I like the way she holds my arm when walking…

up high, under the shoulder,
firm grasp on muscle, feeling
the blood beat acoustically, in joy,
sensually sensing a thrumming
thrombosis messaging, this is a
full bodied animation, liquid life,
“strong to drink”
“strength to break
off pieces and keep,”
a supporting mutuel
pillar column post,
given, taken, entrapped,
enwrapped, ensnared,
and
enshrined, mighty fine
feeling
“indeed”
pieces to mine,
pieces of mine

her taking is acceptable
my taking reciprocal
for her needs fulfill,
I,
walk taller, straighter,
in fuller strides, and when
she stumbles in the obstacle
course of nyc crack-ed sidewalkslop,
her whoosh of breath expelled
when saved by the arm firmament,
goes unremarked, for this is my
purposed occupation and the
occlusion of our skin cells
in tight bandwidth is certification
that our love is so much more than
mere skin deep,
or as she so oft summarizes, life is,
“indeed,” or in deed.

olp

Snow Sleep

the promise~warning of a fresh snow delivery
by milky white angels alters the soundscape
of the city; the early traffic is major muted; the
boisterous, ribald ribbing of teenage competition
is put away in the drawer, reserved for weekend
snow ball fights and Central Park mountain sledding

but what I come to tell you is of my beloved, who nearby,
advantaged by the silence deep sleeps in the ultra
quiet of the bedroom for I have tiptoed lightly away,
nary a squeak or a tweet to sting or wrest the cool
comfort of the concoction of dark+chocolate combo
of absolute silence, the political commentators must now wait their turn, while supping my endless Blue Mountain white mug

yes, even I, wide awake for hours, sense the ulterior
sensory deprivation, the only noise is the windage
of the air conditioning that refrigerates its humming
and the body’s humming response, a choral harmony
of shhhhh…

why matters this to you, I do not know, perhaps
a mutuality of recognition as your children exercise
their snow day privileges, letting you off the hook,
for there is always tomorrow when the dragging-
out-of-bed, the stomping of snow boots, and pleas
to help them find their hidden scarfs and gloves cannot
go ignored, or be silenced…today, this sound of snow~sleep,
a rarity for us city dwellers, who, the unfortunate few, will soon venture forth to meet obligations, completecontracts, open the shop,
write the reports and do the daily diurnal or place calls to counterparts overseas to jointly prognosticate the future of
the next twenty four, but with a snowy lethargy

I write, this, to you, to my children, to the world, but
mostly to my beloved, who, drugged by snow~sleep,
yet to stir, sleeps a soundless sleep of….

wait-a-minute, 8:00am, and I hear a bellow of hello,
a lighthouse sound of warning, and kitchen noises,
the cicadas of circadian rhythms cannot be held back,
triumphantly awaken her, the habits of a lifetime
cannot be overcome…

8:04am
nyc
2/13/24

She Went Straight for My Cookies by Jeanne Bonner

For weeks, I debated which Christmas event to attend with my sister. I finally chose a choir concert in my town. Before the performance, my sister entered my house without knocking and headed straight for the tin of homemade cookies she knew I kept in the dining room. She crammed one in her mouth before saying, “Hello.” I thought I needed the concert’s good cheer after the deaths, three weeks apart, of our 54-year-old sister and 85-year-old mother. What I really needed was someone so close to me that my house is her house, and my cookies, her cookies. — Jeanne Bonner


published in the New YorkTimes Tiny Love Stories column on
Jan 23, 2024

Pradip marks the slow disappearance of faces in the market,
unknown yet familiar and thus important to the senses,
for our eyes crave continuity, comfort reassuring that time,
even time that robber par excellent, still provides some comfort
to our souls, in its own way, even the faces of strangers in familiar places are road markers, bookmarks, that even the known unknown offer a measure of solace, as we traverse the old familiar places
of daily life.

it must be remedied. some of you know that I make not idle promises,
that my promises to be there are effected, for I am affected by the
repair of the world in little, measurable manners, so the iCal calendar
modified with a Visit Pradip++, a new addition…

and on the way there
are few more exotic places where poetry grows that
will require some
layover visitations…

only time in its theiving secretive ways stands between me and
you denied grasping arms, taking the measure physical of a
beating heart
and river-wide smile,
maybe even I’ll practice with a trip to
remote foreign places, which they speak
the languages of poetry too,
Snake River, even Iowa!

olp/n.n.

