she confounds me with sweet raisins and nuts, accolades oh so
high the caloric content....

”Yours [poetry], is subtle,
that seek to grasp, hide and peek,
strong/weak/out-front/meek.
It charms like a snake a wake of ideas,
with innuendo, yet it's sublime,
a bell that chimes, a walk in hell,
a credo a charm, two-arms to keep one warm”
~
**** your praise, cursed encouragement,
leave me well enough to my audience of
the occasional stumbled on, the accidental tourists,
the who few nick my cheek when they randomly seek
a few minutes aside, an at-last-last-chance peek,
giving us both, the reader and criminal, pause,

the pause of
‘who wrote this?’
and it’s innate counter-mate of wonder,
when to my attention brought,
‘did I write this?’

**** praise, poisonous snakes only need apply,
the wake of my ship so quickly dissipates
upon the unmapped, unending Sea of New Poets,
where the 99% just drown the first time round,
and the remaining survivors  glory in fame so fleeting,
‘twere not for the unburied of the internet, their zombies
would too be shipwrecked, ungiving, undead...

a credo? not I.

a credo requires preaching, acolytes according a poet succored reams
of accusative praise, all such leads to ******* up to the egoland
where failures reside alone gleeful pride, and goes to die on bouquets
faded from by over caressing their petals, to floor dropped, in silent admiration, the imagined bells of hell ringing only in the ears
of the delusional deluded

my maturity existential, let it be forgotten, troubling no one,
a new audience of one, owning tickets of broken mirrored pieces,
my layers peeled back, this imagery unrecognized, not I, not I,
for fainted be, the poison of pride denied, for my writings writ
by an accursed one, long since buried in the faint ashes of
lost glorious forgotteness
~
but humbled nonetheless and it is the finale,
“two arms to keep one warm,”
with an elixir of words ear whispered,
**** you know my weakness, and now
my bravado erased by your single touch prophesied

~for Bill T. Jones~

two poets, laureates both,
on the nature of hunger, they discourse,
in temple, where sacrificing is to living arts

I was there, hungry in every aspect,
seeking wisdom of the hungering nature of human.

examine the word, hunger,
hardly a rolling off the tongue mellifluous.
you growl it from the gut, in gowned resplendent ugliness,
go ahead, try it, it’s coarse and powerful insistent.

awoken empty but for the hunger, hungover from
dancing words and imagery not mine, now mine,
maddeningly demanding my dutiful attentions,
as if hunger was the master, me, obedient pupil.

the clean white slate the IPad re-presents repeatedly,
insulted that I have yet to crayon color it with the coherence
of hunger-exhaled words, dismissive that I am but an also-ran,
my village of lexical too unsophisticated,
the page addressed yet unplanned,
Apple white
is the color of the
starving artist.

for Lori, Riley and Kendrick

the questioning words jump off the page,
into two hands transforming,
words shape shifting into
multicolored ink stained fingers,
now, all a chokehold on my brain,
my throaty gasps rasping from
a simplistic convolution -
single questioning deserving an answer

what are you made of?

the obvious answers left in the slow lane,
bone, tissue, rivers and arteries of blue bloods,
just oil and fuel of a containership,
but the cargo carried, that’s the real stuff

you have insight inside that cannot be seen,
self-survival instincts that morph into morals,
our shared air affects you differently,
a sense of defending, caring,
costless  and costliest simultaneously,
spaghetti strands strong sinewed intertwining,
into a better human than most

to call you hero is wrongly insufficient,
but the thesaurus lends me no substitute,
weep, I do,
as the spring and summer blushing green
will not be seen by you at all, and by me,
seen now so differently,
when thinking of
soil-born courage instinctual that has no name,
but grows only in nature

what are you made of?

we know now, but knew not well,
that thing that makes you leap first,
was all you, the entirety of the best,
that exists, existed, as reminders to us,
to mine it, wear it,
medal it upon our fabric

you three,
breathe it back, exhale it from where ever you are,
that trace chemical odor in our atmosphere,
of life-giving sweetness, a rebirthing chlorophyll freedom
that we humans all desperately need,
even just to know it exists,
and inform us

what we need to be made of

your admirers are unlimited by geography or name,
but only by unlimited limits of imagination*

~~~
~for Albert’s wife~
~~~

the tattoos on my body, a complete list
of my 7 names^ stolen/shared with a heavenly human,
the ******* pretending he/it got no skin in the game

but that is a poem for another time...

you thank me for being a “follower”

unnecessary for your admirers are unlimited
by geography or name,
only by imagination,
a yet to b found,
unfound Cern particle

whatever name you/I choose,
what we/me love about your poems,
flora, fauna, the human cuppa,
the patient touching,
is that you write what your eyes feel,
yet, it is I doing the seeing

for that
follow you kicking and screaming,
happil
your /us
babe in arms



~~~