35,088 feet over Nebraska,  

(Nebraska-imagining me climbing a ladder, me upwards, Jacob’s angels coming down, off to a high school All Saints wrestling match in a cornfield town)

a place not on my bucket list, just a blue bias of an eastern stater’s unknowns, a sure sign of how much he doesn’t know

reading Patti’s slender volume “Devotion”

slender like her body, some would call it a wiry woman's
sparse but directed, connective, word-worshipping,
old familiar strangers she delivers to you that you have never met, her phraseology striking me and strikingly beautiful simultaneous

scan it and understanding instantaneous
she asking,
why do we write?

her answers are fine copper wire threaded
into a coil and I close it quick cause the loving ****** desire to
plagiarize such an oddly gorgeous offerings is overwhelming;
I feel the wire words piercing my temple, intending to
emerge out the other side, a decorative symmetry,
I don’t own

my need to script some cursive on my smooth body parts,
on my god-given papyrus, always at the ready,
is a methadone itch, a dulling urge needy for fulfillment,
that needs satisfying but me, soundly second rate,
write like the flip side of a hit vinyl record, no one is expected to play, fulfillment meets futility

thus the title is a modification of a Patti light touch

my alchemy never made any gold and my present presence now over Iowa a reminder that my prescriptions are 1200  evacuations; they are negative commandments,
proscriptions, not prescriptions

do not write, do not wrong words with a middling diffidence,
hide your face and put her words on a shelf above your head
hard to reach, so you do not be tempted

why do we write?

“All seeking an emptiness to imbue with words.  
The words that will penetrate ******
territory, crack unclaimed
combinations, articulate the infinite.” Patti Smith

disambiguation she relieves us of uncertainty
my combinations over Waterloo, Illinois
are ordinary smokestack gray, a spewing wastage,
the angels conforming that my words Cain-fail,
my confession
meets no one’s standards, not even mine

7:07pm Central Time

A HUGE discovery (on an overheated wet snow stinky stuffy bus


no one

not the grannies, the discolored, the over bundled,
or even the seven and eight year old noisy brats,
(towing blonde nineteen year old au-pairs from Sweden)

doesn’t have their face planted on a screen

most messaging
when the light shines in and the illustration is illuminated
through the stink of overheated humans on a bus-poet

i can tell everything about you from the way
you tap on the screen

you nice you mean
you possess a southern drawl, a handwriting less ‘n a scrawl,
you are a passionate lover slow and languid,
you’re a bath splasher, a snowball thrower,
believer anything wet, well, should be a shared liquid

your think all lives matter especially mine

who plods thru life slow and safe one key tap at time,
making love in the same way and never in the afternoon

whose mother loved them swell well and made them
crazy people who smile at everyone
sharing their terra chips, body parts and
sweet spicy spit
with loving tenderness

the ones who write beneath colored decorated fingernails
so careful not carefree using the finger pads to message and
never break a nail or own a heart making a mess worthy of
cleaning up with a repairman

who lies ‘n cheats on their taxes and their lovers with
reckless impunity because you are so important
then what the heck you doing on this bus with us plebeians?

and the one next to me generationally born to use two thumbs,
but pauses to reflect on the way humans speak to one another before desensitizing blurting any old thing

And the one to whom I show this poem and insists I miss my stop so she can text me her digits and kiss that thumb
a year  later in front of a smoke perfumed fire and she whispers
smarty pants, mr smoke scribe,
who writes only love poetry
watch, what does the smoke say?

but it says nothing that cannot be best expressed by
letting my thumbs do all the talking by tapping
all over her body

flying over Harrisburg (Seat 8C)*

transcontinental traveller this day,
from a city island onwards to a city by the bay,
the mileage sum greater than a lifetime of M31 bus trips,
but the in-transit poem-notion-potion elixir in blood stirring,
when a seated poet greets the jet stream
motion turbulence
,
one more rightful writ to the
flying poem chapter,
additive motivated and self-commandeered

airborne in the selfsame real clouds
where the poems are plucked from,
their distance to my body’s poem functions,
vastly abbreviated so they arrive more wet, chilled and urgent,
we become heated tango paired

already approaching Indiana, crossing Ohio,
over whose living souls have I traversed,
over whose stored poems have I flown through,
ruffling their crinkled white wrapper covers, the decorative ribbons,
whose hand waves have I discerned,
and whose cheeks have I gently kissed?

this land is my land, this land is our land,
and from the soft cream of moisture white,
stumbled on my long lost and well forgotten poems, thereby
freshly creasing and dampening yellowings
with the renewable tears when greeting old friends
of the who and when poetry was a secret garden
where I hid and withdrew and transpired the essential oils
of my deconstructed constitution

see this poem is more me just checking in on you below,
you up ahead, and those in arreared reared view mirror,
and on me, composing at an altitude of 31,824 feet to
strings of violins, my one true plane

as compensator for this ramble unfocused I gift you this:

conscripted by the thin atmosphere,
constricted by my failings, my limited stock of words,
my extra clouded judgement, my heartbeats rapido speak,
telling me to tell you my brothers, my sisters,
mine own adapted children,
we have never been closer than we are today,
until that day I knock and grinningly embrace and erase
that tiny space between our ******* and in unison breathe*

