sliced the thumb quite nicely,
a straight line, it,
the thumb,
applauded my skill,
turning bright infected red from
embarrassment
for me...and my minority complaints,
losing HD sight of the
big screen
of what matters

small woes and big-toes,
got ten times aplenty,
got lawyers and creeps
back in my life,
made promises that can't keep

so for sure
biblically cursed,
Job, and me,
losing parched perspective
under the tree
that gives no shade

dancing on that line called
"why bother,"
the other side of depression

forgetting again,
roof over head,
pizza in the belly,
can still stand up straight,
after a few vociferous
aches n' growls,
though the docs prescribe
what i proscribe,
i.e exercise, diet and blah, blah, blah, hah, hah

got her and got you,
goddess of poetry,
the mental health should be ok,
someday,
maybe even
the physicality

but not nut all of you,
not so lucky,
love the brave,
the courage true
those who ask,
when the time comes,
brave ones revealations,
shame me back to perspective

so do the thing,
some say,
call it the-right,

says I,
it's the no-choice
no thought needed,no praise worthy,
just
*extend the
balance,
bring back the
relativity,
share the
luck,
be as brave as those who
dare to ask

another Thanksgiving,
another voyage in the rareified
l'air au-dessus,
the air above,
next to, amidst
the satisfying but untouchable still,
the gray-white of the clouds of which we so oft
exclaim, and always fail,
to do justice by

this time the
turbulence
within
compulsion beating
compels this thanksgiving addition
to the compilation of airplane poems

the pointer finger tapping
out this journey's record,
a priori, gold leafed,
added, inscribed,
on the priory wall
of other journeys,
even before
it was conceptually written

the pointer finger tapping
upon your own chest,
calming the beating turbulence
ever present, a giving present
to me,
red wrapped

no whining!

I promise myself,
to promise you,
cause if this be,
the best poem
I ever write
(why not, could it not be this one?)

a small prayer shawl supplication,
shall not be marred,
with plaints and requests,
visions and incisions,
the beseeching distaste of
be and re quests,
this one simple,
even, and as always,
a tad odd like me

I am just an ordinary Joe,
flying over the middle,
the country, the real one,
no megabytes
amidst the real,
a few hundred other supplicants,
gaily glad on a mostly
head-phoned, protected silent passage,
over water, land, rivers, and family clans,
all engaged and presaged by
calendal X marked to make ,
a Mecca trip,
a Jerusalem western walled, holy mount,
which ironically is for me is
direction relative,
that bastion of flesh and sinners,
the city of tan men
and salt pillared women,
the City of Miami

whoa, real turbulence
makes the typos egregious, plentiful,
and the body sways,
left to rightly,
the poem is compulsed
urgent flown to completion
(amazing the shaking and the stirring,
to the point of locating the airbag)
perhaps, he thinks, someone in this
airy residence doe not want this prayer
finished

enough.

"The Prayer~Poem of Seat 25D"

Dear Deity of Whatever Name:

We humans peculiar to some places,
set aside a day, this week
for being superlative,
for looking inward and do
quiet summary addition,
employing organs,
as many as necessary,
noses and toeses external,
organs invisible internal,
a counting to make,
to number what we are,
isolating the better reasons,
why our existence justified

we do it in
foolish human ways,
as is our nature,
human and fools interchangeably
one and the same

So this one man counts
his words, ever careful,
ever plentiful,
and utters grace,
the Bene and the Blessing,
quiet inside,
his fellow airplane passengers
holy unawares,
that he is praying for them
simply saying this

May each one pause,
even for a second,
and collect the moment,
understanding,
that thankful is a
but half a notion,
incomplete unless
it is given
away to another,
by making it
selfless

for Kitty Prr*

there is no boundary,
Mason Dixon Line, 49th parallel,
uptown, downtown grooves,
separating human from poetry,
but there is living, daily scorekeeping,
push/pull of taking each breath
in a right mannered way

sometime you gotta dig a ditch
to learn to climb a mountain,
pay dues and even get paid back
for living in a wrong mannered way,
which requires laying down of the pen,
doing shovel ready projects
needy for completion,
yet-to-be plans needy for
formulating details,
forethought and caring, putting the
poetry aside,
on top of the dusty piano

sometime you gotta drink it black,
pass on the milk, cream and the sugar,
even if the waitress just brings it,
pour ice water on top.of your head
just for yourself alone
the how-to-cleanse the eyes and head,
sometimes you got to let the
poetry stand aside

sometime you have to open that
black briefcase^ treasure hoard of
all things soured and soliloquy of
missteps and judgement errors,
letting the
poetry stand aside

sometime you gotta do the laundry,
rediscover the bottom of the sink,
watch the washing machine movie screen
picture making,
asking for its very own poem,
but you know this day,
gotta let the
poetry stand aside
and you stand up
and climb,
straighten up,
back creaking,
joints cracking,
first find the place to rest the body safely,
and when the chores of living crossed off,
then only
ready and somewhat good,
dust the piano,
dig out pen and paper
from the kitchen drawer of miscellania,
and let the reign of poetry
rekindle the Phoenix's ashes

How I Observed the Day of Atonement

If you are unfamiliar with day and its observance,
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

In a place of perfect solitude,
No crowded synagogue within to hide,
No cantor to intercede on my behalf,
I spoke words of mine own creation
To my creator who wisely empowers me
To judge myself, for knowing, none harsher,

We two,
Old travel companions,
Upon worn grayed, adirondacke thrones,
We overlooked,
A natural prayer place,
Bay and breeze, white-clouded and sun-laced.
Only the full time inhabitants, the animals,
Grayling butterflies to match and contrast,
Eavesdropping on our Greek dialogos, in this,
Palace of Perfect Solitude.

