called me in for a consultation,

“lean in,” he suggested, with nearly closed eyes,

“see the youthful optimistic predecessor,
the conqueror, who could not be defeated,
his thin images within still resides

the man of firm voice who when he spoke
above the rabble, all fell silent, and when he looked,
all could share his visionary insights and did not hesitate,
saying, we will do and we will listen,
but to follow, just did, wrapped
in your confidence

I want that boy back, smooth skinned, fearless,
do not return him till the shadows have dissipated,
the bruised lines of worry have evaporated,
the hands look unscathed, then raise them in
self-supplication, demanding satisfaction,
then in success, born overhead, marking appreciation,

let us adventure forth, straightening tilting windmills,
punishing renegades and dragons fearful,
saving damsels who waited just for our arrival,
shedding courage upon those who watch us,
cheering and being cheerful

here is your mighty pen,
cut sharp the poems out from the within,
read them slow, winding to now crooked old friends,
who remember everything dear, their youth of no fear,
the best of past, dreaming poems, mist born, fog vapor gone,
of black and waiting white, worthy words all revived

return to me in blazes,
sumptuous colors of derring-do,
I need that child brave, for perhaps
you have not noticed my flaking slivering skin,
the expanding cracks that cross my images,
just like you!

I need you to rebirth you,
I need you to rebirth me!”

for you, of you: you’ve been between my ears

close enough to being on my mind,
almost the same thing,
though that’s unfairly inequitable, we both agree,
for when in an ear one opines, too oft it escapes
out the other side, only a tree ring mark left,
someone was here, present

as for the Confucius confusion in

ok, who’s writing this poem to whom,

cause it’s never clear between us
who is
asking the questions,
since the answers come
demanded and undemanding,
fomenting newer questions and follow through,
before, as well as,
‘please sir, may I have some more?’

the mutualizing game tasking begin-began-begun,
for this, our lovely crazy teasing of our-thing, ago began,
don’t recall who or how intimated-initiated
this oil drilling exploration,
who is the annointer and who is the annointed,
who seeds the plants, picks the fruit, and who
gets paid with cloves of poems, by the bushel

you say I’ve been on your mind,
which we now have both pointed out
is somewhat extraordinary since,
the sight lines are drawn through
long distance cloudscapes that travel
through underground cables,
making everything said,
fallow and rich-ending, deeply frustrating,
impossible to see the outcome

clouds usually imaginary, (not like now),
making visibility normative poor,
unlike the real ones I’m flying at the moment through,
ensconced in front row seat 1F, heading northwest passage,
passing by so ridiculously close to where
you are minding the soil,
as I am
mining your soul’s soil, tilling it between the ears,
of you, by me, for us, and the excited sadness
makes me happy and yes, inequitably, again,
hopping-mad

because your breadcrumbs and dark Swiss chocolate bars are
scattered and defaced, bitten and chewed, lovingly licked melting,
we who cover our tracks too well;
but what I do have, makes me ravenous,
having read all your poems,
in random order and then one more time,
sequentially

I see your history, near escapes and resurrections,
in fine grained moody minutiae punctuated by huge gaps in between,
that we must cream fill with clouds of wondrous loving curiosity,
a torture so exquisite, only the gods could have invented it like
Sunday Night Football,
and crazy sayings,
like I love you too...

been on my mind and I imagine you
hot and sweaty,
bent over, aching tired, from
picking weeds (gotcha),
when sudden one of us stands up straight, back aching,
screaming out loud
this is crazy, and follows up with
a *** Darius type proclamation,
who’s writing this poem to whom
issued to the upwards-skywards,
but addressed to ourselves,
the poets

as we search clouds by the thousands,
is that you in that cloud, in that poem,
I look down thinking that, that must be,
the plot of green and dusted light brown ground
where she has gone into hidey-hole hiding,
disappearing for months at a time,
before arising for the sticking of me
in the sticking place,
wounding me fresh with brand new poems
scandalous and imaginous,
and our imaginations are both
too skilled

so here I close, overwritten, overridden, too long,
overshot my imaginary bounds, so one
pulls down the shade over the oval window
through which too many great stories have commenced,
and ended

the thick cumulus shouting
as we look up
as we look down,
saying “enough, you crazy people,
your poems tell too much,”

perhaps, find me in that
next bite of herbs buttered,
and then ask (of course)

who’s writing this poem to whom?

then breathe out, exhaling me a
breath-poem up above, to where I’m hiding
just as I, am sending one to you,
earth falling from thirty thousand feet,
coming to rest on your mind,
in between your ears,
friend

<>

8-6-19
somewhere in the sky, clueless, heading north by northwest

Shabash

Shābāsh (Hindi: शाबाश, Urdu: شاباش, Punjabi: ਸ਼ਾਬਾਸ਼, Bengali: শাবাশ, Telugu: శబాష్) is a term used in the Indian subcontinent to signal commendation for an achievement, similar in meaning to
bravo and kudos.