8:50am EST entente
entering into Illinois

~for Leonard Cohe, Glen Campbell and me, a single trilogy~

1:32am come down these words in a medusa message,
“about hymn, my priest Leonard (hymn/him)”
and instant recognition-recollection face slap,
this is poem that
I have written
I will have to write
I have already started and left incompleted.
about hymn/him/Leonard, but
the medusa threads need knitting knotting now,
tying up, now not later, waiter,
when the spirit’s in the throat,
or gotta ya by the throat,
no difference

It’s just turning Thursday (had to check)
and just this past maddening Monday,
was in a NYC dive (performance space) on West 46th,
all the way over tween 8th ‘n 9th,
on the tzitzit fringes,
of the Theater District,
where the small clubs all sit cheeky to jowl,
where they squeeze ya in, sitting *** cheek to cheek,
and wheeee,
knee to knee,
at a table big enough for two drinks and a check,
a stage so small it’s an in invitation to off fall,
to hear an entertainer sing an eclectic selection of songs
sure enough LC, hymn/him, quiet slips in, with a
“natty where ya been?” hint hint,
a burning violin  

as if I needed a hint hint from hymn/him,
“hey, hey, by the way, your house’s on fire” reminder
someone wants a trilogy plus one

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,
dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in”
  

of course,
the Hallelujah served up first, this course arrives with drinks and the salsa chips, just in case, I wasn’t fully aware of hymn/him
stalking me, something that happens after midnight regular like,
asking for atonement, and leaving tidbits of unpushed hymns,
now that the sown snow clears  
and the gates of heaven are open for admitting admonition and
up&down come verses on a borrowed Jacob ladder,
steps of ephemeral downy soft violin phrases

ok now I can begin,
as this stage is set with a drum+ cymbal flourish ta da!

na, chill, kids,
almost done, you can’t handle all that needs saying,
but this one needs some fixing, finishing touché touches

should you see a man on the subway,
embellished bya yellow star and carrying a burning violin,
asking strangers if they can spare a dime of inspiration,
so he can worn his way into heaven,
don’t be afraid, for it’s now a duet,
*** with Glen, singing,
me-on-fire-fiddling

”don't be concerned it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing something I'm not sure of
across my dreams with nets of wonder”

yeah.  burning violin.  fiddler on the subway.  after midnight. pursuing something.  through the panic.
touching a burning bush but the fingers unsinged. unhinged. gotta be a poem in there somewhere. and perchance, a ladder to s
some sleep.
see, the end.  

2:31am nyc march 8th

the half-life of a resolution

~for maaidah durrani~

“your words really spoke to me and
i deeply encourage you to write more”
<•>
any resolution
barely lasts to the completion of its
flyby, tower-buzzing,
razzmatazz appearance,
colliding with the wall called
not today a/k/a,
tomorrow

tomorrow takes the lead pole position,
the conditional timing prepositional,
the delaying exscual misanthropic of
but one more,
whatever, it’ll keep for 24 more,
holding out the pretense of hope
for the resolute dissolute

sure, for sure, tomorrow,
will dissolve regret
tomorrow will write of poetry
but not a poem,
tomorrow will swear my
resolutions will be enacted
or, at least,
erased and re-written,
the oldest first when
re-added to the top of the list

tomorrow
will honor thy request
keep on writing for I’m no fool,
1200 plus poems, I’m yet a novitiate
I will keep your request as
one I’ve can never
cross off my life’s list

but tomorrow’s resolve,
be a better man,
leaner, briefer, kinder, a better lover,
sadly
the list has overrun the white pad,
the blue lines refuse another resolu....

PostScript:
number me thus, in the company of the good but the forgotten,
still will be of goodly cheer gotten,
for though ***** could not be saved,
not one goodly man found in all of the ****** lot

except for one, a true audience
a single rapt good  knave worthy word enslaved
thus will we be saved,
thus call me Lot

<>
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/469617/the-night-king-ego-died-by-mine-own-handsept2013/

be my therapist

massage both my temples
from whence these poems originate

will your fingertips perform tailored alterations,
will they insert strange spices and your favors,
unfamiliar but imagined overtime desirable flavors,
thus resolving the question that my answers perpetually fail,
to satisfy my unending need to understand:

how do my temples
speed the heart
bring forth whole poem utterances inconceivable,
reminding me to remember what has yet to occur?

she grins, whimsies me and suggests:

that’s why they have been
appointed anointed announced as the
Temples of You

2:19am 2/19/18

“marvelous brush strokes”

~for Yocum~

the complimentor favors brevity,
employs these pointy few words

the complimentee, me,
favors the insanity
of the overwhelming
overarching hell of
the over-lengthy

but that would dishonor the symmetry of comprehension,
that would dishonor the comprehension of the symmetry
of painting and writing

select colors, use the old palette, favored,
the cash cache of mixology and finally the strokes

i commence
i brush your grizzled face
i brush your grizzled face with colored words
i brush your grizzled face with marvelous brush strokes

the painting incomplete, my brush strokes need retouching,
my brush stoking fingers need a touch of real
so I am coming to see you as foretold^

so i may sign my name signifying completion

^https://hellopoetry.com/poem/556521/a-beautiful-first-re-union-that-will-be/

honor: “you stumble where gods get lost”

honor,

still the tattoo being drawn on my senses,
unresolved and demanding
solution or surrender,
acknowledging, that I am not poet enough

tho y’all keep diverting me with poem commissions,
half started but will freezer keep until Jacob’s angel and I
have wrestled this honor notion to the ground for good,
which means once and forever

