My First Anniversary…
(August 3, 2024)

This title, this poem, a wholly unexpected,
never thinking this path,  
this particular tango existential
would/was needed,
to be added to
my dance card

an early exit, a poem unplanned,
second chance was not a poem in my long
list of titles awaiting a turn to be written

a year ago,
they sent me to the surgeon,
who had prepared, with no hesitancy declared,
informed that we needed to start
all over again,
my poor heart
was waxing and waning,
and I was currently stuck on
the dark side of the moon,
with no jitney making stops theron

by the way,
the accumulation of damage had attained
a level where heart was
nearly exhausted,
( I believe he mentioned 98%)
that attention must be made,
how about
tomorrow we asked,
he laughed no can do,
but the day after would be ok,
and was I an earlier riser,
a coveted 600am slot available,
my name could be penciled in…

One tear ago, 
 wheeled me in, cracking jokes,
thinking what’s the big deal,
laughing hardest
was me,
for my motto was always leave them
(oops, poor choice of words) laughing…
fear was not in my lexicon, nor in my heart,
nor was
a ferry cross the
Rubicon

so many changes, so many poems 365 days later,
the life marked by many a Cain scar,
the big one, a pencil thin ****  hesty reminder,
plus assorted scars scattershot all over, where the “borrowed” veins and arteries, like pieces of twine, mighty fine,
(no, I never slashed a wrist, though it looks like it)
moved to different places,
repurposed, for I was now a used car
but with an extended warranty…

do not think on it much, but as markers come and go,
you think:

oh! I’ll never forget this trip, event, celebration,
and a week later your mind has nearly deleted it from the
critical events memory synapses, just another
day in the blah blah blasphemy
of a insignificant man’s unremarkable life…

but when I shower, the scars rise to the surface,
all over my body’s map, they come out shouting,
“look what I did for you,” from places weird,
they tingle, insuring my never ending surprise,
at that Olympic trial,
they raced, earning a piece & place
on my gold, overall medley team medaling,
or meddling
(when I tease them…)

so, let us bring this to a close, one man’s life,
ain’t making much a difference to most everybody else,
but the question that needyfor asking,
have you changed, how have you changed?

Less than you think, still write you poems with head and heart,
with humor and wit, sweet revelations, reverent with feeling, somehow a
bit original, leaving you laughing,
or maybe even better, smiling…

my mistakes all shared, and my burdens, some shared,
some too dark to be ever revealed, and I’m guessing I’m pretty
((much😉))
the same as I was before, older, not much wiser,

but these days, I surprise myself, for I sit outside
overlooking the wide waters surrounding,
embrace the sun at its earliest morn appearance,
love me the whipping snap of the
sound of great continuous wind gusts,
all the while surveying the world,
while winds are flowing all over me
like vibrant caresses, excavating my creases,
the ancient and recent
lineage
upon my face,
and sit in utter peace
thinking about everything,
and never tire,
staying for longer than a man has a right to do nothing
but to
reassess,
evaluate,
judge,
convey…
and
always
refresh
and confront
today’s
tally…

~dedicated and gifted to Alyssa Homes Underwood,
in perpetuity~
<>
this one, like so many others, is
for my inestimable~faithful friend
who asks, listens and never sings
out of tune,
always lending me his ears…

<>
the 7:42 am train is pulling in…
the tracks run by the soundless waters,
directly through the spaces
called my mind

<>


sun begging come out & play,
“c’mon baby, you know need warmth,”

(even if mine ain’t the kind that realizes
real dreams, the kind that exhale healing,
but come out anyway, take what you can get,
put off the pains of haunting curses, sins that cannot be erased, random emerging like jacks-in-the-box that were cranked, but just waiting for the right moment to fk you up…try putting them bastids, back in the can with  aplomb & composure but you know it’s way too late..)