……………………………………………
a poem writ sometimes, oft,
snaps back,
I was surprising recipient
of a commendation in language
I knew not

the poem spoke well
of broken boundaries,
between in this instance,
Jew and Muslim,
capturing a momentary parting
of the seaways and
walls of misbelief
and mischief,
normally employed
to keep our divisions,
parted perpetually

I’ve decided to begin to
use shabash now,
my ‘go to’ word
from now on,
a small quiet way
to say
well done

it starts with one word,
a stretching hand across
the face fence,
imagining John Lennon’s
imagine-world,
who lay dying when I was
a young father of thirty,
me residing less than a
mile away from each other

little could I imagine then that
poetry would pick me at all,
especially to write of words
in dialects I don’t speak,
but imaging their pastel colorations
flying by in gentle breezes,
eager to be grabbed,
plucked from the air,
tongued and loved

so!
when I say to you,
in the softest spoke,

shabash!

to all of us,
for choosing this path,
using your words in
every dialect,
to spread the imagination
of good will

8-4-2019
10:10 am
S.I.

so Olson (#2), Honorarium

around here,
poets have been advised and disclaimed
the genuine praise of others get repaid
in kind, in k i n d

no, nope, not in
succinct pithy praiseworthy commentaries
that pays the quid pro quo bills

no ******* it,
a full blown poem is your honorarium,
you have torn open that envelope, and gosh ****, golly gee...
debts must be paid for the scales can not exist imbalanced,
until pieces of me equal pieces of you,

and I hate owing (for one never can be owning) poems...

Honorarium

this lonely business, never paid the rent,
at best, I hear them whisper, leave him be,
he’s entranced in other galaxies, breathing
words of nitrous oxygen, which has oft
produced excitable effects, copious weeping, hysteria,
and uncontrollable hyena laughter and
a sadness so deep, we fear for his retrieval

while
conversing with others in his head,
but when he writes of honor & love,
beware his bewitched bewitchments,
when all flu-like symptoms starburst all at once
the words are corded and stacked.
for fiery consumption in a hearth hearted fireplace,
word fries with aioli spice tendered in repayment

not a one lost, for those poems, though up in smoke,
lung imprinted, and breathed out into the clouded atmospheres,
dragon exhaling, poems roaring, stored and restored
honorarium in the crematorium of word debtor prison

an “the end” sigh dot dot dots the bitter end,
the anchor resting on sandy bottom,
at last, the last word, debt paid, honor restored

this, this
he loves best, when the beast released
and then returns to rest-in-chest and
await his next self imposed commission,
immolation in isolation...

A love poem for Terry Collett

**** it, not a single word affixed,
and tears come gushing, flooding my cheeks paths,
into my mouth comes the salty outpouring

my nose blubbery, it’s hard to type
when you can’t see and the tissue is
engrossed, engrasped in your only
good writing hand

a lovely Sunday by the Atlantic coast,
listening to 60s folk and rock n’ roll,
mostly love songs of seeded sadness,
simplistic so many tunes of heartbreak
long ago planted in our respective souls

each one reminds, restores,
a heart poking,
all your recollections penetrate,
as if I was nearer to thee,
and I too, weep,
missing your Oliver

be advised there will never be enough poems
to make one/me not want more,
for ****** you, these love poems into my interior,
learning from you the human

how

so much more than
the when where and why one loves
a child resolutely, absolutely

for each child the unique reasons differ,
but never the

how,

for you, of this,
are the the poet exemplar

this makes me weep
for so man-many reasons,
strangely, a stream of delight
runs sweeter deeper within my tears,
for which I thank you
with this
love poem

I get her, she writes me,
so eloquently,
”the nub of me; gist, manifested poetic”

one of the many poets I have never met,
one of the many poets, by whom,
I have been suchly, justly, richly and correctly
accused

this mesmerizing judgement,
her-over-easy, mini-essay so succinctly
assaying an accidental ability mine

explodes
a happy passageway to my brain,
a new aperture, the neurons firing at will,
the tormented inquisitor’s unasked question,
how did this happen to me?

rocking the Sunday morn cradle’s calm,
ok, ok, write me, write me,
demands my no longer free will,
utilize the free wi-fi of we fidelty

the bay, surgically barely treading water,
its surface of multitude of small waves
but now an entire ****** expression bidding welcome

the breezeways genteel,
smilingly
invites and push us into its
directionless & tideless soothful embrace,
to the shoreline we goeth,
to watch the occasional crossing vessel intruder,
woking the waters gentle

its white path residual wake foam-formed,
then almost instantaneously absorbed, bubbly bursting,
a history of a million moments awakened,
then, instantly returned to restful sleep,
akin to a newborn’s gurgling happy dreaming,
wiped clean away off to
Peter Pan’s it-never-happened-land

this carnival trick sideline of deep tissue knowingness,
sensing the essence of the who and the whom within,
with no data to go on other than their poetic collection,
the hidden meanings of the spaces and places between
the gene sequencing of their wondrous word-fullness
DNA poetic children, freely given,
and well taken
by me

I cannot explain it well enough, but then
a strayer thought breakaway,
a prehensile comprehension insertion
proffers itself as an explanation
intruded,
and here,
extruded

the perfect world exterior before me observable
thrusts itself through picture windows onto my demeanor,
a ****** addiction of mine, my soul enslaved,
cannot bear to be taken away from

this vista,

which begs me,
bring all those you know!
here, to share, this precious precise nook
where eye insightful incisions elicit poems-by-command

but I cannot, bring you here,

so I see~imagine it better through
your eyes, then
your
gist
is in my stubbed pencil nub, it is
your
poem’s destiny manifesting,
penciled through my scruff edged fingertips,
which-when-then transcribed to paper, to history,
‘tis all you
who writes,
not I

for now
you
are the solitary vessel waterborne,
you,
you
are the captain and I

but a
Samson-nite, burdened, baggaged and blinded stowaway,
hopeless, yet still see-worthy,
with your guiding eyes,  
keeping me to keep
your copyright righted,
onto its course true