Patti’s words distinctly heard:
“you stumble where gods get lost”
and that’s what the poetry is for,
to word wrestle until the resolution revelation shines
and someone cries out uncle, father, son, are we not all
samed and shamed when we wrestle with honor

will you know honor when it presents itself?

a man keeps his word and another honors them both
with a monthly sum that says friendship is a promise kept

a father texts to a son in trouble “got your back” that elicits
a return verse of “I love you;”. that’s love, not honor cause someone remembers their immigrant father’s hell going slowly by and this poem and that memory revived, that’s honor

(******* tears on my phone screen, a ****** pain @6:53am
on sabbath morn; no body invited the interlopers;  not me anyway)

honor is not a parade or not the kind on my mind today: the honor that gets you medaled that’s all about brotherhood,
that’s a different kind of honor I understand but not what I’m
about right wright write now

looking for small acts, small doses, nearly invisible to the naked
eye, indeed, ya need a scrunched up squint to detect the honor that I need so desperately seek to theorem proof that,
even I got some

one of you wrote me, I am nothing.
one of you wrote me,
that they are all busted up on the boulevard of broken dreams.

trusting a stranger thru his crazier poems with depreciation and overwhelming sadnesses,
is that honor?

my rsvp (how could I not), is that honor?

honor sought in the small necessities which are more important than small kindnesses wrought from love: those come easy natural

necessary necessity, the word itself bleeds pressure on the soul; but i don’t mean paying your bills, burying your parents and such stuff;

honor is in the unnecessary:  where actions defeat uncertainty, honor is stepping up when no one calls out need

honor is the first step the hand extended and the concomitant
electric shock that traverses two hands in a shake that obviates
unnecessary words
like thank you

which why gods stumble, get lost, they only get praise conferred
but honor belongs only to us humans,
to give honor.
that’s power gods don’t got,
why they oft get lost

so thank you for staying with me this far,
you honor me by listening to an old man
seizing up when his mind asks him direct

did you live with honor,
and tho the summing up s’ain’t over,
(lol laughing, at the ain’t autocorrect),
at least now I know what to count,
what counts,
doing the unnecessary unasked
in small ways, a quieter doing good,
honor needs two and starts when you say hey
hey you...


*7:36am Saturnday  2+10+18
Shabbat Shekalim
writ without disguise

based on the essay in the notes below
which was forwarded to me by Liz Balise
<>
all poems and their accompaniment sauces commence with onions,
that start by fouling the air, bringing forth only unrestricted tearings,
but then...

the slow cooking elicits the sugars hid within,
the unpleasant odor, refined into something
minted new sweet and savory.

so too, the poem must simmer, slow cooked,
harmonizing the caramelizing,
even if some ingredients
claim the first born birthright of the eldest first essential,
despite the collective harmonizing.

the ripened color of the blood red tomatoes,
the ruddy cheery sanguinity of
certain words in each poem,
are the coloration of its entirety -
the ones your never forgive for never letting you forget them!

what matters not but how, the daring to substitute the new how,
how you chef see it and color it with the crazy way how
you beckon us over one by one to the big *** for a tasting
accepting critiques and suggestions, a thousand pinches
of your salty sweet essences.

and the recipe is dog stained and pointy corner ear-edged,
cause you cannot exactly write it down, and you bend the corner
for every substitution and variation,
cause every poem
made to taste the how of us,
each one a subtle different.

everyone understands metaphor,
even the society of the reticent ones in the back row,
just say the “trapdoor of depression” and they’ll nod knowingly,
so say to them a poem is a metaphor for you,
and spaghetti sauce is how you see, recreate in words,
how you need to add an ingredient of yourself
to this one,
a word, a phrase, becomes you,
becoming you in it,
in you,
you in it are both poet and poem,

a simmering new and different
————————————————————————-


A Well Written Essay— The Spaghetti Sauce Method

As a teacher and a learner, I have always wanted to see the "nuts and bolts" of everything. Yes, it slows the process down, but the learning is more complete, and a person becomes capable of making endless connections of understanding, branching to other  creative possibilities. Writing like dancing, and all that is worth learning, deserves all of the pieces and steps of the process.
I remember telling my students every year that grammar could indeed be a dry bone, but necessary in the process of good communication. Told them that I would teach writing by the "spaghetti sauce method" (Visualize their perplexed faces here.). "A well-written essay should be like a really good sauce-- smooth, fine textured, with a complete harmony of meat, sweet, tomato, and seasonings-- not one overpowering the others, but all in marvelous union of great flavor and aroma."
I continued, giving the example of my mother's
(God rest 'er) Irish spaghetti sauce" as a contrast. "Mama would throw in onions, peppers (if she had ‘em), hamburger, salt and pepper, fry it all in corn oil, and mix with two cans of plain tomato sauce. This was all okay with me," I went on,“ till I experienced the epiphany of garlic, basil, oregano, pork neck bones and a cup of wine; in the kitchen of an Italian neighbor, who walked me through the process and ingredients of real Italian sauce that was simmered for hours."
I continued to nudge them with the comparison: "Excellent writing is more than talent and passion, otherwise a tirade of curses, knotted ideas, and copied paragraphs of someone else would always do.” "No," I went on, "It is clear thought, captured, slow-cooked in the labor of mind and understanding— and in good time, expressed, in a way that others can comprehend -- with great attention to the cardinal rule: It is not as much WHAT you say-- but HOW you say it."
Through the year I focused on one or two aspects of better writing at a time for each paper. It was an uphill battle, often teaching against the mediocrity of the expectations in the PA State Standards of Assessment. It would add ten hours to my work week to grade and comment on a set of a 115 papers.

