The seat, 15C,
it calls itself,
screams at me,
let me out!
can't breathe,
with you in it.

pretty sure
sir seat,
it ain't me
that got wider,
but that you
are slimmer.

your momma cut you
3/4 inch, on a metallic line,
on either side, each wrist,
read it in the Journal,
their motto, no fooling!

yup,
even at 10,000 feet,
the ****
cutting word
gotta put in a
guest appearance.

in the exit row
we swore an oath,
administered with
great solemnity to a
no-nonsense stewardess.

bowed we did,
to the AAlmighty,
in the event ,
we needed to operate
the emergency exit,
we would a good job.

**** right,
all cheerfully replied.
nat, women and children first,
which was perhaps
why my fingers
were crossed
under my iPad.

sweetly, they offered me
juice, soda or water,
hard crust of bread,
cost 6.99 if you could
squeeze your hand
in between
your **** and the seat,
your wallet to retrieve.
(credit cards only)

plenty turbulence on board,
the east coast weathering,
you may well have heard,
inclement weather
up and down its entirety.
at least,
I read that in Miami,
the rain is warmer.
(no charge for the
RRR, real rock n' roll)

because I am feeling
the holiday spirit,
signed up for the
up-in-the-air Internet,
the price paid,
I won't reveal,
lest you call me Midas.

somewhere over Tennessee,
I thought I would drop you
this note, pretending it was a
for-real, certified, sorta of a
poem, disguised as a
Genuine Thanksgiving Prayer.

in a way you will never understand,
that lovely thunderbolt lit up yellow,
just a click, a finger tip flick,
kind words in accompaniment,
make feel better about myself.

much do I have,
for it is given unto me,
to be thankful for.

you cannot be thankful for
having,
only for giving and receiving.

this is my first thanksgiving here,
and though jocular do I prose,
with earnest almighty I promise myself,
I will share my corn, feed you pieces
of me that I don't speak of to others.

my feast of words, more glorious,
because of your attentions,
the warmth of of your fires of
appreciation are recorded,
each in its own unique neuron,
cherished, cared for,
and as promised,

I will shake your hands,
then your body
and your soul,
as long as
I have breath,
an Internet connection,
eyes to weep
at mine own foibles,
fingers to record,
and something
worth sharing,

I am sending you a thunderbolt,
and a notification official,
that you have given me much
thanksgiving in the year
two thousand and thirteen.

thank you.

To sleep, my mind impounded,
My heartbeats, bass, lowly-sounded,
Each beat, a note upon mine ticking meter.

An unfamiliar feminine voice, not hers, poses,
Questioning noises, issued from a blackened figure.

This human-shaped metronome,
A singular inquisitor,
In rhythm, but not in rhyme,
Gravely announces repeatedly,
T'is your time, t'is your time,

Each pronouncement,
Spoken n'spiked distinctly:

"Your prose now ended,
last-gentled sweetly."

Wondering still, is it just sleep or truly death,
This forlorn eve, to go, to meet and greet,
Without having said my finale prayer.

Unprepared, thus with unaccustomed flair,
"Unfair" doth me protest, a newly-minted naysayer,
My book incomplete, black-brother frere!

If death indeed you be, my fellow cloaked-rider,
Then make me a one-last-time composer.

Let me whisper once more inside her,
A last poem of the greatest brevity,
But of the greatest import, laden heavy!

Good bye, my love, goodbye....

This closing writ, my finest ever...

>crumbled, rumbled, street survivors,
paper scraps that took the rage abuse rap,
dead love notes, bills red with overdues,
these pre-poems have traveled wind currents
some in from Jersey, some hailing Minnesota,
ain't never see one that crossed the Atlantic,
but reckon it is not a theoretical impossibilty

unpretty city streets, like a museum, collects 'em,
plenty of exhibition space, forlon, historically
orphaned, disbanded, whose paths all got confused,
some sweet, all beat, balled and thrown, no home,
no more, each a reveille, each humming taps, now,
all scented by strret odors, none pleasant, each was
in its prior life, the meat, the grist, the meal of what
was, coulda been, a poem that would have survived
yellowed in care, tender glanced, tucked in books,
safekept, but slipped away, victims of friction, fraction

look down, be unafraid, unravel them slow, careful,
abused, all these messengers all need a good home,
a box in a closet, a book of tenders, witnesses to what
they've seen, places they've been, hand held, tenderized
by words spiced, variegated, ink, pencil, typewritten, like
their prior human authors, all sizes, all shapes, some on
colored paper, a l l astrayed, accidental, purposed, details
and detritus, once deemed essemtial, important, necessary
and needed, even believed, but times change

you're stuck, brain ain't cooperating, tired of staring inside
your self's self, pull on a sweater, it's a chilly spring overcast air,
that don't natural warm, more naturally warn, be careful where,
you step, your next poem is laying right there, grab a few, take
more than a couple, this is like a school dance, try a few, until
you bank the right one in the till, the connection made, a kiss,
in secret stolen, and the drive, the forces, the perspiration urgency
leads to you desk, nook, granny's cranny, and the world of words
overflow like seagulls in a harbor, so many spilling, hard is the
choosing, but excited adrenaline, free basing, in your veins and
****, you gotta just write again, right now, add a ***** poem
back to its rightful place in a heart, upon eyes, tongue taste them
syllables, clap and laugh as they symmetrically form, subtle rhyming,
the sleeping seeds have sprouted, the brown brain loamy cells,
fertile and potent, energize, impregnate, and you just can't wait
to walk the streets, in search of many, many more

it's ok, you have permission to utter a whispery nearly silent
hallelujah<

Helen sends me scraps of poems for repair.  "Shreds of lettuce," she calls them. I fool around with them in my role as Poetry Doctor (see my banner photo). In her extended absence, I will post our convolutions. While the final product is mine, the vision, the imagery, the notion of the poem is all hers and therein lies the true authorship.