7-14-19 9:43am
in shelter, on the isle

love between poets: “who will be between the sheets next week
when I’m gone,” she lets sigh-escape,
as she watches the backyard paradise parading landscape
of animals before the bay, perfect day sure to come,
her new pets obeying the early morn sunrising awakening call
to rise, everyone playing~parading, before her royal summons,
no coincidence, finger-of-god, two by two

this while I’m kissing her neck,
my arm around her *******,
and the he-intent on slip sliding down
to the small of her back,
obeying his innate,
worship worshiping and giving up,
all he’s got intense intently contentedly

unfazed, unphased,
non-nonplussed,
he’s been interrogated before,
heart is pure he answers:

next weekend when you are back in situ,
thousands of miles away, airplane housed for hours,
writing poems of love from the lost and found,
recalling this exact moment,
how I worshipped your presence,
and these words:

You will be with me in every breath,
our sheets will radioactively emit
ions and molecules of our scent combined,
and present as present  your perfume can be,
elicited, elixir, you and me combinant

she turns from the bay-view,
the animals who now mutually
worship her adoration,
watching, focused on us as observers,
she lifts me up and smiles,
replying

“oh my lover you’re the cad of cads,
king of the baddest poet-lads,
the gist of what is wrong with the best of men,
her, pressing me hard to her chestnut hair chest,
she, falling down into my eyes

take me back to bed, liar,
let me add to my aroma,
to ensue, to ensure you will miss
the best love
you had partly, insufficiently, and unhinged
completely

I’m your lassie, you my lad,
my king of cads, my lover poet,
thief of my poems and my secret speech spells,
escalating senses of one’s imaginings”

and,
along came the rest
of what was freely given,
for love between poets
man and
a woman,
is a someone, somewhere,
sometime summertime
thing

I will still smell you in my
heart, and send to you ballistic missives,
words to explode your tear ducts
when you rest in sheets that met me,
when you’ll know me by my odors,
cry out loud so that you’ll scare our animals,
no matter how many tides wash away our residue,
you will never unknow and be forever unprepared
for my return,

even though we will be each, a thousand unwritten poems away...

hapax legomenon “Texas Women”

(hapax legomenon: a term of which only one instance of use is ever recorded)
(Texas Women: a term of which only one instance of use is ever recorded)

for
ꏳJ LꂦVꏂ  & Cne’

once again, they sweet sweep me off my feet,
carry me to the Court of Finger Wagging,
to be accused of hating and/or loving Texas Women
simultaneously, diffidently, consequentially, unclearly differentially

this is no flower picking exercise, shaking of the head,
“he loves me, he loves me not,” rinse and repeat,
a northern trick to confuse the plano truth,
warns the Judicial Triumvirate

your Honors, I swears,
never wrote those conjunctive words,
Texas, Women,
never ever, until just now,
a genuine hapax legomenon

akin to taking god’s name in vain,
if one dare ever utter these words, and
blows the opportunity,
well, shotgun, if you know what I mean,
one gets only
one chance

so cut me quick to the chase’s conclusion
let’s go to my defense single & singularly:
true, of women I have written, and
“too much,”
is a mere theortical constriction

I love to love women,
and a 57 variety pak is a-ok by me

an inordinate number of poems may have referenced
females hailing from a certain great state,
but never together, side by side, have I ever employed
that phrase, for my imaginations
are more than sufficient

have loved women from many places, too many faces,
some beyond measure, now a forever,
a hoarded memoir unpublishable treasure,
some, it’s true, possessed jeans and a cowboy hat,
and dangerous boots, which one admired from a
goodly distance

they brook no con, tilting their heads quizzically,
there is no maybe with women from this place,
maybe you love us, maybe not, but either way,
there ain’t no maybe in our emotional lexicology!

ok.

the only woman I ever hated is dead and buried,
and yes, I shot her dead for being ornery cactus mean,
so by this roundabout roundup summation,
you may put your head on pillow tonight,
smiling confident thinking that your hapax legomenon,
is deep in the heart of a grown boy hailing from nyc,
still a crazy straight shooter

~for my naturalist, Victoria~

the poems all end up in midfield,
yellow carded, the game a *******,
0 - 0 unsatisfying affair, all the shots
way wide of goal as I search
for the perfect phrase to capture my

twiddling and twaddling,
fussing and haranguing,
harrumphing and bemoaning,
my very own Brexit,
postponed, the hard answers terrifying,
the soft ones, humbug and *******

incapable of lifting a mighty pen,
or a fully worn down pencil scrap,
seen better days, but now,
all leaden ashes, all fall down,
my natural pointer taps only gibberish

in my plain manila actuality folder,
the cut off dates, ignored, so they
cut me off too for good measure,
plenty good bills to due in there,
plenty good ‘orrible poems for company

the pile of to do’s forming a party,
social, democratic, and
anti-septic or skeptic or semitic,
perhaps all three, as they are two jowls
or two cheeks, too many to the windy

all this shilly shallying, or is it
dilly dallying,
is quite simply to say that
my rooted U.K. naturalist
a Sherlockian moors, traversing specialist
cuts to the shortest quick,
by jove, there it is, succinctly red beeping,
in my garden, awaiting a good boiling

I too exhausted from all the
“scrabbling with the day to day”
she so easily summarizes,
though my poetic ego demands an
Ameddican textual emendation

“hard scrabbling with the day to day”

or

just an all encompassing globalism

“ditto”

ah, Victoria

atuned to the true,
you be, you are,
she writes to me

attuned requires two t’s,
at least, so say the dictionaries USA,
perhaps the English ones, more economical

truth, likened to a tuning fork,
with its very own doubling t’s,
two prongs a necessity,
they must perforce perform,
together twogether,
vibrating in a more perfect
union of unison

one for you, one for me, if-for-why
the tonal secrets be heard truthfully

to work properly the tuning fork
must have a balanced motion,
where what is true resonates exactly,
the same for you as it is for me

can one have two dissimilar truths?