I Am that I Am (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‬ ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh)

for Eléa

the requests are assiduous, regularly arrivaling, some shy,  
some heinous demanding and denouncing,
inquisitors inquisiting this revelation,
as if it could be bought in a Five and Dime,
with a childlike whining insistence

just  exactly who are you?

this is not my name above,
but one of seventy the Father gave himself

He named me in a fit of efficacy and whimsy and in and from, a fit of a deep veined mystery

You Raise Me Up

all this on the ****** side of corny, and would not blame you
if you moved on…

so nominated in honor of my mission, to travel with you in
all the travails that ail,
to raise you up to raise me up and thus salve the universe's cracks,
fill the crevices and the ****** scars invisible,
with the precise refreshment that make my life,
a slave to your thankfulness

I am the wetness of a mother’s lips upon
a thin red tear on a child’s skin,
I am the the rock hard father’s shoulders grasped by a child’s arms, the child does yet understand that human is illusion,
human is human, however strong,
it is the allusion of human limitations
that is our magical

I am the present re-borning come with a morning glory,
the time when the Am and the Pm  future merge in a name
without tense,
past present and what I may be is simply what
I am

when the past is but another sky bright star, untouchable,
but winking at you, to you personally

I am the touch of the untouchable,
a messenger commissioned to remind you when
the reminders are too far apart,
or even too close
and thus make a breathing space
in between for the living and the missing

I am the
no difference
between a newborn’s soft skin cells
relentless multiplying,
that offers the same precise sensation of the
grandmother’s delightful wrinkling cells of smiles of her
relentless dying,
for all, one and the same,
the child in her is you, baby

I am the fall before the rise, the first that defines the last,
the standard, once obtained, nevermore unobtainable

I am the first fruit of the summer,
a tongue blossom, a burst of memory, always recalled,
always the same, that begs for forgiveness for there are no
new words to describe the profound finding of the
simple pleasures that sustains the blessing over all things new that
are recurring and truly
renewable (shehechayanu)

I am the crinkle in the eye, the one that hides in the fine lines
and upon the lips,
when you purchase the hope however fleeting of a
$2 Powerball ticket,
the very same hope preserved when you laugh when you lose,
for there is contentment in knowing one may hope spring eternal,
yet again in a finite
three more days for and too another lousy two bucks fantasia

I am the ruse of happy satisfaction of a man
in the dark of alone at home,
staring at his sizeable bank balance
and the happy knowledge that its loss  it will make it greater someday when it  happy converted to memories and photos that  are worth a thousand times its multiplicity
if only,
or when,
he knows how

I am that pain in the left side of your red sea-parted soul that cannot be dismissed but is religiously ignored,
that you alone know of
due to its persistent existence, and because it is just tolerable,
it is a sad but comforting pain,
an acknowledgment that a companion travels with you
and that in someway is ok and you exist

I am the water on the night table that extinguishes the dry throat of recurring visions in eyes that always end badly
and make the bed’s welcome a fearful thing,
which is a fearful thing for in good sleep is the
re-naissance and re-formation and the salvation
that was given to you as a gift inside thy mother’s womb,
and that
it is I,
whispering the hum of easy soft lambs,
soft breathing you
unto welcoming rest

I am the poem that must end because of our
frailties and impatience to live in
the reality of human touch,
that must be put aside for any novocaine of words

I am the one who can only be alive
when he raises you up and
you begin a new poem all your own,
and then exit it too, willingly,
to embrace the raising up of living

and that is the
who I am
that I am
raising us up

For Ilion: Sleep, Return to It*

young man of Manhattan
sleep, return to it,
we must stop meeting on the corner of 125th & Broadway at 3am

young father - thy life thy future thy child -
depend on it

as do I -depend upon thy poetry*

for you are the lion of youth,
I, the graybeard of past paths,
no need of sleep in my dwindling days,
but time bids you welcome,

- thy life thy future thy child -
all ask me, let him come to us
refreshed


7/7/17 4:49am
Manhattan

the sun’s veins  

a unique thot, it's magi source:

naǧí  


my poem-joy instant-isthmus arises
and asks that I  
cross, connect,  
write of the sun’s veins that we will be forever unable
to see


but the veins will  heat yours - and it is not shared blood it warms,
it is poem joy
<•>


a warmth organism that leaves one gasping wrestling
for words  
so weakly I am grasping the connection
that snakes across
globes

and the poem joy that has no end, no boundaries  -
that full fills me

And I say,
thank you

the elegance of truthful simplicity,
the sweet truths of elegant brevity,
the insides of insight
|||


