~

Keep It Simple Stupid ("Your Poems Are Too **** Long")

~ for Natty~

white sheet of foolscap,
imploring the fool's fingers,
natty. natty, just this once,
be the simpleton dunce,
spend but a modest pence,
cap the blowout verbiage well

pretend
being a short and sweet poet beat^,
leaving those blue line requests
more white than black,
emptier and thus,
more silently, fuller, and powerful,

build  each line from a few hard crafted,
forged-wrought-iron syllables,
say the more in the
unsaid unwritten

snap your fingers in clapping praise,^
kiss the words bye-bye slow and single,
hold back the overfilling raucous reprises,
those stanza'd motley muddled crew,
de-access all excesses,
a manly, word squad^^^,
no more,
the shaft to success
be a David slingshot of single pebbles

but herein have,
prior blessed and true confessed:

"for I know there is soul in brevity,
but that ain't exactly my finest quality"

this is a "not know how to,"
for when I plunder the sea deep of a
single and singular
first and foremost# kiss,
still forever kept,
and that cylindrical memory volume so full,
one must seek and speak,
many verbal Ceylonese herbal tea toasts,
for the drunken 'n blinder I become,
the greater the need,
the lesser to please,
commissioning the poet to sing of his
long odyssey home,
of even the briefest venture ventured,
a combo of triumph and escaped,
wrapped in a single word,
his every feathery eye retention plucked,
a bald bird to be fully consumed,
even the bones, committed to
paper memory...

what the heck,
you want a speck,
a "say hey kid"^^ haiku,
a shorty hearty 60 second sophomoric Campbell soupy blessing,
microwaveable, heated but not hot,
radiated but not cooked

woe is me,
cannot be denied,
why use a pithy when
for pity's sake,
thrice won't suffice?

the woman, the observer
punches me with a solitary and indelicate,
as her wont, as her want,
"just-this-once"
telling the blowhard to not spout

this prideful pain,
deep water drilled in the muscled fortress of my rocky biceps,
eliciting  an outsized
"ouch, that really hurt,"
and my spouting retort...

~

by this bruised blotch, this redsome refrain,
dulcet sung in black and blue, a sonnet's colored quatrain,
by your flesh's mark, thee I join, in places where no mark dare
reflect our secreted touch, witness-protected by our guardian eyes only...*

**** it.

no more morning glory

the cells want to refuse,
purported pseudo-deniers
of the man's compulsion

not yet six am,
the old house,
the summering congregation of birds,
correspond with each other,
their words unintelligible to the man-ear,
no doubt talking about the interlopers,
the come-and-go humans,
or perhaps,
just the lousy weather

the sunroom's lace curtains,
a patterned flower filtering viewer,
another impediment to what is out of sight,
for the fog surrounds but can't suppress,
the exterior & interior
combo of noises,
birds uttering their morning prayers,
accompanied by the sabbath choir of chorusing
groans from the untrodden, creaky floorboards,
complaining of aged back pains
from forty years
of desert wandering
and over use

they confirm the man is not alone,
and perhaps, even,
among the living

the bay's water's color,
a small hint now comes visible,
colored from the same paint can
as the surround-sound from which the
fog's discoloration was morning-drawn,
wider brush strokes cover this,
the man's small world

the brains complains, not again!

how many times will you compose,
drawing from the molecules of
this view,
no one cares,
but composition compulsion,
****** for what makes
the man breathe,
denies the deniers,
praying in the loudest thought voices,
to the principle that best defines
the moment,
(him?)

human, give thanks,
on this, the seventh day,
for the feast of life provided,
(even the reasoning atheists go respectful, humble silent)
as the man-poet acknowledges here the

One,

who remembers,

is faithful to,

fulfills the covenant and promise,

by making fresh daily,

the works of creation



Silver Beach,
Shelter Island
5:30am,
June 4th, 2016

(Return to Shelter Island)^^

~

"And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love"^

   ~

the winter's quietude
slowly dissipates,
like a miser's reluctantanc to-part-even-with
unwanted, yet saved up tears,
now finally shed, 
tears easy ease on down to please,
morphing into spring rain  
creating a horn of plenty of
les amuse-bouches,
summer tastes,
hints of mint,
all to commence, orchestrate,
miniature, slews of budding teases
of what may yet come

t'is only summer peekings coming to refresh,
memorized friends, recalling a former full bosomed lover's
abundant bounty,
untying the quiescent, frozen tongue,
relieving it of its stale,
suffocating, whited, slushed crust,
issued a full pardon and
twenty bucks pocket money and
freedom
to see the
new full born poems,
without the interference
of grey baited, metallic bars,
poems, floating by, on summer breezes,
air borne for lovers

the same water vista,
under grayscale sky and
winter cloud cover,
is uncrackable and the
Hollow King of Words,
silently languishes, jailed alone,
wretched and deposed,
a wrecked winter's tale told,
an empty throne forlorn

no-way-out aperture extant,
no keyhole found to unlock,
all the songs
that to no avail,
the ineffectual poets impatiently
have prayed,
beseeching an unresponsive sky to rain forth
uniforms of pastel blues and whites

only summer sun-rays
seasonly ready now, fully ripened,
rays notably higher angled,
that can ***** and crack open
the skull and bones,
rejoice the soul's soil,
filling eyes with leafy canopy of green down,
while reheating the heart's chambers,
un-encoding the precise temperature formulae,
for the degree exacting,
where the words-wanting-for-extracting,
release and rouse themselves from a
deeper dreamless hibernating,
and even a last remaining,
napping, spring drowsiness

