Inspired by Tonya Riddle,
Wife, Mother, Sister,
Nurse, Poet, Gardener,
and a
friend

<>


The littlest things you all say, the lightly remarked,
or weighty beloved ones, 100% guarantee a smile
or a tear, no difference, but all press me to grab
the nearest papyrus, to ink that notion, an
untimely timely near midnight revelation,
requiring a scribing to permanent-seal that moment’s
custom potion, via magnification.

It ain’t easy, kinda of reverse curse from
the many wintry months of the ‘tion’s absence:
motivation, inspiration, perspiration go
on a round-the-world cruise and when
they don’t  invite you along, in-truth,
semi-secretly, poetry is kinda de-relevationed (less urgent)

For I have seen a picture, a memorial garden bounteous,
Jordan’s Garden,
so late night, kind words exchanged in reciprocation,
as we both stagger gently into sleep and a new
twenty-four, and here, and I hear, the realization
thoughts inescapable, demanding: creation, visitation,
& ******, a instantion ripening and

Fruition.

A lovely word this one, for it’s strawberry season
on the north fork of the isle, accompanied by
imported Carolina peaches,
and when the roadside farm stands offer them for
sale, included is a a couple of paper towel slices,
for the fruition juices runneth over
(stain stick not included)

So just before midnight, the electrons and (t)ions inform
that tonight, a calming of words, revelations of affection,
salve the grieving heart that runneth over
which surely was my intention,
as well as a celebration of commemoration, and in
calming you friend, my eyes wet, not realizing, that
I’ve written a smile upon my lips, a precursoration to a
rarity, a well and good night’s sleepy and hallowed
restoration.

7:47 AM Mon Jun 26

You Are the Texture

…………………………

~ for all of you,
you, you poet~



Impasto

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

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


<1:47pm>

Cut & Paste

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

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

<2:04pm>


Postscript*
………………

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

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

<>
Cloudbreak

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

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

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

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

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

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

(and I cannot live
from with-out)

<>
a poem in appreciation to Rossella Di Paolo

<>

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


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

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

with in & with out

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

just another unfinished work in progress

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

and you say to no one and to everyone:

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

<>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer! To whom do you owe your poems?

Stroking


<6:56 Am>

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

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

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

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

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

<7:09 AM>

I am a Taken Poet ~ “The Wreckage of Your Silent Reverie”^

<6:45 AM Sat June 3>

again and again, a peculiar lyric
more than provokes, ******, injects,
no mere head buzzing, sledgehammer
beheaded, no under skin, in my pores,
shedding,reabsorbed, replaying the replay,
until I, will-less, commanded endlessly,
induced, besplay my irritants into my
“take,” for I am an overtaken poet, searching relief

too well, the wreckage refuse of these
silent reveries consume us, and I shriek,
contemplating the years of holey falling,
not hours or days, not weeks or months,
spent in rigorous dreams, facing & escaping,
my guilts, my fork failures, bottling & pouring,
with no relief from screams, head-banging,
nightmare visitations and inarticulate moans

until they form words, projectile ejected,
pollutants upon a clean, white background,
and dispatched to the heavens or nether land,
and to you, here in poem form that brings but a
modicum crumb of relief that empties, buying
time, knowing full well, my cup runneth over and
fresh replacement troops are eager, readily available,
by joining the seesaw border war, splitting my halves

my halves for I am not whole, I am deboned,
and slices fall off of these trough of words,
these statements of fact & fission, uninformed forms,
even worse, formed formlessness reciting repetitive,
inescapable  escapades, dead-ended hell highways,
these poems, all carcasses of me, roadside ****, until,
someone unseen, unknown invisible, removes them
to the largest refuse pile in world, a inutile poem heap

even this epistolary of diary entries offered down for
your bemusement, my expulsionary relief, give but
the briefest analgesic, and a newest version of an oldest
reverie, old friend, comes like the unending beeping,
of a dying battery of a fire alarm, squeaking, unrelenting,
unresponsive to curses or begging till the last ounce
of its energy is consumed, so too I, impatient squeak words,
too many contemptuously familiar yet well hid in new combos,