Van Morrison serenades
“These are the days
(of the endless summer),”
it is a hymnal
in / of the church of blue sky,
birch  white pews, voices choral…
the caucus of birds who are crazy flitting, cawing, cracking,
making an unholiness mess unsuitable to the moment’s serenity,

the rabbits, seeing if this idiot threw out some
baby carrots (he did), Van singing of love of the one magician, who would turn my blood into wine…

the whistle blows, a one-minute-warning, train
a-leaving,  so is this poem, and the randomness herein is not a poem, but a cry of the mind,
”un cri de l’esprit,”
may it, it may resonant or fall, face~flat to the ground, the sound of the mind,
the train whistle, the symphony of mother morning nature, the quiet lapping waves,
all acknowledge their “failure to soothe,” them, relentless, will return later, on the morrow, same station, them, who
will never concede that they can be beaten,
to superimpose, a mental purity in the recesses
of where the screams crawl out of the mind’s
cemetery, them unmarked graves, of babies that
did not survive to be named, and yes, that’s a
real thing…shhhhhh, them say the triumvirate of the natural forces state with equanimity
”write, let it out, let it go,”
you
hope no one reads this…but it’s far too late
it is
for~formed, created,
on this the seventh day of the week,
when the Maker rested from his
creation~work, and you think maybe a day of rest, not a bad idea, smiling cause, someone is playing Joe Cocker singing,
“Have a Little Faith in Me”
and then,
“(Try) With a Little Help From My Friends”
confirming, in the governing firmament of this world there are no coincidences…*

<>

8:10 by the sky, and
checking out the sky holes and the holy,
seeing the sight lines to souls gone but always,
well remembered…they too shushing me with
loving kindness…and the next stop is
Nazareth

it is the place each day, before it,
I morning sit,
but technically:

A sound is
“valley that has been filled with sea water sound
is usually formed by the flooding of a river valley…
This means that the topography
is usually less narrow
and more gently sloping than a fjord, but it is no less spectacular.”

it is my vista blessing, that a quiet Sound,
my Sound, asks daily,
this reborn morn body & soul for their
exchange of blessings
in a give and take of
purity of greatness of
restoration gratitude…

the days is early maturing,
the day but a
toddler growing up too fast,
the heated warmth of the
not yet adult noon sun is exactly
that, a teen warmth that penetrates the
cell’s nuclei, with the casual breeze
perfect offset cooling, waving the branches,
with a gentility genuine, even
the tree  swing swinging
is of a mind, moved to a gentle rocking
in preparation for neighbors children to
later come and make it raucous rocking!

the shore opposite is a deep forest green
population of thick trees, that
thankfully
masks most
of the human pollution, the mega mansions
and their trending markings of grown-up toys…

This is my morning ~

Vista and I
recreate the earth’s rough edged birth,
but celebrate with a flooding quietude that only
that word,
Sound,
could so capture and continue to captivate
and
re~
form me
anew,
not blameless or innocent,
but cleanly reopened

and willingly, desirous,
of being better, doing better,
and shed betterment,
to any all that understand that
this momentous but momentary
miracle of a soundless Sound
roars with clean, white glowing,
of a thirst slaking
hope

<>

oh i wish u were beside me…

Friday’s Fumble Crumble:
writ/wrote /needs/work

the WR juggernaut,
of write/writ/ wrote
and associated WoRdy derivatives,
a vast complex,
the crossover
from notion to lively potion,
the ****** of completion;
a tricky *******,
1st an  enticement, inevitably a
first unsatisfactory shot,
the dispiriting recognition
that what you got ain’t good…

a dissolution of resolution,
the look back~try again,
picking off the fleshy morsels
from the Valley of Bones,
that demands a really funereal
and t. swift
sea burial,
thus energized by seawater ,
or the slapping (s)hit from *****+ dirt

comes re~energy, a burst of a covert  coverup,
then comes a gleam,
the light of a beam in the seams
of your fingertips,
a repeating  secretion of ideas that refuse
to give in to a ceremony of deletion,
a prescrip for a sad~glad emotive repast,
a look back,
longing glance, but with a new hope of
rejiggering, that sticky secretion ‘pon
dying, yet enervating,
dancing fingertips,
spewing gobs so fast of wordy worthy
battered batter,
throwing in some Heath bar crumble,
soon enuf the oven is cooking!
baking and the smoking aroma of
over~heated sheets of paper
of soon to be crisply delivering cookies extraordinaire,
but alas,
‘twas all in the mind and is unjustly
a recipe, for ashes of a burnt dreams

and the tenses clench/de clench
when the writ is wrote,
but never,
not ever
is it ever just rote…

@nd that’s what ya get when you witty-gritty-wrote
@

2:06am
7/26/2024