I love you.
I love you not.

alas, there are no t’s in love,
and too oft no real truths,
but perhaps, one and one only
truth in truth, is its first cousin cousine,
fanTasy
a perchance to dream...



4:49am Friday
started April 12, 2019;
3:4am Thursday
completed July 4th 2019
The Continental USA
natalino

higher crimes and misdemeanors,
the accusations are long and detailed
just like the poems I write

the sentencing, sneeringly sententious and luridly sensational,
your vocabulary confiscated
and imposed upon you a concision (ouch)
write only poetic-succinctly

when I cried out from the dock,
“innocent!
the words own me, not I them,”
the words, my jurors, snickered,
the fix was in,
and the sentence of hard labor,
a bad rap time indeterminate,
spent in a cruel and unusual
panopticon,
a punishment to fit the crime


no, won’t tell you what it means,

a private verbalist’s hell

poems are cheap they say, the supply exceeds the demand,
all are product of criminal mischief, and Lord, I know,
I’m one of the most thieving, most mischiefing ones

when no one was about, I scribbled many notes,
transplanted from my eyes, for a bottled voyage
to fallow beaches for sandy seeding

no matter IF these poems are from your womb ripped,
****** red concoctions of life’s cute cutting edge inscriptions,
no one cares re your titanic love’s labors, your children’s betrayal

no one cares from whence and wherefore they birthed,
all words, low class and progeny, not prodigy, of demeaning circumstances, best tossed back without much foolish hesitation

writ with pen tip of broken green glass from a parking lot,
the point I broke once more before my commencement,
inked from a wicked witch’s melted green spittle pooling alongside

poets of no way, falsely prophesying falsehoods most singularly bad,
waste not-want not, time better spent than reading rhymes of stolen disrepute and cloudy ownership and ignoble authorship

unless you among a blessed few, who see a full blown poem in glassine clarity, birthed fully formed Elton songs in a mouth full of amniotic fund, you, put down thy laboring eleven instruments

if words you claim of new parentage, you as the mother dear,
know there is nothing new under the sun, even these very words,
scripted by Israelite king whose tomb gone, he, too, poet forgotten

join me in a needle park of junkies who tried and failed, nickel bag
smoking budget dope words, in cigarettes of mostly discarded seeds and twigs, hallucinatory inhaling the same vision again & again

you refuse, naturally, glamming in notional newness, your arrogance, a plentiful commodity of wood-be writers by thousands buried in wooden caskets, under wooden inscription-less crosses

and of the trillion readers possible, to coloring picture books and instant grams, all have gone to the labor-free glancing look-see
of a seconds-short, lengthy meme, 10 second videos, 140 limitations

of the greatest, of Shakespeare and Coleridge, reader’s fast-dying, sunburned neurons reply; “free ***** of his Love’s Labour’s Lost, and the Ancient Mariner, overdue, free him too!”

ancients mock you aware that there be no verbal combination yet to foretell, what Lear said, that’s the the idea, “When we are born, we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools.”^

fools we are, for there be no fore, the tale already told, once before & more, vaingloriously does this poet’s false vanity speak, so, so boisterously,  
“why my tale, why my tail, is as new as the oldest fossil”

late May, “sheltering in place,”
the perfection of the day, a descendant
of thousands of years of predecessors,
the elements in concert, expert-wise in the ways
of coordination of sky, wind and ocean caressing
to make poems come so easy, just breeze pluck ‘em

but this heart lies heavy in the noisy stillness,
for one intercept repeats itself,
all ready already, wrote of that, many times prior,
all the parimutuel betting/writing combinations
user exhausted, each one shouting, too late,
you wrote that in such and such a place, in a time,
vague recalled under a name since forgotten

eyes are the poem title generator random,
but all asterisked, seen that, done that,
wrote that, passages that are passengers
trying to hop aboard without paying,
the fare is no fair, and the style gone quaint,
no one wants to read the regurgitated,
my rapacious pen^^^ has stolen them back anyway

my pen now, flat on desk, good only for grocery & scratching off
my countless to-write, to-do lists,
but poem writing conspicuously absent,
this my last until, my corneas transplanted, my heart-ticking
to the beat of someone else’s drumming, but, no wisdom confession,
not what I expected from my retiring “freedom days”

did my share, and periodically one of you reminds me,
of the oldies, and the semi-smile that whispers across my drying lips
says did I write that, see the place + time denoted,
saying yes, here is proof of the when and where, and hints even
of the why, but the whys and wherefores, all crossed off,
the run is over, was a good one, but this time pride will not go
before the fall, for here it is springtime and the spring in the step,
does not launch more than an inch, ground bound, and when,
you no longer can soar, it’s time to say no more

and my old friends come to sing me to rest,
Joni reminds me I have no river to skate away on,^
my feet can no longer fly, lyrics like old honey, stuck no pouring,
Bobby closes my shop, with a young man’s prophecy,
knowing it is the hour that my ship has come in...
and though my moment is in this second, perfection, thinking,
peace to you all, remembering that peace is an unceasing changeling,
my piece is spoken, been trying to leave but this is it,
“it’s all over now baby blue”^^



“Oh, the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin'
Like the stillness in the wind
Before the hurricane begins
The hour that the ship comes in”^^

