"I surrender / I surrender always because I live
in the house of poetry / because I ascend
the stairs of poetry
and also because
I come back down''(1)
<>

the stairs clarifying,
up or down, equal direction dangerous,
fraught with trips and spills everywhere and
poetry up offers new vistas, new chances that the
stairs down knows too well, so oft end in mitigated disaster

but
because you live in the house of poetry where
each level is different but always affixed to sets of
stairs that are unidirectional and you've trod them yes,
both directions and both sensations and will again because
the house of poetry has no front nor back door escape, once
you have entered
this house also called
the house of love poetry,
once begun. no exits exist,
you journey to the end of never done

A gain and again, the taste too over powering,
and write down what has taken you up
and will take your down perhaps,
but write, but love, you must,
when living in there.in  the
House of Poetry
it is fated,
the normative
is the extraordinary

"Now I look for her always
I'm lost in this calling
I'm tied to the threads of some prayer
Saying, When will she summon me
When will she come to me
What must I do to prepare
When she bends to my longing
Like a willow, like a fountain
She stands in the luminous air
And the night comes on
And it's very calm
I lie in her arms she says, When I'm gone
I'll be yours, yours for a  song"

Lyric from "Night Comes On"
by Leonard Cohen

<.
the morning comes on,
the blackbirds mark my Coming
with vociferous, unmelodic caw~cawing,
whisper a quick one line prayer
to whom, if anybody, who guardians
my soul & body combo
for one day more restoration

yes, you guessed, sitting before
the water's and landed tableau,
painter's tablet on lap,
wrapped my fav big ugly brown bathrobe,
coffee in my right, left pointer finger doing all the work,
of rat~tat~tap,
shedding my *****'s contents

yes, again, wish you were here, too
especially those who are long past their expiration date,
who I failed in ways inexcusable,
but don't linger for the heart reminders me,
probability states, I-won't have to wait too much shorter,
my due date unspecified, but we all knownow it ain't in the
far distant future
~
all this buys a way of introduction,
please consider yourself fully induction,
get you a pillow, and we both admire the movie
soundtrack of the goodly good of a stiff breeze welcoming us,
the bird empire gone quiet mostly, but the dutiful osprey parent,
wanders, floating, eyes by practice sharpened, for their are babes in
the nest that possess needs that must be attended to, for that is their
calling,

mine?

if it be your will to let me spill,
a moment the same, yet so wonderfully
different, sharing this day in all its specificity
have learned from its predecessors of thousand millions what
combinatory natural excesses it is duty bound to present us with,
for this I suspect, be my calling, waking to be an official greeter of
the miracle we so casually call good morning,
to be burdened in this manner, writing mad hatter style
of all the varied and variegated sensational sensoria overload,
I accept,
the anxious urgency of burning~some need
to capture every detail, without fail, to satisfy our
mutuality of wondrous awe that we have all arrived
in the same place, identical when's and where's here,
but no answer have I as to the Why, nary a clue, but here
I end, this poem dies, its calling  fulfilled,
and I am lesser for it, poorer too,
am disgorged, expunged,
having given, forgiven,
but low on excuses,
all I can, is that my
calling to, calling from, has
both been answered and filled,
leaving me satisfiably
pleasured, satiated

and called,
yours for a poem
.>


silver beach
Sun Aug 24

"When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong"

Lyric from the song "The Rose

<>

Who?
among us has not let this stray dog thought
litter their human mind,
coming in from the far side,

when bruised and battered, you, on the bottom chancing,
dredging for some chance expectation that
you chances have not all
been used up,
luck run out

you've all experienced the decaying angst
of when this long love thing goes awry away,
some often. some not much.some in tumbling brevity,
some after decad-ent years of agonizing, before
scissors snapping the last fraying plain
white string that lastly
remained

she sees me cornerd on the love seat,
and laughing accusesme of
writing only love poetry
for another, while
smiling winks,
at her only
love poet,
who
kisses
her each hand
when the sunlight mixes
with early light and his heart
can see it illuminate our faces