these words retained, their authorship lost and unresolved,
but their siren sounding ringing, ding ding dinging;
resoundingly and unresolved:

we do not always, indeed, hardly ever safe harbor the true origin and
the true meaning of  our memories, but they come returning to us with accompanied shrouded shuddering, so oft, for frequent "EX'ing:"

Excellent exhilaration, expiration,
exhalation, variant explanations,
and unsatisfactory excitations but
never any finality of finale
exiting

the memories and the meanings
return modified, encumbered by
prior visionings, and the meaning
further twisted, their import
un lessened, until some resolution
is reached required retained
and a new memory is formed,
perhaps imagined,
perhaps not,
nonetheless
the siren sounds, the mind alerted,
we commence daily, nightly
to reimagine what we once imagined...even
endings...
nml

read a thousand love stories,
pause, rest awhile,
read ten thousand more,
and then deny equality.

If you ask for no more than you can give,
you ask for not enough

love is imbalance not an equation,
with a single solution

love has both constants and variable factors

so you write of tribulations and tributes
so you write of lamentations and liftings

you think you are on the same page
perhaps
but do we not all read at different paces?

one of you is solid, one is dotted and dashed
one of you is straight, one is bent, forever curving

when you think you are
in balance
in the same place
in syncopation

perhaps you are for a moment
a calculus of one point on a trajectory

and you say I can only ask for what I give
and am given
and no more,
you have miscalculated

this flux
flummoxed
when the old terrain is flayed flat
but thru the windshield you see the
plateau ends, the geography unknown,

when you see unknown
when you seek the unknown
when you give from places you did not know
you had to give from
when you kiss a hand
for  twenty minutes more than than the one minute you intended
when you give more than is asked
when you ask for more than you can you think you can give
the imbalance is the only concert
the imbalance is the the only constant

how do I know this?
what are my credentials?
you are not a teenage girl,
what matters of what you know of this matters?

I am who I am
a diversity of man and manner
I am past prime and in decline
but this I know
for having failed ten thousand poem times
you must ask for more than one can give

but that's not fair!

silly one, still wretched confused,
even after one hundred
thousand poem times

you must ask of
yourself
more than you can give
and ask no less
demand no less

a body in emotion is not a body in rest
when the imbalance is too great or insufficient
then you write a poem
look in the mirror that cannot lie
and move
on
or
move
off

and begin to ask
yourself
to whom may I give myself
more than is asked
then you have finally asked
the correct solution to the
unsolvable equation

a new poem will pass,
that haha, no one will read

but nonetheless, arguing among his several selves,
better to be more fulfilled by the emptying of himself
upon padded cell of paper, of his staining,
the piece of him now
un-chambered & un-containered
thru magma fissures, steaming & cleaning,
providing a penny's penance
for his disparate gloomy idiocies

the gray ladies always smile at him,
always so nice and gentlemanly like, that poet,
underneath his cowardly disdain,
against his pretense's  grain,
contempt for old grey ladies
with old lady odors emanating

is this who you are, is this how you write?

with raggedy old words, that splinter our delight?

One year and one day ago, the Super Moon filled the night and I wrote:*

If you were beside me,
You would believe the unbelievable,
The Super Moon fills our bedroom cup with whiteness,
Light, a sky-delivered invitation to walk on the water
Upon a path illuminated that commences at the dock

If you were bestride me,
You would feel the majesty of
Our union in a new light, bathed in
Sweat and glory of nature's triumphant
Marking our bed and home, its nestled place in nature

Alas! Your potpourri of sleep noises,
The purring, the little yells, dream induced,
Signals that tho beside me, you are somewhere else.
The Super Moon, disappointed, has marked your card,
Marked it absent, but marked me, your lover~brother in arms,
Tasked, incised, upon my body, your homework assignment!

