11:06 AM Thu Feb 2

<>

early early morning

when the restless images of semi-sleep haunt, the hazy unknowns and wavy specters ****** you with wild abandon dancing verbs,
all eager to mislead, happy to pronounce distorted truths, seemingly
delicious but confusing familiars seem real, but they are…not

late late evening

when the day’s hours hang heavy round the neck,
the outlook is now the past-look, inevitable raising
words that start with the letter D, none good or delighting,
and looking back, reviewing, is too oft confused with previewing…

dinner time

when family gathers, interruptions frequent, and the
specific gravitas of concentration sinks beneath soapy
dish water, or is burnt in oven, or distractedly spilled and the
words burnt too, anger arrives as a question…when is my time?

early evening

the receding hubbub has numbed the desire, even the need,
flows are stillborn, and for every word composed, ten rejected,
disarray and dissatisfaction, despair, strangle the creativity and the
seductive drugged  non-thought of TV, dangerously addict-attracts…

when then?

always. as in everything. anytime. feast on the crashing all about,
source and savor life’s cacophony as purest inspiration gifted,
record, clasp and grasp the passing stanzas that flow from the tap,
quicken the mind, retain the veins of irony, whimsy & despair

for there is no time other than the time…

*when “it” already writ and needy only for the writing utensil, tablet,
blue-lined pad that presents, begging for fufillment, yours & its,
and you need only discharge the torrents of what went before,
the poem, and you, both fully formed and emptied and contained!

The
tilt of my seesaw
is decidedly downward facing dog:

and there’s no rush to judgment,
for the powers that be,
be delighted by slow-walking,
making the waiting
max-tortuous,
but am of an age when everything,
even the long buried sins and unkept promises, poke and **** nonstop,
and the formulae once  relied upon
to ease incipient self-deception,
to temporize and salve the consternations

of unkempt aggravated remorse failures,

as aged misdemeanors be matured felonies,
I blurt and declare guilt to all, alas,
and yet,
always an
and yet
in the ultimate crushing of
tardiness, knotted by an indignity of silence,


no one is desirous
of taking my
confession

5:10pm
Thu Jan 28
2023

for Joel Frye, who loves
“my sharing the marginalia of my life”

<>

the tiny smile in mine eyes’ white *****,
glistens,
my eyes inhabited, as is my
habit,
of your noticings of the what & wherefore
of the “it” of my writing…
the marginalia of life
as you adeptly label them…

touch you, my fingernails ,
sensing the ragged edging,
alternating with the smooth

all is revelational, all is relational,
the irreverent,
the minuscule,
the bytes of super-valued
ordinary
and the
extra-undervalued-ordinaries,
each and both,
elevated by you…
observing me observing you!

living on the margin,
doesn’t mean the unimportant,
the margin is a place,
where our mind’s neuralgia
embrace; where you-receive
my envisioning, feel my marginality’s,
my discrepancies, the odd, that oddly

that makes us even!

and
understanding my fingernails,
are what you’re touching,
my touch, your sensing.
identical, precisely provisioned,
and our invisible envisioning,
with nothing in between running interference,
is everything
finest and fine

the marginalia are,
the margin is the beginnings and
the endings of my myriad words,
the overstuffed SUV of my mind
that you help me to unload!








<§>

Thu Jan 5
5:08 pm
Manhattan

~for Lori Jones McCaffery who wrote me of:
“Her hands lay gently joined”

“So tenderly put”

<>
So sweet and tenderly put this trilateral phrase, a complement,
So sweet and tenderly put this lovely, geometrical compliment,
thus birthing this missive that was delivered in a mere 9 minutes,
a simple re-tribute to a poem scraped from eyelids, leaked from
my heart  
of what
I Witnessed,
of what
I Emoted

as my woman,
rustled besides me in the early morning sheets,
stirring my heart, as she astirring slowly awake.

love this title Lori has gifted me, for so few and far
are the in-betweens of the people, places and things,
that are so tenderly inserted in this banged up humdrum,
football game of daily living, pierced by primary moments,
even secondary seconds, of heart~glows that pierce the noise,
even-in-silence put a suffusion of the chest, kissing of the brain,
colored kernels that dare not go unnoticed, this eloquent, perfect,
thank you is a whispering tremolo note that

wakes me up again, with scents of gratitude, for those
who take care, those who give care, who value tenderness
in soft spoken gestures, brash and bold, smartly wisdomed,
so to honor her, to honor this moment of grateful inspiration,
I insert the exact moment these senses imploded in my chest,
ordering me to give thanks, take care, validate the valuation of words,

so tenderly put

2:10pm Mon Jan 30 2023

Kids Just Want Crackerjack-Sized Prizes

petite and instantly pleasurable,
prized poems of brevity that tax
at zero, the lowest applicable rate,
offering granules of delight, espresso
sized, it’s a no to sips from a muging

charming and charmed,
rueful &  ironical, easy to
swallow in one felling swoop,
a  minds’ amuse-bouche,
think of the tree bytes saved!

knee bent in deference,
obeisance heady bent,
counting crows & words,
awed by the encapsulated,
single, subtle, singular idée fixe

here I stand and as I write,
plaint every size has it place,
even it’s own-won-one-time,
short needed too, but ya
canna feed my soul
with candied nuts,
abbreviated notions,
if you desire an ocean crossing*…


<§>

I,
perpetual struggling poet, working-man,
purposely seek the illusion of allusions,
craftily crafted, crafty reverential
carefully chosen references & foreign words,
très charmant,
les metaphoric metaphors plucked from a
million metaverses newly explored,
theiving from our predecessors,
who deserve the homage of
genuine followers, inspiration
from those who borrowed liberally
from their historical predecessors,
the go-befores and go-betweens and
laugh at my impoverished copycattting
copied compliments offered “gratis”

enough.

Thu Jan 5 2023
9:07am