“wordlessly watching, heartlessly helping “

an early morning insertion,
says writes a love poem of
necessity, no formal request,
but as I am quiet bound to
her chest rhyming rising, falling,
she, caught between eyes closed,
but ears open, in pretense of deep
sleeping,
leaves me treading words,
“wordlessly watching, heartlessly helping “
borrowed for reuse, as waves
that have been here moments ago,
but only now just splashing me
to a place of inspiration, I look
up at the jambalaya of verses,
and declare myself satisfied,
both in love and wish this:

a completed poem that satisfies a
noisy urging~surging to tell her I
love her without disturbing her
peaceful state of drowsy and
permitting me too
(thinking pause)
to
taste a piece
of peace, so
well completed

how do you paint water, or clouds?

I could read poetry for the brief,
of my of remaining life, however brief,
and never be satiated, of love, and streams of water,
never stilled, always running in patterns that exist,
but for milliseconds, admired by clouds born in, of,
a moment of re-formation that is perpetuity long:
unending shape shifting, like the freedom of flowing water
currents, forming, reforming and unthinkable, nay,
inconceivable that human eyes or their spoken words
could capture their shiny white foamy essence

But of love, that we can do, paint, design, recreate its
endless loops of undulations, like the radiating circularity
of a pebble dropped gently to its burial sight in a quiet pond.

Humans know, understand and excel at clasping and grasping
at the synapsing of human cells from differing bodies: the
exogenous erogenous of human touch that like the clouds
and the water, who could paint that, who capable of capturing
said sensations that wrack and enliven the body with invisible
interior chemical reactions. I cannot. Thankfully better men and women have treatised  their entreaties to the powers of the universe and been rewarded with the skilled delicacy of weaving human tapestries, the milliseconds of connectivity, eclectic and electrifying of different currents and differing amperage’s forming and reforming like water moving, just  like the clouds changing in response to the externalities of wind and gravity and all the forces of nature that encourage us to study and stare at these flows, hoping to entrance them into standing still for but a moment, and instead, mesmerizing us into standing motionless for hours in awe of their freedom.

Love’s undulations too mesmerizing, and freezing us into
place, or alternatively caucus to run endlessly arms extending,
flying though not airborne , rocketing us upwards while feet never budging, but finding good wards, masterful metaphors to recreate and thus to share the fabulous mystery of this thing we know as love.


2:58AM
Friday
jul 22 (jewel 22) of the 23rd year of the 21st Century.


O.L.P.

I did not know
that first poem
of this day would be
a love poem meant for thee

you coffee fed, snack too,
talking chattingly with a
woman bff, in the sunny parlor,
friend, sisterly, you smother with affection

you are a model, a star for the UN,
you care, and take care of the sad ones,
who knew but lack, the now passion of
a steady lover, you step in, a pledged step-sister

on top of the boon of companionship,
you two play and entertain and chatter~banter,
like only two women can, for hours, without end,
an amicable amazing miracle, to a man who cannot same

for a man, it is different, we love our brothers,
but silence is welcome, understood, appreciated,
we could fish contentedly side by side, guffaw, share
a philosophical nugget, a good story, a back slapping

and I down the hall hear you both, and wonder how,
just how, you two go on endlessly and never run our
of affection, and mutual attention to each others needs,
and here I am writing a love poem, kind kid,  but different,


but not really, for my heartbeats exude love
for the person you are…a truer friend no human
could ever admire more….

The Whether


you will like, love or hate this poem
it will be written, needs writing,
asks no permission from the author,
gives no quarter, it is the
whether of either or,
for ‘tis not in our hands, not in this domain,
for it’s ripped from my elemental being,
like it or not, was took and taken!

Even I, am without choice, this one of
singular changing moments in our lives,

when she speaks and:

the happenstance dominates, the errant word,

bullet kills, grimace or grin is its very own revel-nation,

when where truth smashes,

drips and a froze-moment is preserved without

artifice, mnemonic or devise, for it is both perma-

burnt and burnished with ochres, browning yellows,

when you spoke plainly words that sundered irretrievably,

un-remediable, destructing 

my first first principle,

a mathematical construct of

conceptional  constantcy

“I can no longer love you.”

