We stood
on the driveway today
at dawn
Candles in hand,
as the boy  down the road
played The Last Post,
imperfectly but with
such a beautiful heart

We stood
on the driveway today
With rosemary
for remembrance
and red poppies too
Pinned to our chest.
as birds flew over head

We stood and  remembered
the sacrifice and courage
We stood and remembered
those who did not return
those who did but left
brothers and mates behind
Those who fell,
those who returned injured
In body or mind.

The dawns gentle light
watching over us all
as we looked to
the left and the right
to see neighbors all
Standing  in their driveways
Gifting our diggers
the respect they are due
for the service they gave
to the countries they love

We stood and gave thanks
as the last trumpet note died
and the kookaburras  called
Australia the nation stood tall

Shiv Pratap Pal  writes me:

“Every elder must be respected even if he is elder by a single day. This is tradition. Please let me follow the same. A poet never gets tired and poetry never dies.”

<>

Oh! this leaves me gasping for so many reasons needing enumeration.

The world reminds me daily by email and text, television commercial,
I am a privileged one, by age and right, among the most vulnerable,
so stay, baby, stay, inside your apartment and your mind where the
only virus that can come, is the one you’ve planted and tended all your whole life long.

Oft have I writ about being closer to the end, and this, untroubling,
a relief of sorts in what I fear is a new Dark Age that will arrive,
that will make writing poetry, sadly, an unlikely survival skill,
so I rite furious and furiously to give the best, the rest, of me, away.

Few are the societies that do not venerate to some degree, the elderly,
as if living long bestowed wisdom, in addition to an irritable crankiness,
(why the Inuit Indians put their elderly on an ice floe to die)
neither, both, of the “ain’t necessarily so” conditionals as wisdom deevolves and crankiness is a perpetual, a perpetual annoyance.

Do I deserve respect?

This haunts, for by right, we all believe it is
a conditional that must be earned, and not acquired by a general,
genetic lottery. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
I do not, and a man who announces,
“I am deserving of same”
by saying this, clearly is and was not, or ever will be.

A single day!

What an amazement!

This relativity theorem, this luck of the draw, can’t argue with it, because it is tradition, somethingthat I’m well acquainted, because when I suffered on Saturdays, as an Orthodox Jewish  Child, who wanted to worship with the brothers at the Riverside Drive basketball courts, was dragged to a synagogue where he joked, they could of just inserted the video tape of the prior week, prior year, thousands of prior centuries, a previous millennium, who’d notice?


Who deserves respect?

The teacher, the one who gives it instant unflinchingly,
he who accepts a task from a stranger to translate
his words to a language he knows not even the alphabet,
indeed, a tribute to another, and executes it so well, but best! best!
no questions asked.

Who deserves respect?

One who respects tradition,
giving respect unquenchingly,
for the things that we cannot see,
only observe, come only in a size of limitless,
come unasked, freely given, even happily, and this is
why, for all of the reasons herein listed above, I give all respect to
a fellow poet, and pledge to arm embrace before tradition’s always untimely messenger says to me अब और नहीं!  (no more!)


                                       Shiv Pratap Pal

if you don’t know by now,
going to early mass is not my thing,
as I am one of those peeps of the tribe
that for your sins, died and then, again, and again

‘bout 6:00am, exchanging messages with
my fellow Indians (nooo, I’m not Indian) poets
on mundane subjects like tradition, grandchildren,
nagging wives, profits, revenues and earnings, expenses
(of that, more later)

now that we are living on the isle-no-elation,
the distractions are numerous though varied,
so I find myself unloading the dishwasher,
chopping, peeling, red, yellow peppers, cucumbers

then to a puzzle I am sent, how to fit in two
big cases of water into a Manhattan-sized
closet which shall we say, with largesse, isn’t
large-esse, comes pre-crammed from urban foraging

which means it’s coffee prep time so more
cleansing of yet another device, which happily
annoys by providing step by step, non-negotiable demands,
what me, just another human pretense machine, must execute

ménage a trois, three poems are pre-forming in
a mind that says concentrate, please don’t slice a fingertip,
but if you must, that romanesque nose, certainly
could use a trimming, if you are so energized & inclined

and it’s Sundae morning and I deliver the coffee,
making the route I’ve been plying for many morn,
this one is black, this one is oat milk, extra hot,
this one is awake, cause she’s giggling at **** emojis

oh yes indeed, a liturgical motet, a prayer to a lord,
I’ve never seen, but who insists on interrupting me,
when the mood is upon him, as if we humans were his own
coffee machine toys, don’t forget to make him herbal tea

and you say this is not a poem, and you whine,
overly long, and I laugh and say please, please,
don’t read it, I’ve got plenty others that garnered
accolades of multiple thousands and love this one better

feeling so holy, feeling so hollywood, my tasks nearly
completed, return to bed, when the nagging begins,
what have I forgotten, ****, my own coffee hides,
in the microwave and by now needs a reheating twice

and while I must off to write of Indian traditions,^
the gains and losses of grandchildren, grandmothers,
a new debate rages, how shall I end this morning-prayer,
and
I offer myself
three choices,
in a language I speak in the original,
Hallelujah, Amen, and Selah.