temporarily pulled from the wreckage of my silent reverie


~~~~~~~~~~~~<7:45 AM>~~~~~~~~~~~~

^ “Oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees
In the arms of the angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here”

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Sarah Mclachlan

“Whatever happened to Tuesday and so slow?” (1)
or
Absolute Absolution

Tuesday May 30 2023

<>

the slow Tuesday fragrance pleasures the nostrils,
sweet gravelly Van Morrison in my earbuds, reminding

“This Must Be What Paradise Is Like!
So quiet in here, so peaceful in here…”

Sea salt spray spicy sauces the near-quiet atmosphere,
many boats, some silent, some-not-so, transverse the eyelids,
entertainment by-the-vista, decorating time’s languid etching of ever slowing motionless motion

So quiet in here, so peaceful in here…

the voluble hush, delightfully confuses mes sensories,
noisy cacophony orchestral avians, waves, and a human voice,
punctuate the music of perfect sentence like a period,
…
absolute absolution of interwoven sundry near sounds
So quiet in here, so peaceful in here…


Indeed, it is a Tuesday,
and the slow of the surround sound,
vanilla white w. merest spotted rainbow sprinkling

of the noises of life

So quiet in here, so peaceful in here…so full, so rich,
so vast the strands of colored variegated, perpetual motion
less the emotion, less the raucous caucus of exclamation,
moves me to tears, steals my emotional refuse,
I
too refuse
all except the harmonies of my peace
and the layman accepts the accents of
Absolute Absolution

So quiet in here, so peaceful in here…inside of me…







~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~—————-~~~~


(1) Lyric from Brown Eyed Girl, Van Morrison

<>

Donovan Leitch
“A word of advice: There's no shame in mimicking a hero or two”
(rock singer accused of being a Dylan imitator)

<>

Nat Lipstadt
you did not awake today,
announcing to no one particular,
I am today, as of now, a poet original

I will employ words in new combinations,
try & tricking you to believing my everything,
is cutting edge, unheard, dare I say it?

original.
yet that very word betrays us/me,
we all have origins, seen and unaware,
we intuit breathing words through our ears

the people’s patois, artists who invade us
subconsciously, placing jargon of beauty
on our paths overlapping, life’s happenstance!

Me?  Ogden & Walt, Dylan & Dylan, Donne & Cohen,
others unknown to you, when we stumble into one another
while traipsing verbal trails, toe stubbing on herbal pebbles,
rocky sounds, adjective crumbs

know. ac-know-ledge. if you can. sometimes you can’t…
other’s words subtle invade, takeover a particular neuron yours.
waiting for your employment, recirculating air mutuel.

yet, you understand, tho total recall is an impossibility,
so you pay extra for storage, napkin scribbles, torn pages, bytes of
snippets that face slap, irritate, burrs that burn inside

reach out to the masters, join your fellow plagiarists, ranks,
well worth joining, do not frustration forswear, nothing new,
under the sun, but yet! that very Sun rises daily, a familiar path

but miraculous diurnal, subtle modified, anew & renewed,
nonetheless, asking you for your worship, you very own
novel sunrise prayer, so come!

when gifting, regifting, write with reckless abandon,
commit, recall, conspire, despair, then inspire & believe!

<>

Kurt Vonnegut

“In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!”

**<POSTSCRIPT>

loitering with intent

a man stands on the corner,
in fashion most furtive, shifting
foot to foot, noting each passerby,
he retains, discards, sifting flour
for flowers, wheat chaff for pastries,
word streams for treasured heated floes

why this corner, why this point?

Here.

Hear is where.

Hear is where the poems gems
can be panned, nuggets retrieved,
smiles and grimaces projected,
laughter & tears mixology’d,
humanity, his, restored,
inspired life, restored,
for all.

<2:54 PM Weds May 10>
NYC, and whoever you are…

“writing is a minefield of life happenings…blessed be the seers
for they keep the faith.”
patty m

<!>
life is a series of provocations and evocations,
I will indulge you and define them
as hundreds of micro aggressions,
or a combinatory,
minefield

which comes first,
the explosions or the writings?
chicken, egg, cart, horse,
surely your surly certain of the answer,
but I will not beg
but differ

the itch, the need, the urge, ignited
by the fuse of arrogance of a devastation of self esteem,
or the aches of breaks
of your severed body parts
are
uniquely yours,
requiring explication, repair by the surgery of your own
words shared.

searing unique pain,
makes you confident enough
steering you into becoming a seer.

“You who wish to conquer pain
You must learn what makes me kind
The crumbs of love that you offer me
They're the crumbs I've left behind
Your pain is no credential here
It's just the shadow, shadow of my wound”

“Avalanche” by Leonard Cohen


<>
You?

I know you mean me!
Me Me Me!
and my credentials are quite impeccable,
actually kind of swell!
I know pain, realized pain greater than imagined pain,
and my wound is no shadow,
but a 12” scar from open heart surgery,
when you ripped open my chest,
and stomped on it
just for good measure,
when you left the room I newly built,
to start my life over again…
with you.

nearly 20 years ago,
the chest pains were so real,
I went to see a doctor,
who stated with solemnity:

there is nothing I can do to heal you.
but consider
writing poetry.






<Fri Apr 20, 1:35pm>

“Wound Shadow: Your pain is no credential here”



“You who wish to conquer pain
You must learn what makes me kind
The crumbs of love that you offer me
They're the crumbs I've left behind
Your pain is no credential here
