Pocketbook

Transformational intercepts,
messages to the brain.

Time babe, it's time,
to take a next step.
change the bulb
to a higher power.

100 watts insufficient to light
the forward motion of a
Great Leap Forward,
like in a prior writ, when,
limitation awareness
was a borderline crossed.

Like learning to walk without tottering;
We probably don't know we passed a line,
invisible to ourselves,
but all clear to everybody else,
on that special day, one,
that just came and went:
when you could no longer leave home
without a pocketbook

We were accessorized with body parts
most useful to make our way thru life,
but our exterior-designer
neglected to provide pockets knowing
full well that fashion acessorizing
was more that just a way to carry tools;

Individuation, maturation, needed,
a way to communicate I've arrived

Ain't no child no more,
double negatives
a thing of the past,
cause once you leave the
comfort of the abode with
handbag corpuscles inhaled,
from that day onwards,
you could no longer:

Walk these feminine streets,
leave home,
without a pocketbook,

Judgement day becomes
Every day, nowadays, so,
when from the cave you emerge,
and face the world:

Gonna need what ya gonna need,
to negotiate the way through,
don't matter what's
inside your handbag
or your head,  
if you are eight or
eighty eight,
you know,
you believe, you need
in handbags,
as much as you believe in god

I am incomplete,
my body undressed for all to observe
If I walk down the street
after that day,
that came and went,  
when you could no longer
leave home without a pocketbook

Amusing ditty,
nah that's not my speed,
this is a treatise on
serious matters,
when changes in our lives occur,
when we earn a stripe on our sleeves

Pilgrim progress to
a feeling of vive la difference!
who I am is not who I was,
awoken from a previous dream,  
marks on my body will come,
some wanted,
some unwanted,
some happily dismissed
like the curse of braces

Free at last,
free at last to forget
a painful child's past,
sometime it's losing,
sometimes it's adding on,
but for sure, the day I changed,
was the day,
when you could
no longer leave home
without a pocketbook

Oh boys,
don't think you are excluded
from this rite de passage,
I'm one of you and I know
what we kept secreted
in our over stuffed wallets.

Ain't referring to our student org. card
or the emergency folded twenty
Dad gave you in case,
somehow you got
on the wrong bus and
ended up on the
wrong side of town
where bad things
could be found,
somewhat more easily.

Like the comic book store,
next door to the tattoo parlor,
next to where the
Nice Jewish Boys
where never supposed to go,
and the Stars of David and crosses
were removed discreetly prior to arrival,
like Portnoy foretold in
Technicolor detail.

I know you well recall
that bar mitzvah party, school dance,
When the bottles fell to the floor
unbroken, spinning, pointing to you,
When you realized it was that day,
When you could no longer
leave home without a wallet

Times they don't change
all that much,
and pocketbooks now called
Handbags I am told,
and year old babies play
with iPads like they were
born knowing how!

but I ain't impressed that much,
cause I know that it may  
come sooner as the world changes,
there still,  always be,
a day of  painful,
transformational,
generational passing,
when indelible, invisible
birthmarks somehow
became both visible and erased.

Though they may
come different ways than they use to,
in case new parents need guidance,
**It is still that day when
their little girl,
can no longer leave home
without a pocketbook

Lend me a tune

(For Robert C Howard,
One of the lucky ones)


"But I'll know my song well before I start singing".   Bob Dylan


Some of us poets,
some of us musicians, and a few,
A very blessed few
Songwriters and lyricists,
Poets in sound and words,
Both.

Wish I knew how to
Compose some love song music notes,
But can't carry a tune,
Seems to me,
Comes first the music,
Must music comes first

So with conceit and disbelief,
Wrote words and shot 'em into space,
Hoping they'd pass thru galaxies,
Maybe a comet tail,
Find a Songster who will strum them
Into perfect, into complete

I ain't unhappy that all I got
Was the lesser gift of
Humming words to myself,
Ain't dissatisfied, but wish they
Could be ratified, by the music
Of a voice singing them to me
Or fingers tapping, happening them
Played upon  the ivories upon my chest,
Where the lyrics are aborning,
The chest that needs
Music to be whole, and word-completing

Wish I knew how to
Compose some love notes
But can't carry a tune,
Seems to me
Music,
Must come first

So let's make some music
**** right, together,
Finish these lyrics jointly,
When all finito, pointedly
Needed your music, my darling,
Music to make them soar,
Take our co-sing-song,
Dance to it with our bodies
Sing words the whole night long

Let us imagine, we write together!

