~

walk with me in the
under-grounded passage ways,
the city veins,
that bring the arterial, variegated subway lines
to a consensual transfer adjoining,
permitting the rhythmic, exchanging flow of
***** for cleansed humans

observe the compost of
plasma and a city's red, bloodied cells,
bleached white by the cells called overnight

I travel in these tunnels, north-south, others, east-west,
like most, to and fro, homeward bound,
just another salmon of human capital,
cursed to swim upstream, always

signs adorn, positing hope,
giving out points, helpful directives -
"this way to"

example: this way to the nucleus, haughtily christened
by deaf and dead mortals as the
Grand Central Station

in one such tunnel, cut from the earth with dynamite and blood,
a busily traversed one,
so busy that no one looks but me,
is carved in grey Vermont granite,
high above the
gum and spit stained, concrete sodden, trodden walkway,
by order of some bureaucratic joker
taunting sandblasted "art"
cut into the taxpayer-paid-for-stone,
some of Ovid's long ago words

"dripping water hollows out stone,
but not through force but persistence"

am I the only to ken,,
this is a subtle mocking,
of the rushing, hasty, daily-making-their-way commuters,
whose sentences persist,
but are never commuted, never paroled,
who pass by as if entering under Auschwitz's gates,
where work made no one free

each of us a hypotenuse sliding,
gliding from to hook up from angle to angle,
work to home, home to work,
drip, drip of life to no life,
needy for an overnight charge,
to enable a once more unto the morning breach

for long time  now, my glide path remarkable,
my hypotenuse swinging wildly, ignoring its proposed flight plan,
that presumably shows a proposed radar course of semi-certainty

know it to be a bright screen flashing light
of yellowed missed forecasts,
on a dark green background

my poetic words longtime set aside,
in the lost and unfounded, though they continue to
Ovid drip and drip, agonizingly, persistently
hollowing this man

this ever deepening, eroded void
more keenly felt now by the irritating granulated pecking,
of residual specks of detritus,
minimalist poetic notions, a phrase, a gleaning, a touch,
caught in the grate of my eyes,
yet that make not a whole poem,
or human

but Ovid mocks me true,
my dripping sentence persists,
but, the hollow is not hallowed

my secondhand superficial skin, worn as worn,
a sensual recording of all mine history,
an oral history that speaks from within

can you read my lengthy, literary tears?

a sham, this art,
this tunnel of no ending,
to/from/form of deception,
recording the millions roaring waterfall drops of
drip, drip, dripping, slapping footfalls  

great shovels dug this tunnel, but
the days of our lives erode it ever deeper,
wearing it into a burial ground,
where the ocean of forever,
persists as we pass by
an artisanal lie

~

postscript

*oh Steve, my Steve, guilty do I plead,
too loon, too long this recapture of a walk in a life,
emblematic that it speaks not of solstices,
but of chapters in an unfinished novel,
some finished and some unwritten,
but the ending fully scripted and the plot's author
foolishly thinking the beginning can be
reverse engineered

this poem comes from where the words drip into a soul,
one-by-one, as if to create a single one-a-day one time whole,
a vitamin-poem emerges as a
child born, greeting clean the world,
in black and white word amnesiac fluidity,
measured as one measures a mighty waterfall's flow,
weighty beyond pounds and ounces,,
busting the trusted butchers white scales,
busting into wearied and busting open,
here, ends, worn now, worn by time and time again,,
written on shredded, softened-skin scales

I could not give you less,
I could not give you more...

everything in the physical world ages.
this is the oil of the essence of the physical,
we are born, created, exist, cease and desist
and always,
the essentials exit
stage left

and yet, the met-aphysical has,
no markers visible to the keen eye,
no surface tension to it, neither does time rough hew its edges,
or pebble age it to silken smooth water borne baby skin consistency
with uncountable tongue lickings,
and lay two stones
side by side upon the beach,
fellow travelers,
arrivistes from differing paths

so lets us count.

have we ever met?
no, we have not.

will we ever meet?
perhaps, but no one counts the random< unimaginable<accidental,
for man's plans are more destined to awry then be planned away.

but how long have we known each other?