~
Please Read

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2246391/gratitude/

for it should be the Poem of the Day

a message sent to me:
“I know you, Marrano, secret Jew of my heart, weakened by words and strengthened thereby...stout man of words”^

a stranger invasion - his technology, a new combine of words,
percentage of perception high, a ferreting scraping of tissue,
an abrasion of spoiler alerts that are not hidden but now summoned, despite being unbidden early on a Sabbath morn

and at this, my haunted hours, this secret Jew,
wanders unexplored yet familiar routes
of his well traveled innards,
pondering this sweet Shylock Accusation, nay,
this confessional truth, but more, the nut of his essence that ‘tis
his conviction, his twisted sentencing, the exact lived-level of
a hellish Dante verse that shreds the escape of sleep,
that is home

“weakened by words and strengthened thereby”

words forced to the fore, peremptorily summoned,
this inconsistency so constant, his battle,
where neither victory, loss or truce, are resolutions legitimate,
contradictory poems are the tension production
of this high wire act of the man, a performance
best assessed as one of always slipping,
more near-falling failing than cross walking,
employing his word emissions as a balancing pole,
and balancing is a sometime thing

I am not an illusionist - if anything, a disillusionist

there are stanzas writ
but unspoken
that shall not be out-spit
here or now; for lengthy answers already exist,
in a thousand prior scripts
and
the thin wire of preservation
teaches the value of brevity

stout, I think not,
man of words,  
no doubt,
one who is both,
a secret Marrano and a Jew, fully exposed,
and one who is
“weakened by words and strengthened thereby”


12/2/17 The Sabbath 3:33am

<•>
extra credit reading

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/529429/the-true-tale-of-shylocks-pound/

she,
a salty say
right direct into my fine cut
lines,
to wound and to love,

how ya doing,
what's new,
slipping in a well hid second base pickoff move,
seeing anybody?

you know me too well,
don't have the courage  
to lie or ask you the same
being an-in-love-no-more liar,
I turn around to reveal
that I'm now just a silent salt pillar gazing back,
my salty tears just adding,
replenishing my body's mass

"gravity has taken better men than me
just keep me where the light is"...John Clayton Mayer

where the light is...
this lyric gets carried from midnight to midnight next,
from troubled sleep to the bus stop, to and from work,
onto, back to, the homebound bus stop once again,
from solitary man to father to grandfather and cycles back
to once again a troubled sleeper poem writer,
who just wants to know, John,

when I find it, will, does the light fill, complete and heal the cracks...when I find that light...

in the city, starlight been banished by street lamps pointed downward, far too often it is believable that the whole world has been wrapped in white crinkled, filmy, wax paper, then,
how will the light know where it is needed most,
how will it find the empty chest cavity that writes these lines

there is real and artificial they say, nature vs. man made,
sun upon the face that heals for but an eight minute
bandaid summer ferry crossing, the fluorescent that says here, here is the bus stop, tarry, sit and rest, while you wait for
answer unscheduled, on a bench beneath to the street light
that illuminates a small swatch of street
between the dark spots on the x-ray of
this patient patient's soul awaiting,
are either of those
the light I need John?

no worries man, I'm just teasing, well knowing, neither of us,
tables turned, know where the light is, up high, down low,
if it is yellow or gold, if light is real or imagined,
only the sensation of the curettage needed to be healed when the
chest drained and the light supplants the drained fluids,
when it interferes, interpolates, how it found me or I it,
how I recognized it, how it reignited the home fire, and
I'll drop you line how light, lightly to find or be heavy found,
how light supersedes, defeats, the gravity of daily tugging,
and how what happens afterwards is golightly
up to us

2:10am **** it

all I've learned from love


<•>

for the fedora man, 10/29/17 10:34am

<•>

another song done me wrong on a Sunday morn,
so much due to do, a list not for compilation/publication,
including poems promised and weighty deadlines overdue,
for its tedium would still be lbs. heavy in weightless space

instead a lyric plucks my attention, of course beeping,
insistent chirping a chorus of, write me right now,
immédiatement dans son français de Montréal,
this is the item that needs to be list topping,
now whispering a messenger-angel name dropping
a request formal from the fedora man dressed in black

all I've learned from love,  
a listing doomed to comprehensible incompletion,
a listing to the right as new reasons in-come
constantly from the left, each heart beat a
remarkable reminder that the list grows longer

every day, the repeating seasons, proffer suggestions,
disguised as a newly revised ten commandments,
obedience to which is a wish list for
attaining grace

all I've learned from love is its duality, essential quality,
a human single cannot attain the commingling required
for the visioning a peak season of life colorful,
its sad corollary, leaves falling exposing the body bare-****** of the soul linear alone

all I've learned from love is its shining skin is an agreed upon
indefinable nature, other than we all recognize how our
definition personal exists in that Ven diagrams space where
our circles intersect, when A breaks the skin of B, creating
{A,B}

all I've learned from love is without it no matter what
somewhere inside is a desperation pocket that is
an inquisitive irritant, a brain burr, a pea under the mattress,
a high and mighty 1% of disarmament incompetence that rules the imbalanced balance of my bottom line on the top of my head

all I've learned from love that it appears on its own timetable,
in surprising trains and planes and baseball games, sitting
alone in a theater or in front of a Rubens, on crazy disastrous
first dates in foreign countries at cafes or non gender
specific bathrooms amidst alternating currents of
this is crazy and this is infinite and ever so sobering
wondrous possible

all I've learned from love is it never shoots straight,
but will always end in a holy bullseye

