~~~


every word I write is a tribute


now listen here,
let's clarify the inescapable,
what this tribute thing means,
cause what I'm doing here,
ain't exactly clear

everything we write,
is only a watery-encapsulated
reflection of our lives,
which of necessity,
will always be messy

what the heck does
this guy mean.
when enlisting
this shady word,
tribute?

at 3:10 in the AM,
tribute is dressed in its
more defy-nition sinister,
a bad news speaking cultural minister,
who never fails us
by reminding,
tribute originated
as the nasty kind:

"any exacted or enforced payment or contribution"

every **** word
that I've written
is a **** tribute,
an exacted, enforced, wrung from,
payment
of a pound of flesh,
Shylock's variety pack kind

I'm not bitter,
a touch angry, perhaps,
even brave, ok, unafraid,
to admit, overall,
got it pretty ok

but that I still struggle
to get that satisfaction,
in everything minute and daily,
the tiny and the tremendous,
the cost production load only goes
unicycle upward sloping,
this crisis crazy we call being
alive,
and to you,
who keys and ken
my meaning well

herein is my good kind side
my paying
tribute
to you, your courage,
even me, periodically,
for awakening and walking
into the unknown outside,
and giving it up
in our travelogue of
shared poetry

5:48am
Jan. 21, 2016
NYC (aboard the stationary bike,
paying tribute for forty years of sinning)

Crazy Guy Sends His Poems to a Dead Guy

~for Joel Frye,and yes it’s true~


ah another trivial pursuit of trivial nuggets
bout yours untruly, that is a truly truly,
poets that
I’ve known here, but who have moved on,
it’s my obligation to keep them posted on the
au courant,

so slip them a poem or two,
when you ain’t looking to

make one wonder even more,
what makes a man a nutty Natty.?

well if you don’t know the answer to that after
two t h o u s a n d plus poems, you are not getting me

but Joel Frye,
mutual enjoyed our scribblings,
yeah, he got me,
so via social media,
keep him posted of my latest écrits,
fancy french for scribbles,

of course he gets them
before me,
in so far I assume
my thots are known to rise
or more likely drop,
even before
they traverse that narrow passage between my ears…
but really, just in case,
in the peace and quiet
of the hubbub above, with all them comings and goings,
he, God forbid, (ha!), he may overlook my inane insanities,
and the weirdness
of my compositions,
real, ethereal and in between~al,

that’s a great whew~relief knowing,
at least
some one!
is reading my stuff…

natty

<~>
Pradip Chattopadhyay:
“I think of death now, but more than that, the life I left behind.”

this is like gray hair,
one day, just there,
lower back pain, joins the train,
this retrospection inspection,
seasonal,
neither spring summer or winter,
just a unique fall,
like gray hair,
appearing slowly,
surprisingly unsurprising.

there is no wisdom herein,
just timed capsule release
decay.
the weaker the eyesight becomes,
the squinting routine,
we see every moment,
through a rearguard retreat.


did we win, or just
stalemate?
we cannot accept
the sense of lost,
so squint harder,
for looking ahead
is refused
for that is a neutral state,
facing backwards
is the only warranted
directive,
that you must, must
take to make hard
judgement.

~~~
for Lucy: who gave me the title, three poems, a compliment, and the X Factor {inspiration} then disappeared
~~~
the spume,
the sea foam concentrate, a greener white,
from the the salt and the souls of million dead organisms,
the natural compost of its formation

it, watches the poet, who watches it,
the spume,
come ashore for its final act of
immolation by evaporation

which is why the random act of
an unseen ministering force,
fills my ears with humbling glory of

Samuel Barber's
Agnus Dei,^
my fresh reminder that this
fooling, swelling chest
in this temporary abode of mine human shape,
by the sea,
its passage and welling swelling,
is prepaid for too
expiration by evaporation

as all the white wooly lambs march to the sea,
transmigrating,
returning to spume