I often cry when writing my love poems


this secret, yet-not-so-secret, for the words become
blurry birthed by the amniotic fluid of encasing tears,
and when I write, wearing my emotions on my sleeves,
for wiping my cheeks, nose leaking, because I write of
sorrow supreme, that has no solution, pain repetition-dulled,
yet, provoking each time for the words bubble up, of-course,
it is love, in its thousands of reincarnations, coming to haunt,
the lost, the unfound, thinking of
my parents,
my children,
my lovers,
come, gone and
those who stay…

I bemuse myself thinking, each tear a lost poem, removed
by sleeve or tissue, wiped away, lost, irretrievable forever…
but these yellowed memories forever and ever refreshed
by sea spray and wind, my face absorbs their unique nutrients,
and love and pain rebirthed as if it was the happenstance of
today, and the poem water tank just goes on and on being refilled…

Come On All You Ghosts


<>

I heard a little cough
in the room, and turned
but no one was there

except the flowers
Sarah bought me
and my death’s head

glow in the dark key chain
that lights up and moans
when I press the button

on top of its skull
and the ghost
I shyly name Aglow.

Are you there Aglow
I said in my mind,
reader, exactly the way

you just heard it
in yours about four
poem time units ago

unless you have already
put down the paper directly
after the mention

of poetry or ghosts.
Readers I am sorry
for some of you

this is not a novel.
Good-bye. Now it is just
us and the death’s head

and the flowers and the ghost
in San Francisco thinking
together by means

of the ancient transmission device.
I am sorry
but together we are

right now thinking
along by means
of an ancient mechanistic

system no one invented
involving super-microscopic
particles that somehow

(weird!) enter through
your eyes or ears
depending on where

you are right now
reading or listening.
To me it seems

like being together
one body made of light
clanging down through

a metal structure
for pleasure and edification.
Reader when I think of you

you are in a giant purple chair
in a Starbucks gradually leaking power
while Neil Young

eats a campfire then drinks
a glass of tears
on satellite radio.

Hello. I am 40.
I have lived in Maryland,
Amherst, San Francisco,

New York, Ljubljana,
Stonington (house
of the great ornate wooden frame

holding the mirror the dead
saw us in whenever
we walked past),

New Hampshire at the base
of the White Mountains
on clear blue days

full of dark blue jays
beyond emotion jaggedly piercing,
Minneapolis of which

I have spoken
earlier and quite enough,
Paris, and now

San Francisco again.
Reader, you are right now
in what for me is the future

experiencing something
you cannot
without this poem.

I myself am suspicious
and cruel. Sometimes
when I close my eyes

I hear a billion workers
in my skull
hammering nails from which

all the things I see
get hung. But poems
are not museums,

they are machines
made of words,
you pour as best

you can your attention
in and in you the poetic
state of mind is produced

said one of the many
French poets with whom
I feel I must agree.

Another I know
writes his poems on silver
paint in a mirror.

I feel like a president
raising his fist in the sun.

Things Worth, Or Not, Remembering:
T.S. Eliot,  O.L. Poetry and the Passage of Time

<>

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.”

T.S. Eliot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<>

Only in a world of speculation, but what if,
There was no such world, one speculates,
Where safely looking in both directions as
We cross the alleys and boulevards of now is
NOT required; living in series of moments,
a steady spasming of venturing, and always,
something gained, something lost, but never,
additive, cumulative and more sensational
than experiential and we have no memory,
and thus no prejudice for or against!

Living with constant aspiration, not reckoning what are
Things Worth Remembering, is that not more than
no footfalls, only footsteps, to new love, renewed love,
possibilities of all doors opened, and we take each day
as it is given, banishing longing, jailing regret,
believing round every turn is a new fragrant, radiant rose garden,
or not…but perhaps means eternal, forever looking.

O. L. Poetry

now that I am in my seventh or eight decade,
(not particularly sure when you start counting)
memories bust out like the flashbulbs on olden cameras,
briefly bright as hell, illuminating and annoying as hell,

this flash came to me this morning and don’t know why,
but it was worthy of writing down for no particular reason.

when I was a child in one of those indistinguishable early grades,
my teacher informed my father at an annual parent teacher partee,,
that I was “not particularly smart,” which angered him greatly.

