The old poets haunt me
they taunt me from the shadows
following every keystroke I type -
they’re critical of phrases,
they demand narrower themes
and mock the very clichés they invented.

I remind these frightful spirits of how tenuous
life was, how I’m blindly living these experiences,
how prevalent desire is, how human it is to chase
the things we’re told will fulfill us, like goals and love.

I try and explain this Internet thing,
how the more copious my writings,
the more people it says are following me.
How I really don’t want to sound paranoid
but as hard as I try - I don’t see anyone.
.
.
Song for this:
Too Much Time On My Hands by Styx
Reelin' In The Years by Steely Dan

From dust we are born and
to dust we shall return

Born in diapers
And in diapers.
We shall return

However, that’s not
Even our biggest concern
We learn to rationalize,
Soon it’ll be our turn

However that’s not the
worst of what is to come
Memory loss, the ultimate cost
Dementia, Senility, Alzheimer’s

True it doesn’t happen to all, Just some
Who answers the call
However evidently nobody
will know their outcome

Add in a myriad of
other ailments for good measure
The word “walk” at your own leisure  
has a new meaning it’s rather demeaning

Each person’s, inevitable fate
Life’s journey Check Mate
We learn to slow our gate
turn another page life’s gage

Yes we celebrate OLD AGE Ironic, plutonic
Chronic, crate paper crinkles like her skin
Beautiful hands now liver spots wrinkle
and black balloons they think that’s funny. Oh don’t fret honey. Just the Young ins  

They don’t understand
What it means to have a good day
No significant illness’ to speak of today
Why do we celebrate so many ask
Living with ailments, is a laborious task

We celebrate;
The life we’ve livedThe love we give
The things we’ve seen places we’ve been
The people we’ve known death shown

The things we’ve done While having fun
In our prime, another day another time
We were bigger than life, 10 feet tall
Even the gladiators eventually fall

Nobody ever ages gracefully  
Most Fight it every step of the way
The Golden years worldly and wise
We shrink before our very eyes
Our skin wrinkles sagging
The immense pain ever nagging

The wonders of age and getting old.
A word of the wise don’t believe the lies
It’s not for the weak meek its for the bold
I will age gracefully I’ll never be too old
I have the propensity for living life large

Even knowing
Sickness will bring  us to our knees
“The JUICE  is worth the squeeze”

Inspired song
1) Grandma‘s hands by Bill Withers

don’t believe in
divine intervention,
but all~so(uls)
don’t believe in the
accidents of coincidence

the Pandora Box gods eavesdrop on my mind,
looking to match the music to my mood,
(box to box, they cruelly smile)
Providentially Provisioning
me with inspirational food.
to collect and let
what’s brewing,
stop stewing,
and come out
in a you know what…

that old song,
500 Miles,
keeps
returning, unplanned,
auto play repeatedly
entirely accidentally,
(U believe that?)
my mind keeps on
knowing
I’m up~blowing,
there’s unfinished business
a-firing, a forest fire
of a 500 miles~s-acred blaze,
the firemen intuit ‘tis
of a kind,
it can’t be stoppered
until you and it,
self extinguish, (ex~sting-you~ish (1))
burn itself,
outside inwards,
reverse phoenix,
not sparks left,
until it’s dead

and the song,
and it’s power o’er me,
** ** **, is un~finished
busine business,
having fun with
my undoing

Lord, I’m Two,
both of us,
in words unspoken,
know that the/a fragmentation
grenade that is my brain,
dancing on the thinner
blackest
red line that asunders me,
twice, into two unequal halves,
is inflamed, infected, dejected

Both of us,
hear that dog whistle
loud blowing
one inch, a salty pinch,
or even
500 hundred miles,
makes no difference,
cause Lord, I’m two

reminding how far I am
from my owning
my very own
personal homeland security,
complete with self-sourced,
sovereign jagged glass pieces,
intended to jag, jog, tear, penetrate, break, annoy, till~this line……ends
,
the errata of this man’s
quasi, semi, repeating
mess-ups, that are
erratically invoking
benedictional confessionals,
of poems unwrit

those I dare not,
until and unlest,
you board a plane
to come to save me

Lord, I’m Disordered,
Lord, I’m Three,
a trinity of Myself & I & Me,
siblings who just
can’t along,
but can’t barely survive,
as separate human beings,
for one cord connects us,
keeps attached like on a bus,
though at a modest
moderating distance,
cause the fights are
frequent

Lord, I’m
(yeah yeah Four, say no more,
just rap it up son,
there’s work to be done!)

am I finished being,
an unfinished being,
will I ever make it to Five,
get home, even barely alive,
Lord, will I ever be One,
just like you,
put together,
a jigsaw complete,
a whiskey neat,
a whiskered gnat,
a graybeard bit
of fluff
with a wide smile of a
Cheshire Cat?

Lord,
give me sleep,
& poems born written
pre~complete,
so alls that required is to just hit
SEND,
a journey shelved,
ended before began,
a pieced together whole man,
give me rest,
eternal and blest,
make me an archaic kept,
in an archive slept,
and end this song,
with a fini
of
quietude & peace?


4:35AM
Sabbath Eve
- Av 12, 5784
- Aug. 16, 2024

Stupidly genius, moronic and shrewd people eat their fast food on fine China
Failing is vertical, errors are slander
Their gross insults impacting easy digestion
Hyperbole falsehood messiah

Piercingly silent and ardently soft people keep their opinions on fences
Insults are weaponry not to be yielded
Their platitudes cradling fragile personas
Perversely destructive defences

Classically learned and bookishly rich people carry their privilege with kindness
Science is built with colonial scaffolds
Their method constraining all true innovation
Parochial qualified blindness

Shockingly worthy and recklessly small people polish their boots with lead solder
Gravity holding them grounded and upright
Their bootlaces impacting aerodynamics
Inferior sturdy upholder

Gallantly serving and fearlessly trained people douse the political embers
Fire escape blocked with hobnails and lumber
Their pickaxes caught in the thick poison ivy
Nugatory self-rule defenders

The silent, the learned, the worthy, the trained people trade voyeurism for vision
Hologram values are no longer trump cards
Their gazes averted from hate-dripping sophists
Integrity first coalition

,000 drafts of poems proposed,
some but a bit, a title, a bob,
some wondering why are they kept
in suspended animation, the fire of exiting
from placenta to screaming baby, most,
patient waiting, over the undivided divide,
the Cumbersome Attention Gap to cross,
to the state of hallelujah completion

this race should be an Olympic one,
it is unwinnable, but only open to poets
who willing to go the unlimited distance,
every finished oeuvre, spawns bornes two
more, so you, fool, even a fifth grader,
intuits the higher math of you’ll never
catchup, but rise invigorated to meet,
greet the wonderous sunrise challenge…

and the promised ones, “next one for you,”
the unconditional incompleyedy poems
so overdue, the muses send an armored truck
to collect just the largesse of fine fines…
as my old West Village friend sang, you poet,
“might as well try and catch the wind”

this leads me to observe a new day’s first
birthday, even as Leonard sings Yom Kippur
hymns of mortality, and all the ways humans
can pass thru the gap in the morn clouds that
is the passageway to the Higher North…

you see, this is this poems day of naissance,
one day, one candle, now extant, but sooner
to be a not, one more poem sent heavenward
after a  brilliant brief coexistence with the
innards of my mind…