*Tout ce que j'ai appris de l'amour, c'est qu'elle ne tire jamais directement,
mais se terminera toujours dans une sainte bullseye

still be on my feat*

oh Joni you showed up at my door once more, Saturday morn,
blonde bangs and ***** voice, two octaves below shrill,
right about where the register intersection of
heart piercing, me humming, memory smiling,
poetry inspiring, yeah memories crying, that too

together, we have had more than many,
one case of you, a million sips, and I am writing
to see *how you're feeling and to let you know
I never drank a case of you that left me,
being still, left me standing on my feat

my feat?

drank de-feat like it was the sea, boundless but not soundless,
sweet waves repeating, sea tears tinged with bittersweet cries of
Tupelo honey,
cause you were one of my angels,
lifting me higher when love was saying
not!
this time kid,
place, babe, not this peculiar particular apparition,  
wrong rendition,
and at last, finally, long time later, sheepishly, sweetly only,
what was her name

your voice stood me up, your words still slap my face with
cases of kisses upon my neck, tune-turning prophetic notions of
what's next still  be only just around the corner,
waiting on a new, simple twist of feat,
another song, poem, lover, and yet another,
case of you, so we can always see both sides,
and when I think of you Joni
my mind seesaws,
and I, still be on my feet, and thanks to you
ready for my feat

<•>
10:59am 10/28/17

Kinda fainted Friday nite,
De doctor, he come, he say,
"Son you done
give us a genuine affright."

De doctor, he come, he say,
"Son, it's the end o' day,
Get your **** in bed straightaway"

"Here's what you be needing:
twelve tablets of hourly salting, no halting
eight hours bed rest, no dreaming,
four gallons o' tap water, drinking,
no stopping,  
"and for god's sakery,
cease and desist from
this writing,
poetry nonsense fakery."

Weakly, I protested,

"My poems are the waste products,
the excretions of salt water tears,
a thousand years in the making,
dreams foretelling and retelling events disturbing.

If not removed, disinterred by their inscribing,
these poisonous emotions,
shall surely cause once more
my fainting and falling demotion."

He frowned, de doctor, he was perturbed,
his medical thinking cap was for sure disturbed!

With sighs that made my heart to be a stirring ,
De doctor, he come, he say,
held forth as following, quiet murmuring:

"Here is my prescription:
if you musting,
but with strict limitations it be enforcing:

No more than four po-ems
De doctor permit to be writ

*per hour."

<•>

Preface
___

early Sunday morning her head, half pillowed, half my-chested, in the shady, darkened room with just enough entering daylight to clarify the assortment of miscellanea you are mind visualizing, ordering...it's the exact time when the disguised passing thoughts traverse mixed in with the ordinary of the day ahead, the day passed, your passionate emails, that require complete, non-hasty, contemplative answering, the onerous chores, the pretend-someday-additions to the reading list, the running time for the my little pony movie (wasn't awful), the chances we will be a football team with an 0-5 record (we are) at the end of the day when god ******, well lit,
it sly sneaks in,
I write for women

auditioning as a possible poem title
and just to be sure, it performs a singing audition, we hear it loud and clear, as it snaps fingers and makes Pandora play:
"Your love keeps lifting me higher
Than I ever been lifted before,
So give me love, Which is my desire"

caught, exposed, *******, brain chiming, nails chewing, cylinders firing, pas de choix, and it's now my fingers turn, not to snap,
but to obediently tap
the truth about me, man
10/9-17 8:29am

<•>

I write for women (give yourself away)

alternating currents, one electrical impulse sparkling sparking
to prove I am among the living, and that the engine, yet revving, the beating, the heart toe-tapping, and the next,
is an explication explosion for each and everyone, for you, just, you,
why, I write, for women, for to give myself away

please say your name out loud
right now, right here, don't process, proceed, if you can't...
then
répète après moi,
"he writes for me and no one else"

it is not sorrowful but it could be,
it is simple words but not simple in the slightest,
for constantly falling is a ******* the soulfulness,
hard, too, is in the re-collecting the absences, the aloneness,
even as hard as the opposite, the constant awrying of the daily plan when so much bountiful beautiful
makes an ordinary crazy extravagant delightful,
so so necessary, so **** elemental - it is true oxygen of sustaining,
so necessary to be beyond

to write that every moment is a possession (yours) would be an
understatement, even wrong...for I am a molecular composite of your mystique mystery, each time i am writing-returning  
one bone chip excised as an accounting, the untainted marrow where-the-will-from-where-I-came from, which is from you,
one birth mother,
but so many names many origins all one cell subdivided

each livre is an escapee, a de-lightening runaway, of me,
and in the emptying is my creating
a happy self conception
a Benjamin Button reversal, as was intended

this is the hardest poem I have written in my abbreviating
years, but if not now, when?
I hand-wring cause
I cannot successfully explain well enough the
why

easy understood, why and try rhyme so naturally

I will once more walk the city streets, each espied
a dream mind-see to connect,
distributor to each of an odd shaped token,
a failed self-explanatory thank you for existing,
no whys or wherefores,be given-out  
regardless of creed, color and age,
but not ***, for absolutely this is all about ***,
repaying the grieving and the believing.
the obligation
the happy diminishment