From Helen, Dec 2
Here is the last of the salad,
dressing not required...

savoir-faire [?sævw???f??

Upon a plate
of deliciousness
the lettuce
is usually
pushed to the side
to wilt
and be scrapped
into an
Industrial bin
were we all begin
as fodder for worms
turning garbage
into words
Nourishing
nothing
but our own pride



bon appétit
Helen
---------------

The Human Word Salad

Now it is dressed....*


all poems, no exception,
the bad, the exceptional,
all begin
in an
industrial bin.

wormwood,
wormword
the ancestors,
feast on the scraps,
garbage letters discarded,
the wilts of alpha lettuce,
the word waste of the
every day beta jabber,
plate pushed-aside decorations,
all but none, bystanders

and they

turn them into words,
though inedible, incapable,
of nourishing life individually,
yet their recycled deliciousness,
unquestioned.

when
each sole word,
re-birthed in the compost
of the delivery room of that bin,
meet in the maternity ward
of our minds
words wed,
poems form,
and all the true nourishment
the world needs
begins anew.

<6:30 AM.  Sun May 28 2023>

An internal clock stirs within,
a full fledged conscious conscience rings in,
like a silent alarm at a bank being robbed.

Various devices inform, each with a
different measurement cup/stick, that I,
have slept exactly seven hours which,
pleases, as I am queried,

How do you feel?

Fully refreshed!

my choice today,
most apropos,
for now awake, I begin to:

compose myself.

In the ordinary, is the where that
I have oft found poetry,
not to mention love and other good things,
walk the house, north to south, east to west,
under weakish, not really high in the sky,
sun rays break thru the tree cover and create
a checkerboard of light and dark patches
for children to play upon, if any were/where here.

All seemingly is well.
The rabbits beneath us,
are sleeping in,
because after all,
it is Sunday.

But I digress; composition implies order, form,
even malice aforethought, so as an artist,
knowing the world is yet extant,
and I, yet am in one piece(s),
make coffee for two,
humming an old tune of similar ilk,
re tea

But every human has some master,
and mine the machine!

Want coffee? Hah!
Empty the grounds!
Not enough.
Now, Refill the Tank!
What! More?
Fill the beans!

Suffice! Relent!
I am human, you machine, and I demand coffee.

At last, the impolite machine, that knows not ‘please’ nor
‘thank you,’ nary its native ‘your welcome’ in its native Swissie Deutsche (Keine Ursache!).  All very Swiss, and businesslike,
doth relent, making a very fine cup of coffee.

I shall not trouble you with various side trips,
that though common to all humankind, but
provoke two sister thoughts in quick succession.

A modified abbreviated prayer:

Dear Lord, Yo! You have brought me to
the beginning of a new day,. Thanks a lot!

I skip over this remainder part, my excuse?

Too many words!

(“As the world is renewed fresh and clean, so I ask You to renew my heart with Your strength and purpose. Forgive me the errors of yesterday and bless me to walk closer in Your way today.”)

The other thought, a reciprocal to my gratitude.

Why in hell do our bodies age, ache, snap & crackle, Buddy?
perhaps a revision of this policy is in order, Would it upset
some vast eternal plan if my body never tolled my years
in lines of degeneration, waves of visible and invisible erosion,
or at least make coffee a magical, healing restorative elixir?

Nope.  

The usual sneering silence of just be happy you’re alive
etc., etc., etc. and etc.

Don’t think I am asking for too much. just a little tinkering…

More to write, but I chastise myself with:

Too many words!

Leave off here, though my misadventures
and adventures too, yield up inspirational
hymns galore, and batches of familiar plaints,
that is my inalienable human right to express
to nobody else, in particular,

But you.

For in so many ways, we journey together
though our paths, locales, and courses are
so vastly different, in my mind, we are together,
in the here and now, and in the forever future,
we must continue to share and share alike,
our words….

Conjunction:
a small class of words distinguished in many languages by their function as connectors between words, phrases, clauses, sentences

- the act of conjoining; combination; the state of being conjoined; union; association:

- a compound proposition that is true if and only if all of its component propositions are true.