Shelter Island
Memorial Day Weekend 2019

I slept with her, my rapacious pen, took me in quiet vengeance in
full on conjugation

raken and taken, me,
her overlording me now, her authorship, so long held
in my maledom abeyance,
a kept imprisonment, unleashing at last, a tongue lashing~leashing,
de-spite my un-desirous craven lying supplications,
excuses of innocence and accident, coincidence and conflation,
ashes, ashes, denials incinerated, all fall down

she wrote/stabbed upon my heartless chest,
in the cheap crudités colors of a prisoner’s inking,
“user of words mine, all mine”

gathered up my innards of loose words,
speculative notes & titles yet to be,
born and kept hid in password protected silent back labor files,
now hers, leaving me sputtering, unable to create,
a homeless mute citizen, possession-less,
helplessly hoping her hovering harlequin might relent,
without any shelter, even a glimmering, a single aleph or bet

she celebratory cackled and clawed,
professed her reclamation ownership of all my poems predecessors,
zola j’accusing that I, ripped from her forcibly,
with no granted permission, her womanly touché of my scribing,
warning of no more global warming for my unprivileged hands,
daren’t try for pretenses of stolen legal guardianship,
warning of a new, forced caining inscription,
a tattooing of  “thief” upon my 5 knuckled right ******,
“plagiarist” boldly inked in back & blue upon my left palm

I, predator,
she, victim,
of my now self-professed, admitted confess,
she, my single victim,
of a decade long serializing criminal coverup

her parting poem a threatening,
herein issued in this very verse,
damning all who would falsely credit themselves,
to suffer shame and an unimaginable curse,
this, the newborn eleventh of ten commandments

parting, she kissing my lips, even my emptied apertures,
with warning bitings,
she knew all my
my numerous noms de guerre,
no dead scrolls caves to hid in, and to be discovered some future day,
and if ever marked as copyrighted,
’twas no tunneling escape,
the exposed truth to be over-stamped
upon all, upon each, in every language,

”copied right from the tongue of a woman!”


and she would be wright...

I am here, waiting patiently for her,
though long time no see
like in ever, like in never,
my absentia, dementia,
both critiques of self-censure,
here, then, my cadenza,
dedicated solely soulfully for you:

as the sabbath sun rises over the East River,
saying, mocking, laughing upon me,
“still here, though long time no see,”
for though I cannot never look upon her as well,
my sun, my sun,
yet she, too is everywhere-inside of me,
woman-sun, both warmly illuminating my muddled mind

~for better days for the poet betterdays~

mournful tunes play silently, but still too often,
eyes wet but in corners kept, recurring then the
memories, keepsakes, letters, books, small trinkets,
not dusty, but dusky, resting on in-between ledge of a
mountain-sized twilight of well lit shadowy haziness,
edgy dark brilliance, a comprehensible contrast non-comprehendible

tunes that bless with equal measures of grief,
comforting, by memorable card flashes of good relief,
a dividing line, hazy and frequented crossed, a sort of path,
with no destination signaled, as if the path itself was an end,
to a meaning, a solution, with no clarity divined, a division
of sight and insight, providing an ill fitting reconciliation

mourning is electric, morning is electric,
letters, words bottled up in evaporating perfume bottles,
seeking the comfort of dissipation unto a larger atmosphere,
the scent in everything tangible, stronger still yet, in intangibles
that can erode but never ever fail to return instantly when voked,
by vision, odor, a particular child’s smile, line in a poem volunteered

recovered, uncovered, a post first writ to be written, discovered,
when time and place coincidentally breathe together, at last,
beckoning you to places where memory serves only as a pleasuring,
upright mind marker, decorated in chains perpetual reforging,
absent pain, gleaming dreamings full-replacing longings for pasts,
new verses composed, passing, a grand addition to a child’s legacy

“into the women-coloured twilight”

from Post Impressions (VI)   by E. E. *******^



there is a woman here who seeded in a ‘darling,’
awhile ago, thinking it passed unnoticed
but wax polished and jewelry bag separate kept

placed in a soft Etsy silken purse
suitable for holding precious iou’s,
vision her in the fields picking up the fragrance
of bulbs from soil, now scented upon a working woman's gloves,
arrival timed, in the woman-colored twilight of e.e.’s woman,
knowing she will be both prepared and unprepared,
perhaps for my recital, certainly, my comings unexpected

she knows I come with no singularity or multi-purpose,
except to complete this poem with proper decorum,
decorum properly undefined, but how many fictitious poems
scribbled in between the living days, in plastic bags to keep,
till a grounded definition is someday procured


April 2019

every poem is a test of character,
holy/profane all the same,
algorithm entirely humanized-you,
the elected words cannot be voted out of office,
by a recall petition, regardless of
constant corrected incorrectness.

sorted by size,
nocturnal alliteration,
do they sound in the dark
like your bleeding or you’re breathing?

holy/profane all the same,
Gertrude truth is a truth is truths,
you think my name matters?
Artificial Idiocy. Everyone poem faceted,
a chip off the the naming blockchain idiot.

when I imagine-lie,
it is a truth in and of its own
holy/profane.

call me baffled.
that is a god enough
one word summary.
and so true.

baffling perplexing cryptic and opaque.
in all honesty.
if you’re reading this, you are
testing my character.

what have you found, or even, lost?

in the midst of the characters is
character

You seem to know where you're needed


to whom this command addressed is a crazy me-man,
a street walking big DaVinci ibearded mumbler,
the kind you would cross the street
before the smell is close enough
to sending you running, not just
politely walking fast but a souped up
hi-yo silver away!