He went home undecided whom to hide (1) p,
the teacher or hide me.
unsure, he was, which was the smarter course of action
(for my mother had passed and he without a consultant),
but informed me, who promptly hid (as in escaped)
in the only place suitable in our tiny house, behind the couch,
that was my mother’s pride an joy.

more tired than angry, he reflected while sitting on said couch,
listening to my breathing/panting, he decided that perhaps
the teacher was kerrect, and furthermore, I was not to blame,
(told to me years later by his serious drinking buddies)
“given the stock he came from, it was less my fault, and more his.”



this too, is only a love poem…



(1) hide as hiding, a countable noun, if you give someone a hiding, you punish them by hitting them many times).

http://l.em.dowjones.com/rts/go2.aspx?h=969682&tp=i-1NHD-J0-Gxj-11tt6O-1p-16HvOp-1c-5XGo-11tf9T-l8fLN8RgcQ-1EmUT­C

A new virtual walk lets you enjoy the quiet beauty of a poet’s paradise: the Hawaiian garden of over 400 types of palms that Pulitzer Prize winner W.S. Merwin created over the span of 40 years

bad day omens come in threes (and a P.S.):

1. bad day omens come in threes,
a Trinity Church with a graveyard
included and attached, (1);
when your breakfast
navel orange targets,
aims & squirts on
its namesake orifice,,
a prescient hint for
a freshly cleaned
white T-shirt day,
first bite of the date

2. a trinity requires three,
the day is young,
so when sun up shines,
surely a positivity, nah, no!
just to make a point,
immediate comes out a
glazed donut
coating haze
that says impolitely,
no sir, “nun-uh”

3. go to the kitchen
for fresh coffee,
hearing a car
pulling out,
finding note,
on coffeepot-propped,
neatly folded,
To: Only Love Poetry

”Cannot do this anymore,
don’t forget to turn the
coffee machine off”

P.S.
Can’t afford another costly mistake.  Pre-treat that orange spot.
It was good for awhile, till it wasn’t, but our spots, just won’t 
come out, no matter how many times we tried, stained permanent. Sorry.


onlylovepoetry

one word. one thing
shows up on my face.

everybody knows it is a
keepsake:
keep away from me today,
for fks sake!

certain peculiarmornings
wake with a cross on forehead.

days when you certain,
everything worth saying
has been written, sung,
not a **** thing left to
contribute, except whining.

no way to purge, the compulsion
welling up, coursing down.
this overwhelms, my outlet store,
permanent closed, sign says
don’t ya know it’s a recession.

a one man recession.
no government intervention
gonna come my way.

the notion that I’ll never just
once more, feel the thrill of a
first love, a new born progeny,
woman, baby, poem, no diff,
wrecks me badly, worried sun consults
my animal friends, what’s to be done?

knowing the answer to my curse is,
not one wiling to courage to curettage
the lining of my decrepitude,
the end then, of no more next time.

