I shave before,
you know.

sometimes,
she too,
shaves before,
you know.

lets me watch,
gorge,
for somehow
someone forgets to slide close
the bathroom door.

I am offered

her shaving,
her body,
for me -
or
Shakespeare's Henry V
shaving my manhood
as no man could

"In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect."(3.1.1)

choose.  choice.
woman or war.
as I stiffen the sinews,
summon up the blood,

why do I not see the difference?

35,088 feet over Nebraska,  

(Nebraska-imagining me climbing a ladder, me upwards, Jacob’s angels coming down, off to a high school All Saints wrestling match in a cornfield town)

a place not on my bucket list, just a blue bias of an eastern stater’s unknowns, a sure sign of how much he doesn’t know

reading Patti’s slender volume “Devotion”

slender like her body, some would call it a wiry woman's
sparse but directed, connective, word-worshipping,
old familiar strangers she delivers to you that you have never met, her phraseology striking me and strikingly beautiful simultaneous

scan it and understanding instantaneous
she asking,
why do we write?

her answers are fine copper wire threaded
into a coil and I close it quick cause the loving ****** desire to
plagiarize such an oddly gorgeous offerings is overwhelming;
I feel the wire words piercing my temple, intending to
emerge out the other side, a decorative symmetry,
I don’t own

my need to script some cursive on my smooth body parts,
on my god-given papyrus, always at the ready,
is a methadone itch, a dulling urge needy for fulfillment,
that needs satisfying but me, soundly second rate,
write like the flip side of a hit vinyl record, no one is expected to play, fulfillment meets futility

thus the title is a modification of a Patti light touch

my alchemy never made any gold and my present presence now over Iowa a reminder that my prescriptions are 1200  evacuations; they are negative commandments,
proscriptions, not prescriptions

do not write, do not wrong words with a middling diffidence,
hide your face and put her words on a shelf above your head
hard to reach, so you do not be tempted

why do we write?

“All seeking an emptiness to imbue with words.  
The words that will penetrate ******
territory, crack unclaimed
combinations, articulate the infinite.” Patti Smith

disambiguation she relieves us of uncertainty
my combinations over Waterloo, Illinois
are ordinary smokestack gray, a spewing wastage,
the angels conforming that my words Cain-fail,
my confession
meets no one’s standards, not even mine

7:07pm Central Time

A HUGE discovery (on an overheated wet snow stinky stuffy bus


no one

not the grannies, the discolored, the over bundled,
or even the seven and eight year old noisy brats,
(towing blonde nineteen year old au-pairs from Sweden)

doesn’t have their face planted on a screen

most messaging
when the light shines in and the illustration is illuminated
through the stink of overheated humans on a bus-poet

i can tell everything about you from the way
you tap on the screen

you nice you mean
you possess a southern drawl, a handwriting less ‘n a scrawl,
you are a passionate lover slow and languid,
you’re a bath splasher, a snowball thrower,
believer anything wet, well, should be a shared liquid

your think all lives matter especially mine

who plods thru life slow and safe one key tap at time,
making love in the same way and never in the afternoon

whose mother loved them swell well and made them
crazy people who smile at everyone
sharing their terra chips, body parts and
sweet spicy spit
with loving tenderness

the ones who write beneath colored decorated fingernails
so careful not carefree using the finger pads to message and
never break a nail or own a heart making a mess worthy of
cleaning up with a repairman

who lies ‘n cheats on their taxes and their lovers with
reckless impunity because you are so important
then what the heck you doing on this bus with us plebeians?

and the one next to me generationally born to use two thumbs,
but pauses to reflect on the way humans speak to one another before desensitizing blurting any old thing

And the one to whom I show this poem and insists I miss my stop so she can text me her digits and kiss that thumb
a year  later in front of a smoke perfumed fire and she whispers
smarty pants, mr smoke scribe,
who writes only love poetry
watch, what does the smoke say?

but it says nothing that cannot be best expressed by
letting my thumbs do all the talking by tapping
all over her body

flying over Harrisburg (Seat 8C)*

transcontinental traveller this day,
from a city island onwards to a city by the bay,
the mileage sum greater than a lifetime of M31 bus trips,
but the in-transit poem-notion-potion elixir in blood stirring,
when a seated poet greets the jet stream
motion turbulence
,
one more rightful writ to the
flying poem chapter,
additive motivated and self-commandeered

airborne in the selfsame real clouds
where the poems are plucked from,
their distance to my body’s poem functions,
vastly abbreviated so they arrive more wet, chilled and urgent,
we become heated tango paired

already approaching Indiana, crossing Ohio,
over whose living souls have I traversed,
over whose stored poems have I flown through,
ruffling their crinkled white wrapper covers, the decorative ribbons,
whose hand waves have I discerned,
and whose cheeks have I gently kissed?

this land is my land, this land is our land,
and from the soft cream of moisture white,
stumbled on my long lost and well forgotten poems, thereby
freshly creasing and dampening yellowings
with the renewable tears when greeting old friends
of the who and when poetry was a secret garden
where I hid and withdrew and transpired the essential oils
of my deconstructed constitution

see this poem is more me just checking in on you below,
you up ahead, and those in arreared reared view mirror,
and on me, composing at an altitude of 31,824 feet to
strings of violins, my one true plane

as compensator for this ramble unfocused I gift you this:

conscripted by the thin atmosphere,
constricted by my failings, my limited stock of words,
my extra clouded judgement, my heartbeats rapido speak,
telling me to tell you my brothers, my sisters,
mine own adapted children,
we have never been closer than we are today,
until that day I knock and grinningly embrace and erase
that tiny space between our ******* and in unison breathe*

8:50am EST entente
entering into Illinois