Those old comments from the disappeared with no names,
no faces, just a large gray dot and two -- anonymous*




<•>

Those old comments
live on, unremoved,
from the disappeared ones,
no faces, no names
a large gray dot and
two -- anonymous dashes

a most contemporary kind of disregarding,
disregard-me, frak you, cause I disregarded you first,
funeral pyre ******* gesture,
where only your face was consumed,
but your words live on forever. ...  
congrats, in this day and age,
you, managed to get in the last word

who were you?
why was it necessary to leave?
while your comments, pithy,  
cheddar sharp, meaningful,
of just a plain old prdinary
wow,
tender precious to me
drive me now to simple
madness gladness sadness
failing to yes, to be recalling
who you were/are

were you stalked, trolled, gored,
or just bored
with the word-gaming,
needy for some well constructed avatars
desirous for ****** machine gun killing?

did you heart break one last time
into one million parts too many
you did not believe, didn't trusted me enough,
to heal the cuts and paste
you together like I did previously,
no more one more time?

did you get
transmigrated,
move beyond and out of
London and Minneapolis, Katmandu?

win the lottery,
get parental sent away,
super jetting wealthy,
married, divorced, soul lost,
unhealthy in complete privacy,
up and left the poems of we
poor sods behind,
on your way to Monaco or Singapore?

did I offend beyond any mending?
gladly would have kissed you knees,
written a poem just to tickle you pink
or whatever color you so desired but that
gray grey cream dot not,
that makes your disappearing act,
twice as a pain-full, a banner unfurled of,
you pick the word

was I too sweet, too kind, cloyingly annoying
driving you crazy with my midnight clockwork
"jes' me checking in on you"
one liner messages,
go one message too far?

how we conversed, holy roman dialogues
till one day and hadn't heard and
chagrin uncovered no more souling
we two, ragging and consoling,
on each others nonsense,
cause
you cloaked a name in deliberate invisibility!

well ha on you I am lying,
I will know your name, your face,
your funny way of signing off
when fate sits us side by side
on some long plane ride

you will watch me tap on my tablet
in letters so big you won't struggle to read over my shoulder,
the poem I will write for you / just one more
for just you

and I'll see reflection of your turned away head
in the plexiglass window smiling and tearing,
while I hum some Carole King sad love songs

you will salty say
to wound and to love
cause ain't no difference:
now

you're still an idiot,
write way too long
and forget to put the title in, on -- whatever*

and I will nod also,
in that idiotic identical
tonality of whatever,
in holy poem agreement
not saying much, just
tapping grey --
the rest of the way till we land,
thinking mostly about all the gray grey shades and shadows
in that dashed word,
whatever--



9:27pm 10-5-no jive

who among us
does not whisper
many a daily silent prayer,
unconsciously, or even a thoughtful thought
initiated usually by
  guilted conscience

to a deity,
or to just
the god voices of ourselves, or
ha! or anybody within earshot...

these whispers,
sally forth,
direction upwards,
to an unmappable and usually
unresponsive atmosphere,
seeding the sky moment hoping for
a smidgen of warm rain in a life drought,
and
the wanted future with
grains of hope, needy desires and
evil warded, off put

who among us
reflexively,
without marks of hesitation,
hearing the prayers of others
desirous of any bounty's share<
whisk-that-wish a
fare-thee-well, a shout out, a whisper,
thinking our legal rights confirmed
by a participatory, hearty, ***-along-little-doggie,

amen,
even a
hot ****
or an-oh-so subtle, a holy colloquial
yeah baby!

who among us never says,
please,
promise,
need, want?

not me...

15th,
the time of the month
when a master card american expresses a visa reminder,
hey your passport gonna get cxld!

don't leave town; you got debts due from living life
to the fullest or the lesser, the black & white soda of
mixed up scrapings and dreaming disney fantasias

7 decades is a whole lot of 15th's
many rent/mortgage notices due,
'postage not included' notices,
(in case you were thinking of cutting a
first class stamp size
corner)

the worst word rent, rents,
and not only on the 15th,
smiling - got to rent me a poem someday,
what is the cost, guessing I'll find out on the 15th next

all the time,
lip limp from weekend to the next Friday,
just just making it through, barely,
month to the month, year to tear, dear and dare
15th to the 15th, teenth to teenth
and what is in betweenth

fully forecast a final call, last call will come on a 15th,
made sure there will be enough left to cover the outstandings,

another outstanding word I love

just enough left to mail me and my ritings,
take care of the responsibles, the non-disposables,
my last months rent, covered, my rep intact,
but no more, no one last yellow taxi ride

  the postage to return me
to my next forwarding address,
and even the cost of this poem,
got it covered




