~~
for Danel Kessler^
~~~

in the early morning
of one's youth,
going to synagogue,
quite regularly,
a fabulous, honorably believing,
father's sole request,
more than a half-century ago

time eroded,
the fallacies of organizing a public meeting time
with a deity who seemed unavailable,
when most needed

instead we chatted
in the late of night of the early morning,
a time and places of my choosing,
for human fools do like  a setting regular,
comfort food for the divine spark within

rising/writing for early morning
poetry mass,
was a noted feature of the twofold meaning
of my latter years

where and whence, now and thence,
irreverent dialogue
tween the invisible one,
that would be me,
(can you see me now?)
and the visible one,
the you-know-who-
maker-of-custom-suited souls,
(can "you" see me now?)

*had become  
quite the regular artistes salon

witty repartee, elegiac conversations,
the residuals, in a rain drain trapped,
products collected by the light of  the early dawning,
apres skiing of an all deep-night long mournful body scoring,
poetic raconteur-ing

heaping spoonfuls of two-way mutual chastising,
paeans to the divinity in human-inherent,
regular debate team features of a
contested dark bedroom,
lit only by tablet light bright,
one if by land, two if by sea,
which the shining path to be taken by
itinerant signal comedic essays,
crafted aboard frigates and kayaks
voyaging on turgid, turbulent rivers,
mean city streets, 
swath cut by switchblades of greed,
exploring stories of the dying lands
of an aging man
fed by the streaming videos tubing down
the veins and arteries of an aging poseur

so in the sleep hours,
when I did not dream,
instead nail bled from my hands
words upon  a cold sweaty screen
from fevered fingertips,
diatribe prayers of hope ever after,
after every
dialysis of the arrogance of human nature,
removing, diabolical urea of our tainted beings,
replacing, with granular molecules of wishful thinking

then it stopped, for unknown reasons,
unbegotten creativity, chilling like
***** and champagne layabouts,
on the upper shelf of a mind's refrigerator,
always ready, just in case,
say
a new borne terrorist atrocity,
a seasonal wistfulness flu,
a cold virus blue through the heart,
love came and went with nary a
how-the-hell-did-that-happen,
even a new born babe joy
to the family est arrivé,
comld torch that heirloom/heritage seeded
inert patented creativity
into anime wakefulness

so here, so hear, I paid-pause,
conclude-delude, at 4:44am on
January Seventeenth of Two Thousand and Seventeen,
winessed by numerals white on a blackened background,
of a digital alarm clock with time, temperature and
the lunar phase of a madman
who twice was Christ told
would be a poet/story teller,
like his mother

a bountiful clock telling,
precision information detailing,
a tale that tells about nothing about a man,
who no longer requires
an alarm reminder to attend
his own moring reborning mass,
on a regular basis,

for his disheartened verbs,
runaway convict adjectives,
con-nouns, whimpering exclamations,
all on the loose,
nice sounding,
but of no earthly use

his lips like (the book of) Ruth's,
move in silent prayer,
only two can hear,
but the low priest observing,
disbelieves, thinking the piety of the poet
is just drunken emotion, not devotion,
kens not the broken poems
of the morning mass service no more,
but for
this one, irregular,
unacceptable exception

losing you and it's effortless
redefining short and sweet,
a whiskey neat,
eight years, much shorter than the forever,
everyone's grand assumption feast,
wrongly assumed, love consumed,
making ***** of her and me
for believing,
and looking now,
as if it's almost
our own closing time,
the hour of our
just desserts

you lose yourself, asking yourself,
can a three legged stools
with two busted legs be
just merely rocky,
without another hand on the tiller~shoulder,
something

with haunting visions
of falling, failing, flailing,
down the stairs
victim of a stoning, or just ******,
gravity, the Blackhawk down,
the string puller, the no-reason reason

the slow descent,
so effortless, glassine smooth at first,
barely noticed, shrugged away like a small bruise,
then you cannot help to stop and forgive the incessant
wondering of how we got,
the confusion contusions,
now body bejeweled resplendent,
everywhere, in everything

you were once
a rock, a star,
with all the answers to the questions
she was about to ask,
your arm punched,
attached to an affectionate smiling,
for the perfection of our mutuality of
knowing

was her rock,
and now, quietly,
this last piece of jewelry consists of
a necklace of stones,
a choker of
glass pebbles in both our mouths

wry cry
realizing that the
darkness cracks of
busted and rusted,
are voluminous surround sound silences
breaking up,

either side of

*us

"two birthday presents are better than one"
sayings of the wise men

"and what an honor it is, and how could we be anything greater
(than all too human)?" 
 R.A.
~

for Rebecca, a birthday gift

~
a message of notification,
comes early one evening, an agent provocateur,
a paparazzi peeping tom,
a cat burglar presuming the poet-receiver nat is
a rat-man out and about, galavanting around town,
dancing perhaps, seeing a Pinter play, a movie,
a lecture on string theory, an underground railroad rock concert,
reading a book of priestly poetry, or himself,
lost in a mesmerizing revery of poetic composition

her question, a statement of fact, a reflection,
one or all, all for one, this pronunciation,
a witness deposition re the human condition

the man is knocked askew in about
an instantly,
sitting before the voluptuous fireplace's crackling complications,
fire sensing the multiples of implications,
contemplating the failing honor of human limitations,
sensing the uniqueness of our successes,
a claiming race prize
for all of we humans
in her words

now how great is this knowledge that we,
all to human,
all too human,
need let this then be the first
thought/ message/ notification -
meditation of our every day

that we honor ourselves first,
our upstart blessing,
in order to honor our world
and its bedazzling human creativity


~
We find our poems in many different ways.  Of late,
I keep finding inspiration from the messages that many of you send to me, re the poems I choose to publish here. So I repeat my disclaimer, "any message you send can and will be used as a poem."

~
for T.M.R.
~

We find our poems in many different ways.  Of late,
I keep finding inspiration in the public and private messages that many of you send to me, regarding poems I choose to publish here.

So I repeat my disclaimer,
"any message you send, can and will be used as a poem."
~

instant recognition at levels so deep within,
what are the odds, given the enormous differentials,
that the kin in kindred, would blossom across two lives,
where the oppositional factoids are exceptional

as if seeded in the fertile soil of the blank spaces,
between each of our poem's words and verses,
there secreted for each other, but gleaming visible
for all to see and uncover, even join in,
uncovering semi-hidden insertions and assertions of affinity

I confess

she stands behind me ofttimes in my mind, silently,
suggesting, reflecting, critiquing a word choice,
a nuanced pressure upon the hand redirecting,
with infiltrating suggestions imaginary

oh wordy me, four stanzas excised,
abstracted from the memories contained within my fingertips,
this, an accolade to the pleasuring of humanizing mystery connectivity,
when she, in the depth of her stylized brevity,
captures more than I, after hours of exercised trying,
in the succinct excalibur of her comprehension

*"We are an unstated understood"