Moon:
Gaze upon his eyes when you rise,
Touched and filled with the history of your lover's
Encounter with the Man in the Moon this evening,
Study it well, memorize, these words, I have
Inscribed thereupon for you to read

When you next intimate, I will be there,
Whether in these words or his eyes,
No need to estimate my light,
It's safe, stored, so that the dawn's plight,
Vain attempts to compete the daylight,
All will fail,
For I am, you are,
the moonlight unhid, in his eyes


3:00am
June 23rd, 2013

Super Moon:  If you were beside me

If you were beside me,
You would believe the unbelievable,
The Super Moon fills our bedroom cup with whiteness,
Light, a sky-delivered invitation to walk on the water
Upon a path illuminated that commences at the dock

If you were bestride me,
You would feel the majesty of
Our union in a new light, bathed in
Sweat and glory of nature's triumphant
Marking our bed and home, its nestled place in nature

Alas! Your potpourri of sleep noises,
The purring, the little yells, dream induced,
Signals that tho beside me, you are somewhere else.
The Super Moon, disappointed, has marked your card,
Marked it absent, but marked me, your lover~brother in arms,
Tasked, incised, upon my body, your homework assignment

Moon:
Gaze upon his eyes when you rise,
Touched and filled with the history of your lover's
Encounter with the Man in the Moon this evening,
Study it well, memorize, these words, I have
Inscribed thereupon for you to read

When you next intimate, I will be there,
Whether in these words or his eyes,
No need to estimate my light,
It's safe, stored, so that the dawn's plight,
Vanity attempts to compete all will fail,
For I am, you are, the light unhid, in his eyes**


3:00am
June 23rd, 2013

inspired by a short story from the man from Snake River


<>


no alarm clocks heard expiring,
unrequired and unrequited,
we,
those, self-employed by the
nocturnal repetitive recounting
of sins of omission and worse,
those commissioned in
anger and haste, that breed only
more anger and lay further waste
from humans to 
humans,
awaken with an
irregular precision
and bad disorder,
demanding chances,
expiation, restitution, amendment,
but time erodes
possibilities for the
impossible,
foreign forgiveness

knock-you-down rushing currents
of water erodes Snake River boulders,
them oldsters just like the litany of our
malfeasances, indestructible in nature
geologic,
and in
human nature
illogic,
terms, such as time measurements,
irreverent and irredeemable,
for our sins
live far longer than
our owned memories,
in those harmed, who
cannot in the unlimited timeless quantity of
ever ever,
understand

your wry smile,
your why cries,
audibles you’ve
play called, go
unheard, unseen,
even and odd
Bach Orchestral Suites,
Beethoven Sonatas
more mock than soothe

trapped between industrial carpet
and flat unpainted Armstrong ceiling tiles,
you
in a hell of your own creation, forgot to include,
a Sabbath day extant, of rest for weary creators,
ever ever,

or planned in a world you’ve  designed,
so the best you
can do
is write
another and another
confession ever ever

watching and listening to
the alarm clock that neither
requires setting, for
it’s audible ticking is
alarm-ing curse
enough ever ever
that always never
rings

~for Lori Jones McCaffery~

Lori Jones McCaffery commenting on
“a new time (poetry in the time of pandemic)”^
“Tender and brutal at the same time. Like the times.”*

                                                     ­          <>
your observation, a commission, opens an incision,
bleeding out a Noah flood vision:

                                                        ­        <>

when we begin, to compare and contrast the movable tender and the unstoppable brutal, the poetry must rise to equalize the pressure of unbalanced times, the tender, and the brutal in an uneasy peaceful coexistence, at the same time, same place
                                                           ­     
                              
                              
                            
The Brutal                                              The Tender
—————                                             —————
life in the epicenter, the greatest,       in the darkened bedroom,
noisiest city, now landscape               she awakens, her hand quick
painting quiet,                                      comes to rest on my chest,
one lives/writes/eyesights thru       the quality of motion+volume
pink mask + a minimum six              of heartbeats, is it loud enough,
feet of separation,                                steady on, no need to dial 911!
a citified tableau of macro wave       she unaware that I can hear
forces in crashing collision, upon     her loud, tender exhalation
your skin’s cells                                   celebrating surviving day#?

newspaper images of Death’s            many volunteer, food delivery,
ministers applauding the newly        though I am asymptomatic
arrived mobile morgues, for 100        my request tenderly, firmly
died yesterday,                                      denied, for I meet too many
their brutal death rattles                      of the vulnerable criteria,
overwhelmed  the super-surround.   instead, offering food to me,
sound silences of                                   to deliver to me, to deliver me,
brutal emptiness of millions of           tenderly I say, no thanks,
sacrificial                                             ­    my tour of duty, almost done
                              