3:23am 8/15/17

~~~

~for Leandra from Alabama~  

hope is less a point,
more a sash,
a honorable stripe, a path,
a tightrope designed for slipping,
a struggling, indeterminate journey
requiring a self-granted passport

<|>

long ago, time ago,
when the plate of despair,
was passed round and round
my table unceasingly,
served always piping hot,
my unordered,
but can't be refused,
'main course'
~
yes, I took it,
some say,
thrived on despair,
as despair
symbiotically
thrived on me
~
my unfair share
some say,
was given more
than deserved,
so what,
you took it and cried out
so what
~
so for
forty years wandered in
an unemotional desert of distress,
from which escape
to hope
was deemed,
inhumanly impossible
~
now in my descending, trajectory finale,
years post the wastage, the waste of ages
that sustained, that pain,
sent away, postage prepaid,
no return address
~
once more,
I accidentally taste
the cries of
les enfants terrible,
here @ HP,
the babies speaking so easy of

the utter aching of the young

for it is in plain view,
in almost every other poem here stored
~

I thought:

no mas, no more,
I ne'er, can't,
stop, nay, even slight stop, stoop,
to read and bear
these slights, these desperations so loud,
that remind me too well
of my days of unwellness
~
but one, ******,
renders me, strips me asunder,
drags me down under,
compulsed to respond,
so I tender now
to whomever can read
through mine eyes,
hard bought wisdom of seven plus decades
~
before you can believe in hope,
and its prophecies,
know this:

hope is less a point,
more a sash,
a honorable stripe, a path,
a tightrope designed for slipping,
a struggling, indeterminate journey
requiring a self-granted passport
~
but with the understanding that this
hopeful trip is
itinerary, devoid,
for final destination,
in advance, already well known,

for from the very beginning,
the self-same place you began,
a circuitous, lapping course of
expectorating unexpected high speed crashes,
for the ****** of self voyaging
upon the sea war-waters of
self-examination
is both
infinite and finite,
this traveling travail,
this trip is the work
forever in process
~
Hope
is your only cargo that time cannot decay, spoil,
even under twenty fathoms of brine,
cannot be refused,
must be transported
~
you gotta believe in
yourself,
you just gotta,
accept that the mere breathe of thought,
confirms the unique, unbelievable spark
the worth of you,
that source code unique,
born and then borne within,
to find your purpose,
only recognizable by you,
its place holder
~
dig as deep as necessary,
but no quitting, till you are smoking
hot, bonfired, cause that's how you can knowingly
know you've grasped that you are,
hopefully
just that much closer to being a
mission accomplished
~
hear you say,
so easy to say
so hard to do,
in brief,
there is no relief
~
let's walk together,
amidst woods and shaded country lanes,
grasp arms in the certain serenity,
of my poet's nook,
sit beside me,
young ones
~
leave your castle, cross the dry moat
so assiduously you built,
dug out from daily anguish, crapped-on dirt piles
~
come listen with me to
Bach's Air Sarabande,
you know it, though you think not,
journey upon the music
to the places so so patient waiting within,
where soaring, is the only option,
calm reflection, the only language
~
come let us reason together,
help you to deduce,
process the conclusion inevitable,
your very aching implies
your residual
crushed but uncrushable belief,
in relief,
in the inevitability of
hope
for you are worthy
~


July 11 ~ 22, 2015
posted at last, on
Sept.20, 2017

~for lovejunkie~

"a watermark is a faint design made in some paper
during manufacture, which is visible when held
against the light and typically identifies the maker"

<•>

But you knew that...

in each, and *every poem,
intentional stains faint revealed

Here,
a 2:03am watermark,
a time stamping of time, place,
a self-notification of "you were here,"
hid under the writing wrist,
or in a favorite verse,
(invisibly interspersed, blinking a winking,)
the very now of this poems
incanting, decanting formation,
by the neo natal baby warmers,
heating filaments of glowing incandescence

Perhaps this one, to be completed, come the sabbath,
when the eastern suns rising glow
over the North Fork must, demands it,
de jure, by natural law,
provoke and parole my soul
unto confession,
ordering a performance review of my
yellowed journalism revelations,
by the halo's fresh sunlight,
revealing all the watermarks
of the scrivener

These words, these toyed crumbs,
these human droppings, what is remaindered,
post ablutions, pre-morning prayers
the washing away of the mid-of-night
cappuccino-colored night frights

To new day light,
hold up my skin to any and all effervescent sources,
even the electronic red light, low resolution room dots,
all to see if still yet,
the coursing river run red beneath the
blue veined body's arterial roadmap,
exposing the rents, the cracks,
where, yes, Rebecca,
"the light gets in,"
fresh tracks, new watermarks

This then,
best viewing time of the
impermeable, impermanent, perpetual moving
below and above watermarked inscriptions,
eclipsing, barely just visible
above the eye lined brow,
etchings upon the forehead,
like my Cousin Cain,
standing out outstandingly,
imprimis:

ex libris (from the library of)
the eyes now reading these verses

One of you a-muse-ds,
gave me this title,
one of you used by me,
you gave me the inspiration,
you undid me into this doing
of my undoing

Connecting the unworthy audience,
that's me,
to the masters of my poor souls survival,
that's you, all,
into admitting, rinsing, repeating,
for have I not once before
affirmed
my scores, my marks,
way back in '13

The heretofore
of all my flaws,
you call them scars,
I call them
my prima facie
needled watermarks,
my poems

When once I wrote:

I am both,
and nothing but,
addict and dealer,
a ****** poet...
a ****** poet ******

<•>
8/17/17 1:49am ~ 9/4/17 5:56am
Manhattan Isle ~ North Fork L.I.

<•>