I thank God for friends like you
who live their lives in simple truth

They help a friend along the way and count their blessings everyday

They found love is not in word but deed
and care enough to plant the seeds

that grow into a friendship deep They live to grow and play to keep.

So don't let the years twist the truth
Just keep on being friends like you.

and you and I forever transform
under the aegis of the immortal

as we grow like the roots
of the banyan tree

which hang down with the branches

helping to provide shelter
as we slowly grow closer
to the sweet earth
in silent anticipation

finally touching
gently pushing deeper
until we are one in purpose.

They will tell you there is a right way.
They will hand you a torch and call it the sun.
They will roll their words in raw linen and whisper:
"This is what poetry is meant to be."

And you will nod.
Because they have made it so that not nodding feels like blasphemy.

But listen—
the ink does not check your credentials.
The meter does not ask if your suffering is organic.
A line does not collapse because it was crafted instead of bled.

They will tell you a poem must be naked, barefoot, aching—
as if there is no beauty in a well-cut suit.
They will decry the temple and build a pulpit in its ruins,
preaching freedom in a voice that allows no dissent.

Good poets are cult leaders,
and the first rule of the cult
is that they are not one.

So write the sonnet, carve the sestina,
sculpt the page in iambic steel.
Or break it, shatter it, scatter its bones—
but let no one call your wreckage untrue.

And if they do,
smile.
Because poetry does not kneel to priests.

Being simple
is very hard
that's why
people easily lose heart

who would be willing to let go
of their cherished comfort-zone?
in their anxiety and fear, doing so
would mean themselves they no longer own

such is typical human nature
which is insular and self-directed
with its boundary clearly drawn
every move carefully calibrated

over time, the self hardens
change is no longer possible:
it has been cast in the hardest steel
and is no longer malleable

“The Weight of the Untold” (Pradip)
<•>
6:55am:  Jan 2 nine twenty twenty five

(read the comments first)

enveloped by the early mix
of morning’s hangover of dark
blue gray, window glints of a
sun playing peekaboo over the
yet there (!) Manhattan skyline,
the utter  “ness” of the stilled,
unwritten, unstirred, uncolored
dim of medium shadowy light,
the quietude is an actual thing,
a warming coverlet of cozy peace

am I not forcibly compelled to
write of the weight of white spaces,
Pradip pokes my curious anxiety,
as I question my own words, that
he tosses back to me, so so oft
he ****** the cells of my fingertips
to peek, to bleed, then peck letters
from within, to comprehend my
museum artifacts of words,
the weight of their panoply
of mystery

How, how can the white weight of
our seemingly empty spaces tween
words, carry this burden on its,
bony shoulders, can’t we just let them
be, like the breaths exhaled, the
disappearing exhaust of being human,

is it necessary to carry knowing knowledge,
of what needs no body, isn’t the inexplicable
better left unimagined, there be so much tolling troubles, let them be left masked, they’ll appear as embodied black letters, of-when, their discord is accorded their moment of due…no  more need to succumb prematurely
to this onerous lighter than air pressurized crushing atmosphere of reused oxygen

did I awake just to prove my existence, to offer up this combination of vocabulary of wondering, one more explication of the unknowns that are visible to the naked eyes, big, hard, factuals better left alone…and suddenly the morning light has arrived,

dear god,it will be a sun-filled sky,
and that weight, is modestly eased,
never fully erased, but you know,
I know, most of its occupants
even those
who won’t show their faces

And perhaps they should remain
hidden in the white spaces
between the letters and the words,

u.  n.  t.  o.  l.  d.

The riddle wrapped itself in cloaks of wit and crowns of understanding

The parable parallels the fables with skins and lofty feathers

The riddle was obscured
Left lacking in explanation

Meanwhile the parable remained hidden
Left for future days

The implications of gratitude are like the hot dusty desert winds
leaching out the moisture
dessicates within

Then when the roots run rock shallow the fortification begins

Their indications of agreements entered into
are but less than followed through

Meanwhile the mountains of probability will be forested thick in their nakedness of shame and agit with the flux of futility

Then the riddle will be left perplexed , lacking insight it will not be able to see the forest for the trees