- the coincidence of two or more heavenly bodies at the same celestial longitude.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am in a relationship.

a colorless word
a word of no clarity
a good one? a bad one?
a professional deal,
or one that makes you squeal
with pleasure or despair

without context or content,
a description of a status,
not a state,
but a quid pro quo

I prefer
I am in a conjunction

well recall the day
our orbits
more than crossed,
but synchronized,
when two bodies
began to travel
upon the same longitude
one direction
in conjunction

t'was the day we coordinated
on our mobile phone,
co-configured our future,
our calendars

nowadays,
I answer her questions
while she is commencing to think,
when her foolishness prevails,
she questions, "did you remember to..."
my answer, a question returned,
connected, constant and conjunctive,
"and what's my name?"
an answer conveying constancy

relationship
oft the farthest place from logical,
but you know that,
say I am in a conjunction
and the logicians will celebrate
the end of your lonely celibacy,
well they understand the truth
inherent in and of and about
your compounded proposition

what unimaginative creatures we be,
dispensing with beauty for factuality,
but facts are easily misread,
your fact and my fact, relationship,
the exact same fact, conveys neither
an agreement as to what that means

are we unionized, associated, or conjoined
what is the quality of
our related ships?

so
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,
amend my status please,
post me
as being in a state of:
a) conductivity b) connectivity c) concoctive

no, none of those
capture
what we have
captured,
so let create a new state,
a new world,
using a very old world word
post us as follows,
"Nat is in a conjunction"

Cusp

Once I wrote these words:

Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.

The cool air rushes in,
Stirring the inside stew of:
Infected grime, shameful desires,
Secrets that should not have been exposed,
The ***** stuff of about your life
that you alone know exists.

Contact with the atmosphere makes
Self-pity dies, blue blood turn red,
The TNT tightness explodes,
Ashamed, you have only one escape hatch.

Now, you are ready to write.
(http://hellopoetry.com/poem/now-you-are-ready-to-write/)

so here I am, hands on my chest,
so unready, incapable of writing,

the battle site changed,
sledding to the top of my head,
moved northwards, mush, mush.

just don't have what's required
to melt that mush open,
just don't have the anymore
to finish this Iditarod race
called my Idiot life.

nobody knows the silences
kept in my treasure box.
nobody knows the nail-beds
slept, bloodied, by this
mthrfking depression,
unexpectedly returned to sender,
unable now,
to write, free and clear.

suffused, this words reappears,
you don't get it, the twilight twinkies
below laughing, twinkling,
middle ******* me,
so not suffused,
nah nah nah nah
you don't got it,
you got nothing.

the words supply, torn and  tired
reappears, now escapee prisoners
before flatlining, crashing
as I am currently 20,000 feet over
somewhere above the Eastern Seaboard;

we may land smooth,
but not in any groove
that fits me anymore.

Here's the sorest, sorriest laugh,
what you are about to read
was eons ago born, and today
birthed.

Happy M.F'ing  Birthday #0
don't even, can't complain fresh,
reusing unused words that never got
devoured, so now, used up too,
like me.

cut by thicket's branches
(that in their defense, maim only to self-protect)
calluses of experience
not enough to survive
what is now needed,
new chapters required.

choruses of repetitive choirs fresh,
inspire but land on surfaces
heart-hardened by fear contagion.

who will know and
who will care and who
will make them all go away,
but me...

so touch my self,  
reminder to self is emailed,
beat the odds so man-many times,
one more time, what's the big deal?

fresh differences,
maybe,

words that are new
not in my vocabulary,
maybe.

Struggle, long lived,
is the status quo,
** **, don't you know,
nobody tole ya?

world's axis is tilted
you can fall off
a familiar horse,
get off course,
so east easy
a gravitational force so subtle,
clueless you're drowning
till the riptide
has liberated your
pockets possessions,
pathetic borrowings
of unoriginal thoughts
you thought you actually owned!
now you realize
new inspirational how to books
keep getting writ,
published for experienced suckers
like you.

so here at the pointed cusp
a crescent shaped tangent,
lines crossed, intersection of a curveball
turning inwards, retracing prior paths,
familiar but tho the forecasts predict
being on the cusp of something,
crystal ball reveals nothing at all.

I fold the little have learned
into a handkerchief
folded three times over,
tied cusp to cusp
with a trefoil knot,
which while
mathematically correct,  
is too easy as my hanky is almost empty
and hobo heart journey scary is thinking
done.

Yeah I am young once more morn late,
Call it the year of somebody's lord,
Call it nineteen sixty eight,
Hair to my shoulders
Makes me see better,
Parted down the middle,
The older black ladies,
On the new.york city subway,
One and all, bless me cause this Jew,
Looks just like Our Lord
In them Renaissance picture-books.

Ironically, that winter time,
I wear a white sheepskin jacket,
Purchased in the Old City of
Jerusalem, but don't tell'm that,
Cause they would have marched up to Harlem,
No telling what might've happened next...

Next summer reality intruded,
Money in pocket aid and ain't not enough,
Riding the bus on Euclid Ave.
To go downtown Cleveland, the Flats,
Drag racing and watching,
The river Cuyahoga burn,
Kinda of a bus drag, but very very, kinda cool.


Summer next,
Worked in a Republic Steel mill,
They called me the Macaroni Kid,
Cause stoopidly I told them that is
What I et,, with ketchup Heinz sauce,
Desert, a heath bar!
Cause I was saving my pennies,
This college kid they loved to hate,
Caused he bicycled to work and
Wasn't one of them.