                                all of us isolate lambs, in day jailed,
                                for we still breathing the maybe tainted,                
                                oxygen molecules of no safe surety      

a consummate perfection,                    the same, taming words I tell  
the holy quietus of                                 my son, young father,
those no longer breathing,                   tender me necessary tasks that
they now rest up above,                        require outside journeys, say I
hid in a white cumulus                         send me into the red hot areas
cloud cover, a noise suppressing         insert me into the front line,
sky coverlet, moving across a               militarized zones, he replies,
bright blue pure background,              ”you’re too old, part and
a train of funeral caissons,                     parcel of the most vulnerable,
brutal noisy hooves clacking             better-write-you tender-poems”

daily, hourly, the statistical alerts,         why so hard, to write tender
brief résumés delivered,                         so easy of the brutal, their
drumbeating, look now!                         curses so readily supplied,
are you up to date?                                  is tenderness short supplied?

catalog the debris, organized with brutal necessary efficacy, quantify, qualify the costs, include even the tender ineffable, countdown and graph the brutal calculus of the curve infection, and you, numbed, past the point of eyes capable of what once was tender droplet tearing

highlight the unknown faraway, the tender hope of a distant apex inflection, while plotting the second derivative, the rate of change of the rate of a brutal yet trending upward *****, the ascending all-inclusive stat, infected, the rate of change of decedents, downed, descending, giving in...gowned in hospital blue, for the funeral pyre

a city of lines, crosswalks, velvet ropes, unused, unemployed, social separators, no one about to need to separate, anymore, only the living and the dead, both staying indoors, so neither in attendance, at the empty funeral services, everybody is on the out list...

the now newly indistinguishable, the irresistible collision of two one-sides polarizing poles of no longer opposites, the tender and the brutal in a single embrace, but no, not kissing, embargoed, as we are stationed from above, far, high up on the watchtower observatory, observing the contrast dye that flies so fast on people denuded grand boulevards, down narrow hospital hallways, body-lined decorated, tales of millions of lives isolatized, and don’t forget the brutalizing discovery of scores of elderly, dying alone, withering in the dark, counted, lumped in to the category of statistically irrelevant, if dead, who cares, matters not now, in the afterworld no one asks how,
                        in a fashion both tenderly and brutal,
                        what was the actual cause?

A true fantasy...

Darling,
Two, if by day.
Football this afternoon,
One, if by night,
Pink Martini concerto, ce soir.

The morning, this morning,
The future yet unwrit,
How shall I thee please?

Sweet by night, sweeter by morn,
If you wish me to please,
Let the New York Giants win today!
For if this pleaseth you,
This pleasures me even more!

*Darling Dearest,
There are things in this world not even
God can do....

.                                        Wherever (Synthesis)
                                                  t­wo years later...

"Don’t urge me to leave you.              "If I could, then I would
To turn back from you.                          I'll go wherever you will go
Wherever you go,                                   Way up high or down low
I will go,                                                   I'll go wherever you will go
And where you stay,                              Run away with my heart
I will stay.                                                 Run away with my hope
Your people will be                                Run away with my love
My people                                                I know now, just quite how
And your God                                         My life and love
my God.                                                   Might still go on
Where you die, I will die,                      In your heart, in your mind
There I will be buried."                          I'll stay with you for all of time"

(Book of Ruth 1:16)                                  (Charlene Soria Lyrics)


                                      Let it be writ,
                                      Let it be sung,
                                     All should know,
                                     This I swear,
                                     Where you are,
                                     So, I shall be too.
                                     Your hope, my hope.
                                     Your heart, my heart.
                                     Life and love,
                                     But one.

                                     Where you run,
                                     I shall follow.
                                     Now, today,
                                     Forever,
                                     If our bodies apart,
                                     If our hands cannot
                                    Grasp each other,
                                    Yet, still,
                                    In your heart,
                                    In your soul,
                                    I will be,
                                    I cannot leave.