It's just the shadow, shadow of my wound”

“Avalanche” by Leonard Cohen




<Fri Apr 20, 1:35pm>

part of the job…

tending the garden of friendships…
mine is small and select, never been
a great gardener of human beings,
satisfied with tulips, peonies and lilacs,
a little isolationist, a little lazy, and
a little particular, looking for them
gems worthy of life-long savoring

for I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
internal infernal

but

not so inward pointed that
I freely cherish the simplest smile, the gentle poking
in my side, a version of mmm loving you, better yet,
a kindly finger stroking a smooth cheek daily,
a little dilly dally
reminding
you need another
to complete the whole
job

Family biz takes us on the Acela train to Washington, D.C.,
a many-hour tour of the Monuments upon the Mall inclus,
never on a prior agenda, despite semi-frequent visitations,
but this time, rose early, in the cool morning, to touch and be touched

She asks if we have time enough for the Vietnam War Memorial,
time enough plentiful, no inkling her purpose was manifold, nay,
woman-fold, relating a story of a first teen boyfriend, they vowed,
to never lose touch, tho they became geographically distanced

On New Year’s day, a promise to each other, to speak on the phone,
they do honor this commitment, he will call, for in your early years,
solemn promises, honor, memories potentialities, galvanize bonds;
first love’s easy camaraderie birth tender promises, kept well-tended!

Till one year, no call comes, and desire, necessitates her to be
the protagonist, only to learn that Gerald, drafted in ‘68,
did not return, his parents inform her, the story told wistfully,
a Ranger locates his name, her reflection strains to reach his letters

Only I see her eyes filling and brimming, the shoulders ever
so slightly sagging and know this moment needs memorializing,
for we shed tears so rarely, that this youthful relationship, now more than threescore extant is why we built this black granite wall

Visit the Jefferson, MLK, Washington’s obelisk, and of course
the author of “of the people, by the people, for the people,”
a humble visage, humanizes his grandiose, white robed presence,
assessing his potential measure of life assassin-shortened, we exclaim

”if only, what might have been!”

but no tears are shed, but for a name of a young man,
taken before his prime, who enabled a girl to taste deep own-self, at an age we barely ken the words revealing our true emotive, or understand the color palette of serious, meanings of how we tick…

she’s easy overcome, I wonder, was she inside feeling, exclaiming,
”if only, what might have been,”
but no words emitted, only tears, that a tissue so softly takes away,
I think who among us, yet sheds sad tears for the days of our youth?

this poem in fufillment of my obligations, witness, memorializer,
arm to be leaned on, carrier of Kleenex, compatriot tear-shedder,
empathetic, sympathetic and recording secretary
that our past, is never truly past,

it is just waiting for a reflection,
resurfacing one more time
on a high polished black
granite slab

<postscript>

black granite mirrors sandblasted refresh cut scars into our consciousness and for some, our conscience, as one who
rarely thinks of and forgets to reflect on the life lottery he won,
back in 1968, so he was not called to serve, exclaiming

”if only, what might have been!”

<>

the thought is oft on my mind that all the poets here, I hold so dear,
that if we ne’er to meet in flesh & warmth of physical embrace,
that the nuances of our affections should be in someway marked by a lessening, a discoloration, be it be know then that our colors mutuel
will yet be be enhanced by

the colors of divine light,

this real light,
but invisible to the human naked eye’s limited spectrum,
this light fills the “unnamed, unmanned spaces between us;”

although we may not knowingly vision each other,  
we may envision-know the
sensate glow from the warmth of each other’s blood coursing
blue in vein and artery,  
with the aid of divine light,
trace each others faces with colorizing,
memorizing fingertips,
creating a seared retained memory;

the hues of theses impossible colored, rays that cannot be
optically ascertained, yet, we can understand them, in the same manner we mortals understand the divine presence,
invisible but ever present
in ways more real than, well, as real as any other mundane way

tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar

not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute

a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just  numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected

naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?

here is the hard part.

your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am

gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:

I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…

yes, in full possessive of all the typical, ****** wearing-out diminishments and diminutions

so no surprises, that I’m squinting to see my own personal
street signs two blocks ahead, in case a dreaded left turn be
required

I hear eventually what your thinking, by the second, third rep, I am fully informed of your opinion and am left wondering why people blather rather than win some, with  
a winsome smile

but it  catches me unaware that my voice, (its tones, notions,and colorations) is softer, though not purposed or so intentioned,this is puzzling, so wrestle for the whys, as is my wont, for explicating my existence be my full time employment and time is  overly plentiful and it’s steady evaporation is not the diet I am needing or even
embracing