You come for a visit,
From Germany, the Philippines, Singapore,
India, Nepal, even from industrial Leeds,
Bring me some Aussies and some Kiwis,
Green Tennessee, Nevada City (Ca?), the Canadian Plains
Hampshire & Haverford, where the H's get lost,
Even London, where everything is pensive expensive!
Cannot forget Minnesota, hotbed of poets restless.
If you are crosstown, let's meet on the Great Lawn in
Central Park, by Shakespeare's castle,
Let us turn my, now our, town into a belle-ville!

Side by side,
Stride for stride,
Manhattan, we connive
As our source, spring waters
For inspiration.

You come to me not as tourist,
But as explorer.

Ever-after twenty blocks,
Movement ceased, halted,
The mile, approximately travelled,
We then stop-sit.

Park bench, museum steps, bus stop,
Street curb, ok ok, Starbucks!

We each write a poem.
Exchange fluid words.

No proceeding until each have
Completed composing.
That's the rule.

A poem per mile.

I see this lovely island,
As home,
The sidewalk cracks, my veins,
The harshest of noises, my siren harmonies,
The dirt, my soul food.

But you, fresh eyes for me to
Discover what's been missed, for
Familiarity breeds cataracts,
Clouds the visionary.

I need you beside me
To be my teacher
To see my city
Anew.

The TSA won't let me fly
It seems when airplane-jailed,
My muse sneaks aboard
Without paying for a seat.

Another airplane poem like 30B,
From a long ago flight,
Found dusty, in the poetry sewing box


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

with every breathe he tithes
a packet of whispered wishes,
a blended osmosis of
past and future scenes,
reviewed, previewed,
moments in time,
actual and dreamed

some received,
airborne plucked,
in his chest stored,
prepared for future
takeoffs and landings,
for ultimate insertion
in both
your recesses
and
your abscesses

some native,
combobulated, containerized
packets of seconds,
of joyous moments,
bytes of historical
hugs n' kisses,
as a child
to a child
from a child

those are vanilla frosted,
residual payments for the
good done and given,  
forwarded with all clear signals,
to his loved ones,
now resent, to you,
fellow travelers and sojourners,
intersectors of our peculiar
coded dots and dashes

thirty five thousand feet high,
composure lost,
he swoons as
Bocelli's voce del silenzio
releases tears so sweet,
which are by nature,
gravitated and transformed
into snowflakes to decorate
the Sierra Nevada's
breasted peaks and valleys,
over which his physical notion
is at rest, yet in motion,
within a Delta flying ship

Yet his fevered chest
beats rough,
for every flight seems
a time warp interlude,
a forced reflecting rhyme,
not of his choosing,
a lawful, thoughtful, imprisonment

having donated to you
his best, the remainders,
the man tallies, recalls:

ancient slights, scaled heights,
requiems for his forefathers
scored by cantorial choirs,
liberation struggle weariness,
offers taken and refused,
aces in the hole that proved
insufficient to save his soul.

goal line stands made,
onslaughts refused,
true lies and false truths,
moist lips and monster tears,
occasional A's and calcu-hell-us,
hand me downs received,
help me ups got n' given,
buildings pricked by airplanes,
death wishes granted
and nothing thereby gained,
children, found and lost,
mine, yours, ours...

The sums, always the sums!

engine noises and pilfered winds
are dulled and semi-silenced,
yet the silvered chamber prison
resonates from end to end
as each ledgered memory,
each packet of the
hidden whispered poems
he does NOT choose to send,
dents the man,
leaving claw marks,
screaming pay attention to me,
as if they were the priorities
of a six year old child,
refusing to be ignored

he does,
attention, he does pay,  
allowing rocking guitar heroes
to overtake weeping violinists,
just as newer transgressions
surfeit even his
most really *****,
ancient sins

No matter how he counts,
unable to master the additions,
no matter how many times
counts are initiated,
taken and retaken,
the tally's net net is
concluded, numbered
"forsaken"

his life's W-2 is black n' blue,
deductions falsely enumerate
and thereby underestimate
dues he has paid summarily,
earnings, distorted,
taxes paid never enough,
to satisfy the justice scales,
so wearily he
cries and enunciates,

The sums, always the sums!

