini
of
quietude & peace?


4:35AM
Sabbath Eve
- Av 12, 5784
- Aug. 16, 2024

the propulsion of compulsion is indefatigable,
it cannot no more, be ignored, as if it is forming
a holy commandment, number 11, you must
write when so ordered, denial is temporary
i n s a n i t y, and the backlog of nuances be
comes longer and longer by the instant

the provocateurs, them eyes, those eyes,
even the ears and tongue join in to instigate,
the cabal of influencers who peddle no product,
demand no payment but total obeisance and
sometimes low-class instant fufillment, for here
I am in servitude,@ 4:33am, by dawn’s early light
(no **** for real), propelled and compelled by
the creative, the spilling urgency of the need
to expel notions of potions that flit between the

frontal lobe, parietal lobe, cingulate gyrus,
and prefrontal cortex: (I told  you, it’s a cabal!)
all  firing
up neurons like electron spark plugs, and only
I can see the sparks colliding inside as letters,
words, phrases, none lazy, all demand long life,

or the Perpetuity of the Momentary”

it grows lighter by the minute and the sporadic
lights across the bay wink morse code secrets
to the observant, and Noyac’s  tree line has
become a distinguishable and distinctive
land mass to which I crossed last nite via &
upon the South Ferry, when all these conflicting
concepts began a painful birthing delivery,
the coagulation of the flighty, merging and
transforming into my child, in my bed, through
the picture window that has so oft been complicit
in the ganging up on my very, very old and restless
brain

but, uh, this ecrivez, this motion that the momentum
of the momentary desiring & deserving of monuments
to the perpetual
won’t be stilled and hours later, with it’s invisible hands
around my throat, it yanks from within what did not
exist ten minutes prior, but always existed inside me
as a jumbled puzzle, gestating quietly till a swift kick
of birthing pains insufferable accompanied by her
raucous dreams, awoke me from ******* and rhyming
Rem Sleep, to now, this moment, named forever as
4:57am and this noisy newborn, covered in embryonic
fluid (wonderful but disgusting really) is all ready pealing and peeling
off suggestions for brothers and sisters, this arrogance
is untenable, but the babe laughs at me, for it knows that
there are hidden, voluminous files of titles awaiting their
turning time of final conception

no longer nighttime, an early forming day, it too,
covered in its own fluidity, awaits discovery, for
the lights from across the bay have gone to bed,
turned off but the greatest, more powerful
brighter discharges
of the Sun Gods

The Bay’s waters are still, though my woman is not,
muttering, still dreaming out loud, as if she wishes
to foment
turbulence, and desires a boat for safe conveyance
across the dark seas of the night to the searing bright
June summer day that the Greek seers have forecast,
and then that moment, like it’s older sibling, will demand,
it’s very moment of personalized perpetuity, its own
unique naming,
a full recording, a welcoming by the Preservation Band,
amidst the glory of its mother mornings colorings of
palest blues, puffery of cumulus whitiwhispers all tinged
in my favorite, flavored color, creamsicle orange,
and the calming power is self evident for the rustling
back and forth of raucous dreams have ceased, and I too
am no longer possessed by the moment, until soon
when the hands creep slow round my throat by a new
moment, and all is lost, all is gained and a newest poem
is brought from the womb of my ancient past, my currency
of the next minutes and the wealth of words that are
available to us all! demands one of us, perhaps you?
to commit its actualized existence into reality

I bid you a soft adieu, for the chores of existence
those demanding pests of drudged biblical
pestilence
can no longer be kept
waiting

nml
5:21am
Sun Jul 16
2024

writ at you know where…