You Are the Texture

…………………………

~ for all of you,
you, you poet~



Impasto

“is a technique used in painting,
where paint is laid on an area of
the surface thickly, usually thick
enough that the brush or  painting-
knife strokes are visible.

Paint can also be mixed right on
to the canvas. When dry, impasto
provides texture; the paint appears
as if, to be coming out of the canvas.”


<1:47pm>

Cut & Paste

is a technique used in poetry writing,
we refer back to our visions, heard words,
the eyeful, the earful, scents, the reads read,
all in the mind’s palette blended, thickly, but
the merging fused, every word~in~coloration,
it is unique, reincarnation, copying impossible.

The imagery, cut and pasted from thy heart and
soul, upon canvas, your poems~pieces each appear
as you-are-texture, you becoming out of, you, the canvas.

<2:04pm>


Postscript*
………………

it is not lost on me that the
scars, our words,herein,
we note too frequently, almost casually,
are, can be, the selfsame
words/painting-knife
employed
for our first and foremost
canvas we utilize,
is ourselves…
our bodies, ourselves

~for VB, who loves mornings like no one else can~

<>
Cloudbreak

Sky provides a moving mural, Napoleonic battle sized scale,
pudgy fat, creamy cumulus clouds impasto painted permit no hope for a fine day *except
for tiny patch of baby boy blue blanket that mint hints
that there may be hope yet, that summer succor may yet,
be available to all,

If only,
but the gray paste inhabits sky to sky, end to end, making it
impossible to discern a horizon beyond the bay, merging the
flatline water line with the impregnable grey of sky, making a borderline indistinguishable, a single landandseascape

All is blended,
all is merged,
demarcating lines blended and disappeared,
this is morning.

A Oneness
waiting to be exchanged,
swiftly swept out to sea,
an exchange,

for freshly squeezed OJ sun,
and appointment with God,
who demands/commissions a new poem
politely,

a celebration of his handiwork,
Why Else Would He Bother?

(and I cannot live
from with-out)

<>
a poem in appreciation to Rossella Di Paolo

<>

I, too:
          - am an embryonic work in progress,
well into my seventh decade, with no ending in sight


                                I too,    
live in the house of poetry, the address likely differs,
but suspect the innards of the houses differs little,
the decor,  quite similar

         - my house shrewdly requests a rethinking,
                                    noting, it lives my artifice,

with in & with out

Then, we are a We:
                                  
          - my cavities house her, She, Poetry is of Ruth (1) born,

          - Poetry, She, reminds me, ”whither thou goest, I will go”


This duality:
          - where the haunting of words providential,
             emanate, both inhabiting & inhibits my breathing
              She, a fearsome creature, a fearful-something,
for it tears me and shreds tears its demands be wrung
from with in to with out

She, Poetry:
          - leaves me gaping, hollow, fills me with
            depressurizing boreholes exposed to the elements  of
            externalities of an admixed atmospheres, that nature demands             be refilled, fresh in, stale out,
for which the artifice trick is knowing which is which

when Poetry’s  birthing:
          - chest pounds, heart-rate beats heavy metal,
            abdomen contracts, there then, no languid in my language,
            no help untangling the alpha-bet jumbling,
            product of the screams of pushing,
squeezing it forth

you’re hoping to quick-catch newly formed combinations,
for if you fail, a poem
noisily crashes to and through the floorboard cracks,
where poetry’s chaotic glinting etes
maliciously glimmer~winks at me
with a sarcastic thank you

“ah, too bad, another creation stillborn,
gone to rest, biting the nether dust,
without hope of resuscitation…”*

just another unfinished work in progress

periodically
a survivor clean caught, transcribed, edited to be finished,
amniotic fluids cleared,
poem resurrected
blessed with eternal life,
readied to be shared and delivered,
affirmed

and you say to no one and to everyone:

this poem will be our poem,
wither it goes, ascending, descending,
all live in the house of poets,
one house,
many apartments,
each poem a god,
and
my God will be our God,
your God, my God,
in the House of Poetry

<>

you pout and defer, dancing backwards,
claiming, blue is now blackened
from underuse, incapable and incapacitating revival

saying  eyes cannot see, distinctly, neither near or far,
the tremble of love, forgot & distantly absent,
but I know, a heart’s sensory muscles never die,
though weaken they might, underused, un-exercised

denying  that inspiration  
no longer resides with in thy sensitivities,
has fled, undercover of smoking forest fires
all the diurnal hazards that invade, occupying

my internal spaces once filled by poems
you conceived, birthed, in a pleasured haze,
came so fast, you bare recall agony accompanied,
but not the ecstasy of the end resultant!

you know it’s you of whom I write, but,

a note not shaming names, but messages
countless private messages have I sent
begging, beseeching, give me your gifts

once more, you owe me not, though I
oft irritate with my deafening pleas,
yet only denials continue, my pleas ding
but dent not, the tired fear of your exposition

so speak to you plain,
feed my soul selfish
like in years gone past,
there are holes in mine

that require your elixir,
creamy softness that moistens
my face with tears of your words
originating, astound, enfold

not later, not soon, not excusals,
write for me NOW, WRITE FOR YOURSELF,
but leave me not forsaken and thirst un-slackened,

Answer! To whom do you owe your poems?

Stroking


<6:56 Am>

this petite gesture, glorious in effect,
impervious to aging, speaks volumes
of storied nuance and sun powerful to believers,
inherent messages much refined by its singularity

all that can be, will be, transporting the living,
calming effervescence by simplest of motion implanted,
its sensory powers long lingering, instantly, uncovers
the furtive child in us all, tho well we hide it

stroking my woman’s body when errant dreams,
disturb the early morning scheming, returning a placid,
to her steady breathing, exhaling the disturbing,
erasing the fearful that wanders inside our night boundaries

stroking the cheek, of my six year old granddaughter,
pulling back the hair locks that impede her vision,
the whirlwind passes, her body sedates, and her
totality merges into mine, born, borning a Godlike oneness

these fingers air the words that my chest pervade,
there is power galore in their communicative physicality,
but nothing more powerful than skin upon skin, in motion,
continuous, circular soothing the giver and the receiver equally

<7:09 AM>