Prologue

casual glance at my notifications while driving even though
I’m all ready a bad bad boy, cruising at a sedate,
cruise-controlled 70 mph  vs. the bureaucrat bifocals 55,
a remnant regulation of the Eighties,
all the while humming with Gilligan
“a 3 hour tour,
2 passengers set sail that day”

then execute a four lane 180,
gotta get highway sideway grassed ,
cause i’m gassed...
by a Poem Breach

of the poems promised by me,
to write of thee,
you, my best inspiration,
the list grows longer, faster
than the hours provided

pull over fast emergency for my composure breached,
my vision wetted, my eyes hit by an unplanned unexpected,
sudden summer thunderstorm

<•>

The Poem Breach

once more into the breach thy words breeze through my chest,
like on a flamed stick, night roasting, toasting beach summer marshmallows,
that cut direct to the ineffable sadness that resides resists within,
that sticky, white mess,
a human heart melting

a thank you message that I’ve read before,
many times more than once,
how my unasked poem, a sun unique,
arrived at the
precise time and place,
to lift and even save,
how could I’ve know?

I did not know

but these messages collect on my chest,
unsought words of purple ribbon metal that make a
less burdened cowardly lion,
grown man cry,
do crazy things for it is a possible solution to his
age old quest

Why do I exist, is this my purposed plan, don’t understand, all
but the answer peaked and peaceful accepted in the breach unreasoned,
my port of entry, a gateway to the scales, a bridge it is, over a time-life river styx and unstuck, yet certainly always confused...


“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”


thank you so insufficient

I spoke to Kissinger this week

~for C. C.   the reluctant poet~


read him your poem,

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1933595/kissinger-on-park/

spoke of your reluctance
to write without the encouragement of others
(see below)

K. said poetry writing
very similar to decision making -
a single letter addition makes it into a wry thing:

writhing

but once you’ve published,
  once you have made the policy decision
then and only then begins the incision
that others cut upon your chest,
to fill with infectious assassination or
admiration,
at the risk taken

K. said: pray and trust that you reluctant fellow
and I
can non-disclose (hide) our internist discordance,
neath a sheen of stolidity that is a
pretense gravitas cover-up certainty,
for we wince when they shoulder tap you with
hindsight queries that you recognize
as retro grade F seeds
of inequitude

if you require recognition as encouragement, K. intoned,
prepare prepayments for your poems,
you have failed before even starting

please your self, lad, no one else,
reluctance is the chief ingredient in failure
do the work and pray for grace to do some
yeoman-well-enough to carry others upon the outgoing tide
of your burdened shoulders

this man who transmits my words
has been kicked off the fence, rejected,
a
frequent wrong road chooser,
for at least 25 years too,
stiff-necked like me, refuge survivor,
who leaves it all the way out
from no one nothing hiding,
freely acknowledges the policy errors of his wasted life,
can not be but the finest fodder for the retrospective historians
but he reminds us
loving children and animals is one way to say
I am so sorry for
the human judgments one must make when
first you sign your true and honest name
at the end of a
poem
or a war they call yours

reluctance is a luxury one can ill afford,
it seeps and permeates in the guise
of a sleepless temerity
and cracks the reflection served up
in the mornings first judgement,
that is,
if you dare to
reflect

<•>

~ a message from the Reluctant Poet~

“I'm a reluctant poet myself -
just started getting some
positive responses here recently,
which is ever so heartening.
I have three poems total posted!...
I'm just happy when
I can get deep down and say
what I want to say, and
hopefully give it a little beauty and
poetical magic for good measure.
The rest is up to the dear readers.”*
<•>

this man of constant tomorrows,
hopeful Mondays, bad Fridays,
a man of constant sorrows,
pictures and poems from a life
celebrating constant recalibration,

never allowed to forget that the
years of lucky will run out,
like the string you saved from packages were delivered,
when come the years with
no luck and no more packages arriving

tempest aroused weather throws a crink in the atmospheric pressure,
sun lazy long weekend planned rejuvenation, disrupted,
all day rain and wind gusts
that whitecap/kneecap
the river-fed bay forcing a
couch-curling up, a doozey dozy,
cozy writable assessment, a
tempting
answered with
positivity

close your eyes and all that can be felt
is memorized by your
forefinger cells,
a stroking upward gesture,
your stroking. your finger.
the children you have brought
into this difficult place

and a woman’s face as she rests uneasy and needs calming

but the memory of your own cheek as a living fired thing
being stroked is a gone,
because it was not frequent enough,
is longer than long past than what matters now  

my pointer finger remembers though

pointer finger points at my chest
stoking, pushing,

  what does your artistic heart remember?

one more for Joni and the one who accuses me of
"owning the courage to care so blatantly."

<:>
accused of writing with blatant courage,
a  4 credit requirement for caring

blatant is a word of merger -
open obvious unsubtle and unashamed

and a dissembling misleading one!

it is all of these  and yet can be a contradictory mask of
opposing, differing faces

my blatant is none of these
but appearance only

**** muses keep me coming back
to a particular lyric,
keeps seeking me out, so successfully, wherever I go,
I hear it
it’s invading my both sides now

the dizzy dancing way you feel

you think I have my own blatant courage, untrue!
so oft you mistook my dizzy dancing,
all fluff all humbug so obvious so ashamed,
a cover up, a most subtle cosmetic pretense of the truth -
  of
no courage at all
and yet (they mock)
you do care...

just another of my peculiar
life’s illusions
(self-delusions)

  I really don’t have blatant courage at all