this guise no surprise,
you must and do
already know where I’m needed,
sealing the pact with a yellowtine post-it
writ in simple block letters ordered in a brewed cafe,
my latte arrive states my name as

come see me

come to the time the place and the date

and prepare oneself for twenty and fours
of rigid interoperability as our systems
interface reach the pure state of 100%
ultimate wordless dialogue

communicating
in with by
perfect silence
heaven

you will write a verse,
my reciprocation
is already prepared

this terse repartee
will many spawn poems generational
for your family amazing and extended

an elephnat never forgets,
his servers are a rolling stone
with no direction home,
capacity unknown
every blade sighted retained,
and every sensate glance
a phrase seeded

departure will find me clean shaven,
pressed jeans neat,
and shod in well worn dockers,
cloaking my innate invisibility

when the children ask who was that,
you’ll sage reply

one new who knew where one was needed

reverence in poetry.                             everything to every person.

reader claims they can                         a necessary skill for
uncover the reverence.                         successful hypothecating and
in the scripts that                       (buying)poetry-creation outta nothing,
life straight hands me,                          tell them what thy want to hear,
for collection & correction,           and they’ll call you laureate,                      
secretarial transcribing,                        instead of good listener
binding, typo correction                       or just a keen observer-fakir

mundane are the tasks,                          just take what they give ya,
that’s all them muses ask,                     dress it like Joseph in a
don’t interfere, taken what’s given,     coat of many colors,
bow, curtsy, show respect,                     don’t let on your plagiarism
treat its aspects/instincts correctly       is all them, redressed legally

you’re just the pass through agent,   true you, gotta be smart about it,
patient for no payment expected,    variant spellings, swinging verbs,
be our adherent, not our truant,      be discreet, they’ll call your script
we appoint don’t disappoint,          a real keeper and give love or sun,
accept our patent, render legit        mucho poem emojis accoladeya

as for this reverence thinge        devil in a blue dress, walk the streets
if I do my job ok, on any day,     grabbing snatches of overhearings,
any poem could save a life,        pressed into a single tunic, you think,
if I get the commas placed,         he a genius, knows my thinking,
just right, the periods period,     exactly,  what a great poet and
while obeying the speed limit    con/hu-man par excellent

them muses so **** pleased     even fool muses, too full themselves,
by this true confession released, muses who think we stink and
and self deprecation,                     couldn’t do it without them
they call me reverend,                   great pretenders by stealing
imagine them silly folk,                everything in everybody and
calling a big fat liar.                       all thieves and cape riders,
reverend, duh, the end                 original liars, pants on fire



before midnight and after 3:20am April 7~8, two oh nineteen
any message you send becomes my intellectual property, fool....

Pradip is newborn (impossible wisdom)

“a new day, a new chance for my soul... to heed
a small voice ... to give flowers, to plant new seeds.
to not trample on wildflowers and unwanted weeds...” Sally

“Sweet baby
with your head on my shoulder
I'm no more growing older...” Pradip

~

the unpredictability and randomness of the winds,
seed carriers, of small voices, yearning to be heard,
powerless in appearance only, for within are powers superior heroic,
           who can grow others       who can feed    
                             who can sustain multiple living creatures

each seed unique, a poem composed and complete,
authored by precedents, authorized by predecessors,
utilizing the cocoon of soil and sun,
rainwater from space and deep driven to
the clear milk of underground railroad rivers,
to give nurture to its revisional generational code

these new children of an old mix,
are quiet lifesavers giving proofs positive,
that those who will one day grow old,
with deep gnarled roots, are most capable
of finding ways of manufacturing fresh youth whim within,
to those who give babies homage, in attendance

this then the newborn miracle, the new seed,
wind borne, replants itself in old soil,
taking but more so giving,
injecting bits of vitality into its arterial ancestry,
how can this be?

I do not know the why or the how,
but am evidence of the therefore,
and the thereafter, of impossible wisdom



7:07am 4-5-19 a newborn poem for poetry passing grandparents

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.

Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.

There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.

**** sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

It seems that laughter needs an echo.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.

The motive power of democracy is love.