though there is a first here. ever.
first time, every stanza writ,
closed off, finally ended, with a flourish,
a puncture of a period.

~~~~~~~~

postscript:


the closing scheduled for now,
have to change the name, says York,
it’s the common law, I’m legal bound,
gonna sign the documents as
no more love poetry.

919am Wed Jul 22 2020

this word love,
heavy with import, alternatively,
falsely called out too breezily,
diminished by over-usage,
till you admit it doesn’t fit
like your formerly fav pair of jeans

stretched, too many stains,
cut for a different body,
a different soul,
a different existence,
a former you

so when the mind and mouth
glimpse a synchronized synapse,
and just ‘bout ready to let the “L”
bomb slip past the guardians of
your own galaxy, you nick time,
modify it to a moderate, but yet
fulfill your need with a differentiated
four letters.

(“Cariño para ti.”)
“Care for you.”

awhile, a time ago, wrote:

“the oven's writing warmth,
still faint discernible,
giving off the aroma of heated ink,
upon a skin-smooth page..”

                         <>

my words returned by the commentator-in-chief:

“Tells me why the best part of my
time with her was spent in the kitchen.”^

lay fallow my emotive, a response due catalogued
but unfulfilled till today, oh hell it is a moody way,
partly cloudy day, raining in between sunny  brief teasing episodic.

perfect.

for the mixed mood, a melancholia of innocence with a dash of a salty, self-reflective hazing, choosing careful words when I write without clear direction, you want to rush outside, get set up, and then surrender-retreat inside to the comfort zone, the hearty, all-involving,  kitchen where the ink is always kept on warm on the glass topped oven, and the dripping-coffee-machine never shuts down, at-the-ready stale crackers in the cupboard, and all these writing utensils at the two-handy, when she comes in, and with a quick surveying, kicks me out, to make us accoladed good food, with these words:

“my darling only love poetry man, render unto me, this captaincy,
my fiefdom now, and herein are kept my ingredients and tools, whe my words are secreted.”  You mistake the warmth here as a necessary condition for thy composition, but not so, the warmth required travels in the hearth of the body, get thee to the nook, to the sunroom, or our bed where I catch you prepositioning conjunctions to join weeping verbs, adjective so riotous their beauteous is stolen by God i’m the fall, thoughts worthy of becoming verses and stanzas, the exclaim the wonders of thy perspective, thy goodly nature, thy odor of freshly stirred vocabulary, an alluring stew in a new ***, surrender this cooking place to me in order that you might chef a new creation, half mine, half yours, all ours.”

she tips the pool boy!

who arranges the deck chairs, opening the blue umbrellas,
and the kitchen dishwasher, who arranges them Ach so!
for the fussy, **** German-born dishwasher,
the man-who-takes-refuse-to-the-town-dump,
the bed maker, fluffer upper of pillows when up-awakened,
the driver who always has car tissues, and a disposal system,
the exterminator-in-residence, for the necessary cohabitating pests,
the guy who buys the groceries so she may live to see her grandchildren,
but that guy,
who writes her only love poetry,

he just gets the finger,
yes, all ten, a 2X five bonus,
and their associated tips,
whenever
he,
presses SEND,
a new poem,
just for her,
created.

she calls it an even bargain, what she don’t know, I’d do it all for free,
for just a single eyelash winking.

on account of you:

she says: do you know you often smile when, day dream dozing?

me says: on account of you

she says: c’mon sweet talking man, ain’t gonna fall for that hooey!

me says: hooey, phooey, on account of you

she says: nah, you writing poetry, no fooling me no more!

me says: on account of you

she says: I bet you got one of your girl friends singing to you, through
those wireless earbuds, doncha? who is it this time? a Sara or Joni?

me says: on account of you.

she says: you think big shot, you can multitask b.s. me? doing three things
at the same time!

me says: on account of you

she says: on account of you, I’m seriously ******, you don’t tell me anymore
sweet lies and alibis, probably writing an ode to one of your poetry gf babes!

me says: on account of you, can’t count no more, how many love poems in my lifetime written, and this one too, going out to you, charged to my tab, you babe,
are my account, my accountant, my accounting....

put down the pen,

gown thyself in coats
of many riotous colors,
banish ‘never’ and ‘hope’
from thy lexicon, and
begin with a smile
always a smile as you
walk the streets as if to say
open open says me,
open sesame and let the
good works begin,
for having found your
captain of the muses,
your Calliope,
your rosebud,
lucky you!
you will need not write

another word

dear god, you humble me into quietude

she says it’s sunny and 75
