It's always while they're sleeping that you wonder the most. You wonder what really goes through their mind when they're not in control of their thoughts, if it's really your face popping up like they tell you it is. If it's you that makes their heartbeat quicken and their breath intensify. You wait for that mutter of a name, of your name. Though most of the time it won't happen, you can't help but wait. And then you're lost in the ins and outs of the air they're taking and you watch as their chest rises only to fall again, hoping you won't end up the same way.
    Their beauty stands out to you the most in this moment. The softened details of their face without emotion, without worry or sadness. The way their eyelids flicker as they dream and you pray that it's you they are looking at. You pray even if you don't believe because isn't anything worth trying to keep these moments yours? The most private of moments unknowingly shared.
    It might only be a brief second before you drift away yourself, only to be greeted with their face again. Or you may ponder on the thought of their peace and pull them closer to you; wrap yourself up tight.
    When they're in your arms, they're all yours for that split second. You'll probably get lost in it, in them, as your lips fall to their skin and you mutter aloud the words you want to narrate their dreams. Hear me, you think, half hoping they'll awaken to meet their lips to yours while the other half is content with this silent admiration. You deepen your breath to match theirs, waiting to meet them wherever they are as soon as your body decides to shut down.
     One more kiss, you think, planning to lean your head forward once more, but before you can, the melody of their breath is forming a lullaby, and you're flying away too.

head to toe kissing


I   the mundane

moonlight madnesses, a possessive noun,
commissions gravitational pulls that disobey and obey
laws of interstellar loving. The antique modalities once and forever, forever laying still, stilled in places of antiquities and historical need, are thundershower and hail rudely reawakened, the undertow of
pull and push, the yanking hands  of need for others, for others,
it’s the explosive-knowledge, the opening of the old kitbag of perpetual principles, that crazy head to toe kissing is no less necessary, more so, than the computation of the total breaths mundane, unnoticed even now as I write of them, that we will count from that very first, in deed, they are one and the same, like the same
kisses given from head to toe

II   the profane

at the first, the body insists, I am but a long haul trailer, no taxi me,
cargo and passengers, are my quatrain accompaniments,
traveling companions boon, my own toons, too soon disembarked,
songs of parents and lovers, children and others, your visage passed
without your permission, but with your happy encouragement,
to generations that will see things that futurists dare not
even mention, but the profane urge to warn them all, kisses from head to toe, elevates, and overcomes...so when most of my names dusted with forgetfulness, lost in the waves, my scorching soft lips will be recalled just as an airy flight of light brushing upon a newborn’s eyelids just at the moment of birth.  A rustling more felt than heard, the ****** and bruised carrying body will sensate and instantly forget, but nonetheless transmit genetically, that the profane of birth and life renewing can be only washed away, when past and future, recalled and recreated, kisses from head to toes, dripping with softening saltwater tears, a chemical organic reagent of creation,
inside the histories of head to toe kissing

III  the insane

so when, somewhere, some place, a man’s body prepares  
tous ses adieux, his memory foolishly sane and strong,
his wasted paper bag container ship, rust bucketed,
crinkled and wrinkled, skin folding in on itself, hanging to bones
by stretched sinews and tendons that no longer tend to business,
loosened and gangly, they hang on barely to the bare nakedness of
evolutionary processes, mostly not, offset, by the tenderizing effects of kisses, from invisible attendees,  unconscious they,
willingly and unwillingly, offering farewells in actuality...
head to toes, noses to belly buttons, tatted, tattered, and still tasted by dying cells.  It’s insane to think it’s even possible  one retains each and all, but he does, those few given, those few  millions he gave away for cheap belly laughs and poems, decade upon decade accumulated are the totality of him, all of them free and sealed in kisses from head to toes

late May, “sheltering in place,”
the perfection of the day, a descendant
of thousands of years of predecessors,
the elements in concert, expert-wise in the ways
of coordination of sky, wind and ocean caressing
to make poems come so easy, just breeze pluck ‘em

but this heart lies heavy in the noisy stillness,
for one intercept repeats itself,
all ready already, wrote of that, many times prior,
all the parimutuel betting/writing combinations
user exhausted, each one shouting, too late,
you wrote that in such and such a place, in a time,
vague recalled under a name since forgotten

eyes are the poem title generator random,
but all asterisked, seen that, done that,
wrote that, passages that are passengers
trying to hop aboard without paying,
the fare is no fair, and the style gone quaint,
no one wants to read the regurgitated,
my rapacious pen^^^ has stolen them back anyway

my pen now, flat on desk, good only for grocery & scratching off
my countless to-write, to-do lists,
but poem writing conspicuously absent,
this my last until, my corneas transplanted, my heart-ticking
to the beat of someone else’s drumming, but, no wisdom confession,
not what I expected from my retiring “freedom days”

did my share, and periodically one of you reminds me,
of the oldies, and the semi-smile that whispers across my drying lips
says did I write that, see the place + time denoted,
saying yes, here is proof of the when and where, and hints even
of the why, but the whys and wherefores, all crossed off,
the run is over, was a good one, but this time pride will not go
before the fall, for here it is springtime and the spring in the step,
does not launch more than an inch, ground bound, and when,
you no longer can soar, it’s time to say no more

and my old friends come to sing me to rest,
Joni reminds me I have no river to skate away on,^
my feet can no longer fly, lyrics like old honey, stuck no pouring,
Bobby closes my shop, with a young man’s prophecy,
knowing it is the hour that my ship has come in...
and though my moment is in this second, perfection, thinking,
peace to you all, remembering that peace is an unceasing changeling,
my piece is spoken, been trying to leave but this is it,
“it’s all over now baby blue”^^



“Oh, the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin'
Like the stillness in the wind
Before the hurricane begins
The hour that the ship comes in”^^

Shelter Island
Memorial Day Weekend 2019

upping the umami, the fifth taste

“Umami is the last-to-be discovered fifth basic taste, along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty, and triggers a distinct class of taste receptors on the tongue. ... The most notorious (and often unjustifiably maligned) source of umami is monosodium glutamate (MSG), the sodium salt of a naturally-occurring amino acid.”

a chicken soup recipe^ says it’s time,
time to up the umami,
me-the-no-cook is sidelined and intrigued,
then taken to another place

sweet, sour, bitter and salty
are the tastes of you life,
but it’s time to up the game
release the amino acids of my fingers
into her body, the tasting menu scrapped,
go direct to the boardwalk hotel,
railroad her unto my jail,
teach and share the notorious
fifth perception of loves taste,
the elixir of our combinatory sensationalism






————-

The Best Chicken Soup with Rice, Carrots, and Kale
Saveur
Tomato paste and fish sauce add depth and umami to our best-ever chicken-and-rice soup studded with sweet carrots and silky kale.