~~~
Lyrics to Agnus Dei

^ Alleluia Alleluia
For our Lord God Almighty reigns
Alleluia Alleluia
For our Load God Almighty reigns
Alleluia
Holy Holy
Are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
You are Holy
Holy
Are You Lord God Almighty
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb
Amen

awas amidst
the bits and bobs of my pseudo-sleep,
check my watch oft and habitually,

understand
that the actual time is not what I seek,
no, what I desire is reassurance of
some sort,
that time is present,
that it is yet measured,
in my about, breathable,
that time is there,
for it is the wonderous of wonder,
it’s a
present of and is love itself,

love is time…
(think on it)

it is all possibility,
the future in
slow motion is both
realizable & visible even
as we daily practice realizing it,
as if
time is
snuggling us

as a glove,
asking us each,
place your hand inside,
and waving yours
airy about
into your
new existence,
that we dare not waste,

so
write and right
are no accident, but
equals, friends,
brothers and sisters,
one is both

all about
how your stock of words,
the inventory of what you got,
aged and now marked down on the books,
carried over from the holiday season,
that you, in marriage to life, accumulated,
to whom you have become betrothed

your trade, no can give 'em up,
gotta to maintain their
existence
no matter how bewildering,
gotta to demonstrate
persistence
by taking last year's unsold,
repaint, recombinate, dress 'em up,
post them as all new,
even tho the words used,
pre-existed you,
still noisily proclaimed,
still advertising
each Johnny-come-lately
poem as
**"brand new"

the waters of the Sound, churning,
make my hands a five-in-hand knotted,
full of writhing wriggling writing poem
lines with an go<hesitant~go  slow, knowing that,inspiration is daring me, just as the  whitecaps are, troubled trolling so nearby,
gone can hear them mocking me with their
17knot  ‘breeze,’ your lyrics are but
blowing in the wind, soon enough will
shift to someone else, leavening your
deflation with a non~riser sour-dough mix
of unfinished sadness

in advance, knowings that every poem
more like a Monarch butterfly, here but
for a momentary traversal travesty,
gone faster than the eye blink, and this
infilling fleeing fleet urgency more
likely to die on the pyre of unfinished
rejected draftees, unselected for service

nonetheless ~ “follow” lyrics refuse me
to let~leave a poor tribute to vine~die, the
fingers speak in unison, urging me on,
not wanting to escape from this fantasizing
moment, urging me to tap tap tap
evermore!

“ Come taste and smell the waters of our time,”
Richie invites us all to find our own water,
let it work its magic upon our
nerve endings, but,
mine full of sendings, how?

can one sit seated in the Poet’s Nook,
same vista, no visa required ~
just to see it each time
differently, only the truly creative can love it
so much, that they tip into unexplored unexploited
veins of fresh blood and words
and eyes that discern and earn the ability
to write of the old with new inside insights

those! they are the ones you need to follow!
creators! with a small C, see them feel, see them divine with rod, their original water,
from which they emerged, and drink once more, for the water follows them like nutrients, raw materials that nourishes
and they in turn, return to their watery
birth site, their emotional placentae,
drawing from, returning to it new creations

for all of us to follow, fire our senses,
make us!
make art in all our hearts,
and don’t mind me, just

”close your eyes, child, and look at what I'll show you;
Let your mind go reeling out and let the breezes blow you,
And maybe when we meet then suddenly I will know you.
If all the things you see ain't
Quite what they seem,
Then don't mind me 'cos I ain't nothin' but a dream .
‘cos”

We
ain’t nothing but a dream,
our disguised muses visiting,
pleading to be
usefully used…

maybe '14 wasn't so great,
maybe indeed,
it was just
******* awful,
a year out of sequence,
come fifty, seventy years too soon.

here I am
alone at home,
laying about,
and A riddler wishes
me a marvelous holiday,
a merry Christmas,
interrupting my umpty umpth
viewing of Ralph's seasonal quest
for a Red Ryder BB gun

another poem, gestating,
suddenly borning,
kicking my guts
get out here and now,
nine months, of nine minutes are up

another story,
needy for retelling,
another riddle to unravel,
another itch, this day is now stuck on
a poetry assignment, way way too big,
high school football and a good novel,
put far aside and from a
watery weeping state,
here he goes...