perhaps, (always a multi-perhaps), mine aging grants an edge-softening, the brain regulates away the shouting urgency of what seemed important, demandy &needy for immediate attention, has a natural implant subtly started subtracting and governs my always was voluble but less-than-valuable insistence to be heard above the raucous din of the world~is~ending~
scarecrows

perhaps, it is something simple physic, but I deny that
escapism excuse, for yet, my bellyful laughter still loudest I know especially, at the ironical, comical of my mirror image rightly making fun of my vanity and even yet today, on a busy city street my senior YO! still summons taxis  to appear from
blocks away

perhaps, he flatters himself, his soon to be required stick will be so big, the need to speak softly intuitively concomitant, but that’s a lie as  he has no stick as of yet, ‘cept for the one he himself, he hisself, penetrated & perpetrated up his own ****

perhaps, just the intuitive or learned wisdom to think slower, talk lower, excise the waste of haste that plagues  the modern life, all that quiet, buttery yet uncool logic persuasion triumphs over the no-reasoned- shouting-pretense to be everybody’s exercised right
to be stupid

so many possible perhaps that this  listing is making me too, 
list to one side; perhaps, the list is so lengthy it requires a conservation of energy, and sotto voce approach to the so-much-of-everything
yet unanswered,

but perhaps,
I  just have less to say and
it comes out of me,
softer and wiser…ha!

perhaps, time has worn me down into a…
**a modulated man

~for J Donovan Carrasco & Mike Marshall,
two far superior story tellers~

<>

now that I am in my seventh or eight decade,
(not particularly sure when you start counting)
memories bust out like the way flashbulbs POP on olden cameras,
a briefly hellish bright,, illuminating, yet annoying as all get up.

this peculiar flash came to me this morning, don’t know why,
deemed worthy of writing down for no particular reason.

when I was a child in one of those indistinguishable early grades,
my teacher informed my father at an annual parent teacher partee,
that I was “not particularly smart,” which angered him greatly,
for reasons he couldn’t then particularly express clearly, if at all.

He went home undecided whom he had to hide (1),
the teacher or me.

unsure, he was, which was the smarter course of action
(for my mother had passed and he without a consultant),
but informed me, who promptly hid (as in escaped)
in the only place suitable in our tiny house, behind the couch,
that was my mother’s pride an joy.

more tired than angry, he reflected while sitting on said couch
behind which I found refuge from all troubles,
while listening to my breathing/sniffling/panting,
he decided that
perhaps
the teacher was kerrect, and furthermore, I too,
was not to blame,
(told to me years later by his serious drinking bar buddies)

“given the stock he came from, it was less my fault,
and more his.”




3/23/23
nyc


(1j hide as give a hiding, a countable noun, if you give someone a hiding, you punish them by hitting them many times).

so many women~poets have I loved

my occupation undisguised,
my intentions opaque~opposite,
my profession, lover

they,
most know, some suspect, a few clueless,
despite clear sky mountains of hints,
fastest currents of verbal affection

you scoff, think me old~poet~foolish,
know my loving has taken me to
every continent,
subway & metro, English gardens, Canadian planted fields,
my offers of shoulders, gentlest hands,
accepted and kindly re~fused, but still,
yet loved

grasping their words, parsing their phrases,
uncovering their remorse and spiced joys,
their gains, and losses, shared conjoined
the curl of a hair lock, the shape of the eye…

entrapment by poems of enticing whimsy delicious,
for it is in the well of their poems that my love,
born, thrived, drowned and died

something in the way they wrote, delicacies
plucked and ****** me in, the insight inside scraps
of life glories and sadness proffered,
that I loved,
broke me

oh fool, oh fool, how dare you cross the Styx
river~boundary of common sense, allowing hope to infect,
phantasies and poems inspired, conspired, died?

so
much more to tell, but nothing herein to be consummated,
I loved them with a purposed seriousness of imagination,
and only write this today after years of adventures,
because I no more…possess the powerful skills of
imagining loving

tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar

not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute

a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just  numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected

naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?

here is the hard part.

your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am

gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:

I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…

Fri Feb 10
8:12 AM


“As artists, we are exposed to a heavy level of scrutiny, mostly from ourselves,” adds Villarini-Velez. “At times we might be insecure when a choreographer asks us to do something that takes us away from our usual, classical vocabulary. I felt like some of my peers who aren’t exposed to this movement would feel insecure at times, but nonetheless, rise up to the challenge of exploring new levels of artistry. It’s easy to rely on our usual bag of tricks, but I enjoy the risks of detaching from what looks good and moving in a way that feels good. It’s our responsibility to rise to these challenges and expand our artistic horizons.”(1)

<>

guilty. as charged.
so, incorporating new words,
differing styles.
do what does not come naturally.

“detach from what looks good,
moving in a way that feels good”

make radicalization your ethos
make new-for-you your eponym.