                                   Where you are,
                                   So, I shall be too.

~~~~

Thank you all for loving this poem so much.  I have long thought of the symmetry between Ruth and the lyrics to the song "Wherever You Go,"
when ever I hear them on Pandora....last nite around Two Am, I decided to set them up side, by side and then to see what happened...and the merger, the synthesis was the obvious and only solution.

(Dedicated to Stephen E Yocum)*



You who have spent time on this planet,
That you can count your annual growth rings,
By just employing a combination of
Fingers, toes, eyes and nose,
Stop and think, after reading on.

Forty years on, what are the words, the titles,
The honorifics that you would like to see
Next to your name?

There is a yeoman Yocum in our midst,
Who has collected a few adjectives,
The sum total if additive,
Is a resume most complete,
One you should envy!

Able Friend,
Lover of Dogs and Humans,
Gentleman Farmer, Decent Photographer,
Spinner of tall tales, woven for his
Grandchildren.

A writer, a poet,
He says "a would be,"
I say, one who attempts,
Puts his name on writs public,
Is no would-be!

Who here would dare disagree?

More than all this, unlike so many,
Grateful for everyday of life,
Even those ****** full of strife,
And who served, a grunt,
One of the proud, the few.

I salute, you, and call out,
Attention Poets, Marine On Deck!

But no stuffed shirt ,
A man of soil and earth,
Who can laugh at himself, and write,

"My driving experience feel greater,
Would be to speed down the road,
Behind the wheel of my little Red Racer,
Completely **** naked,
And of course,
Feel the wind in my hair."

It is easy to be some things.
It is hard to be many things,
But it is the hardest, and the best,
When you look back,
And laugh out loud, admit,
The funniest thing you know,
The one that keeps you sane,
The one-thing, hardest, and the best,
Is to laugh at yourself.

So stand attention,
Go to the mirror,
Tho you might not like what you see,
If you focus, and really look tight, squint,
Do not be surprised,
If, in a few minutes,
You burst out laughing,
Especially if you do it in your
Birthday suit!

Maintain this perspective,
Forward and retroactive,
And then perhaps,
You will be able to write
These words...like he did!

Where upon, sheer elated emotions,
Of this my journey of self discovery,
Began to sink in and I started to cry.

There are times is one's life,
when lessons are taught,
When almost no words
need to be spoken.

And the best teacher's are
our own Brain and Heart,
Comprehending, embracing
Life's many shared Lessons.*

Marine Slocum, Stand at Attention!
There are Poets saluting you.

Somehow, unbefuddled, it all ties together,
The happy endings get tied, knots well made,
Sleep comes easy, the light dims slowly, finely,
Clarity, everywhere, not for taking, just for asking,
Wanting is off limits, even inconceivable, and the poem.
Why, even the poem finishes itself, and to all a very, Good Night

a grownup lullaby

at the end of the road
on a road with no end,
this is no contradiction - only a decision,
at a four way intersection

at the point of entry (explicit)

it does not strike me strange
at the point of entry
when the heightened senses and the dark subconscious merge

when the lust and the sweat intersect
with ego desire and self is everlasting everything
that the ***** words secretion is sticky on my tongue

when I pant poems born in rawness and tears
on this the last day of the year
and eyes closed see visions extraordinaire
and the Maker whispers in both ears see!

it is the see of what is me,
it is the point of entry and departure,
one and the same,
conception an immaculate mess,
the emptying and the fulfilling, when unkempt promises
are born free flowing and semi-truths transform into
actualities unforeseen and my child cells of new poems
are injected, stored, awaiting the birthright
and the death of publication,
my moment of privileged perfection passes
