all I've ever learned from love

is

in the trying is the finding out
of the
all about,
losing battles to find yourself,
a war-won victor and a long term loser,
making the process new, expensive
the event expertise training
acquired to shoot your foot straight,
laugh about it when you do it again
and again

for the relearning is the crown jew-el,
that jesters rob from their kingly masters,
pride in love is the fall season preceding
Canadian winters, always thinking
you know better, be better at keeping warm,
this time which is the next time

you cannot learn from love,
cause it’s twice, two times,
never the same,
past lessons ain’t no prologue,
the body is maybe in the wafers,
sometimes vanilla,
sometimes chocolate

and the epilogue is
100% of the
poem~songs that I love writing
and hate remembering

so Olson (#2), Honorarium

around here,
poets have been advised and disclaimed
the genuine praise of others get repaid
in kind, in k i n d

no, nope, not in
succinct pithy praiseworthy commentaries
that pays the quid pro quo bills

no ******* it,
a full blown poem is your honorarium,
you have torn open that envelope, and gosh ****, golly gee...
debts must be paid for the scales can not exist imbalanced,
until pieces of me equal pieces of you,

and I hate owing (for one never can be owning) poems...

Honorarium

this lonely business, never paid the rent,
at best, I hear them whisper, leave him be,
he’s entranced in other galaxies, breathing
words of nitrous oxygen, which has oft
produced excitable effects, copious weeping, hysteria,
and uncontrollable hyena laughter and
a sadness so deep, we fear for his retrieval

while
conversing with others in his head,
but when he writes of honor & love,
beware his bewitched bewitchments,
when all flu-like symptoms starburst all at once
the words are corded and stacked.
for fiery consumption in a hearth hearted fireplace,
word fries with aioli spice tendered in repayment

not a one lost, for those poems, though up in smoke,
lung imprinted, and breathed out into the clouded atmospheres,
dragon exhaling, poems roaring, stored and restored
honorarium in the crematorium of word debtor prison

an “the end” sigh dot dot dots the bitter end,
the anchor resting on sandy bottom,
at last, the last word, debt paid, honor restored

this, this
he loves best, when the beast released
and then returns to rest-in-chest and
await his next self imposed commission,
immolation in isolation...

A love poem for Terry Collett

**** it, not a single word affixed,
and tears come gushing, flooding my cheeks paths,
into my mouth comes the salty outpouring

my nose blubbery, it’s hard to type
when you can’t see and the tissue is
engrossed, engrasped in your only
good writing hand

a lovely Sunday by the Atlantic coast,
listening to 60s folk and rock n’ roll,
mostly love songs of seeded sadness,
simplistic so many tunes of heartbreak
long ago planted in our respective souls

each one reminds, restores,
a heart poking,
all your recollections penetrate,
as if I was nearer to thee,
and I too, weep,
missing your Oliver

be advised there will never be enough poems
to make one/me not want more,
for ****** you, these love poems into my interior,
learning from you the human

how

so much more than
the when where and why one loves
a child resolutely, absolutely

for each child the unique reasons differ,
but never the

how,

for you, of this,
are the the poet exemplar

this makes me weep
for so man-many reasons,
strangely, a stream of delight
runs sweeter deeper within my tears,
for which I thank you
with this
love poem

I get her, she writes me,
so eloquently,
”the nub of me; gist, manifested poetic”

one of the many poets I have never met,
one of the many poets, by whom,
I have been suchly, justly, richly and correctly
accused

this mesmerizing judgement,
her-over-easy, mini-essay so succinctly
assaying an accidental ability mine

explodes
a happy passageway to my brain,
a new aperture, the neurons firing at will,
the tormented inquisitor’s unasked question,
how did this happen to me?

rocking the Sunday morn cradle’s calm,
ok, ok, write me, write me,
demands my no longer free will,
utilize the free wi-fi of we fidelty

the bay, surgically barely treading water,
its surface of multitude of small waves
but now an entire ****** expression bidding welcome

the breezeways genteel,
smilingly
invites and push us into its
directionless & tideless soothful embrace,
to the shoreline we goeth,
to watch the occasional crossing vessel intruder,
woking the waters gentle

its white path residual wake foam-formed,
then almost instantaneously absorbed, bubbly bursting,
a history of a million moments awakened,
then, instantly returned to restful sleep,
akin to a newborn’s gurgling happy dreaming,
wiped clean away off to
Peter Pan’s it-never-happened-land

this carnival trick sideline of deep tissue knowingness,
sensing the essence of the who and the whom within,
with no data to go on other than their poetic collection,
the hidden meanings of the spaces and places between
the gene sequencing of their wondrous word-fullness
DNA poetic children, freely given,
and well taken
by me

