~

Keep It Simple Stupid ("Your Poems Are Too **** Long")

~ for Natty~

white sheet of foolscap,
imploring the fool's fingers,
natty. natty, just this once,
be the simpleton dunce,
spend but a modest pence,
cap the blowout verbiage well

pretend
being a short and sweet poet beat^,
leaving those blue line requests
more white than black,
emptier and thus,
more silently, fuller, and powerful,

build  each line from a few hard crafted,
forged-wrought-iron syllables,
say the more in the
unsaid unwritten

snap your fingers in clapping praise,^
kiss the words bye-bye slow and single,
hold back the overfilling raucous reprises,
those stanza'd motley muddled crew,
de-access all excesses,
a manly, word squad^^^,
no more,
the shaft to success
be a David slingshot of single pebbles

but herein have,
prior blessed and true confessed:

"for I know there is soul in brevity,
but that ain't exactly my finest quality"

this is a "not know how to,"
for when I plunder the sea deep of a
single and singular
first and foremost# kiss,
still forever kept,
and that cylindrical memory volume so full,
one must seek and speak,
many verbal Ceylonese herbal tea toasts,
for the drunken 'n blinder I become,
the greater the need,
the lesser to please,
commissioning the poet to sing of his
long odyssey home,
of even the briefest venture ventured,
a combo of triumph and escaped,
wrapped in a single word,
his every feathery eye retention plucked,
a bald bird to be fully consumed,
even the bones, committed to
paper memory...

what the heck,
you want a speck,
a "say hey kid"^^ haiku,
a shorty hearty 60 second sophomoric Campbell soupy blessing,
microwaveable, heated but not hot,
radiated but not cooked

woe is me,
cannot be denied,
why use a pithy when
for pity's sake,
thrice won't suffice?

the woman, the observer
punches me with a solitary and indelicate,
as her wont, as her want,
"just-this-once"
telling the blowhard to not spout

this prideful pain,
deep water drilled in the muscled fortress of my rocky biceps,
eliciting  an outsized
"ouch, that really hurt,"
and my spouting retort...

~

by this bruised blotch, this redsome refrain,
dulcet sung in black and blue, a sonnet's colored quatrain,
by your flesh's mark, thee I join, in places where no mark dare
reflect our secreted touch, witness-protected by our guardian eyes only...*

**** it.