Put me, little ole wiry me,
In the boxcars,
Loading and loafing the
Rebar, twisted and straight,
Came it, sent it all over,
Me, black as a
Pennsylvania coal miner,
A San Fran homeless man.
To this day, can't get my
Fingernails really clean.

At night, me and the boys on the porch,
Gettin ******, ****, music and a view of
Cleveland East, the sirens rushing around,
To the houses on fire, the next ******.

First freaked us out,
Coming to get us,
Then it became the best, finest ***
"That was so stony cool" light show.
The girls looked like Joan Baez,
And if they didn't,
We still took 'em to bed,
Pretending it was Janis,
If Joan was busy
In the dorm room next store.

Hey babe,
Wanna come back to my dorm room,
And drink wine, listen to Blood Sweat and Tears,
Make some of our own,
Cause my roomie gone down to Canton,
To visit his cleaning lady mom.

I loved that guy liked he was the first
Real person I'd ever met.
On my first day, without asking,
Ran his hands both all over my head,
Looking for the horns on the Jews head,
According his parish priest, we all had'em,
God's official representative on the consecrated earth of
Ohio.

In those days, I applied to schools
Farthest away from home,
That the student discounted airfare was no more than
59bucks which I could afford so I could go back to
NYC, and find out what was really
"Happening" man.

The summer next, worked in the East Village,
Summer Office Boy for a big corporation
In a part of town where you could buy
Leather fringed vests and the headshops sold
The paraphernalia to get hookah high,
And if you hookah lookah right,
That wasn't the thing they sold for cash money.

Took my steel mill blues money,
Bot me a '65 red mustang car,
That needed to be jumped to get started,
Courtesy of the Cleveland special hell called
Midwest winter.

That car, the floor was made of cardboard,
The four cylinders were bolted to the car,
So when u opened the hood, you saw mostly
The pavement of the parking lot,
Some tiny engine,
In between holding on for dear life.
Always kept extra brake fluid in the trunk,
In case the leak got bad on the Heights.

Needed to do what I needed to do,
So I wrote a resume of whom I was,
And whom I ain't, so I could get me a
Real big time job.

More on that someday,
When the resume is resumed,
Getting updated, that will be kinda funny,
Cause it will run about 500 pages long.

Right now, strange,
I am hard by hard by the Frisco bay,
The Ferry Building and the tripartite
Disposal systems of three garbage cans,
And who should appear, but
Otis and Sara B., (live from the Fillmore)
Singing to me about a dock on this bay.

Got me those 'high flying blues,'
The kind that say;

"Lord, look at me here,
I'm rooted like a tree here,
Got those sit-down, can't cry,
Oh, Lord, gonna die blues."

Missing that dock of mine,
In the picture next to my invisible head.
You want to know my face?
Maybe when back east,
I'll find that photo of that long haired college boy,
Leaning in on, so proud against that red Mustang.

Right now all I got these here old vignettes,
True stories one and all,
Making me miss my dock, my shelter,
On that old adirondack chair,
Where my **** aches, and my mind fevered
With poems of love children and a life that
Tho dim recalled, I see it all so well.

Some poems never end,
Nor were meant too.
Alliterative phrases, invitations,
Add a verse, a word, even a sound,
An exclamation of delight,
A stanza in its own right.

Unfinished work, forever additive, collaborative.
Modify mine, pass it on,
Free to steal it,
For ownership passes to you,
with your first reading,
And lost when you close it,
Stamp it and release it into the atmosphere.

But some poems do. End.
Unique and distinct,
Pockmarked-faced at birth.
Owned by my initials,
Never to see the shelves of a
Lending Library.

Like this one:

Cannot remember a single day
When suicidal thoughts
Were not heard clearly above the fray
Of jingle-jangled, responsibilities
Demanding my immediate attention.

The end.


NML

Expect miracles every minute
Not.

Go away children if you want
Uplifting,
This is a dark adventure
Composition.

Gloomy the mood,
Gorgeous the day,
You have received my disclaimer,
Scurry away.

I scribe smoke that is uncontainable,
Smoke that suffocates, not for decoration.

You are the unrighteousness, not on the list,
Peekaboo voyeurs who read and dismiss.
Why I pen this or this.
Lost in the shuffling cards,
Luck is not inexhaustible,
Mine, bottled in the bin labelled,
The last recycling.

Dark is the blue sky,
White clouds just clothing to disguise
Morose is the vision,
Of eyes that have not seen a miracle
In decades of waiting.

Let us divorce today,
Find good cheer and company elsewhere.
From my finger these words fall freely,
No waiting, from me to you instantaneously.

What ails thee smoke scribe?
I have given and been taken, leeched and bled
and now wasted the last of my
Nine lives.

This is where I stand, edged and ledged,
Miracles are not shown to me anymore.
My quota, used, I'm not us-confused,
Cause I wrote the disclaimer,
The warnings, the risks, well understood.

Write of the good, the bad, of the
Beautiful that does not last,
Wonder if this is the poem  
shall be my Epitaph?

Poetry craft, was the sword I breathed thru,
Unlike you, my motet is completed,
The music, the canon smoke, here, come, then
Gone.