and frowns and smiles are
one and the same, silken thread wove open and shut

the precision precious circumcising of flesh and soul departing

the utter collapse from within, the drowning in the amniotic,
rebirthing rebutting my denying that I have no more to give

I believe I belong to you for it is what the desire firing cylinders
say repeatedly in the union of the up and the down cycle:

come, come inside me,
I am the pleasure
you are the treasure
in one cup measured
conjoined container
when the point of entry is the point of departure
and with eyes closed from satisfaction and prayer
I see everything all at the same time, uttering:

I am undone utterly and the difference between
the end and the beginning can be seen only
at the millisecond long seven decade coming
point of entry

12/31/17 5:38am dawn dying and new day mourning

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

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

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

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

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

can one have two dissimilar truths?

I love you.
I love you not.

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



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

~for betterdays, and all Aussies~


the fires massifs all around, the smokes surrounds,
the house invaded with closed-out-of-college students,
mother and father who are similarly workless, a fire bounty,
all this a treat to an nine year old (no school) boy and his dog

newly self-appointed ringleader, the little boy,
in his fire heaven, with a gang to command, to entertain,
some adults, silly college students, who don’t know “no,”
when he says this is the game we are playing next

this vignette, is not a Manhattan variety^
but an insight story heard, unwitnessed, but of
those who tell the tale, unwittingly, of finding small joys
amidst sky-full clouds, all grayed bunting of burning stink

few wiser than my old, tired and smokey clouded eyes,
though, one yet detects those who are truly not lost,
those who are found, and those who will find them all,
and lead them to the safest places inside themselves

and my heart and brain, at last in unison,
forgives the restless adults who with grownup worries,
yet can! just barely detect those mini joy-rivulets among the whiffs
of destruction and bravery, losses and new hands extended

So I ask, Mum, what game shall we play next?

Perhaps, Noah’s Ark?

thus concludes a text
from a dear friend whom
I have never met, but this a,
concluding statement is
both convulsing and
uncontained

autumn is a her, a self-selected
gender unique, that picks its
own pronouns, pronunciations,
for women greet us with
warmth+chill skill
combinatory, to
make ordinary
our daily green
reform into
a multi~variable aristocracy of colors,
a forest of expressions,
each a statement leaf,
stating look at me,
I’m transformed, resurrected, disguised,
though essence unchanged, for
I am the possibles of ad
infinitum and I am:
not-nearly as potent
as the sparks of god
within a human being

3:58am
10-20-24

Awesome Young


I stumble, catch myself,
But my breath is still short.

Skip around,
go back and discover,
uncover.

Incredible.
Awesome
in a way that overused word was intended to be
used.

There are so many miracles,
young poets, whose works
lost in the shuffle of the ordinary,
who don't get read, liked or
loved like they awesomely deserve.

One day,
someday,
I will write a poem,
naming names,
before a Congressional Committee,
getting them on the record.

Done it before,^
will do it again,
got take a week off from work
to get 'em all.

Odd,
even then,
will strike out,
can't capture them all,
they keep a-coming,
from all over the world,
places I never heard of.

It almost makes me believe
world peace is not just a
Saturday Night Live joke.

A Woman's Reflection on Her Reflection (Valence and Value)

one poem, written by two authors