ain't no hiding this day,
ain't exactly mine,
a nice Jewish boy,
from the skyscraper city,
brine bred on family lore,
that starts with an escape journey
from the Spanish Inquisitors
some five hundred some years ago  

clueless where to take this travail,
absent answers, questions unanswered,
why do I do this to myself,
looking once again
at the places where pain
comes from,
knowing that my human answers
just a salve of paper thin digital words

how to crossover,
from distressed days
to peace on earth,
when  I ain't got
no talking relationship
with Jesus on an
average bad day,
let alone his manger birthday

this year was not my best neither,
double negatives purposeful employed,
but my bad ain't even close,
to answering riddles and questions
taken as my very own,
making a bad year
that much worse

head butting,
no answers coming,
when my own spirit in the sky,
does it again,
via Pandora,
plays another
nice Jewish boy's answer
to my dilemma,
as if my mind read,
Norman Greenbaum sings his answer
from way back in
1969

well my prayer
sorta exactly answered,
whom am I to disbelieve,
here's another tribe member wrestling
with the exact same interrogatory,
invoking Jesus's intervention
one that sold millions of copies,
to ever question the
unfathomable wisdom of
the spirit in the sky

but my work made even easier,
the question riddler
clues me in
with her answer simple,
and unafraid:

"celebrate the present
and
remember the missing
then celebrate both together"

there is no divide here,
no north, no south,
call your spirit by whatever name,
and
where your story begins,
how it ends,
it's your own poem~composition,
mostly writ,
but not all,
by you,
that cannot be forgot,
for all humans are poems,
past and present
are forever

when at a loss
for the salve of digital words,
well remember Abraham told his only son
some plain words:

"the spirit in the sky,
will provide"

celebrate our portion,
larger or smaller
for are we not family,
one family,
one portion

Riddle solved

-----------------------------------------------
Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky Lyrics |1969

"When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky

Goin' up to the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
Prepare yourself, you know it's a must

Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He's gonna recommend you to the spirit in the sky

Gonna recommend you to the spirit in the sky
That's where you're gonna go when you die
When you die and they lay you to rest
You're gonna go to the place that's the best

Never been a sinner, I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He's gonna set me up with the spirit in the sky

Oh, set me up with the spirit in the sky
That's where I'm gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
I'm gonna go to the place that's the best
Go to the place that's the best"

Went to the doc.
Told me I was on my way to
Dying
Way faster than I should be.

Laughed.
Doc, you been telling me that for
Five years
And my poetry is only getting better.

He says,
Ya think?

Look at you,
You live in a watery place,
Talking to god about sports,
Ripping off O.Henry,
Solving equations
On the direction of the
Bubbles you blow into the skies,
Recording your innermost
In public bathrooms,
Ever ask yourself,
Is that normal?

Laughed.
Every now and then,
I take them pills
You gave me.
They come in orange cylinders,
30 at a clip,
Supplied my druggist dealer.
I figure for every pill,
Another day, another poem.

But I won't stick myself no more.
Got enough people- things
Sticking me daily.
Why should I help themselves along?

You right, doc snorted.
You've lived this long,
What ya got to show for it?
Then why do you come
Bothering me,
Annoying me.
You think I like
Spending 90 minutes
With you?
You think I spend
90 minutes of mine
On every poet
That comes thru
My swinging doors?

Well I like how, doc,
You write down everything
I tell you, so when the archaeologists
And the alchemists
Come a-digging,
Looking for the facts of figures,
In your files,
They will find the gritty story
Of a New Yorker,
Who saw poems in sidewalk cracks,
Street signs, young hearts and smiles,
Even you white starch coat,
Your stern disapproving face,
gets utilized, but got stop someday,
Wouldn't be fair
If I used up more than my
Fare-thee-well share
Of words.

The doc,
He didn't laugh,
Nah, don't buy it,
Gotta be a reason
Better than that
Why you keep on
Bothering me,
Ignoring me,
Hastening your mortality?

Doc, done my time,
Sentence served,
Now I'm just coasting,
Waiting for the day,
When I get summoned.

Looking for a new view,
Looking down on the young ones,
Staring down, at them struggling,
For the exact right word,
To place just so on their computer
Screens/screams,
I can be the rustling noise
In their ear,
They call inspiration.