THEN COMES HIS SHOUT OUT,
at his most vulnerable,
when a thin veneer of alumina
separates him,
from a fall inglorious
to an end most gorious,
a rapping beat moderne
insists that he go all out,
disallowing no
airy fairy poetry
to disguise that:

If the integers are false,
the entries of a life lived,
are sucker lies
black eyed flies
toxic shockers
that bust open
stinko lockers
where the B.S.
mocking stories
are kept

don't look close
at his documents
they ain't exactly
heaven sent
and the government men
be back on his track
their aviator shades
protect them from
burning light of the
man's furnace
where he burns their liens,
and the agent's ear pieces
drown out his screams of

The sums, always the sums!

God bless you,
keep and recall those packets of
whispered wishes, good tithes,
that the man bequeaths,
gift baskets of
expresso essentials
with God's love delivered

Tho his words,
amateurish and unvarnished,
silly and pompous,
nonetheless, they are the
return on his investments,
his yearnings for your happiness
are the savings accumulated,
though meager jewels are they,
they are ad valorem,
mixed into his confused murmurings

here then,
are his summings up,
what he wills you,,
the tally finale
the best wisdom is
found on coffee cups
at 2:47am.

Dance
Love
Sing
Live

to which he respectfully amends with a
Write.
(See banner photo)

The Night King Ego died...

The time, the place, the setting:

T'is some hour for sleep, prescribed,
For me, the reality of sleep, proscribed.

The strains of Bach's
Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major
Haunt.
Richard II's words
Give pause, precision refinement of my cause courant.

“No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the ***** of the earth”

Two am in New York, sleep,
As advertised,
Literally, a passing acquaintance,
Doesn't make it to
The side of the bed occupied by
100% of me.
Seems he went
From chimney to chimney
This past Sunday morn.
Not having a chimney,
He flue right over me.

No matter.
Company aplenty,
Ego and moi,
We, had a long talkie.
A bit of a wrestle, a staring contest
In a mirror, we watched ourselves,
In the pitch black
where clarity is perfect,
For nothing else exists,
But ego and me,
To distract us.

“I'll read enough
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that's myself.
Give me that glass and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds?
O flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity
Thou dost beguile me!”

Called my lawyer just now,
ordered her to commence
the divorce papers, serve them ASAP,
I need to rid myself of
My oldest nemesis, my oldest friend,
Mine vanity, my ego.

Let me explain
myself to myself.
You may tag along for the ride.

Writing is more important
than any of the individual
Five senses
That feed this addiction.
Without sound, sight, touch, smell and taste,
I can live quite well,
Thankee.

But ****** boy mind needs to write
Simple survival.
No write, no life.

But ****** bad boy ego is a curse,
A contaminate of each and every
Line, stanza,word and verse.

"Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin”

At first, for an audience of three
I performed,
Me, myself and I.

But the suckiness creepeth in,
and etches my distorted face,
Salutations and gradations,
demanding confirmation
Of Shakespearen magnification.

Do you like me?
Do you love me?
****** all.

Curse ye King Ego and your vainglorious occupations,
Divorce me, from the sad isle of
Self
Self worth,
Pride, vanity insurance,
The most deadly of the seven
Deadly sins.

Ego desperate in kind responds:

"I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?”

Slime and slippery, want is what you feel,
Taste grief, need friends,
Sly devil, you twist thy cunning tongue,
The reverse, your plain meaning!
You need nothing but subjects,
In earnest and forever praise,
Absent them, you mood and whine,
A pretender, a poseur, a drug addict cursed!

Let us purpose to dispose of thy spirit earthly,
Slow starvation too good for you,
Poison, arrows, the hilt of my blade,
The neck, thine bowel,
Let me embrace,
Prefer your steel hot or cold?

If we both must expire, then it be so, for
My honor taken, my life forsaken,
My poetry in disrepute,
Until that day when I write for me alone,
And ally my scripts, in coffin, with me interred.

"My dear, dear Lord,
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation; that away
Men are but gilded loan or painted clay...
Mine honor is my life; both grow in one;
Take honor from me, and my life is done."