give your name to what you create,
a mere signature insufficient, it is not part of the work!

taste the wet words upon tongue and lips,
let the saliva linkage be to the following morseling phrase,
the mouth sac moist be where verbal embryos are birthed.

hear them spoke in your voice, but,
silently, in your mind, and yet, speak-say them inside
with the shocking thunderous force of a newborn’s first cry.

and when you read them assembled,
weep with pleasure, relieved, this, your child,
looks exactly like no one, with but trace elemental traits of you.

but it is all yours, sinew and cell, fiber and skin,
drawn unformed, ejected from the intramural hollows of the body,
then and only then, mark them at last as truly

*mine..

Compare and Contrast (the foliage of the heart)



<>

My work is loving the world.
 Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - 
equal seekers of sweetness.
 Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
 Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
 Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
 keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
 The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
 Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
 a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
 to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
 telling them all, over and over,
how it is
 that we live forever.

This is the first poem in Mary Oliver's collection Thirst, titled,
“The Messenger."

<>

Ruler of the Universe, grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass among all growing things - and there may I be alone, and enter into prayer, to talk with the One to whom I belong.

May I express there everything in my heart, and may all the foliage of the field - all grasses, trees, and plants - awake at my coming, to send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the life and spirit of all growing things, which are made as one by their transcendent Source. May I then pour out the words of my heart before Your presence like water, O L-rd, and lift up my hands to You in worship, on my behalf, and that of my children!

-Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav

<>

too early on a Sunday morning for a trick or treat question,
still bed-bound @ Nine AM, browsing the internet state of the world,
it’s pre-my-walk on First Ave., in my Manhattan
concrete habitat pasture, where it’s gray and grayer
reveals of raggedy grass, certainly no sheep, and the only flowers
arrayed will be those with price tags fronting the bodegas
that are busy preparing breakfast for thousands of New Yorkers

trick question?

indeed! there is NO contrast, save the compare the kinetic similitude
of three kinfolk prayers, amidst frightfully unchanging headlines of
the dreary state of the world - weather report prototypical,
war, death & destruction, whiny celebrities and sports “heroes,”
editorials preaching, a vast quietude of no one’s mind changed,

but, always the but…

my work is loving the world, the grimy solitary blades of grass, true survivors, hosted & sprouting in dirt cracks miraculously,
letting the foliage of my heart blossoming in early morn warmth within my body’s extremities, clothed coverings of wintery wool,
confess my facts (“no longer young and still not half perfect?”),
filling the styrofoam cups of begging, wretched yearning refuse,
planting sprigs of mint green dollars in blanched froze hands,
wondering to myself, which one is the masked messiah?

these are the growing things in my fields, 70 years familiar,
the fruits and flowers of my life, are street crated>corners,
a panoply of vest corner garden-parks,
and the people!
people of every color and shade, what variety hath man wrought?

my eyes lack
not for anything, plenty the stimuli joyous within the astonishing spirit and life of all things blooming in hostile soil and you
may yet see the mark of
Abel joy upon my forehead, in my eyes, and see lips whispering this prayer~poem while being birthed, but in a word, a single word,
a pouring, best summarizing of a rebbe’s blessing
shouting out, anointing, appointing:

~Hallelujah~


Sun Feb 19 2023 9:15 AM
NYC

sent to me, I send it onto you…
but without permission
yet cloaked in good intentions
and with tender,
put
<>
*all writ by patty m

yet magical still are queries,
the stimulation of maddening messages
zinging around the brain,
inane, maybe so,
although,
who knows what they might show?

Bizzare indeed this need to bleed
words,
Absurd?

Yet reckoning defines a day
when messaging will be titled PREY
as we're besieged by egregious things
a string of freedoms lost
and at what cost?

Write now my friend with endless scowl,
don't get mad or throw in the towel.
Scourge down deep to find the spark that
opens up our tender hearts
then like the grinch whose heart grew and grew
Your messaging will find a few,
and then some more
until we're all caroling outside your door.*

<>

“the voices in your head that stir up mayhem and scream at poets without a vision. Procrastination, overwhelming circumstance. They scream as we sleep, lines and lines of spineless crimes, that want to be written in endless rhymes. No mas, no more, I've beaten them down they're smashed on the floor. Yet who will redeem and let sunbeams beam on fate.
Poets sometimes finish what they start, and now it's clear,
we will find a fresh start in the coming new year”

“Poetry seems to perform hypnosis, the found rhymes and assonance and anaphora enacting an enchantment, a bewitchery; it seems to be giving subconscious advice. Get ready! You must change your life.”

Elisa Gabbert is the author of five collections of poetry, essays and criticism, most recently “The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays.”

