the bus poets

we are the modern day chimney sweeps,
the ***** black faced coal miners of the city,
digging up its grit, toasted with its spit,
the gone and forgotten elevator operators,
the anonymous substitutable,
still yet glimpsed occasionally,
grunts of urbanity
provoking a surprised
whaddya know!

once like the bison and the buffalo,
we were thousands,
word workers roaming the cities,
the intercity rural routes and the lithe greyhounds
across the land of the brave,
free in ways the
founders wanted us to be
us, the stubs and stuff,
harder working poor and lower cases

we were the bus poets,
sitting always in the back of the bus,
where the engines growls loudest,
seated in the - the most overheated
in winter time, so much so
we nearly disrobed,
and then come the summer,
we were blasted with a joking
hot reverie from the vents,
but vent, no, we did not!

no - we wrote and wrote of all we heard,
passion overheated by currents within and without,
recording and ordering the
snatches and the soliloquies of the passengers,
into poem swatches;
the goings on passing by,
the overheard histories,
glimpsed in milliseconds, eternity preserved,
inscribed in a cheap blue lined five & dime notebook,
for all eternity what the eyes
sighed and saw

books ever passed
onto the next generation in boxes from the supermarket,
attic labeled, then forgotten beside the outgrown toys
with our names writ indelible with the magic of
black markers

if you stumble upon a breathing scripter,
let them be, just observe,
as they, you,
these movers and bus shakers,
as they, observe you

tell your children,
you knew one in your youth,
then take them to the attic
retrieve your mother's and father's,
teach your children
how to read, how to see,
the ways of their forefathers,
the forsaken,
the bus poets.

Good on You (a love poem),
this one, is, good, on you.  

phrase uttered, measured, apace,
each comma,
a paused breath of:

admiration, enveloped by
a secret pleasure coating,
saucier prepared,
the base, the pleasured secret in this
mans minds eye unseen.

each comma,
precisely the carbon copy of the
comma curve of dark hair that
falls from a forehead down to the chin,
in a museum quality photograph,
as if it was intended to hold, contain,
your sly blunt moody,
and full plated whimsy,
when that half-smile poesy is in place.

good on you,
slow please,
not
goodonyou.

did you think, I did not have, a special bottle,
a Grand Cru,
a pinot noir, in the reserve,
inside the locked cellar of me,
to be used to anoint mine own
English Duchess of Burgundy?

well and proper aged,
but unlabelled,
till you provided
the appelation, the domaine,
good, on, you.  

the bottle dusty, the feelings, not.
if we never meet, matters not,
the gentility, tous les bons mots,
good in you,
hid in in all of the
astounding incredible poems
I well-addicted need,
those archeological mounds of a life,
I excavate and well heed,
going from one to the next,
me, the bumbling bee,
pollenating, following the path of the
watermarked tracks of
the King's Cross,
alas, they do not offer a couchette,
from Terminal 4 to London Bridge

unlike a teenager
happy to confess,
I am even younger,
an old fool, a geezer,
in love with a museum quality smile,
as he totters down to the Tottenham Hale station,
to catch the blue colored line, to the station after Vauxhall)
(oh dear, what's it called again?)
walking 10 to 2, saying ta to all
who assist his
two hands on an old man's bent feet,
steering the wheelhouse heart through its tubes

this is an undedicated poem,
retuned and returned,
addressee unknown, yet I know
by the greening dew droplets decorating faces,
that come so easy,
not a one wrung out,
you know
the who's of the true ownership,
the clarification,
in the bread crumbs,
fully disclosed,
left by me,
but for me,
in order to retrace my steps,
to find the railing,
when the steady on need arises

some Tuesday next,
will disembark from a riverboat,
at the old Tate,
spending my afternoon,
staring at an imaginary museum quality photograph,
till the guard surly reminds the pesky Yank,
its past closing time,
the man who will not be moved,
for already he, past overcome,
so why be thinking on why leaving,
for he will only be back again tomorrow.

so different.

mine, simple declarative sentences,
typically matter of fact,
so **** presumptuous,
those ill mannered,
know it all Ameddicans.

yours, lace doilles,
in a pub, with Hilda and Bill,
drinking pale ale,
from a porcelain cup,
and I am laughing,
Why?

It is all,
Good on Us,
a, love, poem,
indeed,
no kidding kid.

the phone turns yellowy orange,
low power mode,
have fallen below
the 10% threshold,
we both drowsy,
yet competitively locked-into
separate screen servitude

she notices,
I don't,
she says,
"you need a charge"

god, she's so correct,
our mutualizing power is
fastly slow draining

this we both
know~notice,
and neither
says nada~nothing

we,
both poets in our way,
acutely aware
of the power of metaphor,
and she knows
that I know,
I noticed
what just went unspoken*

>an untitled poem<

spend /broke

I am here.  I could spend all my days reading your wires.  I could spend all my nights writhing writing responsa psalms.  
perhaps I do, for after all, I am here  
{~for Mara, Denel, Liz B.; Patty~}

I string fences too, bury birds, insects, living sons, tho just out in the back of my ex-mansion brain. want to write simple, effectively, like you guys, and want to live simple ample effectively. cant cursed, cursed canticle Kant cant.  so the day commences   2000 plus emails chirping read me and I've just arrived, but I do not, bury them in a mass grave with an effective 'delete all,'  not even thinking what might be missed, missed

what happens when u run out of fence, land, good silences, and spending becomes broken? spending, breaking, chicken, egg, simple, too many words, to read, to write, so which will come first?

