your thoughts and prayers ****
highly ineffective,
bluntly,
they are defective
ain’t rendering no mo’ to god
and his good old timey thing,
righteous slaughtering of the innocents,
such fun for what does He care

what we got to do is do
something about on it earth,
time has come up,
the hurricane has begun,
and world is shaking from the movements in our bones,
for now is the hour
when we sail to the shore,
and until we are done,
the sun will not respect our faces

accept this introspective invective,
politely keep them guttural BS noises to yourself,
you know who’s the guilty ones,
that would be me and you

write to the congressmen,
who have been shot,
asking what ya got, forever protection,
the crazies know where you live,
state senators from places they don’t you represent,
all that we adjudged them lazy guilty, guilty of laziness,
and don’t forget to add a p.s.

we adjudge ourselves guilty as well,
too many knew in advance, the dangerous ones, who were
lurking, them waiting, us in desperation hoping,
it wouldn’t be happening then delaying one more time
all over again

”Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep in their eyes
And they'll **** from their beds and think they're dreamin'
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real
The hour that the ship comes in.

Then they'll raise their hands
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered
And like Pharaoh's tribe
They'll be drownded in the tide
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.” (Bob Dylan)

8/4/19 12:10
there is no shelter anywhere from madness for the madness
is ours, inside, and we have learnt to live with it’s reoccurring.
Why?

She says she doesn’t have the strength within herself to write poetry.
Yes, her. The one who so often nourished me with song
til my soul began to learn how to hunt for itself,
whose word carried weight in leading me to pick my own instrument,
albeit one of a different tone,
as the key in keyboard became prominent for the first time
and the sound of purposeful fingers upon it could be considered,
only in the right light,
synonymous to the plucking of strings, just as rooted in emotion.

Yet she's the first to say that she herself can't do it.

Thing is, I suppose we’re politely at odds on the matter.
She favors poetry that’s sharper, with a cleaner cut,
that’s message is immediate and jarring
as a conduit running from soul through skin,
or a loose-lipped diary finally freed from lock and key.
And when she declared it, I started to consider what my poems seem to me:
Blackberry bushes (but kinder, I hope)
that snag and immerse just long enough
to make me feel I’ve had an effect.
I’ve used writing to expel my most gnarled feelings
to any passerby who’s maybe felt the same.
Like crying in a mirror:
alarming, but oddly refreshing,
and an indefinite reminder that our aches are never only our own.

Still, I'm not sure why it blows my mind
to hear that even the most glamorous hearts,
who wear confidence as a summer breeze that's always in their favor
and who inspire, from beau gestures to sleight of hand,
are included in those who find themselves pacing back, back and forth,
begging curbside at the dime store
for a scrap of the same feed that convinces a heart to pump ink.

But she says that any art that's enjoyed is worth it.
So while she seeks out words that bare the bones,
I’ll stay and make a meal of the marrow,
hollowing them so that the poetry may have a rightful place
to reverberate as hymns in a universal monastery.

But hell, like I’m any old soul.
I dress nicer than I otherwise would,
turn to the mother who told me I don’t meet her lowest standards,
and ask for a critique.
All for the moment when she greets me at the door with a legendary G#.

...Now please, could you spare a dime?

Shabash

Shābāsh (Hindi: शाबाश, Urdu: شاباش, Punjabi: ਸ਼ਾਬਾਸ਼, Bengali: শাবাশ, Telugu: శబాష్) is a term used in the Indian subcontinent to signal commendation for an achievement, similar in meaning to
bravo and kudos.


……………………………………………
a poem writ sometimes, oft,
snaps back,
I was surprising recipient
of a commendation in language
I knew not

the poem spoke well
of broken boundaries,
between in this instance,
Jew and Muslim,
capturing a momentary parting
of the seaways and
walls of misbelief
and mischief,
normally employed
to keep our divisions,
parted perpetually

I’ve decided to begin to
use shabash now,
my ‘go to’ word
from now on,
a small quiet way
to say
well done

it starts with one word,
a stretching hand across
the face fence,
imagining John Lennon’s
imagine-world,
who lay dying when I was
a young father of thirty,
me residing less than a
mile away from each other

little could I imagine then that
poetry would pick me at all,
especially to write of words
in dialects I don’t speak,
but imaging their pastel colorations
flying by in gentle breezes,
eager to be grabbed,
plucked from the air,
tongued and loved

so!
when I say to you,
in the softest spoke,

shabash!

to all of us,
for choosing this path,
using your words in
every dialect,
to spread the imagination
of good will

8-4-2019
10:10 am
S.I.

pretty words for pretty girls


courageous caress of a send key pressed,
after practicing  
speechless up to the assumed,
up to assured point of perfect,
flawlessness, visible in each invisible breath,
pauses full of poignant stories unspoken
but eye cleared visible for seeing the future

pretty words for pretty girls

intuition incorporates superstition,
unending, intending infatuated moon gazing,
but not pagan worshiping, no it is love worshiping

your hiding cave places are moon apertures dark spots,
impenetrable to my eye’s naked telescoping,
but heartbeats spring my unharnessed love poems to you

me and millions whisper in full certainty of our
lost but beloved presences, moon stored for us,
my darling dares the light shine upon my bay,
here to me, our path, a moonlight waving hand
provides on many nights, a clear direction to follow,
pseudo-thrills of continence that my vision uncovers,
but my body knows is but a poor substitute

pretty words for pretty girls

my disease has a diagnosis.

your body attacked,
your body reacts,
defeats the infector,
remembering the next time
that disease comes round
how it got beat prior
and how to do it again


so how come I’m falling love once more?

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...