~~~

Tue Jan 2024, 2023 8:33am

<>

Or it may not,
but know, core know, say it out loud,
write down by hand in pen,
this poetry thing
is addicting
and dangerous

Sadly,
I am an addict,
Not a recovering one,
for the infection
has no cure,
no vaccine,
and amputation
does not help

Sometimes, for a time,
it goes deep,
it is living while you believing,
and disbelieving
sometimes, for a time,
it got bored and travelled on

Not how it works

almost every sub surfaces,
the innocuous are not innocent,
a quick retort, an unfocused hazed memory
trips you up
and down on the sidewalk
a familiplace,
you return/go

and back on Boogie Street,
no need to find a dealer,
they find you
and the new curse word of modern times,
“use your words!”
fates but does not sate,
and you think to yourself,
the quieter time was fine,
but this pleasuring release,
the bewilderment
the urging and the purging
of poem after poem after poem
is the hell you love.

Her hands lay gently joined,
her breathing breaching the fortress of a bedroom’s silence

clasped as one, in the very early morn,
her fingers move in motion, wavering, *******
recalling a violin instrument, an unseen youthful memory,
her internality rumbles with a quiet litany,
an indecipherable host of jumbled mumbles,
a cacophony accompaniment to her quietude of steady breathing

I,
study her, as I have done so many mornings prior,
once more, capriciously slipping back inside/beside our bed,
to restart My Sunday morning quiet-like, for as is my wont,
have awoken with the morning dark, treading room to room,
filling my Winslow Homer’s Macintosh mug, with 19.7 fluid oz. of Jamaican beans freshly ground, an instigating odor, a fragrancy
most contradictory, soothing, nonetheless, a steadying, yet a
blaring wake-up call

She, clad my in-her new festive plaid pajama top,
a creamy fabric that begs for my I-dare-not stroke,
is easy prone and that,
pleases me, for I wish to bed beside her, letting her rest
till her mind texts her body, no more! or the mumbles grow
grow nagging onerous and stirring and when her disposition is
well-disposed,  she stirs too,
after her fashion

with a dancer’s grace, her arm slowly rises, resting airborne,
fingers arrayed, splayed and Balanchine arranged, (1)
pointing upwards,
lingering until
the arm falls impromptu, sudden,
as a crescendo striking an apex,
her risen hip-mound,
imitating a bell’s clapper woke reverb,
and she sleeps no more…

<>

Sun Jan 15 2022
in the wee daylight  hours

“catharsis, the purification or purgation of the emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art. In criticism.  It is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator.”