nearing 3’o’clock, cooling,
let’s go for our usual constitutional,
for a lovely afternoon walk to Shell Beach

can’t can’t can’t walking now in
a bottomless pit, every handhold,
poems, newly commissioned, newborn,
broken off the wall, revealing a gleaming,
light of iron pyrite, really good fool’s gold,
cause only fools write good poetry, or even try

but tonight I’m gonna feed you bucatini bolognese
babe, you gotta walk, make some room for all the words
that will come tumbling free falling while I’m sleeping next,
you’re up prowling looking for rhymes, lines, unheard of before,
you’ll need energy to bite, write, and make loving poetry and then,
then, sleep late, my laddie-baddie, new ones on my nightstand,
for my perusal, my usual unusual man who gifts me them to
in quantities of ‘more galore,’ that I accept, adore...adore

so afterwards, I must say my morning prayer, as an atheist forgiven,
the one I commissioned, and you composed, for me:

Dear God: you humble me into quietude, with gratitude...

this lyric licks your face,
leaving you-salty-caramel
smiling, while listening to Janis, singing
”(You Don’t know What It Is Like) to Love Somebody”

no babe,
nothing lasts,
not you, not love,
not me,
no matter how hard you
rhyme, theorize,
forget and memorize,
life’s only constant is
constantly refreshing all,
endlessly remembering
and forgetting how to
hold on to a heart, to love...

sometime a breeze, usually a hurricane,
comes along, prying your hands
off what you got, or,
prying your eyes away
onto something new, cause
that’s just the way it is
with human foolishness,
you gotta
“to walk, talk,
rhyme and theorize,
forget and memorize,
always refreshing,
knowing that
nothing lasts”


until it maybe does...









———————————————————————————————

“To walk, talk, rhyme and theorize, to forget and memorize, always refreshing, knowing nothing lasts, except things that last forever, last never, poems and decisions needing completion, choices, reordering songs loved best, replete all sorrowed pains, uplifting prayers, hallelujah hymns, last rites....”^



—————————————————————-

that fog horn blows,
worries my mind, lord knows, we don’t need,
more obstacles in this tired world, so the horn
trying, to be blowing fog away, without success

the sound’s remainder air-lingers like foam bubbles
ridden down to coffee cup bottom, resisting, protesting,
refusing to expire, useless/nonetheless, says no dying

sole boat outlined, bout mile out, must be anchored, it’s
unmoved by fog danger or noise, fishing is my informed
best guess, but fish ain’t stoopid, swimming another way

the fog horn wakes the woman who looks askance
cause there is neither coffee or a newly christened
poem upon her nightstand, an explanation is sought

“stand by me,” I sing, “be unafraid my darling, stand now,
stand by me,” poet said “been guarding our bed, this long
foggy night, agin interlopers, bad dreams and sea troubles”

shied ‘em away, knowing that when a man loves a woman,
she can lean on him, cause he’s load bearing, her safety is
always first, poem second, coffee coming, with sun rising

she bemused, funny you’re, kooky like the poems you’ve up-
written all night, up all life long, all stored up in my nightstand,
you’re sweet, like  Tennessee whiskey, ignore my scowling my own
poet-mr. coffeeman-sea guardian, you’re alright with me

despair ****** up all air, its currency is TV gold,
spent on rerunning human misdeeds, hate unmasked,
past infection point, reason is virally infected, what goes unspoken,
is we eat our young, they burn us on crucifixes, sins we committed
or not, we, living in the golden age of rage, no good reason crowned

basest instincts of intolerance is illness of all human supremacy,
it’s cheap and easy to hate, and its even cheapest to hate the
haters back, so the circle unending, wish I could sound less stupid
when my heart keeps ringing, can’t we all get along? Please. Idiot.

naive! guilty. toleration of nothing will suffocate all voices,
what good is this poetry gig, if we can’t drive out all hate,
no salvation, no hope, buried my writing utensils, cause
nobody’s listening ‘cept to the sound of their own righteousness

no need for only love poetry, when hating somebody is just (ha!)
so pleasurable, let’s hate everyone, for no good reason...

<>


a lump in my bed
————————

sheet covered, toe to head, alive or ?
call it lumpen woman, though shapely,
the thick coverlet says yay, let’s suppress!
what lies sheet-deep, let everyone wanna guess?

two arms snakily shoot/emerge, straight out,
from besides ears, to aerate treasured tresses,
blonde mane, lioness locks, somehow sun colored, of the
rest, a-guessing kept, I man of reason, am’nt a speculator

reasoning that when the world was 1st created,
there was a holy hole in my side, missing a ribbing,
leaving me needy for a plugging, a poultice covering,
a bandage stitched, so my breathing unimpaired

thus this how and why the lumpen woman is come