738am

no way you could know that
I have driven US 80, when
the Pennsylvania Turnpike
was considered a legitimate deathtrap,
and 80 was a god-send

shuttling back and forth tween
Cleveland (o/k/a The  Burning River City) and NYC,
in the crappiest weather man
could just about tolerate,
and 84 was just an
incomplete dream then,
so we one day,
could skip that idlewild,
Passaic, New Jersey,
back in '69

indeed the Pocono deer that
came through the windshield,
luckily, legs first,
after smashing the radiator,
that I dragged by hooves
to the side of the road,
still well recall, for that
was the first time I touched a
living thing dying in my hands

when I broke my arm in
Tannersville one summer night,
they drove me to the big city,
Scranton,
woo hoo,
cause the break was bad ,
they need to operate,
so they left me there,
w/o any anesthetic,
in the hallway(!) till morn
and a "see ya later kid,"
how they did things in a tough place
known as central Penna.,
which now I think of
semi-fondly as the place where
a piece of me was left buried
and I am still alive to swell tell

but people were tougher back then,
even me, a city 13 year old boy,
cause I had dreams of  girls,
wonderful girls, who had powers in their bodies
that could do things to me in the Poconos forests,
that were unthinkable (for them) after crossing
over the Hudson River,
and that was plenty
anesthetizing

so dem my bona fides,

and Now I Will Write
just another overdue thank you
for Balise, who writes
with a coolest heated blazing detachment,
and then at the very end,
IN ALL CAPS,
smacks you on the head
via the heart

writin'  
of
this n' that,
Mass and men,
worshipping a river called the Lackawanna,
the bleakness of a not quite grimy poverty,
(I worked in  Republic Steel warehouse)
that made grey a bright color,
and the sun was invisible from October to May,
in a world where people PROUDLY,
clung to their guns and religion,
(you arrogant out of touch Harvardian snob,
Mr. Obama prima donna),
you had to see it to believe it

of
herons and beer cans,
of parents and pain,
so exquisitely,
that I would gladly
drive to Tannersville again,
right now,
if I could, if I could,
yet learn that skill under her tutelage,
which by the by, is why some call me
still crazy, still crazy, after all those years,
crazy from a balise,
a wintry blizzard heating the readers eyes, and
who reads my footnotes
and thus
only this woman,
knows, better than she ever realized,
where his undulatin' poems come from...

a plain poem (the first time I came in you)*

a plain poem, light and effervescent, a flim-flan tasting,
plein de absurde rimes, full of nonsensical rhymes,
a lattice of criss crossing pastry sugary lines, the ones,
cannot, struggle to deduce, induce, reduce
from my constipated vocabulary

oh well
~
the first time I came in you,
entered, bidden welcome,
suffused a bridge between
the party of the first part,
the party of the second part,
sugar lightness airy nonsense,
two spirits dancing the singular
pas de deux of their finite lives,
a performance unbeatable,
unrepeatable,
lost to the perfection annals

Shockingly, Surprisingly, Summarily,
did not compose an ode,
don't mine a new vein of ore,
even write a plain poe poem

as best can recall,
at the candle melting of the
sealing wax of the deal,
gave an honest speech,
instantly falling fast asleep
with nary a grunted word

ever since l,
cannot write of plain love plainly,
so she makes me pay with a
new living elegant elegy daily,
a quatrain, what a pain,
this iambic panting meter
love poem writing

jeez louise,
how I wish could write of
roses red and violets blue,
get back to sleep,
oh well then,
back to work

got to make those sad moans,
hers, go away,
so please excuse me

near ten years later,
still paying the dues of the
initializing error of my way

she rumbles-mumbles in her
pre-awakening dream state,
so please excuse, got to go, think up
some implicated complicated  
verses to soothe away
her simple poorly hidden anxieties

you see,
I am happy paying
on and on,
writing like the devil furious,
she is stirring, coffee soon,
cafe au lait
if you get my meaning,
but still cannot beat,
repeat, re-alive
that simple plain living poem notated,
when first I came in her*


<•;)

9/24/17 6:49am ~7:17am

a new poem (words, words, words but another drug), bolt upright, uplight, reattach yourself to the liquid of the music,
soothe the irritation, slowdown the shaking hand,
give god or his creatures, the nocturnes and sonatas,
a chance to restore the pounding of the chest to a leveling
equanimity

to no avail, the sleep angels have fled from the
forest fires in the chest, and the helicopters must quench
with the commence of dropping clouds of wet words,
when, when will I be released from a life that has no
easements

words, words, words but another drug, a habit that gives
everything but a temporary state, every poem nothing but
another her, another lady puncture in my restless body,
another juncture, where all your choices are the way of
error

the high will last, shorter each one, but the track will exist
for all the time, a token of human foolishness, the more is
the inevitability of the ending, writ, drawn a little closer,
and comes with a hand written spongy-apology begging for
existing

in his notes, motes, dust mites of titles, single verses,
elegies, essays half written, passing thots claiming to
want to be wannabes, this appears and it's a perfect
ending

there is no security in poetry, only the unresolvable

man in his perfect certainty, never was, nevermore, n'ere will be never, and one poet walks a razor's edge, that is his three tenses struggling for mutual coexistence, one of
a calming beauty, a dark glory, a perfect closing, choosing
a final solution, a belief in relief, that simultaneously
engraves, erases, and
equates

another new poem fissures to the surface, and the palpable
is a magician's illusion, a trick, a feat of dismemberment,
an excise of a piece, a drink, a Tennessee whiskey of him,
an emission that never gains remission status, all this fakery,
a new poem (words, words, words but another drug),
excellent, worthless and self-
effacing

{|||}

3:48am-5:46am