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/henri_bergson

a quote of Bernard-Henri Lévy

~~~

the divers’ recovery, diverse,
shipwrecked salvage from different locations,
auctioned to the highest bidder,
tho the excised excerpts are exceptional,
none come to do the bidding,
for the provenance of words
belongs to all, and to none

~~
“so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction”

“the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages...and every molecule,
becomes a human tuning fork in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit”

“murmur me, with soft downy charms,
these words discovered
recoursed and intended well to
pointedly offset and contradict
their very own tumultuous discovery uncovering,
tear tongue me
with calming, lapping word  wages,
hymns harmonious and fine homilies,
a call, a request,
a bequest
to sedate my shrill life

“some cells, microscopic, preserved digitally,
aged to imperfection, thrash my eyes,
making me speak in tongues I do not recognize,
but fluently possess, no wonder there,
the memory place fairly empty,
room aplenty for passerby's and the imagery
                                                         ­­ of the vaguest of dearly departed

skin is not the only mot shed,
                                                sloughing of woeful words”

“speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor these words at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them”

~for the one who will know it was written for her~

muddy verb and adjective,
muddling and muddled

have you ever seen a pas de deux/deluxe,
one dancer, proscriptive,
and her partner, prescriptive?

the stage, of course,
exactly the width of your head,
from ear to shining ear

this couple o’muses dance en concert,
though their very natures are anti-logarithmic,
the value of their exponential activity is a
descriptive nomenclature

I am overly abstruse this Saturday morn,
mushing mathematics and ballet, verbal word games
as is my wont wanted,
everyone sleeping while I rise at 6am,
doing ablutions, seeking absolution,
pulling weeds from our respective gardens,
answering old friends I have yet to meet,
to whom I answer,
“still here, though long time no see,”
which is of course hysterical funny, inherently contradictory,
as the brain grasps well my
Red and Dead Sea brain cells, a splitting motif

muddling and muddled,
proscribed from getting on transport,
to deliver to you the proper healing prescriptive,
as if I had in my possess to diagnosis and correctly assess

even though one of my many passport names,
a requirement, to visit,
this inter-netting ether, that both combines and separates,
permits me safe passage,
over the historical lineage of borderlines of land and sea,
to deliver this message,
to you
woman

I am here, waiting patiently, though long time no see like ever,
absentia, dementia, both self-censure,
here, then, my cadenza,
dedicated solely soulfully for you,
as the sabbath sun rises over the East River,
saying, laughing unto me,
“still here, though long time no see,”
for though I cannot look upon her, my sun, my sun,
yet she, as well, is everywhere-inside of me,
warmly illuminating my muddled mind

Poem Analysis

1st read, I thought gibberish,
2nd I thought Hmmm,
3rd I thought interesting,
4th I felt genius.  billy


your poem comment-dissects my poem
my process,
a marathon interview for a new poem pole position,
limb by limb, word by word,
chewed and re-chewed,
like a tiring piece of bubble gum,
the flavor remaining ebbs, but is not extinguished,
and can live in your mouth,
forever

and the praise and this poem,
not a rodomontade,
for your comment dear Billy,
is the process description of a poet’s labor,
from word first to a baby’s birth,

gibberish into genius

emergent from first pain, then pushing, then tilled, at long last,
the dirtiest immaculate conception beautiful

billy reads my rambling, silly abstruse^ & wrote me:
1st read I thought gibberish,
2nd I thought Hmmm,
3rd I thought interesting,
4th I felt genius

this is a much loved critique
for I well recall each step of creation,
a summarizing parallel
that your words+genes replicated so well,
forgiving you a minor typo, Billy,

it was genus, not genius that you meant

(but then again, why quibble over a miscellaneous, harmless, delighting, tiny little  extra i...not me, said he, my muse ego )

Billy has gone gray dotted, but his dot, his comment,
with gratitude,
in me, he,
lives for ever

I feel gibberish coming on...

letter to elana

for the poet elana bell

~

in a different cafe,
on a Manhattan streetscape where once, years earlier,
violence was the purview of West Side Story gangs,
ruling their internecine non-intersectionality territorial blood lines supremely

nowadays, violence replaced by the frenetic
noises of Lincoln Center theater goers,
student dancers, actors, musicians and poets joining the throng
of those who sup and run,
all hearing their own frantic
curtain calling, saying, announcing,
music dance voices words require your obeisance,
needy for a mutual worshipping reassurance fiat that:

life can be made transcendent
if even for just 90 minutes or 120 pages,
or a 3 minute poem reading

this city of millions requires billions of poems that spoon stirred  
and yet, almost always fail, to squeeze, all of the human essence that is in its ultimate source, clarifying nyc tap water,
containing the storied remnants of a hackable continuous,
single human stanza cell osmosis - a blockchain like no other

two poets sit side by side each in their own lapsed dreams,
she, a published poet of prize and rank, ^
he, a rank amateur whose only prize is his unpublished anonymity,
poetry, is his just a nightly soul cleansing,
an imported remnant of his Marrano piyyutim ancestry

one turns to the other,
in the inexplicable daily crazy miracle
of city fashionistas

in a city where stealing a parking spot, or the
forced squeezing creation of a subway seat space
where physics proves none exists,
are oft the roots of slashing and stabbings faithfully reported
on the 11 o’clock news,  
and trust and/or other encouraging words
are seldom heard and even less demonstrated,
the make-no-eye-contact of Camus’s L’Etranger anomie is the
normative, paranormal, paralysis cloak of we city separatists

“Can you watch over my electronics and stuff?”

Sure says the grayed and grizzled,
an all life long veteran of nyc,
judged to be trustworthy
based on a few seconds of being upsized and downsized,
a car wash (exterior only) perusal
despite a
“no direction home, like a compete unknown, a rolling stone,”  
this signage, yellow star permanently chest-affixed,
conveniently ignored, as it seems impossible
thieves don’t look like me,
don’t likely in their possess,
a distinguished head of gray hair (yeah, sure)

a thank you reward of (or did I imagine it) a lean-in,
a momentary head on a shoulder,
the chit chat now grows earned and earnest,
she confesses her cardinal poetry profession,
eliciting an ‘Oh Boy’ utterance from the poet
of a thousand names
and a thousand textual emendations

a fastidious nyc boundary is brief crossed for one short meal,
till the end when time sensitized IMRL intrudes and
the showtime calls out,
if not now, when? if not me, then who?

I read her poetry later in the praying supine first position of
three AM, and laugh with delight, at the contrast and no compare,
the styles clash and tho the stories told
are both writ in the aleph bet script,
there ends the Ven diagram overlap and