That will be Part II,
That is what I will do,
When your forecasts
Come true.
So what me worry,
I got jobs done and to do,
And I can do 'em well
Just about anywhere,
But I visit you, cause you,
Are a righteous one,
Cause you care.

And I will be watching you too.





5:38am

For Chalsey Wilder

Realizing that 'tis near five months,
that our ions, our verbal lips
have not crossed or caressed,
our words electric,
have not charged us
with current direct,
pleasured is my mind
intensely, devoutly,
to see your message
this Friday Sabbath eve

the weekly work toil,
now foiled
fair full my physical liberty,
from the tiresome and woeful.
your floral bequest,
presented as a request,
it's scent wishful and sad,
so hard to understand,
for your are a flower,
that makes this answering poem
grander

now and here, I fulfill,
this charted task,
with a poem answer crafted
by you, from me,
and entirely for you

your request, 'tis my obligation -
that is freedom

realizing that something in life,
you, being that something,
you, are that petal,
that the poetry breezes
accidentally sent to me,
by rambling, random chance

you posses and grant unto me
a freedom to love and lionize
a petal'd poetess and
heroic lioness

wish not in vain for a careless life,
care much, care hard, care so much,
as you do,
for in every poem you pen,
you betray yourself and prove
your sense and sensibilities,
the quality of caring,
the quality of human essential

well I know,
the illusion of blowing dandelions,
being envious of their
seemingly ***** nilly ways

well I know,
this experienced old
and extra foolish fool,
that the cares superficial
of a troubled existence,
woes of an uncaring world,
lay heavy and rare is a
hoped for easy discard
ever realized,
and for one
so young as you,
'tis heaviest burden of all

but look at the freedom here!

you gift me inspiration,
is that not power,
is that not freedom?

you gift me a willing to caring,
direction and harmony,
you scent me flowers,
you send me a poem,
each petal a part of a whole
astoundingly beautiful,
you, flower,
you, poetess,
you,
astoundingly beautiful

you ask me what do I think of your poem?

I think a flower
is astoundingly beautiful
never will I tear a petal from it,
and the let the imagined wind,
the image of free fall flight
tear it from me

never!
I love my flowers,
frolicking free,
breezed and caressed,
the freedom of caring
they grant,
is so easy,
yet so hard,
but I love it so,
as much as I love your poem

read this knowing,
this is your moment


------------------
Realizing something in life*

by Chalsey Wilder

Letting go of a flower petal
And the wind picking it up
for a ride to the unknown
Feeling something in your heart
as you realize a flower petal
has so much more freedom
than you do
It can be who it is
without a care while you can't
and flowers are loved for it
while you aren't

You stand there
wishing for a second,
for a mere second you wish
you were that flower petal
then you look down
then around
and walk away,
maybe still wishing
you
were that flower petal
or maybe having it
change you forever
Have you ever had a moment like this?
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/790345/realizing-something-in-life/

Acts of Kindness

<>

let this be
my first rule,
and my last,
in ~ deed,
my only

begin, end,
and populate
my daily life
with the courtesy
of sharing my
abundance
with you