∑  nPk,   ∝ ≫ x! π f (x) ∞ x ≡ φ 3√a N(μ,σ2) <:)


In English:
The sum of the probabilities that your poem will trend is proportional, but greater than the factorial of the constant pi, when the function of x is leminscate (infinity), and when the value of the x variable is identical to the golden ratio constant, or when the cubed root of the normal distribution of love.

Finally,
finally
finds
you well.

It is the word you supply,
when asked
100 times a day

How are you?

How ya doing?

Answer:

Well,
I am well.

for my life, my poetry,
me, all of us,
are trending,
now that I have found,
found and solved,
the formula for
my-piece of the
Normal Distribution
of love

The
tilt of my seesaw
is decidedly downward facing dog:

and there’s no rush to judgment,
for the powers that be,
be delighted by slow-walking,
making the waiting
max-tortuous,
but am of an age when everything,
even the long buried sins and unkept promises, poke and **** nonstop,
and the formulae once  relied upon
to ease incipient self-deception,
to temporize and salve the consternations

of unkempt aggravated remorse failures,

as aged misdemeanors be matured felonies,
I blurt and declare guilt to all, alas,
and yet,
always an
and yet
in the ultimate crushing of
tardiness, knotted by an indignity of silence,


no one is desirous
of taking my
confession

5:10pm
Thu Jan 28
2023

Entanglement: First Poem of the Day

We awake simultaneously, syncopated.

Guests next door,
Can't risk love making noises at five am,
A noisy first coffee of the day,
An oops, unintended,
Guest wake-up call.
Nope.

So, instead,
We ear-insert our buds, white flowers,
You, to the Land of Thrones, yay,
Me, to the land, nay,
The **island of my
Secret poetry life.

I'm carried there on music-waves,
A Motet For Five Voices and
Jason Mraz, Tracy Chapman, Billy Joel,
Pandora's music box escapees.
Pandora's an oddball shuffler,
Just like me.

You read/listen/sleep head-resting upon
My good arm, my cunning one,^
And I leftist type write, hunt and peck at 6:00 Am,
And tho we will not fluids exchange,
I smile at our white wires all crossed up
As metaphor for our
Heart's happy entanglement.



^ Psalm 137
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

6:15Am
June292013

humans born a mess,
messengers carrying blank notepads, sheet music,
brought from within to the without

a baby-sized handful of historical residues retained,
garnered from all too brief a prelim existence,
arriving possessing hints of what may be

most emerging crying,
crying over loss of the womb security,
for seers all, all see unaccountable futures clouded
by an inevitable chance of rain
and death

all of us, no one excepted,
covered for months in **** stained fluids ,
a holy, ***** combination
of amniotic nourishment,
and our own waste

a hint of what is to come?

human then spends the rest of life
cleaning up after himself,
mostly with tasks of addition,
punctuating by the occasional cleansing of
elimination subtraction

making room for the next love,
labored birthing of a baby poem,
from your womb, midwifed,
haunting ghosts of three note tunes,
begging for a set of lyrics and a
great chorus everybody can sing,
a completion competition

going along, all along, to the goings on,
all our routes preternatural crooked,
lived a life of pretense, a straightened out life,
which is the nuanced, connected summary of our components
which are all curves, dots on a line

and the composition source,
the secret chords employed,
tech installed just prior to birth,
effacing glorious sadness, glorious joy,
the human building blocks,
with the certainty that
everybody knows,
that's how it goes
everybody knows,
only fools believe,
you'll live forever

but live at least long enough to sing and write of
a man cleaning up his own life's messes,
and perchance, after our absence,
leaving the world better for it