into bed and body, to patch and complete, warm and
stoke me, wake up us to freshly chilled spring atmospheres,
and other supposed reasons to compose only love poetry

Fri May 22
early morn bedecked bed
isle of sheltering

bathtub overflowing, the kitchen sink a-running,
water water everywhere, everybody, getting a wordy
Saturday po-em, ahem, so only, lonely, love poetry,
high pitches, whimpering, like a three year old chillun,
why not me babe? why not me babe?

words uttered somewhere, everywhere, hourly,
maybe even screamed, sung, shouted outed,
with total justification, incredulous incomprehension,
my ticket unpunched, this fate, an indeterminate sentence,
if only I had a penny for every utterance, be a multi-billionaire
and still dissatisfied

the isolation au courant makes it a thousand times worse,
sometimes, I hold my own hand, remembering what is touch,
just not to forget, like a lazy eye, a missing limb needy for
scratching, a sensating, sustaining pleasure that sorely
disappoints, for the brilliance of it, is in its eclectic electric,
and a solitary spark fizzles, swallowed up, into disappointing reveries

my eyes wet themselves when I see letters airbone, floating, reforming,
why not me babe?
if mine eyes cannot catch another’s, no across-the-room thermometer saturating stare of farenheightened heat, what good this vision?
left with a single despicable desperate cri du to my conurbation,
why not me babe?

my banana bread aroma flies out the open window to meet
and be greeted across the street, with applause and affection,
but our nostrils cannot taste, our lips forbidden, in this hell,
why not me babe?

the quietude so great, I hear the rhythmic breathing of one who
could be my chosen, my one and only, my love poem, exhaling too,
why not me babe?

but the see-through curtain prohibits strangers exchanging ****** fluids, glances of possibility, and enraged, unengaged, smash all my mirrors, cause they don’t answer my question,
why not me babe?
it’s a reverberated echoing, a slap across my face, married to my cryout, a singular sensation of exasperated silence

pick up my brass decorative magnifying glass, with twisted ivory handle, examine my hands, my lips, my nose, my credit scores, my personal spaces, my declining weight and bank balance, each excuse, belief,
the white spots decorating my sticking out tongue, thinking there’s another sense I’m forgetting, but all I recall is,
why not me babe? why not me babe?

and that is why only love poetry did not get a love poem today...

<>

“where all my journeys end”
————————————


§§§

she gets
breakfasts in bed,
an all-pandemic menu benefit

I smile,
as I carry delicately
her coffee, berries, & bagel,
a happy house divided,
stroked even sided
1/2 French pear confiture
1/2 NYC  whipped cream cheese

I smile,
as I am now an imagined,
a heroic carry-out guy,
an ear budded delivery man,
whose ears are filled to the brim
with words of an old love song,
“where all my journeys end”^

this poem is hers,
an ending for her
bed breakfasting,
and a commencing,
for her living well

an ending for her bed breakfasting,
and a commencing, for her living well,
a place where,
all my journeys end.

§§§§§

May 8
twenty twenty




^Traci Chapman

“May 15, he [the Governor] announced Monday...that the  lifting of stay at home restrictions will take place in regions which were not badly hit by the new coronavirus, mainly in upstate New York.

The restrictions will not be lifted in New York City.”

<|>

no sight in end,
no vibration of the tine of routine,
soundless, as in endless.

we unmark the calendar,
May 15 requalifed,
just another day, as in,
the search for Clorox wipes and Purell sanitizer,
will continue unceasingly

as in endless, as in
no sound no sight no vibrancy,
plenty wailing silence

we redefine social distancing.

measured not in feet,
but in months,
March, April, May

that have somehow disappeared
from our calendars
permanently.

everything in life is tech-ordered,
in this age of mega-multitasking,
the brain poorly functions, so in its defense,
the brain leans on learned reflexive behaviors

she, on the couch, cashmere blanket covered,
the Tv platform reconstituted as a drone,
a politician in front of a camera pontificating,
while she scans the Ipad, and both me and god,
don’t know what more she might need (to buy)

so when I stroke her legs, to give
added heat to her fiber-edged warming,
I do it more than once to test my theoretical,
she responds repeatical, unhesitatingly “hello my love”

after the fourth or sixth testing,
she looks up, ears perking, sensing,
knowing, something is afoot (a-legged?)
quizingly asking, “ok, what’s up?”

I smile, and explain most rationally,
that in furtherance of my current poem,
now underway, I was testing my leitmotif,
that even love benefits from proper training
<>
no, I will not show her this poem,
lest she show me in return,  
her new self-improvement,
her recently-learned-at-home,
mindful, meditative training in
kickboxing skills.