8:49am
Manhattan Island
May 17
2020

man says, this life, for what, a thousand dry
holes drilled, wildcatting, a win-loss record,
that didn’t approach, come close, to breakeven,
not even an asterisk in the records kept

man says, this body, its rate of desolations
increasing, the goal line distance secretions,
decreasing, this broken runner, tackled from behind
by the past, as his future caught up with him

man says, goals, deadlines, hamstring him,
due dates, an invitation to a criminal activity,
rub, nobody wants to take it down, his record,
left behind, when they shut Rikers Island

man says, always poor at maths, a loser of words,
his parents, his children, all time despairing of him,
called the AAA to come, tow him away, but,
all the junkyards refused him entry

man says, what separates ought and nought,
a little letter, just an n, that screaming thought,
a little letter, insufficient to bridge a poem too far,
man digresses, the past is ever present, in every word

writ and forgot.

<>

“I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat,
gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the
day and night”

Song of Myself (1892 version) by  WALT WHITMAN

                                                   §§§

Irony great, some say unto delicious, for my writing,
be a fusing of surroundings of silences, admixture of
inconsequential noises, atomic horn and geese honking,
sun rays speaking in tongues, my skin translating, both,
the sounds of the city, those of out of city, merged, both,
accessible, instant recall, stored for tongue tasing upon

these blank pages below, needy for wordy fulfillment,
copy and place these mishmash of cacophonous,
on a single page, simmer, blend and sauce, of course,
salt to taste, mine, author of this recipe being born,
born in the night, prepped by day, the lovely sounds,
kettle or pan, broiler, fryer, slow cooked on full flame

they are the melted butter sweetness crossing the span
between the body of the heartbeat, the ache of the brain,
shot out in rapidity, error’d and stain’d, their state natural,
for this mess of beans, collection of noises, stir my soul
where they contain’d, aromatic, fanatic, exotic, sticky hot,
only a singular harsh invades, the shrill of the voice human

this piece, this poem, a flavoring, a dish-not-to-be-repeated,
once consumed, spoiled milk, molded with Jello mold green,
back to hiding in place of unseen, of bravura masked as cowardice,
when crackle of easy wasted word cowards, daily spewed,
so precious these ingredients, these artful sounds, easy ruined,
chitchats of nothingness, parlous blasé wastrels, seize! cease!

take thy tongue, let it memorize all the oddities that fill your ears,
ecrivez! the cooing, smacking, the alliteration of snap, crackle, and
yes, pop! and if you can love the human voice, of that too, tho not me,
more beloved, the exterior symphony of kettle drum, soft cry of violin,
timpani tingling, guitar plucking, the voice of men, too oft abusing and abused by untruths, emboldened lies, they are the sounds
I love least, love to hate.  a shrill disease, the TV liars...

                                                     §§§§§



May
Manhattan Island

~for VB~

<>

“A child said What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?”

Song of Myself (1892 version) BY WALT WHITMAN

                                                §§§

­there is special delight for the city dweller,
when the first clean flushing of brightest spring green
disrupts the unending graying city ribs of worn concrete,
the alternating lifelessness of blasé brick, pretending
off-beige, ***** pale blue, a sooty furnace red,
well done,  a good pretense that they are, of color.

I am among thousands whose as a child my breath
gave way, taken by gasp, when first made
entrance to the green diamond sparkle oasis of
Yankee Stadium, hid by the urban dreariness of The Bronx,
near sixty years vision sustained with perfect clarity on
retina-implanted, a shock, an earthly con-trast.

today, an old-timer, a first timer, I’m gifted Whitman’s Song of Myself,
from a friend and poet, who lives hardy by a Port,
another islander like myself, surrounded by wet roads and
pathways to the Northern Pacific, amongst timberlands of
forested and natured grass, a differing kind of stadium,
both of us silently saying, thanks Lord, for lending us yours.

even temporarily, this day, your emeralding grass handkerchief,
equates our dispositions, so differently identical,
your name, our initials, in opposing corners, embroidered,
your grass tapestry upon this troubled earth, a scented, joint, poetic
remembrance, that though it’s but words that bind us, we! we know!
the songs we sing of ourselves, we sing in synchrony harmony.

                                                   §§§§§


Wed. May 13, 2020
Manhattan Island,
by the East River