~

*a secret-possessor, a poetess of riddles,

informs, but my senses don't conform,

claiming that in my possess,

a gift ensconced, a soulfulness harbored,

purportedly outing me as "one gifted soul"

~

this "gift" of cobbled together phrases, on the back of
paper napkins,

words impermanent, undeserving of the firmamen
of cottoned cloth,

they shall not be mourned, when forever lost,

for like my soul, but a fleeting glimpsed visitor,

a 100 year comet, naturally self-destructing,

intended to be witnessed but once in a lifetime

~

wincing at this dear praise, yet it serves me well,

as the sweetest reminder, that we shall all yet meet,

all on that day, all in that place,

from where souls are gifted and returned,

however shopworn

or even disgraced

~

all welcomed upon our inevitable return, no proof of purchase needed,

where, living forever, in such good company is a

certain surety,

knowing this, that we are all certainly possessed with this relief,

easy then, in agreement, every each, born in fluid from the belly of belief,

each of us

"a gifted soul"

around the table we go,
each declaiming modestly,
the blessings we are duty bound
to acknowledge

my list swift

in possession of all my senses,
some say, even my faculties,
but hours later,
when the glaze of gourmandy fades,
struck, remiss,
my failure to extend a kiss

to my muse, who, deft orchestrates,
the combining of the five
into something greater,
a symphony of visionary words jive
that come to life,
more than I ere believed possible

that thru the poem,
I could give joy to others...

for this blessing simple,
*rejoice, rejoice, rejoice

~

~ for my knowing friends~





~~~
so simple the notion,
that healing's potent potions
are non-directional portents
coming at you
like a Bob Dylan, Avettt Brothers,
rhythm and rhyme,
tunes injected from the outside knowing,
from the first time
that they were residing inside,
all the time

in, on and under the skin

the conflicted battle rages between the
coursing forces of

I believe

and the low grade infection, incurable return of

faithless disbelief and irreconcilability

a parental entry knowing,
despite different routes of administration,
there is no pharmacology for a limb lost,
any prosthesis healing supplanted
from without,
never achieves
anything approaching next to normal

but from within,
the heart can heal itself,
trying a natural bypass,
doing its imperfect best
to correct the uncorrectable,
resigned to accept the unacceptable

the slight edge felt from
cutting a garden's new growth for replanting
an act of belief in the future,
witnessing a sunset's nightly color sky's return rebirthing,
knowing, admitting to oneself,
that miraculously better than all ever seen prior are

medicines that come from the outside,
and inward bound daily injections,
they are:

"healing, from the inside out...
just as it was meant to be!"

soul brothers from other mothers,
fellow city dwellers,
one up downtown
one down uptown,
fellow riders,
of the underground
of the by-NY-ways
of America

we met years ago ruminating on poetry,
late one night/early one morn,
just like us,
there is no difference,
call the hour what you want,
we spoke one language,
long long ago
in the early days here at HP

the I, lion of gray stumbled on me,
with a smiling, stunning midnight crosstown compliment,
kindred instant

he stole
my breath, with work that..
declaimed notions of
quiet unshouted artistry excellent
and a new appetite was birthed
in my head, in my bed
one night

the young black man-father and the
aging white-grandfather
so little in common,
but in the early morn,
we both haunt the hallways
of the city of poetry,
speaking the poetry of the city,
where blood is but
two colors

black and white,

like the poem words we share
that you are now eye-reading

and

in our torn,
but not yet shredded country,
we find ways to speak

I am long done, past being the past,
he is the dapper father of the future
and the river boundaries we share,
on different sides
are lines of connection
not demarcation

the elbow comes to rest in the soft
skin coverage of my essence

in the dark, it's easy and free to weep
but still never cheap

everyday is still a word, an everyday struggle word,
echoing like a scream in a cavernous void

her elbow comes to be buried in my chest,
preference for an unavailable, sleeping soft cheek,
this elbow sharpened from years of work, worry &
baby carrying

on this day, of pointing,
take-a-hint-to-be-remembering,
the simple honors life bestows
comes like a pointy elbow poke,
across vastness of a bed of whiteout cotton,
freshly filling up
as I am writing,
with thankful years and thankful tears,
already recording newbie memories
freshly forming up

welcome this sharp goodness
all the days
of our lives,
even those everydays
of our lives

nothing greater than being grateful,
and the re-gifting to others
the blessings of plentifull*


5:26am Thanksgiving Day 2016

~


smile and weep,
love the shallow for its deep,
finding amazement in the complexity of life

this prior script-thought
re-arrives but this time,
tonal differences,
a spoken aloud cascading cacophony,
no  protective cocoon of silent email,
jus plainest pain masquerading beneath a tensile casual remark

and how you wish you could poetry, write, torrentially in simple lines,
to match the transverse and reverse
the only two gears,
so overcome with anger worry and pain no killer can
****,
so deep and swift
its haphazard rambling rambunctious
cursing coursing

and all she said was this:

this is going to be the end of us

and you, charged to interpret this sentence,
like your namesake Daniel
the invisible handwriting on the
Babylonian wall
that is under construction for which
you will both pay

equally

posted on Mar. 6th 2016
~~~
"I would look at them in the audience:
the frail old lady with thin white hair;
the big, rough biker-looking guy;
the pleasant middle-aged teacher;
the silver-haired accountant with two young kids;
the beat-up middle-aged woman with rheumy alcoholic eyes who is sweetly gracious, modest, as she moves to give you a seat;
the obese, wild-haired man bursting out of his torn, cracked leather jacket;
the giggly, chatty middle-aged redhead in the NoLabels.org sweatshirt;
the Patti Smith-looking woman, tall, pale and austere; the hunky football player;
the skinny hipster girl in architect eyeglasses and torn jeans. Everybody listening so closely to the candidates.
Beret guy, too, with a white bandage on his eye and a beard that went down to the third button of his shirt.
What a crew we are."