awaken to a symphony spoken
pitch perfect,
a woven rainbow color palate ensemble,
all full throated blooming

before and by my water view,
an old empty Adirondack throne has grown
one more winter-withered and wise and weary,
aging well,
if aging a well be,
and yet visibly poorly,
unable to speak,
bereft these so many months
of its human companion's conjoint, howling voice

chair asks him now plaintive,
not
where I've been,
knowing that any answer
immaterial

nor
does it inquire,
have I come to stay,
knowing any human answer
is always at best
an uncertain truth

only this it seeks ascertaining,
desiring a newly needed-seeded knowing

do I return
carrying with me,
a summer's secret love?

strong enough to make our single tongue
break the wet dog woeful silences,
to sing the praise of
those refreshed elements now blossoming surrounding,
that all come to enhance,
the secret purpose of the human

do I carry the tune
that will unlock,
at long last,
the somber silence,
that no winter's gale roar or
noisy, erratic spring chirping ,
however loud,
yet leaves nature, alone, clouded,
incapable of solving
the riddle of human nature,
that bring summers birthing to fruition

do I in my possess,
own the love,
that's strong enough to end
the silenced weeping
of the other season's mourning abscesses,
the absence of summer?

they say it is but the mechanical turning of
the hardware store's calendar, kitchen-walled hung,
that marks the man's semi-automatic returning,
yet the paper's crossed out, numerical dates,
cannot foretell,
if the necessary passion,
the requisite human love,
the provident kindling of summer's furnace
whose heat,
can provide life's
reasonings,
will arrive on timely so that

even silence will now have found the tongue
to haunt me all the summer long;
the riddle nature could not prove,
was nothing else, but secret love

eight years on,
she, airplane borne,
takeoff - a minute from,
texts a parting thot

"love you madly"

you can't recall ever
that prescient précis designation
on any earlier editions
of your other old lovers resumes

this tidbit of reckless abandon
moves fury fast,
direct to the top of the list

madly, manly madness,

when you man,
allow the crossover to occur,
when boundaries twixt honesty and
sensibility
are declared
voided laws

when the white cloth napkin of careful sanity  knocked, swept to the floor

maddening love rawest realized
conceded

in madness, completion is indivisible,
indivisible, completion is madness

manly madness

~~~*

this old man's tiddlywink, land-locked words,
runted, blunted instruments,
needy for release, the balm of salvation,
woods, neither silvered or exacting,
more a spit stain polish for a dulled, tarnished brass spittoon,
smoothed 'cept for the brute brunted bunting
of christ-crossing railroad tie lines,
all across his roughened terrain'd face,
a black and a white Degas
pen and ink etched illustration
of howling agitation.

the concrete moonscape
racked upon his soul and face,
mapped remembrances of variegated Judas kisses
each left in a pockmarked hidey place,
tired principles bent, bent from sacrificing oneself,
a rockstar burnt offering,
to any deity that promises illusions that time,
can be healed, all its cursed residues & sins sealed,
in locked antechambers, fully furnished rooms,
rentable for perpetuity if so desired,
but irony dictums diktat says you've locked yourself in,
in circular spaces where every angle stab-states:

yo, there are no unpainted corners for escape,
no day of atonement on your petite universe's calendar,
nor a host of worthy words that can e're suffice,
so howling makes perfect sense

inventory the wasted errors accumulated, accentuated,
uncovered by the howling of only "I'd known better,"
his accountants all jolly rip roar laugh,
when you beg them to ******~reduce jail time of
ancient leaden bulletpoints from the taxes future payable,
they profess there is no statue of limitation from any authority's press
for dues owed arising from your own imitations,
they mock me by howling in poe-ing unison,
"nevermore, nevermore...forevermore"

the contradiction of those criss#crossed fine lines,
each pointing in no direction, a trap of inaction,
fie, fie, on the double dealing hand you have dealt yourself
in the game of liar's poker, where all the face cards curse with smiles,
pretend portents portrait paintings of only rosy outcomes,
each a one way sign,  each pointing to a different,
magnetic compass course in a world
where all polarity confused, reversed,
so wayward, the only direction home

before Rembrandt's self-portrait @  Met Musée, he worships,
the painter's hipster jaunty hat pouty-pointy stating,
"what me worry,"
but the cracked crevices, whisper even louder,
"nothing left to lose,"
in the gallery, all stare, misunderstanding why,
why you weep profuse in perfect recognition at the
mirroring witness testifying, from whose pixels you cannot be protected,
each agitated paint pore shouts words of 
"j'accuse, j'accuse"
in a dulcet howling harmony

words lip locked, no exit, traffic jammed inside squirrelly cheeks,
scabs form, mortar and pestle a pus paste of
jumbled sounds and tongued blood,
a delicacy of swoosh and swish spit,
ugly kept behind prison bars of yellowed teeth,
a vile concoction of glorious bile of new combinations,
destined to die unuttered,
the howling all internal, becomes silence,
and yet, here,
here lies buried proof positive,
"even silence finds a tongue,"^
even words, unspoken,
yet, mind-reader read quietly,
permits the howling agitation exorcise and surcease,
rein to escape