~~~

Ever the analyst,
A mirror functions as surface to
Parse the fleeting constant
Of youth's beauty.

From genetic gift
Of symmetry and bone,
To technological tampering,
Until the equation is solved,
As experience and character
Models and maps the result.

The answer, a reflection,
Of individual valence and value

(written by S.D., a woman)

~~~

(written by N.L., a man)

unbidden and unannounced, a
"not fully formed poem,
but a simple reflection"
inbound missile arrives inbox,
armed with silent power,
the lethality of the
Holy Unexpected

the man reflects
on her mirror-on-the-wall's
fulsome reply,
parsing the words of a
woman's reflection,
while gazing on her own

every human's momentary glass notation,
but an instance of summation,
a human poem, whose editing,
unceasing

a comma here,
a period inserted,
an eye shadowed, an eyebrow tweezed,
a eye dark circle line added,
to tree-mark time's authorship

all  these
but a person's
excerpted extraction,
notarized,
then auto-erased and revised,
as out of date,  
instantaneously compromised

but,

it is upon  the conceptual,
valence and value,
more that the man reflects perpetual,
less on transitory morphing changes of
exterior mortality

while overlooking her
glassine realization from behind,
he concludes:

every reflection,
no matter how oft the snapshot,
the unfleeting constancy
of the combining of the

princes of principles,
valence and value

that he witnesses,
in the calming pool
of her eyes,
(those borrowed windows into her soul's well,)
so well reflect
her unchanging greater finery,

her character

this reflection,
metamorphosis transformed.
into a planetary permanency poem,
high placed in his the firmament
of their conjoined sky

Axe Handles
BY GARY SNYDER


One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
                 the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with—"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"-—in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.


Gary Snyder, "Axe Handles" from Axe Handles. Copyright © 1983 by Gary Snyder.

~For Ayesha~

for simply put,
or
simply taken,
they’re a disguise...

eternal guards on duty,
alphabet soldiers that
grow more vigilant

standing reef,
a barrier,

a thousand years to erosion complete.

this is the right poem, but the wrong words. Mystified me, how
can this be? such a young person, whose words speak to me?

If we are not our words, what will we become?

a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs*

my woman, she's a
snuggler and spooner.

burying herself on my,
no, in my
double barreled chest,
her blonde hair,
my field of gold.^

she landscapes my life,
paralyzing me with the
simplest of gestures.

she sleeps holding my thumbs.
locks me up.
locks me down.
so I cannot transcribe
the lines of poetry mindful,
landlines shut,
land-mines of verse
unexploded,
till these now,
hours later.

a few notes ago,
a few days ago,
heard an octet,
eight voices singing of
five letters, five vowels,
a  e  i  o  u.

you can hear what I heard too.

after you listen,
better understand
vowels are the butter of language.
the anointing oil of connectivity.
more than a line of code,
they are the keys to the code,
that make words and life musical.

I suppose we could mange without them if we had to.
spsz v cd mng wthot thm ff v hd t.

but not so well.

I suppose we could manage
without opposing thumbs.
learn to type with my nose,
paint with my toes.
but not so well.

here is how it comes all together.
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs,
never give them more than a
never thought, passing over, assumed.

oh yeah, on some tv show,
you can buy a vowel.

these glues are the things that
give me the chance to tell this:

this poem it is a bit about me.
this poem it is a bit about her.
this poem is really about you.

I could live without
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs.
but I could not live
without her landscaping my chest.

but
when I share this knowledge
with you friend, it becomes a
verified, realized, acknowledged truth.

So you see this poem is about
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs,
but really about you.

In fact, I am thinking,
that if I did not love the title
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs
so much,
would entitle it instead,
a wholesome democracy of love.*

you, a registered voter,
vote then with both all the
a  e  i  o  u  and opposing thumbs
at your disposal.

create with no shame
create with no measuring stick
use only this:
everything that is done well
                           is good art

explore and excavate forms,
churn the ether

within you is the sleeping artist,
tap yourself awake,
yet be silent,
be intimate,
with the unconscious plateaus
with in you

be intimate
with the making
and the doing,
the fertility
of creating

you will require silence
to allow for reflection,
communication

Childbirth is noisy, messy,
Birthing art is different

understand your language,
mine it, taste it,
it is your play dough

avoid the chronic,
habit is slavery

collaborate for
there in nothing new
under the sun,
but the constant rediscovery
of the old
in new forms
when ideas are exchanged,
every partnership is a solo

Experience anew,
Each time,
Say:
This is my first time,
This is my first work

I do not need your validation.
I validate myself
and in doing so,
who else
comes along
for the ride
on our tide?

create with no shame
create with no measuring stick
only this:
everything that is done well
                           is good art

Be Fertile and Radiate

Seasonal confusion, upon this globe of poetry!

Fall here, leaves tumbling into places that amaze,
But you write of spring,
Others of summer,
Winter always, someplace,
Its retrograde reputation
Cannon fodder for the dark-ended, sad ones.