Peggy Noonan, political columnist, writing about a New Hampshire meet-the-candidates Town Hall 2016

~~~

*confess here, am an avowed legally, registered voter,
who fails to vote with almost
perfectly regular regularity

for his solitary voice almost always
swallowed whole,
living in the futility utility of a self-selected body politic,
geographical location where
dissent is a now pathetic revolutionary concept lost
in the new intolerance of a place

where there is none of the
demanding New England hampshired state
that brooks, adheres to
only the standard highest,

"live free or die"

in the sweeping crush of nationalized,
commoditized would be Commodores,
whose sounds bite,
elephantine donkeys and donkey'd elephants,
leading us to the same slaughterhouse,
by different paths

but I am a crew member here...

proud and free,
proud to be,
amidst this mess of characters,
homogenous in their pursuit
of independent assaying
of the character of men and women
to whom we would
our liberty,
entrust

God, it gives me breathing space,
these unusual common folk, who with the
unpracticed eye of a periodic literary critic,
in their first-in-the-nation primary,
selected the would be revolutionaries extremists,
polar opposites

God bless their orneriness,
though both of their final aisles choices to me,
anathema,
message received,
we are tired of the ordinary hacks,
who think their longevity means success,
want a sea core change,
a fresh revolution
as principled as the original...

but they suit up, on uncomfortable
folding chairs,
willing to listen,
all the while acknowledging
their presence physical,
evidentiary proofs each,
that you can fool some of the people
some of the time,
but you cannot fool
all the people
all the time

a man proud to be a crew member,
of this cantankerous irascible population
who will vote this time
but not on any machine that offers up
more of the same ole insane,
will exercise my vote,
in the most old fashioned now way

the same way
I write poetry,
upon a ballot where I will
write in, write on with
ink and paper,
tag a name of person
good enough for representing the
interests best
of this rag tag crew o'mine,
who I love so....