<>

composed many, months & many, many years ago, and hazily recalled, written in a moment of purification and purgation, petrified by aging and it’s companion, self-pity from fear of approaching death, sought purity by its very composition, when someone just recently poked my eyes with the word c a t h a r s i s, and this old poem resurfaced…no, no, it’s not my birthday anymore…

<>

yesterday was my birthday.
you need two hands, two feet,
a multiplication table
to count my years,
each finger, worth a decade.
each toe, perhaps, a century.

birthdays.

a point of inflection,
a point of opportunity,
a present presents itself,
to rewrite history.

a second coat of paint,
gift-wrapped in weak excuses.
of how I lied, of how I ain't,
grimm-fated fairy tales
somebody created.

invisible suits of gold-cloth
worn to my party of
past rewritten and
future foretold.

one single thought,
a memory,
seizes my heart,
as I fall to my knees.
cracks my temperate ease,
renders open the
woof and weave
of recycled deceptions,
causing all to be revealed
and asking myself

what if the poetry ceases?

you know prostrate?
you have tasted grief?

have you not but
a singular pain,
one act,
one deed,
one memorization,
act of cowardice,
act of desertion,
mistake maden, taken,
for which
forgiveness
can never
be given,
be faked,
attained?

do, does, did.
did; does; do.

let me then this day,
win the birthday lottery,
let floods of relief from
daily chores drown me,
chauffeurs to drive,
masseurs to massage,
cooks to cook,
les délicieuses friandises to sweeten life,
please keep theologians, logicians,
philosophers on retainer,
even historians, those future fortune tellers,
if needed, for explanations -
or just satisfactory rationalizations.

none know,
or can provide,
still and yet,
a year round
priestly sacred chord,
to grant relief,
absolution,
songs of hallelujah,
erasers of the ache of
perpetuity worry.

those ancient pains,
grow fresh daily,
the loss of one element
of my body,
prevents my primal knot
unreasonably to be untied,
everything should be permitted
on my birthday, no?

this day, these days
breathe through words,
molecules of vowels,
stem cells of consonants,
the fabric, the tissues of life,
veins are a dictionary
of corpuscles,
red blood cells are
mounds and nouns of nutrients.

this day, these days,
the infection of my soul
is tempered, kept at bay,
tamped down from the
full flowering
of white blood cells
of rhyme, verse,
and asking myself

what if the poetry ceases?

though the bones creak,
snap, crackle and pop,
the body they carry,
resurrected this day in white
for morning, afternoon
and evening prayers,
and the last one special,
spoken standing.

thrice daily poetry I recite,
roses red, violets blue,
my marrow transfused.

though my prayers likely refused,
the poetry act immolates
the fringes of my disease,
for which the common cure
is not currently invented....
so I ask myself

what if the poetry ceases?

be assured, I am told
scientists hard at work,
on the forgive n' forget drug.

meantime,
take a bubble bath in
rosemary and mint,
trap and tap some words,
into your cell phone bone,
the poetry heat, scented waters,
provide aspirin relief.

through this poem,
on one day annual,
I am relieved, relived,
the muses, the Devils
all herein, feted, and sated

gone for few moments
concerns, worries of
exposure today,
the agnostic's foxhole of hell
is dis-remembered,
the gloss returns,
the faux dispatched,

ain't birthdays grand?

yet, I cannot help but ask

what if the poetry ceases?

what rhymes with
Sorrow?

mmmmm.

could it be
Morrow?

bath drains,
rosemary and mint odors dismissed,
the Argentine disparu,
the Spanish Medievalists,
the Neo-Raphaelites,
all dispatched,
didn't they have birthdays too?
didn't you know
the Renaissance has come
and gone,
but nobody tole ya?

t'is the day
my sweet city recorded my
naissance in the
Hospital of the Flowers
on the fifth Avenue.

the 'crats put the datum
in the bureau with the
night creams and
the statistics
as follows:

on this day + a few,
six or seven or decades ago,
perhaps even fourscore,
a few centuries,
a question was born,
and an ache that is
sometimes relieved,
by a poem~song.

though do not celebrate,
t'is a day to calibrate,
review, edit, tinker,
rewrite, often a stinker.

always one thought recycles:

what if the poetry ceases, how will I breathe*?