I know the science of orbit,
Axis tilting, angle shifting,
Yet confusion masters me,
For I did not know,
That seasons were present
Upon this globe of freedom poetry!

For me, here, it is always summer...
The season of relief,
In the sun of -
The rays of -
In the warmth of
The sun,
That bakes poems
Into my skin cells.

being a poet is not planned

~for Gabriella Garcia~

~~

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

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

was he thinking?

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

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

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

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

knowing well and full
now

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

~~

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

bent Hallmark card (for BJ Donovan)

”I'm a bent Hallmark card with no stamp. It won't reach my love”
                   BJ Donovan (HP gone, Gray Dotted, r.i.p.)

at the drug store, loose poems,
no right-sized envelopes left,
loosie cigs, for newly ‘underemployed’
both, thumbed, finger oil anointed-stained,
and
bent

all available for purchase
24/7, in these United States,
in national drugstores jailed,
kept in “chains” till discarded

therein hides the rub-bled best,^^
great verse writings, deadline-
inspired in a Ohio bullpen office,
@ corp. HQ by an Eng. Lit. major

composed, vetted, approved, yet
marked ‘failure,’ by quality control,
third Tuesday of every month, ritualized,
manager freshens display, victims chosen

Hallmark display, pruning the die-marked,
the no-hope cards, consigned, to a green
in-the-back-garbage dumpster resting place,
where you just may see me climbing-in

(and where America safe keeps its treasures)

droning on, as per usual, I’m kicked away by a
rent-a-cop, muttering insurance assurances, just
business, not personal, grab what cards I can, mine,
stolen pleasures, resending via insertion here ‘n there

my resurrection act, a new business, wife thinks
me stinks, but for me, a perfume of saved  words,
an act of rebirthing, god bless America, making it
great by giving Hallmark poems a second chance

gonna send one of those cards in envelope,
addressed to BJ Donovan U.S.A., no stamp,
inside note, your poems were ordinal, small
plates of sardonic pith, human foibles, on being

old, recalling youth, both celebrated, Icarus and Daedalus

pretty sure this poem may not get there but I believe
in poetry and the US Post Office, who delivers
mail to me, marked “Nat”^ and to Santa Claus,
which impresses, cause I’m mythical, he’s real

your compositions were breathtaking, literally,
miss your hallmarked witticisms, criticisms,
glad you escaped that virus nursing home jail,
if needed, write to “Nat, NYC, living somewhere
in a park, scribbling close by the East River”^

I’ll get it, like I got you, they know my special tree,
and the rock nearby, that too, is a known hideout,
no worries buddy good stuff may perish, but somehow
it gets a second wind, can’t keep a good scrip, down forever...

a very humbled admirer...

NaTTy

be tender of words
and
tender of hearts,

be strong, be kind,
forgive us, them,
forgive them, us,
yourself as well,
for ours are walls
needy for overcoming,
and yours are too oft
too high

lives of tasks and taskmasters,
these oft self-appointed,
responsibilities - rocket-******
upon shoulders of mortal materials
uneven for and unintended
for the job
of carrying the world...

and yet,
we do
carry you, carry the world,
imperfect and scourged,

those self-righteous,
beheaders be wary,
I will not atone for you,
I will speak no tenders for you,
on this day of forgiveness,
there is none

http://hellopoetry.com/search/poems/?q=Betterdays



as is my wanton wont,
when stumbling
upon a new voice,
the passed baton
is herein handed off

am old man.
my poetic voice is just
memories that are
repetitive lies and lines.

speak in simple sentences declarative.
this is nature's way.

darkness approaching is indeed my
au courant poem, mon actuellement.

I have seen better days.

I have read betterdays.

now I am upset, distraught.

here come another young
hot bright votive voice,
and I am being asked to believe that there are
still words that raise hopes of
betterdays.

her bed chip crumbs, delighting,
leave crumbs of pleasure in my soul.

l like her big word poems,
that leave me, fill me by:
siphoning all in a parched gluttony
leaving behind a viscous residue
and few glassine portals
into a reflective world

better yet I love her
mothering little god poems,
letting me remember little boys
who once loved a father

little god love
radiant is thy smile,
smallboy love, exudes from you,
like a flower god's nectar,
bestowed, with negligent love,
upon a mother's world.
i will drink my fill,
everyday, whilst i can,
for far to soon will you
grow up.

don't speak eastern Australian,
tackers and doona's, no clue,
blue cats are a foreign breed,
but the cat of this starfish mother,
shares my literary tastes:

him, nestled,
on the second, to
uppermost stay,
of the third
bookshelf,
in the study.
he has filed
himself,
between,
ogden nash
and proust
and it is there,
he plans to stay.

let me not go on and in deeper, lest
I delay you from her pleasuring
thy tasted untested senses.

so here I am all grumpified
(at my age, you can make up your own words)
unsure if un or satisfied,
knowing that a woman,
word whips me into a
soothing frenzy of creamy
morning coffee verbosity,
a captive taker of life's
ungrandest moments,
poems of them,
make to glory come.

somewhere in the world,
a woman writes of plain goodness
of simple strife and simple lives,
makes methinks that there could be
betterdays still ahead,
better poets surely, than me,
and the day starts well