Please, please, first listen to this, if you are unfamiliar with this musical piece*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kllZlF6mB2s


~~~~~~~~~~~
you thought you didn't know it,
but you did

somewhere a wedding, a movie
and you thought how beautiful

I hear it
each note distinct, unique and a
passageway to the next and the next

a transcendence
a generation
an uplifting
an arousal
a smoothing
a calming
a weeping

smithy of words,
I have read,
I have writ
words that gut punch me,
round my mouth into oh's,
cause me weeping endless


but this music
arrests *and rests me,
miracle each time
I walk on its waters

how utter fools we be
to have "lost" this
for over three hundred years!

I rediscover it each time

somewhere a wedding a movie
and you thought how beautiful

for me, a funeral,

play it for me at
my funeral,

hold it in a
wedding chapel,

so with it,
upon hearing its invocation,
I may thee wed

thereafter, when you stumble on it
our vows be timely renewed,

and
though apart,
together,
we will weep, once more,
transcendent, once again,
ascendant, then and now

For Emma Ottinger “I put out (my stories) just because”

“just because”
that’s the best excuse you got girl?

cause be-ing
just
is a **** good one

way back in March
wrote a declaration^ to all those just
beginning with an iota of courage and
a good story telling
way of seeing and the
secret sauce-way
to spin my imagination in
my eye sockets
with their well words,
for I am a drinker of
the beaujolais firsts of the new grapes
of young poets

words welling springing from between
the oohs and ahs and the damns -
I wish I had wrote that...

so here’s a hero push - so many kinds of bread to
fill our baskets, please girl may I have some more?
so here’s to you - and the Great Plains that birthed you,
and the breadbasket of four poem/stories you poured out
that were so far from plain, how could you know of seas and sea foam and cobalt and mahogany human body parts?

and the speech patterns of waves that took me decades to learn?

use those “Jacob’s ladders between your fingers,”
“whistle me like a stray dog following,”
for that’s what “the kingpin of my flighty wits”
requires, for this old scribbler is now:

“firmly rooted for a girl who's bold enough
to crack the whip over her head if
ever went to war with myself.
A confidant that won't run,
won't offer half truth when
the whole of it
is all that actually matters.”

so write with that window light on and
wheat fields that can be reenvisioned as the gray-blue sea
from which I crawled out of croaking...
to read you rightly

6/25/18
10:25PM

By CAConrad

we stopped
     studying the
         night sky for
            directions
    if someone said
      we made it up
        planet Earth
          isn’t real
           we would try
            to verify try
             to be sure
             critics
              are the
               evidence
                we do not
                 trust ourselves
                 your imagination is
           asking for parole
        what is your
verdict Warden
  try to always
    remember the
      calendar made
        of light our
          ancestors
         followed to
       pass the year

The root cause

What makes so many
Weep and write,
What is the root cause?

Natty boy, c'mon,
This question, repeatedly,
asked and answered!
Turn the radio on!

No, scorn me not,
My answer sino-complex,
mine too.

Many of our devices
Record waves, cycles,
Of which the length, shape,
Endless are the variation.

Your expertise? Your cycles?

Read my **** poems,
A to V.
Even the equations.

I have known heart ache so real
My chest hurt for months.
The doctor had no pills for that.
Risked everything. Lost.
My own weakness seek and sought,
Self-destructing me.

I have known the soul ache that makes
Rising From The Bed,
The most agonizing decision.
A life and death incision/rescission.
A go/no go apparition questioning.

All this long after I was a man.
Two children, reso-possible?
Nope. Choices limited,
Sat in the sunroom,
Contemplating all this.

Say what you need to say.

I try every day to just grab,
Hold, get fastened to me,
The tiniest scrap.

So when I walk by the river,
One atomic iota of sun, a single rain drop,
Gives me cause to pause.

The cycle begins again.
Still unclear? Get graph paper.
Copy this overlay down.
My manic-depressive cycles lookalike,
But the amplitude variegated.
In 59 seconds, Live and Die,
A calculus point on a monthly cycle,
Which in turn, but a point,
A microscopic dot,
In a cycle longer,
A Hundred Years War.

You ok dude?
.
Where is this coming from
On the commencement of a
Three day weekend?

Fair question.

There is a button here,
Randomness incorporated,
Into some poetry sight.

Led me to a eleven year old, poet.
Now,
Know, you understand...the question, posed.

The tiniest scrap of hopeful buried here
In plain site.
These colorful, wordy points,
Scattered, on the cycles,
Usually at the highs and lows.

Maybe I did not answer it well enough.
Maybe nobody can.

Yo, need a job.
Yo, need money.
No cycle in my savings account,
Only a straight line downward sloping.

so I grab an iota of sun,
a solitary raindrop,
make a plan,
write this poem,
a cycle
inflection point.

I ask this question
Every ten seconds stil,
If you must know my truth.
Dueling banjos in my head,
never ever
have stopped playing.

This poem-answer,
Not my best.
But a cycle turning point.
Again.

Having fed the beast,
Maybe I'll get five minutes till
I write it again
In a different shape,
En pointe,
Standing up and beautiful,
I am a twirling ballerina,
who can twirl with out ceasing,
knowing the perpetual motion secret.
For but another mini-cycle

I am endless.
It is endless.
But dear god,
why must you commence with the young ones,
aged eleven?


6:40am Saturday.

No. Yes. Maybe.
A little.

YesyesYes...been in love with you since kindergarten,
When you asked to keep my pencil,
Offering me marriage in return.

Thot it was time you knew.

Some memories make you seem more foolish as times goes on,
The smile, wider, deeper, and the regret...harder and harder


6:50am

August 24th 2013

Men of few words are the best men
Shakespeare's Henry V
(Act 3 Scene 2. Line 41)


yet men still
pleasure themselves oft,
the music of their voices
soothes their conscience,
even as it irritates
those unchosen few