Amiable did we chat,
I of family, this and that.

He, wearied from recent travel,
To Syria and India,
Was glad for a day off,
For he had little to do,
But wait for twilight,
To then close the books.

For us no formality, easy the going,
No prosecutor no defender in residence,
For we exchange these roles intermittently,
The incriminatory, the penance, all deeds displayed,
No adult games of winking eyes, and
Hidden heart, secret chambers,
Rabbinical or angelic intercession.

He does so love his Bach,
Adagio on strings,
My soothing gift to him,
This music more than divine.

He returned this courtesy.

Warming sun to expose my chest,
Cooling genteel breeze offsetting,
The bay emptied of wayfaring skiffs and yachts.

A cooling beverage proffered,
But sighing, he said that he had yet to find
A beverage that his kind of thirst could slake.
For his eyes, tho shining, did not effervesce,
As when we shared this day in years past.

Too much killing, this year,
It tires me so to tabulate human excess,
Spoke not a word, for my critique would
Comfort him less, if at all.

Thanks for Kol Nidre, he plainted,
So I too can disavow,
The best intended oaths I took and take,
For each year, I fail more than the year before.

If only I could sit with each,
As I do with you,
Where what needs saying,
Is said, understood, undisguised as praying.

A schooner to the dock did appear,
For him it attended, for him, it waited,
Sails, both black and white.

He stood to depart, my arms-grasped, taken, he graphing,
Measuring my fortitude, my strengths, my divinity.

I do so love this day in your company.
I shall sit with you again one year on,
Bach sweet when next we meet, please.

Soft spoke, as almost I should not hear,
Your time is nigh, no thing I create is forever.
He spoke with such sadness,
For well I knew, the intent, his meaning.

He, for-himself, saddened, for he loved
Sitting  beside me in this manner,
Since my inception, never deception,

Only He resting easy, when he atoned before me,
And I gave him his absolution conditional,
As he gave me,
mine

My midnight blue satin dress
Someone said that it’s wicked, wicked tease
However, I know better:
it controls my every mood
Staying ahead as my curves survey the scenery
  I swayed down the avenues

Who’s going be the lucky fellow?
To auction it off my back
Who’s the one that
  see 3-D images with only one eye?
but to see what lies beneath this midnight blue
is sating memories

I felt the earth move under my feet
Pleats and creases;
hisses and random kisses
Tonight I am your mistress
and most of all
the goddess in the mist

Airbrush my body with admiration.
but never again say you love me
What is love?

who will read aloud
my poems
when I'm gone?

that old unfriended thot,
a nagging merry query
was for awhile forgot,
put on the back of an upper shelf,
where dust motes and mites
fear to trend

thoughts,
that I thought
I had dispensed with,
letting time
build illusionary wry walls,
fooling World Trade Center tall

morose forlorn,
pensiveness of
red ant armies,
incapable of
black marker redaction,
there is always one
a lingering malingerer
a sole fado singer,
playing woeful jazz in
the Quarter
on an empty emoty street,
dressed and guised
as the soul of a solitary
cancerous cell
"survivor"

cur overlooked,
biding time,
the surgeons gone,
the drugs flushed,
radiation burning
no more

begins then
the unholy
trilogy cycle

worn out, overused...
invasive categorically relentless
maybes,
what ifs,
then
oh goddamnnotagain

because believed, on knee,
I oathed that
loathed, raven nevermore,
ought
that
cracked door would be open

yet like the
New Orleans levee aged locks
hurricane succumbed
overflowed, overcome,
keyholed, infiltrated,
falllen to the enemy,
mes enfilade,
rumps up the black flag of
surrender

brain sneers
periodically,
like every other
minute, ok,
second,
coyly asking
penny for your
worthless thoughts?

just when you believed
"no mas"
was a prayer that had been heard,
teeth kicked in,
body snatching
hordes and boors
bad boys and ******,
sitting high in the
saddle again,
grinning torturous
tarty smiles
at who,
at you, fool!

you're as alone in that place
as insufficiently as that
impoverished overused
word can ere convey

the nagging realization
that when asking

no one answers

when your thinkings
perish you
your cutesy sweatshirt reads
last standing poet alive,
stabbed ded by awful-truths,
you failed and
all the black cats,
have fled the neighborhood,
just when need was greatest

who will read aloud
my poems when I'm gone,
has been silently answered

by silent applause,
the last theater goer
shuffles out, and turns
and extends his *******
his review leaves a
singular impression,
he looks familiar,
gauntly ghost,
he has accompanied me always
and his finger is his
triumphal parting shot