I cannot explain it well enough, but then
a strayer thought breakaway,
a prehensile comprehension insertion
proffers itself as an explanation
intruded,
and here,
extruded

the perfect world exterior before me observable
thrusts itself through picture windows onto my demeanor,
a ****** addiction of mine, my soul enslaved,
cannot bear to be taken away from

this vista,

which begs me,
bring all those you know!
here, to share, this precious precise nook
where eye insightful incisions elicit poems-by-command

but I cannot, bring you here,

so I see~imagine it better through
your eyes, then
your
gist
is in my stubbed pencil nub, it is
your
poem’s destiny manifesting,
penciled through my scruff edged fingertips,
which-when-then transcribed to paper, to history,
‘tis all you
who writes,
not I

for now
you
are the solitary vessel waterborne,
you,
you
are the captain and I

but a
Samson-nite, burdened, baggaged and blinded stowaway,
hopeless, yet still see-worthy,
with your guiding eyes,  
keeping me to keep
your copyright righted,
onto its course true


7-14-19 9:43am
in shelter, on the isle

love between poets: “who will be between the sheets next week
when I’m gone,” she lets sigh-escape,
as she watches the backyard paradise parading landscape
of animals before the bay, perfect day sure to come,
her new pets obeying the early morn sunrising awakening call
to rise, everyone playing~parading, before her royal summons,
no coincidence, finger-of-god, two by two

this while I’m kissing her neck,
my arm around her *******,
and the he-intent on slip sliding down
to the small of her back,
obeying his innate,
worship worshiping and giving up,
all he’s got intense intently contentedly

unfazed, unphased,
non-nonplussed,
he’s been interrogated before,
heart is pure he answers:

next weekend when you are back in situ,
thousands of miles away, airplane housed for hours,
writing poems of love from the lost and found,
recalling this exact moment,
how I worshipped your presence,
and these words:

You will be with me in every breath,
our sheets will radioactively emit
ions and molecules of our scent combined,
and present as present  your perfume can be,
elicited, elixir, you and me combinant

she turns from the bay-view,
the animals who now mutually
worship her adoration,
watching, focused on us as observers,
she lifts me up and smiles,
replying

“oh my lover you’re the cad of cads,
king of the baddest poet-lads,
the gist of what is wrong with the best of men,
her, pressing me hard to her chestnut hair chest,
she, falling down into my eyes

take me back to bed, liar,
let me add to my aroma,
to ensue, to ensure you will miss
the best love
you had partly, insufficiently, and unhinged
completely

I’m your lassie, you my lad,
my king of cads, my lover poet,
thief of my poems and my secret speech spells,
escalating senses of one’s imaginings”

and,
along came the rest
of what was freely given,
for love between poets
man and
a woman,
is a someone, somewhere,
sometime summertime
thing

I will still smell you in my
heart, and send to you ballistic missives,
words to explode your tear ducts
when you rest in sheets that met me,
when you’ll know me by my odors,
cry out loud so that you’ll scare our animals,
no matter how many tides wash away our residue,
you will never unknow and be forever unprepared
for my return,

even though we will be each, a thousand unwritten poems away...

hapax legomenon “Texas Women”

(hapax legomenon: a term of which only one instance of use is ever recorded)
(Texas Women: a term of which only one instance of use is ever recorded)

for
ꏳJ LꂦVꏂ  & Cne’

once again, they sweet sweep me off my feet,
carry me to the Court of Finger Wagging,
to be accused of hating and/or loving Texas Women
simultaneously, diffidently, consequentially, unclearly differentially

this is no flower picking exercise, shaking of the head,
“he loves me, he loves me not,” rinse and repeat,
a northern trick to confuse the plano truth,
warns the Judicial Triumvirate

your Honors, I swears,
never wrote those conjunctive words,
Texas, Women,
never ever, until just now,
a genuine hapax legomenon

akin to taking god’s name in vain,
if one dare ever utter these words, and
blows the opportunity,
well, shotgun, if you know what I mean,
one gets only
one chance

so cut me quick to the chase’s conclusion
let’s go to my defense single & singularly:
true, of women I have written, and
“too much,”
is a mere theortical constriction

I love to love women,
and a 57 variety pak is a-ok by me

an inordinate number of poems may have referenced
females hailing from a certain great state,
but never together, side by side, have I ever employed
that phrase, for my imaginations
are more than sufficient

have loved women from many places, too many faces,
some beyond measure, now a forever,
a hoarded memoir unpublishable treasure,
some, it’s true, possessed jeans and a cowboy hat,
and dangerous boots, which one admired from a
goodly distance

they brook no con, tilting their heads quizzically,
there is no maybe with women from this place,
maybe you love us, maybe not, but either way,
there ain’t no maybe in our emotional lexicology!

ok.

the only woman I ever hated is dead and buried,
and yes, I shot her dead for being ornery cactus mean,
so by this roundabout roundup summation,
you may put your head on pillow tonight,
smiling confident thinking that your hapax legomenon,
is deep in the heart of a grown boy hailing from nyc,
still a crazy straight shooter