who must deign
to listen to the
ration of their excuses.

I fare not well
in this endeavor,
for as poet and
recorder of all that be
known as human folly,
more is always best
or at least, better!

for no man knows
the limits of his import,
his web of self-deception
cast far and wide,
for it must perforce
hold him aloft,
on all the tissued lies
he hath convinced himself
to be the absolute truth,
and nothing but...  

so let us ascribe
to those fools
who call themselves
mistakenly, men
a smokey, fleeting honour,
for many words
they do employ to
plead their case,
proving well in
a fashion most
contrary and contradictory
that their worth is
worst, when they speak
long and eloquent of their
vainglorious heroics and medals,
watch their words ascend,
and like smoke, forever disappear.

that is why, young reader,
heed the lesson of the
American cowboys
who say little,
but walk tall,
and sit straight
in the saddle,
and sing consoling songs of
lonesome love around the
dying fire.

punto / contrappunto (patty m /nat)
(on the why of messaging, on the Underground HP)

none can fly,                          all can fly
except in words,                   in deeds, indeed,
yet others turn                      those who believe turn
lead into gold,                       golden faerie dreams real,
penciled in the salvation     hints inked upon the skin
of the host, the blessing       are the blessings of the host,
of solving great puzzles.      deeds of salvation solutions.

Yet unbeknownst for many.  known to all
its jiggling all the quarks,      the clashing of the neutrons
spinning electrons that          within all of our protein protons
affect many,                             effected upon each,
invisible all is hidden.            where all was hidden, now visible

the message that isn't             let our acts speak ever louder
transmitted,                             realized,
holds no power, yet it             a time for action
remains a black screen            for each message, now an action    
in the catacombs                      in the clarity of daylight
waiting, waiting there,            no longer waiting,
millions of little pieces            each action a deed
when finally viewed                the summation total
                 
                                 grows gargantuan
                               funneling radiation
                                     from the sun.

Climbing roofs,                       to the streets leaping
sliding down drainpipes       knocking to open all doors
to the street,                             filling the stadiums & squares
I'll wait with you,                   no laggards, all in attendence
            
                                         they will come,
                                         poet after poet,
                                    spreading the word,
                              words to deeds, each of us
                           a messenger and a conductor,
                            orchestrating the symphony
                                        of revelation.
              Patty m.                                                       Nat

All is revealed.

Look at my photo.
You see the solitary Adirondack.
So oft writ, it is almost yours,
From which I ply my craft.

Sentinel, overlooking the bay,
Looking for poem invaders,
Need prisoners to do the hard labor,
For I am on duty, elsewhere, peripatetically,
A new tour of duty to family.

See the coffee mug,
The contents, a warm hug,
For though it sumer still,
The sky and breeze beg to differ.

I think time is nigh,
To close this chapter,
A few itinerant thots yet rumbling,
But the rush is gone, like my contented season.

Wise men do not deny perception,
Grown cold, my warm invitation,
Perhaps, I injusticed you with repetition,
But I left you a motet for comfort.


And hints of an address,
In case some enchanted evening....

Hasta La Pasta!


She stands in the doorway
As is her wont,
Bidding adieu to the retreating figure
Who spent the night in
Adoration of the Magi,
Her charms, her hair,
Her serpentine figure most fair,
And scribbling on Hello Poetry
Till his eyes said, no mas!

The retreating figure that be me,
Late for work at 7:20.
Over the shoulder I exclaim,
Hasta Mañana!
Which is silly because
My return is faithfully guaranteed,
Every eve for as long as I live!

She laughs and replies,
Hasta la Pasta!

Stop in my tracks,
About face and in woeful Italian,
Do exclaim, in a deeply serious timbre,
Hasta la Pasta?
Basta!  
(Italian for "that-does-it")

You can have my love, my soul,
But leave to me the labor of poetry.
Loving you with words is
my domain, the speciality of my terrain,
So no more hasta la pasta if you please,
And by the bye, I would love some
Tonight, say around eight,
At a restaurant where the moon is
The only light illuminating our faces.

7:45 AM

Negotiating with ******

You can't.
Even if,
He disguises himself as
Bashar-al-Assad,
Taliban,
Al Shabaab,
Hassan Rouhani,
Or that ole mass murderer,
Now not such a bad guy,
We could left him alone,
Cause he didn't have WMD,
Saddam Hussein,
He just mass murdered,
The old fashioned way.

They thirst for the blood of mine.
And when satiated, they will come for you.
There will be no Mass said
Over our mass graves.

Do not pretend to lead,
When all you seek is avoid.
The historians will seek you out
And label you coward, Chamberlin.

Shall we meet at the soccer stadium
Called Ghazi, for some ice cream
And a public execution or two?
Let's make it a woman, for the extra satisfaction?

A perfect place, conducive for relaxed negotiations!

Woe us/me, when our moral compass points only
Downward,
Into the bloodied earth,
Where we will soon enough be buried too.

1:12:25 9:20am nyc

Exactly, how far is it to you?
this is more than mere question,
or a rhetorical poem title discard,
consider it an interrogatory of
the first order, a debate raging
with every word successfully
affixed from brain to fingertips,
from my breathing to your heart,
how far is it exactly, pray tell me,
how these cords of words find you,
are your lips bending up in a smile,
need me a weather report, air quality,
wind gusts vitals vital to yo! estimate
how fast & conditions they’ll require survive/arrive in your eyesight well
and be friended


feed me the data, Heart Rate, Blood Pressure,