since the sun rose this morning
and every morning before that

when it rained,
and the drops rode down the window pane, and
two drops became one,
thus, since
a million millenniums before time was recognized as measurable

when the  flower blossoms in the garden,
am I not the descendant of the first bee,
and will not our progeny,
ever propagate?

so I have known you for all time
have honored you for all time
and will do so again,
when I metaphysical choose to,
in a manner unknown and yet to be
chosen

perhaps when the earth circumnavigates a distance of 365
days and nights,
or perhaps, when the need is keen and well felt,
a poem in a breeze, very well hid,
shall caress a cheek, and
that will be an honor arrived,
when next the "time" counted by heartbeats
says

due.

4:15am

once and once again, the clock does not sound,
for in nether time,
there are no material measurements,
no actuality of numerals,
no millimeter notching's on skin for ordering

nether night nor dawn, an orderly dark disordering,
as time quietly flows all about your head,
as if it were an obstruction in
a gentling stream's path,
you, but a modest disruption,
a ripple of disappearing existence,
purposed for erosion

yet the unsociable media anoints me marked,
older, an e-naissance contusion upon the body,
your day of creation, your hour of invention,
has gone and passed

Paul calls,^  
two melancholy men to melt into one
in word, in song, a comforting troubling  
even,
an explanation proffered for the meaning of it all

the grand children,
send a generational appropriate video greeting,
an amorphous, porous, hug of electronic pixels
that will outlast every one of us
even
the last archeologist

nether this, nether that,
the lower register,
the upper hand,
the body, the work,
the body of work,
greeters both, sending morse messages uncoded,
your cracked vessel leaking deep water oil,
reminders that a horizon but another world,
another word,
for unobtainable,
all gone is just, all gone,
a blended beyond, marker of the nether place
of yesterday's and tomorrow's

crisp atmosphere, special ordered
for perfect pumpkin patching, apple picking,
stout sweaters all, a blueish autumnal sky,
orange 'n red leaves delivered on time

the old uber-man-grand-pa,
hired as a day driver,
saddles them up,
three generations all tucked in a
repeating mise en scène

a replay of some thirty years earlier,
when the now-father
was about the same age,
as his boy, three years aged
and yet so impatient

asking the same question
his father perfected,
in the same sweet voice,
at about the same time,
in the same way,
a little voice from deep in
the cavernous back seat,
sighing, squeaking with an
I've-seen-it-all ennui,
some mere five minutes into
the hour's plus journey
to the 'country' bound

"are we there yet?"

titters 'n snickers from assorted adults,
but grandpa weeps words with composition instant,
so many answers to such an important question,
so serious that an admission, confession
required, due you,
grandpa still asks the same question

every day of his life

it's Sunday and longish poems per Yeoman,
strictly verboten,
God knows there's an essay unwritten
as the answer, a symphonette with
a thousand opus, by-your-command repertoire,
a pumpkin for every patch,
some answers that even may be a
young prince's carriage in hiding

but for now let this suffice,
sometimes yes, sometimes no,
and sometimes, the goal line just goes and moves on ya

so with utmost seriousness
a purposed thoughtfulness proposed,
posing said inquiry knows no age limitation,
if you have not asked of yourself this day,

"are we there yet?”

then the answer is surely,
not yet

circumscribed circumstances circumspect  

~


these then
the circumstances,
that circumscribe
my essentials

the surround-sound orb walls of choices
made and yet-to-be-made delimiting me,
making me wary of the unforeseen,
more circumspect of what I will someday have chosen

recall standing on the now crushed,
destroyed subway platform of the
Cortlandt Street Station,
debating

take this job or that

took the one but a crow mile fly away
(and not the one that didn't survive)

come that day,
me, audience observer then,, not one of the
death undefying unwilling circus performers, and heroes,

when I pass the covered up burial sight,
the many nearby and  forever crinkly crape draped firehouses,
or open the drawer where
I have
saved the tidbits of that
particular day's memories walk home,

a covenant reaffirmed,
a circumcision of the soul renewed

a circumcision upon the soul,
the renewed cut, sheds, allows some light
into the circularity of life


9/11/16