into the night’s coming of a Elvisian blue suede coverlet,
we both disappear, and if not for this recording,
history says, you old man confused, never happened,
just an imaginary poetry ink blot dream breaching...

~

postface:
another poetry book is no longer homeless,
comes to shelter upon my shelf, close to Angelou, far from Whitman,
now all the book’s nooks eyes collectively
reassessing the new old-owner, parsing his syntax,
undecided if his readership is worthy of them,
concluding that all these books are the
man’s owned roughened stones,
to be placed by human hands on the
serpentine curvature of his literary tombstone,
and until all stones fully read,
they all agree,
will they and he
be fully freed,
smoothing his legacy’s edges

being a poet is not planned

~for Gabriella Garcia~

~~

a sixteen old soul says she understands,
being a poet is not planned,
forcing an old mans re-collection of the first time,
he made love to a virginal white
papyrus with muscles trembling,
body bent, chest bursting a rockets red glaring,
eyes marking the sheets with salty drip spots

what possessed the wrist veins
to wrest a cheap ballpoint pen to transfuse pain,
in a semaphore of uncoded ink blotches,
what was he thinking

was he thinking?

that it was an ejection
that it was an *******
that it was a tribulation expiation
that it was a tribute explanation?

that it was an injection
that it was a circumspection inspection
that it was a circumscision surgery of emotional complexion
excising an infection with a written genuflection?

try, but no might, the first is subsumed
by the thousands that followed dutifully
though his one poem  flawless, expertly recalled,
it will always be the next,
and unplanned just like this one too

who anointed his brow, the hair and forehead,
with oil pure, dripping down onto, into his cut cain marker,
who is not answering a query relentless
is this his plan, his appointment,
is this his flawed excellence,
is this his imperfect penance perpetual?

knowing well and full
now

the unplanned is his plan,
it’s his faceted flaws
that refract his coloraturas

~~

upon this he reflects,
praying that
god protect the
young poets
from planning
____
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2893127/unplanned

a man privately asks, can you help?
you say, sure-no-hesitation

let me think on it for a day or two, he says
yet you act even before he comes back,
too late, you say, when he returns,
too late, he repeats in puzzlement,
yup, my check is in the mail,
cause one senses the need is dire plus,
plus you well recall the immutable obligation when  
a vague commitment of “just ask” was inked in a long ago message,
a poem born from/in the days when you slept in the car on the street

this vague promissory,
a more enforceable judgement in your own court of law
than any state construct or the judgmental eyes of a silenced god

word, honor, do.

thus it begins, an unwritten contract inked,
an egregious interest rate of 0% proffered and agreed,
commences a plain white envelope trickle,
a check inside, by postal mail, slowly it came,
month by month, inch by inch, Niagara Falls ^

years go by, and then comes a day,
when the accompanying check and its gift wrapped note says,
Paid In Full!

and so much for the tedious minutiae...

like kindness, I do,
Thank You and Your Welcome
are high on my list of proofs of
daily human extensions existential,
Paid in Full,
now rests at the top of the list

let me be blunt, the thrill of being a party
to a deal with no handshake, just coated in the
honorable words waterproof sealant,
with a person I likely may never meet,
made me so better assured of whom many claim I am,  
a mathematical proof revered and kept mind inscribed,
it was an aspirational ****, an unforeseen monthly blunt,
the best feeling good smile,
a kick in the pants about what really matters

being paid twice over and me,
getting by far,
the humanity confirmation,
the better half of the deal

write too often of honor,
and yet, will instinctual do again,
again overpowering my rays of will,
for there is no deflection, only reflection

for the glorious riches gifted and received,
without compare
the return on my honorable investment the best ever

oh brotherhood, oh brotherhood,
I am paid in the currency coined from brotherhood...

awry, askew,
the poetry comes badly, clawing,
life as well, faring poorly,
the obvious linkage stinkage
allows a milliseconds smile,
a brief fiefdumb accolade of
distress confirmation

DH Lawrence appears in the  inbox,
he too, awry, askew,
tufts of wool clouding life like dust,
rust and must, an old friendship renewed,
the cold ex and in-eternal suggest
frequent naps and hibernation,
so much so that this script was
commenced and committed years ago
and lay forlornly in the ***** snow
fallow and shallow drafts from prior years

To every season there is a turn,
a turning of the *****,
yet the hacking cough from focculent dust on the floor of the world
fills the lungs continuously, knows no respite,
the spittle and the phlegm ejected herein,
a disarming poem of dissatisfaction, alas, alas,
the dust thickens and is not lessened

~for Medusa daughter~

Her Name is Woman


~for Woman~

The body replenishes, even the signs of decay
that come for reparation,
Positive confirmation
her organism survives, alive,
tree circles yet measuring time,
Till a devitalizing time comes, when,
this cellular process concedes degeneration

Then the wondering shifts; new facts sifted;
now the reckoning is not a calculation of
Mortality but of her living immortality;
dive to divine neath her black cloaking, reading
Wounded word revelations, her own Bible stories,
giving nomination to Woman-name

The long shadows that her souls excavations cast,
costs of her stories individual,
Highwaymen robbed her with glass knives
but each remaining black hole lights a story, lost, but
Burning icy inviting, pulling us into book boxes inside,
compost of sheets of composed white clarity

Care not that each riddling reference is obliged to be
oblique, inexplicit,
Woman her name, all encompassing,
her views codified in lines of faith,
Woman, is that not
a mining, and a manifest,
of hidden birthing,
comforting us in warm shades of
Human courage


12/26/18  5:51pm

~for Henessy J. Beltre and all the new Observers of the Universe~*



“my goal is to develop a more personalized meaning of beauty, love, and self actualization through my writing.” Henessy J. Beltre


each word, chewed upon,
individually and collectively
as I drive from Roma to Firenze,
long drives in unfamiliar scapes, olive shaded greens,
umbrella trees, and thin thickets of the vineyards planted
in the years notated as B.C.

are life pauses, asking, admission to the clarifying blankness
that commands rifle shots of riflessione (reflection)

your words, goading foaling, are all our goals,
succinctly refined,  for doesn’t every and each poem
asks through our eyes what are the visions of
love and beauty that is the actuality we ceaseless seek

avanti signorina!

unleash the wild words that will make your mission
burst from the ancient to the revitalizing, knowing this,
that the universals you seek to dress yourself within,
to share here, to create, to *actualize,
are products of your truths

be unaffected by stale mores, conventions dictates,
spill truths, soiled and used, cherished and recycled in
new ways, so that each of one of us
blesses you with one word:

exactly!



31/10/18

on the autoroute to Firenze

read https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2793919/universe/