SpO2, so I’ll know what condition your
condition is in, adjust my words accordingly,
send to this distance back to me awaiting,
the necessary facts & figures to provide the finger stroke directional, do you need whispers or emboldened bold face to arouse the a spirit flagging, a shoulder shaking, a dozen red lipped chords of
kisses and sweet everthings, that do not
dissolve, dissipate or disappear instantly,
but can be stored in a Ziploc bag, refrigerated,
ready for gorging and disgorging, repeatedly,
as needed, synchronized slow or hard, fast
or soft, wet or dry. sweet or salty, savory
or a blended mixture, an adjustable concoction depending
on distance, time of day,
tell me,
the stuff that you accept
with open willingness,
or just begrudgingly

all adjustable
all shaped to
your individuality
elastic flexible
but the schedule
filling up fast
so we can mutual
squeeze into each others
empire of empty

so,
Exactly, how far is it to you,
to where you are being?

~
Bala^ comments:
"alignment - any which way one can if possible to make
****** and ******* simultaneously happen,
without any best position plan"

~

may all the gods bless you, Bala,
for waking me at 4:33 with this poetic induction
coaxed from my spinal fluid sanity
with perfected clarity

my own circadian rhythm masters internal,
the most reliably unreliable human container technology teachers,
semi-skilled in the entrainment arts for this impoverished body mine,
deem it appropriate that early morn messages of
propitious possibility be greeted immediately

entrapped, awaken me at four AM with great glee,
because these elusives^^  know exactly what stirs
this being's cochlear cockles into birthing a
poetic cookie ******* *******

your message meme provoking, inducing,
be honest man - simply seducing, my within
by your teasing words from without

"without any best position plan"

not to confuse the mere appearance of a routine
as worthy of the entitlement of "plan,"
much as the poem's own vanity chooses it own alignment
the relationship, the relativity -
always the
flexing flummoxing freaking insatiable pleasuring

when your thrusting unplanned message
****** and bests my brain,
releasing a fully formed, instantaneous parrying poem
from an aroused, passing, unsanitized, second of sanity

for no better *** than this...
as per the unplan?

this tissued life,
this in and out
of punching and counterpunching continuous,
but rarely contiguous,
for we are never aligned for more than a moment,
the moment that almost always goes unnoticed,
for the heart's ***** tissues,
are mostly torn by how life
uses us roughly

so here is an aligned confession fecundity

this poetry gig, my salve,
to tenderize the daily redness,
the irritation residual of having no plan

however these fingerprints decided for you,
to present, upon completion,
this soft-spoken loud *******,
a peaking, not a leaking,
** ** ** - a screaming

hallelujah, i'm aligned!

the man found albeit briefly
a  beat, a plan and its verbal, herbal,
best solution

may all the gods bless you, Bala,
for waking me at 4:33 with this poetic induction
coaxed from my spinal fluid sanity
with perfected clarity

the man and his plan, for a mega-second
his best,
unplanned but got and given,
in poetic planetary alignment
positioned

as are you and I -
the thousands of miles of distance tween us
as you read this
collage collapse
into a singular synapse
of ****** and *******

hallelujah, we are aligned!*

~

disclaimer:
anything you say to me, can and will be used
for a poem
~
5:55am
April 1, 2017

seeking to post, embracing the sprite of send,
**, **, oh no, oh no, my work is roasted,
thy error message says
boy, thy work,
lost, burnt, and toasted!

did not your brother William foretell,
“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triump die, like fire and powder
Which, as they kiss, consume”
their issue, our poems, explode and die, unsent!

Can you blast us a group message, a fine line of one or two,
what ails the system this politically incorrect discrimination,
some can, some can't, it is a glitch or has our transatlantic
"special relationship" or my operating system,
sunk beneath the clouds?

Post us brother, why some of us can and others not,
post our words which you love so much!

In God We Trust, For He Invented Reasonable Doubt




In Courtroom of the State of New York, Part 62,
where the only decoration extant,
in gold leaf letters,
a magnificent joke,
In God We Trust.

Words so incongruous
to the real time drama,
a poorly acted Law and Order episode
of which I partake,
(as Juror No. 1,
ergo you may address me as
Mr. Jury Foreman),
they stun me into stupefaction
every time we enter and the
Bailiff pronounces with much gravitas,
"Jury Entering"

A potpourri of a dozen Manhattanites,
with wisdom acquired
by the singular virtue of
having attained the robust age of 18,  
noteworthy for being free of
criminal record,
having been nominated
to sit upon the jury that will decide
the fate of one Eric B.,
for what he may have done upon West 11th Street
one Summer night in
June Two Thousand and Eleven,

If adjudged guilty,
New York State can take,
incarcerate him for up to
15 years of his life

Predicate felon by the age of twenty seven,
Eric's resume consists of
four felonies,
two misdemeanors
a wife and two little children,
and a partridge in a pear tree.

Facts turgid and muddy,
Eric tells a story
one juror calls a confection of lies,
no one murmurs
much disagreement in the
tiny, overheated room
we have been sequestered to
replay
the 2012 version of
Twelve Angry Men.

But I am not his peer,
nor am I a seer,
common sense says
if appearances are what they seem to be,
he aided and abetted
in the forcible taking of
a nice Connecticut lady's cell phone
with his brother who just happened to be
released from prison earlier that day

A convoluted tale
ripe with inanities is told,
upshot is our defendant's tale,
his robust defense,
portrays him as the unluckiest man
in the whole world,
a good Samaritan,
{chasing after the thief,
** **, his bro}
against whom events have conspired

In Manhattan can be a harsh place,
where the natives
a tough lot,
tougher than the Indians from whom
they stole it all.

Our bridges we sell to out-of-towers,
all it takes is one to say,
what the heck,
reasonable doubt is
a ***** to overcome
so let him go


Jan, 2012