~ For Mike~

an abundance of:

illogical reasons,
of hate,
of emboldened badness beyond inexplicable,
and nor is it
episodic, not periodic, but abundantly continuous,
so
no need for a fan, one of those upright six foot tall,
MF’er tornado sounding fans, for the hate free flies every where,
damning the consequences, full speed ahead, spreading
medieval plague style, and as we two talk of this world,
on this world,
electronically a thousand miles apart,
we, worn and wearied, being ******, and awaiting the
spill doors to unleash officially tidal waves of  
dammed up, still held back raging, hate
that is just edging over the top,
a nauseating goop (apologies to what’s her name),
I awake at 4:something

(to complete six hours later
whatever this is, this lamentation, of woe and sackcloth,
ashes on my tongue,
commenced the eve before,
but genetically ancient and familiar
in all
my cells),

to complete this heavy evensong,
commenced and begun seven hours earlier when one soul
states to another a simple,
“forgive me, my heart is heavyweight heavy tonight,
the world’s disheartened burdens beyond bearable,”
the quiet calm of a sleeping house pervades my soul,
and a lament is transmogrified into a
psalm of hope;

for having shared the pain,
when one asks the other for forgiveness,
for exposing the other to this sadness infectious,
then,
understanding and comprehension
overcome me,
realizing that hatred has failed
when two bleed into each other,
that
shared distress is
distress defeated,
by a large and grandeur
purer expression of connection
across state lines,
tween two souls
unlikely to meet,
ever,
and yet this cellular combination
is so powerful, so
a w e s o m e,
it is
indefatigable,
(incapable of being defeated)
and we are each others
Shepherd and lamb,
in a time of woe,
one more time,
but soon the dawn will come
to welcome us with
the embrace of a newborn,
uncontaminated,
and to finish this now psalm,
now, and forever
newly perfected.

“I suppose I will never lead the ordered life my father led.
And I’ll never live in the kind of house he lived in, with its rituals,
its dignity, the smell of polish.”
Leonard Cohen

<>
the orderly of an individual life,
guided by the guardrails of family life,
superimposed upon it by a calendar of religion,
that layers into you with a cyclicality of communal ritual,
that rules, guides, tides and hides you subliminally, the individual,
in ways that forever alters how one comprehends the meaning of
belonging

the oven~heated, banging smells of the kitchen,
the hubbub, frantic sounds of a Sabbath eve prepping,
vacuuming house cleansing, far more than just a cleaning,
the young boys in their jackets, white shirts, for Friday night
candle lighting, the girls in Sabbath frocks, assisting Mother,
but by
Saturday morning sermon time
those boy’s shirts
were always untucked, sweaty and always less white,
from running around outside synagogue from playing Ringolevio,
for which you were justly critiqued by a mother’s glare-stare

this play-within-a-play poem,
played out in homes nearby,
for community was very defined by geography,
and the candles of Sabbath oft visible in every home as
Fathers & sons returned home from Friday Night services
where the Sabbath’s peace was welcomed like
a new bride.

but the knowledge that this scenario was occurring in
homes around the world in almost identical custom,
lent a larger perspective to even the youngest, of a
belonging

As for me, I passed on that life,
not as well as it was given to me,
but as best I could, or honestly, desired,
but because I the individual inherited these
ways, words, knowledge and sensations and deemed
failing to transmit would be a grievous denial of a heritage
were I to not gift them this order,
the dignity of these rituals,
the pungent smell of a polished home,
a life of intuiting

belonging,
be longing.

~ one more for patty m. ~

slept late after dancing with my devils, from,
from the wee, until a pealing pearl from the Earl of Dawn,
recovering from an intrusion~invasion~brain~regurgitation,
and it’s nearly 9am, sipping my first cuppa Hawaiian,
& woke to a repost of a ten year old wondering plea(1)

makes me think “This old thing,” poem, like a fav
frock/suit that still drapes perfectly, and yet draws the
***** admiration and drippy drawling yummy compliments,
gracefully, gratefully demurred with them three words,
& it’s 8:39am, Bruce pitching in with “Born in the USA”

recipe for a new thank u Gawd poem to make room for
a fast~break diet for an old man with a rebuilt ticker, this
very emission~transmission of a verbal politesse writ going
some where, cooked on a medium slow burner fueling dressed up seeds of heartfelt appreciation made of ancient oat grasses

birthing a poem~child of thanks to the Lawd for one more day,
opportunity, the five sense’s delivery gratitude and gratifications, and the desire to intertwine the sights, music, a crisp blue November Sky, the need to bleed brew these words into a fulfilling,
second moment mug, for the pearls and Earls

of poetic humans


10:01am
Thu Nov 2 2023

“where time is the fly and age the fisher of men”

<>

”until I fell forward
into fall where time is
the fly and age the fisher
of men, then when winter
begins all will be forgotten,
where time is the fly and
age the fisher of men”

excerpt from “The Fall” by Rick Richardson

<>

that words from a different ionic state, jump as embodied ions from screen to the throat, evicting a guttural current of exclamation, you believe even with the half-heartedly palpitations from  remainder of my damaged pumping heart, that these words were always intended, just for me…

boy and old man coexist, the pottage of memories stirred,
and the time is fly, and I drown in the miracle of greenest grass of
Yankee Stadium at age eight,
oasis, heaven, a child reborn in a sea of Bronx concrete,
and the swallowing up of my boyhood is forever marked henceforth, the hook has caught me, and I am of the age
once and forever


not a fisherman, but a fisher of men’s souls,
mine own is my best bait,
hooked line and sinker, and
wisdom and words
elude and delude always, 
 like summer is perpetual and aging a construct,
time does not fly, but slowly laps and waves
eroding our myths and ourselves upon a continuum with
no ends

~postscript~

<>
yet I believe,
in miracles of
fish and loaves,
and that our individual continuums
will exist beyond the artifice of constraints
of
mortal time and that poems are
the forever chemicals within
our
bloodstreams,
even when our blood no longer spills

yet I believe!