July 4th
2023
7:53AM

Flight #177 / Seat #7C - where I'm bound/I have been released

the final part of the trilogy,
re broken lives,
some finalized,
some revitalized,
some, their score,
incomplete

~~~


on the road again,
crossing the continent,
from sea to shining sea,
from one set of Eastern grandkids,
off to see the wizardry
of the West Coast variety

six hours six minutes,
flying high time, weather's fine,
a voices inform us, that will be
our mutual time of peaceful co-existence,
on this particular traversée journey

I've done harder time,
30 years ++ with no parole,
except for poetic verse,
them words,
I learned to parlez-vous parlay

never been afeared of flying high,
even amidst the wickedest black pitch,
tar and feathered thick, which is all the
ovaltine shaped window of the
exterior world, cares to reveal
at thirty thousand feet

the oxygen level in the cabin,
as it usually does,
says hey!
feeling heady boy,
so get good, so get ready,
write us a poem, a new shiny toy,
another of your airborne verbal medley

I've got little upon
to expound,
currently limbo'd
tween fresh, death-revived,
past memories of imprisonment and release,
by the jailers of L'Ancien Régime
and
the soon to feel,
happy anticipation of
Frisco fresh young lives re-greeting us,
long distance visitors with joyous screams,
loud, clear and that may cut
the muddied gloom internal,
like a pair of welcoming,
gleeful, liberating scissors

my windowed widowed refraction,
directs my carpaccio-thin guise
to pierce onwards a well trod state of
deeper reflection

noting that we will soon be flying over
water poisoned Flint,
in the state of Michigan,
just missing by an inching,
Paul Simon's sung request,
his "all come to Saginaw" dare

yet, I don't know where I am,
though the course trajectory
pilot-officially programmed and set,
ticketed firect  through to
San Francisco

nonetheless, my internal organs all feel lost,
misplaced and turned down around,
passing directly over cities heard of
and yet never seen or footed,
can I still claim to have been there?

same question differently couched,
providing this passenger's headache,
I was there, of this world,
for the almost forty years plus,
though I wasn't really present,
merely accounted for,
finally learning that "freedom"
is just another word

and though the Angel of Death,
scheduled, made a pre-flight pick up,
he left part of me behind
and on board,
to pick up after,
steward some of his and my
messes

the eyes, the brain, the whole noggin,
search for secret signs,
potent portents, turn indicators,
that this gloomy doom,  cloud thicket,
this too shall pass,
this last shared repast of shards,
this,
my so long now song
an au revoir to
"sad eyed lady of the lowlands"

noting that I am outbound and seated,
on a bunch of lucky sevens, flight and seat,
could be my luck is youthful changing?

where I'm bound
I can't tell,
I'll let you know when I get there
when I know, how I'll know,
I don't know, maybe some
extrusion of new words will speak,
at landing time, a different voice,
where and when I'm bound,
that will cry out

"now unbound,
at last,
at last,
I have been released"**

~~~
2/11~12/2016
started while over the Great Lakes, Michigan, and Wisconsin;
completed over Tahoe, Carson City, & Sacramento

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/

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

The only reason I write is because....
There are words, solitary and un-empowered., unemployed.
Single, yet, Singular.

I de-file them, dis-organize,  tabulate their DNA,
Recombinant, transgenderize, tenderize!

Clichés banned, need chunky pieces of  
Shock and saucy sounds that once said aloud,
Never stand still, reverberate, days after first
Spoke.

Words that spoke, spike, such that
Days from now you will come back to this poem,
Sheepish, because you
Spiked,
When these words, you
Spoke.

Thus impaled,
You mine mine veins, thrombosis temples pulse,
You will close contact with your ven,
Intersect memory and prophecy
And never write again the same way.

For having left the sanctuary of the familiar,
You will find the truest safety,
Is
None.

Answer the posed uniquely, then,
You memberize in the company of poets.
This oath believed and bespoke
Both burdened and enlightened,
You, tuned and turned,
Speak:

The only reason I write is...
Because



August 29th 2013

not  the prophylactic kind,
nor the rubber kiss road tire kind.

but the rubber of bodies
old and young,
tired and tense,
young and flexible
migrained, played & splayed,
pain paralyzed,
soothed by cherubic
fingertips
oiled with,
anointed by,
a-custom cream
of tenderizing aloe
and gentling, kind loving
quieting & shushing

tho mine own temples,
raging, feverish,
combobulating
as words spill as *******
and then

she
sleepy whines:
why did you stop rubbing me?

and for
a sleep deep,
she leaves
me,
going unanswered

but happily
nonetheless
boy be typing
**The End

meet me
where the broad teary rivers
both empty and fill the oceans,
takers and givers,
swapping sorrowful fluids constant,
these loyal thieves,
from the sky,
robbing a soul's invisible moisture,
selling what isn't hisn't
right back to the heavens

for this is the
human condition,
the foaming eddys where
life becomes words
becomes life redux,
infinitum swapping
sorrowful fluids*
~~~~~~
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1052415/a-personal-god-wailing-and-complaining